Communications of the ACM
The blog archive provides access to past blog postings from Communications of the ACM and other sources by date.
February 2016
From insideHPC
Cray Appoints Fred Kohout as Chief Marketing Officer
"Fred brings to Cray a proven track record of building strategic partnerships and increasing sales through a customer-centric view of the market,” said Peter Ungaro, president and CEO of Cray. “Fred’s background at industry-leading…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Turn Your Coke Packaging into a VR Viewer
More engagement with Virtual Reality . Will this drive the acceptance of VR as interface? In Fortune: You can’t buy the world a Coke, but maybe you could see the world in virtual reality while you sip your Coke. ... That seems…
From U.S. Public Policy Committee of the ACM
Hill Tech Happenings, Week of February 29
The House Appropriations Committee and the Senate Appropriations Committee will hold budget hearings this week. Tuesday, March 1, 2016 Hearing: The Encryption Tightrope: Balancing Americans’ Security and Privacy House Judiciary…
From Daniel Lemire's Blog
My next bet: VR is going to take off in the next 3 years…
You have probably heard of virtual-reality (VR) headsets. Three of them are coming out this year: Facebook’s Occulus Rift, HTV Vive and the PlayStation VR. Moreover, Samsung has produced a Gear VR unit for low-quality VR. These…
From U.S. Public Policy Committee of the ACM
NIST Seeks Public Comments on the Use of Randomness to Protect Data
The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) is seeking public comment on draft design principles and requirements for randomness in cryptography and security applications. Comments are due by May 9. The 75-page…
From My Biased Coin
Distinguished Service Award
Nominations
Nominations can be made by any member of the Theory of ComputingApril…From The Eponymous Pickle
Internet 2 Rethought
Happened to be at a presentation announcing the launch of Internet 2, and admit I have not thought about it for years. Not really an advanced internet, but an alternate one. We used it to link to University research in early…
From Schneier on Security
Resilient Systems News: IBM to Buy Resilient Systems
Today, IBM announced its intention to purchase my company, Resilient Systems. (Yes, the rumors were basically true.) I think this is a great development for Resilient Systems and its incident-response platform. (I know, but that's…
From insideHPC
Video: Node Health Check (NHC) Project Update
In this video from the 2016 Stanford HPC Conference, Michael Jennings from LBNL presents: Node Health Check (NHC) Project Update. "In this follow-up to his 2014 presentation at the Stanford HPCAC Conference, Michael will provide…
From insideHPC
Code Modernization for Smarter Geophysics
Today Allinea announced plans to champion what it sees as a key survival message for the Energy industry when it exhibits at the Rice Oil and Gas HPC Conference in Houston next week. "We'll be underlining to geophysicists at …
From insideHPC
Adaptive Computing steps up with High Productivity Remote Visualization
Today Adaptive Computing announced it has integrated Remote Visualization with Moab’s workload submission portal, Viewpoint, in order to improve ease-of-use and increase user productivity. "Adaptive Computing is transforming …
From The Eponymous Pickle
Networks of Parked Cars Could Save Your Life
Suggesting that parked cars, acting as a network of computing systems and sensors, could play an infrastructure role as part of the Internet of Things. Why parked? Apparently cars spend 95% of their time parked, so thats where…
From The Eponymous Pickle
A Consumer Value Equation
We were proponents of using a 'consumer value equation'. Still relevant, but it has been suggested that there are value drivers that are evolving more rapidly than just cost and need to be tracked. And are likely disruptive…
From insideHPC
Video: Using HPC to Advance Water Desalination By Electrodialysis
"Electrodialysis is a technology used for water purification in applications such as desalination for drinking water, waste water reuse, and demineralization. An electrodialysis system uses ion-selective membranes and applied…
From insideHPC
Industry Experts Discuss Accelerating Science with Storage Systems Research
In this special guest feature, Ken Strandberg describes the highlights of panel discussion on high performance storage at SC15. "There was significant discussion about identifying the most important workflows, e.g. will checkpoint…
