Communications of the ACM
The blog archive provides access to past blog postings from Communications of the ACM and other sources by date.
February 2020
From Schneier on Security
Russia Is Trying to Tap Transatlantic Cables
The Times of London is reporting that Russian agents are in Ireland probing transatlantic communications cables. Ireland is the landing point for undersea cables which carry internet traffic between America, Britain and Europe…
From BLOG@CACM
Developing Computational Solutions With Humility: Recommending Morgan Ames' 'The Charisma Machine'
Morgan Ames' book highlights the missing HCI design process for the XO Laptop
From The Eponymous Pickle
Design Thinking, Improv
Upcoming short free talk.
You are invited to attend:
ISSIP Service Design Speaker Series
Radical cross-collaboration at Cisco with Design Thinking & Improv
on Wednesday, February 26th 2020, 11:00 AM - 11.45 AM US Eastern Standard…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Game Based Learning and the Power of the Human Element
Of interest to my readers, following up:
Franz,
My new, co-authored book has been launched and may be of interest to members of your community.
Emotify!: The Power of the Human Element in Game-Based Learning, Serious Games and,…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Google Power Generating Kites to be Axed
Remember reading the early reports on this, and seemed very interesting in possibility. but cost and risk was unclear.
Google parent pulls the plug on power-generating kite project
First moonshot project to be axed since Google…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Training Autonomous AI Combatants
Expect this, at all sorts of levels of autonomy. Offensive and Defensive.
How to Train Your AI Soldier Robots (and the Humans Who Command Them) in The RAND Blog by Thomas Hamilton
Artificial…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Autonomous Cars
Comment, with more detail:
' ... My name is Jennifer Bowen, and I'm working with a site called PartCatalog.com. We just published an article that answers a question that's getting asked a lot these days: When will we have fully…
From insideHPC
Video: RISC-V momentum around the world, from edge to HPC
In this keynote talk from the 2020 HiPEAC conference, RISC-V Foundation Chief Executive Calista Redmond explains how the RISC-V open-source instruction set architecture is gathering momentum around the world, finding applications…
From insideHPC
Podcast: Co-Design for Online Data Analysis and Reduction at Exascale
In this Let's Talk Exascale podcast, Ian Foster from Argonne National Lab describes how the CODAR project at ECP is addressing the needs for data reduction, analysis, and management in the exascale era. "When compressing data…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Google Moving UK Data
Note that 'where' data is held may start to become an important issue. Note also the specific considerations that Google is indicating here, as part of Brexit and other data uses. Also related to spatial web designs?
Google Moves…
From The Eponymous Pickle
The Spatial Web
Brought back to my attention, dated (2018) , The Spatial Web, still relevant?
The Spatial Web Will Map Our 3D World—And Change Everything In the Process By Peter H. Diamandis, MD
The boundaries between digital and physical…
From Daniel Lemire's Blog
Science and Technology links (February 22nd 2020)
In a large cohort study, the highest probability of reaching 90 years old was found for those drinking between 5g and 15 g of alcohol per day. This does not mean that if you are not drinking, you should start. The Earth is getting…
From insideHPC
Video: A Preview of SC20 in Atlanta
In this video, SC20 General Chair Christine E. Cuicchi from the DoD Modernization Program previews the Supercomputing conference coming to Atlanta in November. "Christine Cuicchi is director of the Navy Department of Defense
…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Books by Stephen Few
A look at all of Stephen Few's books on the viz and use of data, including his latest:
The Data Loom, Stephen Few, $15.95 (U.S.), Analytics Press, May 15, 2019
Data, in and of itself, isn't valuable. It only becomes valuable
…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Simple innovations are the Most Used
Anyone in this space for a while knows the drill.
