Communications of the ACM
The blog archive provides access to past blog postings from Communications of the ACM and other sources by date.
June 2017
From Schneier on Security
Food Supplier Passes Squid Off as Octopus
According to a lawsuit (main article behind paywall), "a Miami-based food vendor and its supplier have been misrepresenting their squid as octopus in an effort to boost profits."...
From Schneier on Security
Details from the 2017 Workshop on Economics and Information Security
The 16th Workshop on Economics and Information Security was this week. Ross Anderson liveblogged the talks....
From The Eponymous Pickle
Assistants in the Hospital
One of the earliest suggestions for virtual assistants was to have them answer questions and perform simple non-medical tasks in hospitals and other health care facilities. Huge amounts of professional time are expended this…
From Daniel Lemire's Blog
Science and Technology links (July 1st, 2017)
Canada is 150 years old today. The iPhone is 10 years old this year. We can safely say that the iPhone 7 is over a hundred times faster, in almost every way than the original iPhone. Very few things get 100 times better overContinue…
From insideHPC
Is Water-Free Cooling the Real Future of HPC?
In this video from ISC 2017, Olivier de Laet from Calyos describes the company’s innovative cooling technology for high performance computing. "The HPC industry is ever facing is facing the challenge of ever-increasing cooling…
From insideHPC
Podcast: Why HPC is Vital at NASA
"At NASA, what we're doing is we're really looking at ways of making aircraft more efficient. We're trying to make them quieter. We're trying to make them get to cruise altitude faster, which saves the taxpayer or the people
…
From Daniel Lemire's Blog
Video game review… Nier: Automata
Single-player RPG games are having a tough time. Last year I reviewed Deus Ex: Mankind Divided. Though I felt it was an excellent game, it was not a commercial success and it seems that there will not be a follow-up game in the…
From insideHPC
Fujitsu Powers KNL Remote Access Program with Intel HPC Orchestrator
In this video from ISC 2017, Tom Krueger from Intel and John Wagner from Fujitsu describe the new KNL Remote Access Program. Now, with the power of Intel HPC Orchestrator, Fujitsu customers can gain access to a small cluster
…
From insideHPC
ISC 2017 Wrapup by the Numbers
Today the ISC Group announced that their 2017 ISC High Performance conference drew a record 3,253 attendees from 60 countries. The attendance represented a 5.2 percent increase compared to last year’s event.
The post ISC 2017…
From insideHPC
Univa Powers Formula 1 Racing and more at ISC 2017
In this video from ISC 2017, Bill Bryce from Univa describes how the company's software powers simulation for everything from Formula 1 racing to manufacturing and life sciences. "Univa is the leading innovator in workload management…
From The Eponymous Pickle
The Wave of a New AI
Nice, non-technical overview in CACM look at emerging technologies that are supporting advances in AI. Useful with management to consider areas of interest. Will this push us over the hype edge for real intelligent value?
Artificial…
From Computer Science Teacher - Thoughts and Information From Alfred Thompson
Professional Development for the Advanced CS Teacher Teaching Advanced Students
This is sort of a riff from yesterday’s post about what to teach students who are beyond the normal Advanced Placement CS level or perhaps looking to something advanced in place of the AP course. Most professional development…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Samsung Bixby Starts to Roll
Samsung Reports:
*After launch, Bixby's language support will initially begin with Korean, and expand to English and then Chinese. Plans for further language support are tentative. Bixby voice controls will soon be integrated
Three…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Discovering a Million Dollar Idea
Reminded of the use of the term:
IKEA's Idea Man Reveals How to Discover Your Own Million Dollar Idea
The process is called vu jàdé. That's déjà vu backwards, and anyone can do it. By Chad Perry in Inc.
From Schneier on Security
Good Article About Google's Project Zero
Fortune magazine just published a good article about Google's Project Zero, which finds and publishes exploits in other companies' software products. I have mixed feeling about it. The project does great work, and the Internet…
From The Eponymous Pickle
A Beginners Guide and Tutorial for GANs
Via O'Reilly, supported by Google. A Simplified Tutorial. Instructive, not the idea of a network generating content.
Beginner's guide to GANs
This tutorial will show you how to build a generative adversarial network that learns…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Real World Statistics
Its good to remember that statistics is the basis of all useful problem solving:
Making Statistics Work in the Real World
Wharton's Bhaswar Bhattacharya discusses his research on statistical methods.
The field of statistics is about…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Storytelling in Netflix
Still a very limited set of examples. The idea of branching interactive storytelling has been tried for a long time without success. I like trying it again, but don't have great expectations.
Netflix Storytelling
There’s no…
From The Computing Community Consortium Blog
Research Opportunities and Visions for Smart and Pervasive Health
The Computing Community Consortium (CCC) has released a white paper, Research Opportunities and Visions for Smart and Pervasive Health. This paper is an outgrowth of the December 2016 workshop Discovery and Innovation in Smart…
From Schneier on Security
The Women of Bletchley Park
Really good article about the women who worked at Bletchley Park during World War II, breaking German Enigma-encrypted messages....
From The Eponymous Pickle
Recommender Engine in Cortana
Good instructive example for Cortana. How easy is this for maintaining the recommendations? I like to show these kinds of examples because they include simple business process. Which is forgotten these days when mentioning…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Adding Intelligence to Ad Delivery
Interesting that the 'Show' version of Alexa, with a screen, is attracting advertisers. Consider that this can add intelligence for consumer with the delivery of adds. Images are likely expected. Video in particular. Here…
From insideHPC
Performance Gains Using Libraries
In many cases, applications that perform various simulations use some of the same math functions that many other applications use. Rather than each developer recoding the same math functions over and over, libraries, developed…
From insideHPC
InfiniBand Continues Momentum on Latest TOP500
Today the InfiniBand Trade Association (IBTA) announced that InfiniBand remains the most used HPC interconnect on the TOP500. Additionally, the majority of newly listed TOP500 supercomputers are accelerated by InfiniBand technology…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Stand Up Math
Will do anything to get math interest from kids.
I have been asked if math and computing interest are really interchangeable? Having been a professional in both spaces, and I say, yes, and especially now more than ever. Just…
From Computational Complexity
50 Years of the Turing Award
From The Eponymous Pickle
Generative Neural Networks and Marketing
A good explanation of generative neural networks, how they work and their applications. There has been some conversation about their implications for video use and marketing. Any real examples out there? Exploring.
From insideHPC
SPEC/HPG hardware acceleration benchmark adds OpenMP Suite
Today SPEC’s High-Performance Group released a new version of its SPEC ACCEL software that adds a suite of OpenMP applications for measuring the performance of systems using hardware accelerator devices and supporting software…
From Computer Science Teacher - Thoughts and Information From Alfred Thompson
Finished Advanced Placement Computer Science–Now what?
This question is now more complicated since we have two AP CS exams again. Does CS A follow CS P? Should it be one or the other but not both? But let’s put that aside for the moment. Suppose a student takes one of the AP CS courses…
From Schneier on Security
Websites Grabbing User-Form Data Before It's Submitted
Websites are sending information prematurely: ...we discovered NaviStone's code on sites run by Acurian, Quicken Loans, a continuing education center, a clothing store for plus-sized women, and a host of other retailers. Using…