Communications of the ACM
The blog archive provides access to past blog postings from Communications of the ACM and other sources by date.
June 2016
From The Eponymous Pickle
IBM Watson and Cisco to Build a Workmate
Another potential commercial example of virtual assistants ... Natural extension for Cisco who is already providing advanced business technologies. IBM and Cisco will make Watson into a virtual workmateThe cognitive computing…
From CERIAS Blog
Changes for CERIASand Spaf
Today (June 30) is my last day as CERIAS Executive Director. This marks the end of a process that began about 15 months ago, when it was unexpectedly announced that my appointment was not being renewed. Last week, the dean responsible…
From CERIAS Blog
Changes for CERIAS…and Spaf
Today (June 30) is my last day as CERIAS Executive Director. This marks the end of a process that began about 15 months ago, when it was unexpectedly announced that my appointment was not being renewed. Last week, the dean responsible…
From CERIAS Blog
Changes for CERIAS…and Spaf
Today (June 30) is my last day as CERIAS Executive Director. This marks the end of a process that began about 15 months ago, when it was unexpectedly announced that my appointment was not being renewed. Last week, the dean responsible…
From The Eponymous Pickle
The Rise of Social Bots
In the July issue of the Communications of the ACM. The cover article is "The Rise of Social Bots"Good background, future, value and cautions. Not very technical. I like adding the adding of 'social' to the description, ultimately…
From Phys.org Technology News
Tesla driver killed in crash while using car's 'Autopilot'
The first U.S. fatality using self-driving technology took place in May when the driver of a Tesla S sports car operating the vehicle's "Autopilot" automated driving system died after a collision with a truck in Florida, federal…
From The Eponymous Pickle
On the Digital Potential of Europe
Interesting McKinsey overview with statistics. Having dealt with regulatory data issues in the EU, had always thought they were forced to be more digital as a result. The article says otherwise, and that there is considerable…
From Computer Science Teacher - Thoughts and Information From Alfred Thompson
Interesting Projects Funded by SIGCSE
Earlier this week I received email about several grants that SIGCSE has awarded. I think they look pretty interesting. I’m especially excited about the first one. Making coding accessible to everyone is important.
The SIGCSE…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Measuring the Current State of AI
Nicely done talk today by Ken Forbus of Northwestern. Sobering view of what AI can do today. So what is intelligence? I was always somewhat unsatisfied by the Turing test. Its not about fooling people into thinking a system…
From insideHPC
SUSE Powers OpenHPC at ISC 2016
With the OpenHPC stack, you can leap forward with a validated, tested and secure infrastructure software stack and get to product in a fraction of the time. This new approach will drive rapid advances in the state of the art …
From insideHPC
Nor-Tech HPC Clusters Power Groundbreaking Projects
Today system integrator Nor-Tech disclosed that the company is working closely with some of the world’s top researchers and innovators to develop, build, deploy and support simulation clusters. "This has been an extremely exciting…
From insideHPC
ISC 2016 Sets Record for Attendance and Program
Today the ISC Group announced that ISC 2016 drew 3,092 attendees from 53 countries, exceeding all previous attendance records. The conference and exhibition were held in Frankfurt, Germany from June 19 – 23.
The post ISC 2016…From insideHPC
Video: Student Cluster Competition Awards Ceremony at ISC 2016
In this video from ISC 2016 in Frankfurt, Gilad Shainer from the HPC Advisory Council hosts the Student Cluster Awards Ceremony. "The overall winning team this year was from CHPC in South Africa. As repeat winners, CHPC is establishing…
From insideHPC
Supercomputing the Mystery of Astrophysical Jets
Over at NICS, Scott Gibson writes that researchers are using XSEDE supercomputing resources to simulate the gaseous outflows from black holes known as astrophysical jets.
The post Supercomputing the Mystery of Astrophysical Jets…From Phys.org Technology News
Aussie innovation changing how we experience the Tour de France and Rio Olympics
Sports fans are about to get a whole new way of experiencing the upcoming Tour de France and select endurance sports at the Rio 2016 Olympics thanks to a start-up out of CSIRO's Data61 group.
From insideHPC
PRACE Elects New Leadership
The PRACE Council in Europe has elected Prof Dr Ir Anwar Osseyran of SURF/SURFsara as Chair and Dr Sergi Girona of BSC was elected Vice-Chair. PRACE – the Partnership for Advanced Computing in Europe – counts 25 European Members…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Forces that Shape our Decisions
Podcast: In his new book, Invisible Influence: The Hidden Forces That Shape Behavior, Wharton marketing professor Jonah Berger takes us inside the conscious and unconscious ways that social influences shape our decisions. Knowledge…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Emergence of Legal Robots
Have examined related problems, like the legal examination of contracts. So not unexpected we are seeing attempts for legal AI to replace elements of expensive services. In Inc.
From The Computing Community Consortium Blog
Computer Architecture 2030 Visioning Workshop
The following blog post is by CCC executive council member and University of Wisconsin-Madison Professor Mark D. Hill, who was loosely involved in the planning this workshop. I just attend the fantastic Architecture 2030 Visioning…
From Computational Complexity
Excalibur
Goro Hasegawa passed away last week at the age of 83. Hasegawa created and popularized the board game Othello based on an old British game Reversi.
From Gödel's Lost Letter and P=NP
Getting to the Roots of Factoring
We revisit a paper from 1994 Richard Lipton is, among so many other things, a newlywed. He and Kathryn Farley were married on June 4th in Atlanta. The wedding was attended by family and friends including many faculty from Georgia…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Sensing Computer Data
We tested related methods, so this research recalled some of the ideas. How do you extract data from unconnected computers? By sensing other things computers emit. In Wired:IN THE PAST two years a group of researchers in Israel…
From BLOG@CACM
A Very Local Snapshot of K-12 CS Education
What are students learning in K-12 CS?
From Daniel Lemire's Blog
Fast random shuffling
In a random shuffle, you want to take the elements of a list and reorder them randomly. In a “fair” random shuffle, all possible permutations must be equally likely. It is surprisingly hard to come up with a fair algorithm. Thankfully…
From The Eponymous Pickle
A Hand that has an Eye
In CACM: More on robotic touch out there. Here an eye is added to a hand. Don't remember seeing something similar. " .... Carnegie Mellon University (CMU) researchers have developed Articulated Robot Motion for simultaneous…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Intelligent and Secure Learning Hub for the Smart Home
Hubs should learn ... " .... With the emerging ecosystem of connected devices – often dubbed the “Internet of Things” – consumers are rightly worried about the security and privacy implications associated with always-on hardware…
From insideHPC
Analytics Frameworks
This whitepaper is an excellent summary of how a next generation platform can be developed to bring a wide range of data to life, giving users the ability to take action when needed. Organizations that need to deal with massive…
From insideHPC
Video: Bob Wisniewski on OpenHPC at ISC 2016
In this video from ISC 2016, Bob Wisniewski from Intel provides and update on OpenHPC community activities. "OpenHPC is a collaborative, community effort that initiated from a desire to aggregate a number of common ingredients…
From The Computing Community Consortium Blog
100 Examples of Obama’s Leadership in Science, Technology, and Innovation
The White House recently released their list of 100 examples of President Obama’s leadership in science, technology, and innovation. The list includes many computing related commitments such as supported millions of students…
From XRDS
Convolutional Neural Networks (CNNs): An Illustrated Explanation
Artificial Neural Networks (ANNs) are used everyday for tackling a broad spectrum of prediction and classification problems, and for scaling up applications which would otherwise require intractable amounts of data. ML has been…