Communications of the ACM
The blog archive provides access to past blog postings from Communications of the ACM and other sources by date.
January 2017
From The Eponymous Pickle
AI Newsletter
O'Reilly's latest AI Newsletter. Usually informative. Often linking to their books and related materials and webcasts. Worth a follow.
From The Eponymous Pickle
Why Should Algorithms Explain themselves?
Some of our earliest work in delivering expertise via AI to the enterprise failed because the system could not explain its reasoning to its users. The system could not sell itself. But does a system need to do that? Or does…
From The Eponymous Pickle
MS Buys Deep Learning Company
Continuing to be interested in what 'conversation' means for AI. For humans it is a key part of sharing, delivering, learning and developing expertise. How do we give that to machines?
Deep Learning Startup Maluuba Acquired…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Apple Making Smart Glasses
Now back to the idea of augmented reality glasses, where Google glass failed, though is apparently still being worked. Do we want fashion, or actual value, or both? Which drives sales the most, adoption the most?
Why Apple…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Salespeople and Executives
Worked on executive information systems that linked sales people and executive decisions.
Executives and Salespeople Are Misaligned — and the Effects Are Costly
Frank V. Cespedes, Christopher Wallace
U.S. companies spend over $900…
From BLOG@CACM
ACM's Open-Conference Principle and Political Reality
The Open-Conference Principle is aimed at benefiting society.
From The Computing Community Consortium Blog
Nominations Sought for New CCC Council Members
Nominations Due in 3 Days! Computing Community Consortium (CCC) is charged with catalyzing and empowering the U.S. computing research community to articulate and advance major research directions for the field. To do so, the…
From The Computing Community Consortium Blog
More Big Data to Knowledge Updates for the Community
The Data Science and the Big Data to Knowledge (BD2K) initiative at the National Institutes of Health (NIH) have a number of announcements and upcoming events. New Announcements The 2017 Benjamin Franklin Award for Open Access…
From insideHPC
Video: Rescale Night Showcases HPC in the Cloud
"Billed as an exposition into 'The Future of Cloud HPC Simulation,' the event brought together experts in high-performance computing and simulation, cloud computing technologists, startup founders, and VC investors across the…
From insideHPC
HPC4Mfg Industry Day Comes to San Diego March 2-3
HPC4Mfg will host their first annual High Performance Computing for Manufacturing Industry Engagement Day on March 2-3 in San Diego. With a theme of "Spurring Innovation in U.S. Manufacturing Through Advanced Computing," the
…
From Putting People First
Yves Béhar’s ten principles for design in the age of AI
Swiss designer, entrepreneur, and sustainability advocate Yves Béhar points out that there are no high-level manifestos or guidelines for designers working with AI, robotics, and connected technology today. Last week, in a talk…
From insideHPC
Argonne Annouces Early Science Projects for Aurora Supercomputer
Argonne has selected 10 computational science and engineering research projects for its Aurora Early Science Program starting this month. Aurora, a massively parallel, manycore Intel-Cray supercomputer, will be ALCF’s next leadership…
From Schneier on Security
IoT Ransomware Against Austrian Hotel
Attackers held an Austrian hotel network for ransom, demanding $1800 in Bitcoin to unlock the network. Among other things, the locked network wouldn't allow any of the guests to open their hotel room doors. I expect IoT ransomware…
From insideHPC
In Memory Computing Speeds Results
In-Memory Computing can accelerate traditional applications by using a memory first design. Applicable to a wide range of domains, In-Memory Computing and In-Memory Data Grids take advantage of the latest trends in computer systems…
From insideHPC
HiPINEB Workshop on High Performance Networks Posts Agenda for February 5 in Austin
The IEEE International Workshop on High-Performance Interconnection Networks in the Exascale and Big-Data Era (HiPINEB) has published its program agenda. Held in conjunction with the IEEE HPCA 2017 Conference, HiPINEB takes place…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Smart Glasses Adjust for Visual Tasks
Not augmented reality glasses, but those that adapt to needed vision.
