Communications of the ACM
The blog archive provides access to past blog postings from Communications of the ACM and other sources by date.
November 2018
From [email protected]
FictionStein
Science fiction like Frankenstein nudges readers to confer humanity but nudges them away from moral fortitude.
From The Eponymous Pickle
Armpit Sniffing Sensors with AI
Because of the products we made, for many years we used human sensory labs to address anti-odorant efficacy. So this digitizing of the sensory process is very interesting.
Arm Leads Project to Develop an Armpit-Sniffing Sensor…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Human Presence Sensing for Smart Buildings
In RDMag.
NSF Grant Awarded for Smart-building Sensor Research by University of Hawai’i
The National Science Foundation has awarded University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa researchers a $750,000 grant to develop a low-cost sensor capable…
From insideHPC
AMD EPYC Powers Tyan Servers for Data-intensive Computing
In this video from SC18, Philip Maher from Tyan describes how the company is packaging AMD EPYC processors with innovative server configurations for tackling data-intensive workloads. "AMD EPYC processors are based on the 14nm…
From insideHPC
Atos Adds AMD processors to BullSequana X Line of Supercomputers
Last week at SC18, Atos announced support for AMD EPYC processors in its upcoming BullSequana X range of supercomputers. The next generation AMD EPYC processor, codenamed “Rome”, is expected to be available in Atos’ new BullSequana…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Being More Open Minded
Good piece, one of those fundamental things, and I think fairly rarely done in the enterprise. Ultimately its a human resource issue. Will the integration of more machine automation make this harder yet to achieve?
A New Way…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Customer Experience Tools and Trends
Good point about tool use. As long as the few tools you use cover what you need. Good to have a mix of generalists available that can help you choose, and then focus in on common methods. Document the results and repeat
Customer…
From Schneier on Security
Information Attacks against Democracies
Democracy is an information system. That's the starting place of our new paper: "Common-Knowledge Attacks on Democracy." In it, we look at democracy through the lens of information security, trying to understand the current waves…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Teaching Machines like Children
A long known approach and goal. Allow machines to have very basic learning capabilities, let them experience the world, and result in general intelligence. Seems we have taken a small step in this direction, but still in…
From insideHPC
Video: ECP Launches Extreme-Scale Scientific Software Stack 0.1 Beta
Last week at SC18 in Dallas, the Exascale Computing Project released a portion of the next version of collaboratively developed products that compose the ECP software stack, including libraries and embedded software compilers…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Food Safety Detection by Consumers
Clever use of RFID tags to detect and evaluate contaminants
Putting Food-Safety Detection in the Hands of Consumers
MIT Media Lab
By Rob Matheson MIT Lab News
Massachusetts Institute of Technology Media Laboratory researchers have…
From insideHPC
TYAN Storage Server Steps up with 10 NVMe Bays of High Performance Flash
Last week at SC18, Tyan showcased their Thunder SX GT62H-B7106 storage product line featuringIntel Xeon Scalable processors, large memory capacity and NVMe connectivity for high performance software defined storage applications…
From insideHPC
Mellanox BlueField SmartNICs Accelerate E8 Storage
Last week at SC18, E8 Storage announced it is expanding its technology partnership with Mellanox with an integrated solution built on Mellanox BlueField SmartNICs. Customers will be able to maximize computing resources by pairing…
From insideHPC
Record SC18 Attendance a Bellwether for Growth in HPC Market
The SC18 conference drew a record-breaking 13,071 attendees, making it the largest SC conference of all time. As the premier international conference showcasing high performance computing, networking, storage, and analysis, the…
From Schneier on Security
The PCLOB Needs a Director
The US Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board is looking for a director. Among other things, this board has some oversight role over the NSA. More precisely, it can examine what any executive-branch agency is doing about…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Kroger to Build Robotic Warehouse for Home Delivery
Kroger continues to advance. Now testing home delivery robotic warehouses. Also direct robotic delivery testing in Arizona. The latter being a particularly tough challenge, given its need for autonomous decision making in…
From Computational Complexity
Is Secret sharing REALLY REALLY REALLY used?