Larry Tesler: Computer Scientist Behind Cut, Copy, and Paste Dies at Age 74 BBC News
Larry Tesler, inventor of the "cut," "copy," and "paste" commands, recipient of ACM SIGCHI's…
From insideHPC
Job of the Week: HPC Architect at NVIDIA
NVIDIA is seeking an HPC Architect in our Job of the Week. "NVIDIA is developing processor and system architectures for accelerated high performance computing, machine learning, AI, datacenter and automotive computing. We are…
From The Eponymous Pickle
AI and Clinical Trials
General overview of the state of the technical advances.
Artificial Intelligence Ushers in a New Era of Cost-Effective Clinical Trials
Contributed Commentary by James Streeter, Global Vice President Life Sciences Product Strategy…
From BLOG@CACM
Getting a Program Right (1)
Why it is good to have a systematic approach to software verification.
From The Eponymous Pickle
Tag of Everything to Protect Supply Chain
Tagging everything uniquely. Authenticity. Devil in the details. " ... Tiny, battery-free ID chip can authenticate nearly any product to help combat losses to counterfeiting. .. "
Cryptographic 'Tag of Everything' Could Protect…
From Schneier on Security
Friday Squid Blogging: 13-foot Giant Squid Caught off New Zealand Coast
It's probably a juvenile: Researchers aboard the New Zealand-based National Institute of Water and Atmospheric Research Ltd (NIWA) research vessel Tangaroa were on an expedition to survey hoki, New Zealand's most valuable commercial…
From Daniel Lemire's Blog
My thoughts on how research funding is attributed in Canada to Computer Science
In Canada, most computer science professors seek funding with NSERC, the main Canadian funding agency for science and engineering. It is more or less the equivalent of the American NSF. The core NSERC program is called “discovery…
From Schneier on Security
Inrupt, Tim Berners-Lee's Solid, and Me
For decades, I have been talking about the importance of individual privacy. For almost as long, I have been using the metaphor of digital feudalism to describe how large companies have become central control points for our data…
From The Eponymous Pickle
A Short History of Ethereum
Ethereum provides an instuctive aspect of blockchains, including a more generalized aspect of smart contracts that is useful.
Blockchain: A Very Short History Of Ethereum Everyone Should Read
in Forbes By Bernard Marr
Even those…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Stephen Few on Logarithms
Data viz expert Stephen Few on Logarithms. I recall very early in my experience in the enterprise, having to work with execs on this concept and how it could improve their understanding of visual measures, but also confuse…
From insideHPC
Bright Computing adds more than 100 new customers In 2019
Commercial enterprises, research universities and government agencies are turning to Bright Cluster Manager to reduce complexity and increase flexibility of their high-performance clusters. Along these lines, the company just…
From insideHPC
Big Compute Fireside Chat with Sam Altman from OpenAI
In this video from the Big Compute 2020 event, Sam Altman from the OpenAI research laboratory discusses artificial intelligence Shawn Hansen, COO of Rescale. "I think of the most exciting developments in the field in the last…
From insideHPC
NOAA to triple weather and climate supercomputing capacity
The United States is reclaiming a global top spot in high performance computing to support weather and climate forecasts. NOAA, part of the Department of Commerce, today announced a significant upgrade to compute capacity, storage…
From insideHPC
Inspur Re-Elected as Member of SPEC OSSC and Chair of SPEC Machine Learning
The Standard Performance Evaluation Corporation (SPEC) has finalized the election of new Open System Steering Committee (OSSC) executive members, which include Inspur, Intel, AMD, IBM, Oracle and three other companies. "It is…
From insideHPC
oneAPI: Single Programming Model to Deliver Cross-Architecture Performance
Bill Savage from Intel gave this talk at the Intel HPC Developer Conference. "Learn about oneAPI, the new Intel-led industry initiative to deliver a high-performance unified programming model specification spanning CPU, GPU,
…
From Schneier on Security
Policy vs Technology
Sometime around 1993 or 1994, during the first Crypto Wars, I was part of a group of cryptography experts that went to Washington to advocate for strong encryption. Matt Blaze and Ron Rivest were with me; I don't remember who…