From Computational Complexity
It works in practice, but does it work in theory (Pollard's Factorization algorithm)
Throughout this post I ignore polylog factors. It is trivial to factor N in time N1/2. Pollard's rho-algorithm (see my write up here or Wikipedia Entry) for factoring does bette expected time N1/4. Or does it? It works well…
From The Eponymous Pickle
HoloLens Developer Hardware Specs
In theVerge: Good to see more specifications for developers, also for innovators considering applications but still no much new with regard to realistic commercial applications beyond NASA and product design. Where are the…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Automating Feature Engineering
Correspondent Jason Maughan of PurePredictive sends along a Beta of some work he is doing on feature engineering. Based on Kaggle experience. As I have always said here, feature selection and engineering is a key part of any…
From Schneier on Security
More on the "Data as Exhaust" Metaphor
Research paper: Gavin J.D. Smith, "Surveillance, Data and Embodiment: On the Work of Being Watched," Body and Society, January 2016. Abstract: Today's bodies are akin to 'walking sensor platforms'. Bodies either host, or are…
From Computer Science Teacher - Thoughts and Information From Alfred Thompson
Interesting Links 29 February 2016
February break is over. I’m not actually in school today as I am working with one of the writing teams working on a framework for K-12 Computer Science Education. I took it fairly easy last week. No trips, no special events,Social…
From Computer Science Teacher - Thoughts and Information From Alfred Thompson
Writing the K12 CS Framework
Like most classroom teachers I really hate missing class time with my students. So I’m pretty deliberate about the time that I do miss. I’m missing the next two days of school as part of one of the writing teams working on a …
From The Eponymous Pickle
Google Neural Network Determines Image Location
A superhuman capability? Certainly in volume of recollection. Applications? Retail product location? Advertising analysis when linked to neural or behavioral clues?In Technology Review: Here’s a tricky task. Pick a photograph…
From The Eponymous Pickle
How will Innovation Save P&G?
In the Enquirer: I worked in the innovation space there for a number of years. Good article on whats up publicly, mostly in product as opposed to operational innovation. Nothing very surprising, but worth it for CPG and P&G…
From insideHPC
STEM IP – Advancing HPC, Industry & Society
"When it comes to commercialization of promising IP, HPC punches below its weight. That, we can and should change. Where does the HPC community get training on entrepreneurship? How do you become an entrepreneur? Does it have…
From insideHPC
Will the Cloud Change Scientific Computing?
"What is important to researchers is ‘time to science,’ not the length of time a job takes to compute. 'If you can wait in line at a national supercomputing center and it takes five days in the queue for your job to run, and …
From The Eponymous Pickle
Wal-Mart Out Sources
Fascinating behind the scenes look. Note how this takes information and data closer to the business process. In Infoq:" ... has open-sourced OneOps, a cross-cloud deployment and orchestration platform. OneOps abstracts…
From The Eponymous Pickle
CNET Smarthome Experiences Fragmentation
Now that we finally have a large number of potential interactive components for the smart home, how will they work together? CNET discovers, as I have, that the result is considerable fragmentation. Amazon Echo can form…
From Gödel's Lost Letter and P=NP
The Pierce-Birkhoff Conjecture
A kind of hierarchy collapse? Cropped from father-son bio source Garrett Birkhoff was a mathematician who is best known for his research on lattices, and also his work on teaching of abstract algebra. He was at Harvard almost…
From Daniel Lemire's Blog
Lost my bet: the PC isn’t dead… yet
I can’t predict the future, nobody can… but I think betting on the future is a good intellectual workout. It forces you to think beyond your day-to-day activities. In 2012, I bet $100 with Greg Linden that by 2015, tablets would…
From Geeking with Greg
Tablets replacing PCs: Resolving the $100 bet
In 2012, Professor Daniel Lemire and I bet $100 over the question of whether tablets would replace PCs. Specifically, the bet was, "In some quarter of 2015, the unit sales of tablets will be at least twice the unit sales of traditional…