I Can See Clearly Now
UNews (UT) (01/24/17) Vincent Horiuchi
University of Utah researchers have created "smart glasses" with liquid-based lenses that can automatically…
From The Computing Community Consortium Blog
Global Cities Teams Challenge (GCTC) Updates
There are a number of Global Cities Teams Challenge (GCTC) SuperCluster activities coming up: City Platform SuperCluster Workshop: Kansas City is hosting the GCTC City Platform SuperCluster Workshop on February 7-8, 2017, at…
From Computer Science Teacher - Thoughts and Information From Alfred Thompson
The Complex Question of Complexity in Programming
I spent most of last week grading semester projects written by my students. Reading through the code of beginners is really interesting. It’s interesting in part because of the solutions they come up with. You see in my first…
From insideHPC
Cheyenne Supercomputer Triples Scientific Capability at NCAR
The National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) is launching operations this month of one of the world's most powerful and energy-efficient supercomputers, providing the nation with a major new tool to advance understanding…
From Daniel Lemire's Blog
Maps and sets can have quadratic-time performance
Swift is a new programming language launched by Apple slightly over two years ago. Like C and C++, it offers ahead-of-time compilation to native code but with many new modern features. It is available on Linux and macOS. Like…
From insideHPC
Video: Modern Computing – Cloud, Distributed, & High Performance
Dr. Umit Catalyurek from Georgia Institute of Technology presented this talk as part of the USC Big Data to Knowledge series. "This lecture will be a brief crash course on computer architecture, high performance computing and…
From The Eponymous Pickle
What is Machine Learning, and Why is it Intelligent?
Not bad, completely non-technical, 5 minute, video introduction to machine learning. And why it is a kind of 'intelligence'. Nicely done.
Ankit Mistry
Senior Software Engineer at Citibank India
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=__snatmeLM0…
From insideHPC
HPC User Forum Returns to Stuttgart Feb 28 – March 1
The IDC HPC User Forum, taking place at the HLRS premises in Stuttgart-Vaihingen on February 28 and March 1, will bring together the HPC community to hear experts from all of Europe and the USA. During the two-day event, one
…
From The Eponymous Pickle
What AI Needs is a Dose of Realism
Good thoughts, though I am a strong proponent of AI, there is still much to do.
What AI needs is a dose of realism
Oren Etzioni talks about the current AI landscape, projects at the Allen Institute, and why we need AI to make sense…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Year of the Chatbot?
Is it the year of the chatbot? Many examples out there, but still needs considerable evolution. May well be the year of chatbot experimentation.
Year of the Chatbot?
Through a special arrangement, presented here for discussion…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Differential Event Models
Having been a long time practitioner of simulation using events, this immediately attracted me to this description. Technical. Thinking how this can be used, have not completely understood it yet. Interesting too are the…
From insideHPC
25 Gigabit Ethernet Consortium Validates Multi-Vendor Interoperability
"In order to handle the increasing amount of data, server architectures all too often require multiple 10G ports. 25G Ethernet arrives just in time and has started its climb towards dominance as the leading server-to-ToR switch…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Random Walks for Time Series Forecasting
Nicely done, fairly gentle.
A Gentle Introduction to the Random Walk for Times Series Forecasting with Python by Jason Brownlee on January 20, 2017 in Time Series
How do you know if your time series problem is predictable?
This…
From Schneier on Security
New Rules on Data Privacy for Non-US Citizens
Last week, President Trump signed an executive order affecting the privacy rights of non-US citizens with respect to data residing in the US. Here's the relevant text: Privacy Act. Agencies shall, to the extent consistent with…
From insideHPC
Radio Free HPC Interviews Henry’s Mom and Congratulates The UberCloud on New Funding
In this podcast, the Radio Free HPC team speaks to our special guest for the week: Binnie Coppersmith, also known as Henry’s Mom. It’s Binnie’s 80th birthday, and Dan wants to know once and for all if Henry is an alien, or at…