Communications of the ACM
The blog archive provides access to past blog postings from Communications of the ACM and other sources by date.
July 2015
From The Eponymous Pickle
Bouncing Camera Gathers Images, Realities
Fast image gathering for reconnaissance and image based reality creation. Possibilities.Police Are Now Testing This Harvard Startup's Throwable CamerasBounce Imaging believes its technology could also have potential for a consumer…
From Schneier on Security
Friday Squid Blogging: Russian Sailors Video Colossal Squid
It tried to steal their catch. As usual, you can also use this squid post to talk about the security stories in the news that I haven't covered....
From Schneier on Security
Schneier Speaking Schedule
I'm speaking at an Infoedge event at Bali Hai Golf Club in Las Vegas, at 5 PM on August 5, 2015. I'm speaking at DefCon 23 on Friday, August 7, 2015. I'm speaking -- remotely via Skype -- at LinuxCon in Seattle on August 18,…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Amazon Dash Button now Available to Prime Members
In Silicon Angle: The Long awaited Amazon Dash Buy Button is now available from Amazon. " ... Amazon.com is now officially selling its Dash Button for $4.99. For now, the Dash Buttons are in limited stocks and are only available…
From Putting People First
Service Design in Consumer Banking: the challenges and opportunities
Last month the people from Irish UX consultancy Frontend Design looked at the UX revolution in healthcare and how changes in that sector are moving towards putting the customer at the centre of the service. The banking sector…
From Putting People First
[Book] Excited to announce the new book by John Thackara
How to thrive in the next economy by John Thackara Thames & Hudson August 2015, 192pp Abstract Drawing on a lifetime of travel in search of real-world alternatives that work, I describe how communities the world over are creating…
From Schneier on Security
HAMMERTOSS: New Russian Malware
Fireeye has a detailed report of a sophisticated piece of Russian malware: HAMMERTOSS. It uses some clever techniques to hide: The Hammertoss backdoor malware looks for a different Twitter handle each day -- automatically prompted…
From insideHPC
Video: HPC-Workloads using Docker
In this video from ISC 2015, Wolfgang Gentzsch from The UberCloud presents: HPC Workloads Using Docker. "The UberCloud Project provides an environment to run HPC workloads on a variety of cloud providers. Wolfgang elaborates …
From U.S. Public Policy Committee of the ACM
USACM Submits Comments to NIST on Privacy Risk Management for Federal Information Systems
USACM today submitted comments to NIST on the draft report, Privacy Risk Management for Federal Information Systems (NISTIR 8062). USACM supports NIST’s efforts to define a framework to help manage growing privacy risk in the…
From insideHPC
Agenda Posted for HPC User Forum, Sept. 8-10 in Broomfield
IDC has published the agenda for their next HPC User Forum. The event will take place Sept. 8-10 in Broomfield, CO.
The post Agenda Posted for HPC User Forum, Sept. 8-10 in Broomfield appeared first on insideHPC.
