Communications of the ACM
The blog archive provides access to past blog postings from Communications of the ACM and other sources by date.
February 2019
From The Eponymous Pickle
Data, Data Science, Causal Thinking
"The Seven Tools of Causal Inference, with Reflections on Machine Learning," by ACM A.M. Turing Award recipient Judea Pearl, describes tools that overcome obstacles to human-level machine intelligence. Pearl delivers a message…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Beyond Worse Case Analysis
A look at the worst case in performance. This deals more with optimization methods, those that can find specific correct examples. So for example sorting a file is given as a common problem. There is a precise correct
Video…
From The Computing Community Consortium Blog
NSF Webinar on the Quantum Leap Challenge Institutes
The National Science Foundation (NSF) has announced a webinar on Quantum Leap Challenge Institutes (QLCI). The webinar will take place March 13th from 3:30 PM to 4:30 PM Eastern Standard Time and will provide an overview of the…
From insideHPC
Univa steps up with Support Services for Open Source Grid Engine Users
Today Univa announced that it will now provide support services to users in their open source community to assist them with installation, configuration and troubleshooting. Supported products include Open Source Grid Engine 6…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Robots with Sense of Self?
We often found it useful, when modeling a conversation to introduce the 'self' aspect for concepts like memory, context and goals. These were not for guiding physical robots, but robotic processes. Still useful for noting…
From insideHPC
John Shalf and Thomas Sterling to Keynote ISC 2019 in Frankfurt
Today ISC 2019 announced that its lineup of keynote speakers will include John Shalf from LBNL and Thomas Sterling from Indiana University. The event takes place June 16-20 in Frankfurt, Germany. "On June 18, John Shalf, from…
From insideHPC
Siemens Simcenter comes to Rescale ScaleX Platform for HPC in the Cloud
Today Rescale announced a strategic collaboration with Siemens PLM Software. Siemens PLM Software has partnered with Rescale to enable SaaS delivery of Siemens’ Simcenter portfolio on Rescale’s ScaleX platform. "Leveraging cloud…
From The Eponymous Pickle
TurboTrack for RFID Robotics and More
Recalling an application we might have used this.
MIT Media Labs Creates Highly Precise UHF RFID for Robotics
The TurboTrack system employs a standard tag and interrogator, as well as a "helper" antenna device that pulses short…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Robotic Process Automation
Update on the advance of RPA. I don't often hear the excellent idea mentioned, many have not seemed to have heard of it, does it has a marketing problem squeezed between analytics and AI?
Robotic Process Automation Gains
Robotic…
From insideHPC
ClimateNet Looks to Machine Learning for Global Climate Science
Pattern recognition tasks such as classification, localization, object detection and segmentation have remained challenging problems in the weather and climate sciences. Now, a team at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory…
From Gödel's Lost Letter and P=NP
Phrases That Drive Me Crazy
Some nasty phrases that appear on the web [ Jimmy Wales ] Jimmy Wales is the co-founder of Wikipedia. Of course this is the wonderful online non-profit encyclopedia we all know and love. Today I want to talk about using the web…
From insideHPC
Making Computer Vision Real Today – For Any Application
With the demand for intelligent vision solutions increasing everywhere from edge to cloud, enterprises of every type are demanding visually-enabled – and intelligent – applications. Up till now, most intelligent computer vision…
From Computational Complexity
Flying Pigs Unsafe at Any Speed
Take a moment and imagine a flying pig. Do you see a pig with tiny wings lazily guiding along. But pigs are not particularly slow animals as anyone has seen a pig race at a county fair can attest to that. So why not in the air…
From Schneier on Security
Can Everybody Read the US Terrorist Watch List?
After years of claiming that the Terrorist Screening Database is kept secret within the government, we have now learned that the DHS shares it "with more than 1,400 private entities, including hospitals and universities...."…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Small Coffee Farmers Seek Trust
And another example of Integrity-type usage .... Used to work in the coffee procurement and blending space, sometimes with small grower.. Might be an interesting place to look for small agricultural suppliers?