Since I am teaching Cryptography this semester I am teaching things people REALLY REALLY REALLY (RRR) use. For some topics this is RRR true, like RSA (that it is used to transmit a private key that is then used is FINE.)
I was…
From Putting People First
Journal of Business Anthropology devoted to design anthropology
The Journal of Business Anthropology is an Open Access journal which publishes the results of anthropological research in business organizations and business situations of all kinds. The theme of the latest issue – Vol 7, No
…
From Putting People First
[Book] Who can you trust?
Who can you trust? How Technology Brought Us Together and Why It Might Drive Us Apart by Rachel Botsman Public Affairs November 2017, 336 pages If you can’t trust those in charge, who can you trust? From government to business…
From The Eponymous Pickle
ASK Toolkit for Visual Studio
Nice to see continued development for skills.
New methods for easier Alexa Skill development (Technical)
Overview
ASK Toolkit for Visual Studio Code (Beta) is an extension that that makes it easier to develop and deploy Alexa
…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Easily Model your Knowledge: Jerry's Brain
Do you have a map of what all you have done, written, researched? Jerry Michalski has one. See: https://www.jerrysbrain.com/ We looked at this as a possible means of capturing retiring expertise, in an earlier AI era. We…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Sliding Microbots at Microscale
Things happen differently at small scales.
Using electricity and water, a new kind of motor can slide microrobots into motion
Microhydraulic actuators, thinner than one-third the width of human hair, are proving to be the most
By…
From insideHPC
Overclocked NVIDIA DGX-2H Cluster Lands at #62 on the TOP500
In this video from SC18 in Dallas, Marc Hamilton from NVIDIA describe the all new overclocked DGX-2H supercomputer. Built by NVIDIA, a cluster of 36 DGX-2H devices with 3 Petaflops of LINPACK performance was just ranked #62 on…
From Computer Science Teacher - Thoughts and Information From Alfred Thompson
The Learner Gets A Vote
One of the cool things about Twitter is that some interesting discussions take place among really smart people and the rest of us get to watch and, if we’re smart, learn. One such conversation took place over the past weekend…
From insideHPC
Video: How Ai is helping Scientists with the Large Hadron Collider
In this video from SC18 in Dallas, Dr. Sofia Vallecorsa from CERN OpenLab describes how Ai is being used in design of experiments for the Large Hadron Collider. "An award-winning effort at CERN has demonstrated potential to significantly…
From insideHPC
The Right Terminations for Reliable Liquid Cooling in HPC
High performance computing manufacturers are increasingly deploying liquid cooling. To avoid damage to electronic equipment due to leaks, secure drip-free connections are essential. Quick disconnects for HPC applications simplify…
From insideHPC
The Green HPCG List and the Road to Exascale
In this special guest post, Axel Huebl looks at the TOP500 and HPCG with an eye on power efficiency trends to watch on the road to Exascale. "This post will focus one efficiency, in terms of performance per Watt, simply because…
From insideHPC
Atos to Build Finland’s Newest Supercomputer
Earlier this week CSC in Finland announced that Atos will build it's next-generation supercomputer for academic research. "The initial delivery will consist of the first partition of the supercomputer and its tightly integrated…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Implantable ID Cards
Not new, back again, surveys indicating we are very willing to have them done.
Would you swap your keycard for a microchip implant? For many, the answer is yes
Twenty years ago, in late 1998, a 44-year-old professor in the Cybernetics…
From Schneier on Security
What Happened to Cyber 9/11?
A recent article in the Atlantic asks why we haven't seen a"cyber 9/11" in the past fifteen or so years. (I, too, remember the increasingly frantic and fearful warnings of a "cyber Peal Harbor," "cyber Katrina" -- when that was…