From The Eponymous Pickle
Many New Channels on IFTTT
I see that IFTTT has added 17 new channels of data this month. Intrigued by its use for combining sources of data with logic to perform actions. A very mild form of expertise delivery. Worth a look. Their description of"…
From insideHPC
Knights Landing Prototype Powers Cosmology at ISC 2015
In this video from the Intel booth at ISC 2015, Dr Juha Jäykkä, COSMOS System Manager at University of Cambridge describes a cosmology demonstration running on prototype Intel Knights Landing and Omni-Path hardware. "At ISC …
From The Eponymous Pickle
CVS Pharmacy and IBM Watson
Good example of an advisory system interacting with the consumer. Being built today based on some of the work created in the Watson project, Look forward to seeing this in more detail. Data privacy issues will be important…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Brands, Private and National, Matter
From Bain: National brand vs Private label. " .... It was only a decade ago when many industry analysts looked at two looming trends—the rise of retail consolidation and proliferation of private labels—and issued dire warnings…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Big Data and Statistics
A non technical overview of statistics and its relationship to the use of data in business. Often management does need a well thought out description of a tech subject. By Bob Hayes
From Schneier on Security
Back Doors Won't Solve Comey's Going Dark Problem
At the Aspen Security Forum two weeks ago, James Comey (and others) explicitly talked about the "going dark" problem, describing the specific scenario they are concerned about. Maybe others have heard the scenario before, but…
From insideHPC
Coral and Intel’s Scalable System Framework – The Path to Exascale
"HPC has reached an inflection point with the convergence of traditional high performance computing and the emerging world of Big Data analytics. Intel's HPC Scalable System Framework enables an unprecedented level of system …
From The Eponymous Pickle
Programming Robot Swarms to take Inventory
This one of the more unusual innovation efforts we examined. Could we program swarms of simple devices to perform complex, time consuming tasks? Taking video inventory was one of the examples often suggested. It did not succeed…
From The Eponymous Pickle
A Look at Innovation Centers
A Study: We built one of the earliest Inno Centers, so I am interested in the dynamics. Though do these have to be in Silicon Valley? We agreed it was good to have outposts there, but SV is not non-tech reality. Have written…
From The Female Perspective of Computer Science
Creating a Sense of Coherence in Open-World Adventure and Role-Playing Game Stories
The following is my most recent explanation of my thesis project.We are interested in the application of interactive storytelling to videogames. We want to improve story experiences in open-world adventure and role-playing games…
From Schneier on Security
Comparing the Security Practices of Experts and Non-Experts
New paper: "'...no one can hack my mind': Comparing Expert and Non-Expert Security Practices," by Iulia Ion, Rob Reeder, and Sunny Consolvo. Abstract: The state of advice given to people today on how to stay safe online has plenty…
From The Eponymous Pickle
P&G Supply Chain Redesign
I posted a link to this once before. I had to review this for some work, worth another examination. Overstatement of the implications?Does P&G Need Retailers Anymore?The Real Meaning of P&G’s Supply Chain Overhaul Procter &…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Shift from TV to Digital Video
From Google: An interview with creatives, How fast is this moving today?" .. Great YouTube ads are born from great creative ideas. But how does the shift to digital video change the creative process? Google's head of agency…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Process Improvement and Building IKEA Furniture
In the APQC blog: What building IKEA furniture can teach you about process improvement. by Jess Scheer. Good points. Respect and evolve the process!
From insideHPC
Compute Canada to Renew National Research Computing Infrastructure
Today Compute Canada announced funding to renew and consolidate the Canadian national platform for advanced research computing. Compute Canada and its regional partners ACENET, Calcul Quebec, Compute Ontario, and WestGrid will…
From Computer Science Teachers Association
What do students think about coding?
What does assessment look like in a K-8 Computer Science program? Computer science teachers like myself use various methods to determine learning amongst their students, examples include: a debug activity, some version of ‘get…
From insideHPC
BSC and CEA to Collaborate on HPC Innovation
Today the Barcelona Supercomputing Center (BSC) and French Alternative Energies and Atomic Energy Commission (CEA) announced plans to collaborate on HPC research and technology innovation. Both organizations have signed an agreement…
From The Computing Community Consortium Blog
Executive Order establishing the National Strategic Computing Initiative (NSCI)
President Obama has issued an Executive Order establishing the National Strategic Computing Initiative (NSCI), which is an effort to create a cohesive, multi-agency strategic vision, and Federal investment strategy in high-performance…
From insideHPC
Nested Parallelism
The benefits of nested parallelism on highly threaded applications can be determined and quantified. With the number of cores in both the host CPU (Intel Xeon) and the coprocessor (Intel Xeon Phi) continues to increase, much …
From insideHPC
Video: Argonne Presents HPC Plans at ISC 2015
"In April 2015, the U.S. Department of Energy announced a $200 million supercomputing investment coming to Argonne National Laboratory. As the third of three Coral supercomputer procurements, the deal will comprise an 8.5 Petaflop…