Coffee Farmers…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Strategy for Storing Clinical Trial Data with Blockchains
Here the goal example for using Blockchains is the integrity of stored results among multiple parties. Assuming some parties have an incentive to tamper with the data. So why not use a database ledger with assured strong
The…
From The Computing Community Consortium Blog
Great Innovative Idea: Capturing Meaning: Toward an Abstract Wikipedia
The following Great Innovative Idea is from Denny Vrandečić of Google. Denny was one of the Blue Sky Award winners at ISWC 2018 for his paper Capturing Meaning: Toward an Abstract Wikipedia. The Idea Currently, Wikipedia is available…
From insideHPC
Singularity 3.1.0 brings in Full OCI Compliance
Today Sylabs announced that Singularity 3.1.0 is now generally available. With this release, Singularity is fully compliant with standards established by the Open Containers Initiative (OCI), and benefits from enhanced management…
From insideHPC
NSF funds second round for OSC’s Open OnDemand
The National Science Foundation (NSF) recently awarded funding to a team led by the Ohio Supercomputer Center (OSC) for further development of Open OnDemand, an open-source software platform supporting web-based access to high…
From Computer Science Teacher - Thoughts and Information From Alfred Thompson
What Are You Reading?
We all get asked this question – What are you reading? Often this is the context of an interview and the person asking is really asking “how are you keeping current in your field?” For computer science educators there are few…
From The Eponymous Pickle
History of Data Visualization and its Future
Good, detailed and lengthy piece. Remember many of the transitions. Now would like to see more and better analytics/AI visualization to add to this. And better ways to understand deeper context and application of data for…
From The Eponymous Pickle
D-Wave Announces Next Gen of Its Unique Quantum Computing
Continue to follow this. Notably for its possible use for certain kinds of problems.
D-Wave announces its next-gen quantum computing platform By Frederic Lardinois in TechCrunch
From insideHPC
IonQ Performs First Quantum Simulation of a Water Molecule
Today IonQ announced that its quantum computer has achieved a critical milestone: simulating the water molecule with accuracy approaching what is needed for practical applications in the promising field of computational chemistry…
From insideHPC
Video: Sierra – Science Unleashed
Rob Neely from LLNL gave this talk at the Stanford HPC Conference. "This talk will give an overview of the Sierra supercomputer and some of the early science results it has enabled. Sierra is an IBM system harnessing the power…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Datafication is a Process
OK, specific terminology is new to me, but I can see the point. Being data driven is important, but getting there is also a process. Datafication. But does it need a new term? Very nicely done, non technical paper on the…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Fedex Experiments with Autonomous Pods
I think we can assume we will soon see multiple autonomous delivery pods crawling (and perhaps later flying) all around the landscape. Waiting for unintended consequences. Not too different from automated mail delivery bots…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Alexa Socialbot Reports on Grand Challenge
Following this effort. Have experimented with the bots to date. We still need more substantial results to make these approaches more powerful. True, meaningful, contextual conversation is the goal. Not just fooling someone…
From The Eponymous Pickle
People and Process
Thoughts on process in Retail, not that often effectively utilized.
Intersection of technology, processes and people by Jim Frome
From the front end to the backend: the people, technology, and the processes that empower them
Today…
From insideHPC
D-Wave previews Next-Gen Quantum Computing Platform
Today D-Wave Systems released a preview of its next-generation quantum computing platform incorporating hardware, software and tools to accelerate and ease the delivery of quantum computing applications. "Quantum computing is…
From Schneier on Security
"Insider Threat" Detection Software
Notice this bit from an article on the arrest of Christopher Hasson: It was only after Hasson's arrest last Friday at his workplace that the chilling plans prosecutors assert he was crafting became apparent, detected by an internal…