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The blog archive provides access to past blog postings from Communications of the ACM and other sources by date.

December 2019


From insideHPC

Penguin Computing Upgrades Corona Cluster with 7nm AMD GPU Technology

Penguin Computing Upgrades Corona Cluster with 7nm AMD GPU Technology

Penguin Computing has upgraded the Corona supercomputer at LLNL with the newest AMD Radeon Instinct MI60 accelerators. Based on the Vega 7nm architecture, this upgrade is the latest example of Penguin Computing and LLNL’s ongoing…


From insideHPC

Sandia and LBNL to lead Quantum Information Edge Strategic Alliance

Sandia and LBNL to lead Quantum Information Edge Strategic Alliance

A nationwide alliance of national labs, universities, and industry launched today to advance the frontiers of quantum computing systems designed to solve urgent scientific challenges and maintain U.S. leadership in next-generation…


From The Eponymous Pickle

Amazon Ships

Amazon Ships

The numbers continue to expand.  The efficiency amazes.

Amazon Is Its Own Biggest Mailman, Shipping 3.5 Billion Parcels in SupplychainBrain

Source: Bloomberg

As Amazon.com Inc. works to speed orders to customer doorsteps before

In…


From The Eponymous Pickle

Being Paid for Data

Being Paid for Data

Considering the design of methods of payment and ensuring their security.   An example.

AI Needs your Data and you should get pad for it.  By Gregory Barber in Wired

ROBERT CHANG, A Stanford ophthalmologist, normally stays busy…


From The Eponymous Pickle

Shutters for Star Watching

Shutters for Star Watching

Watching the skies for anomalous behaviour in real time:

NASA to demonstrate new star-watching tech with thousands of shutters
by Lori Keesey, NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center..... "

The Goddard-developed microshutter array technology…


From The Eponymous Pickle

Google's Summarization Performance: Pegasus

Google's Summarization Performance: Pegasus

A kind of AI.   Summarization is useful and powerful concept.  But consider that summarization also exists in a context.   Its output is only useful in a particular context, and that exists based  also on the requester.  And

Google…


From The Eponymous Pickle

Amazon Echo Flex: Plug+Simple speaker

Amazon Echo Flex: Plug+Simple speaker

Amazon seems ready to inexpensively (for now $20) replace every wall plug with a link to Alexa.      Now lets give these devices something more intelligent to do.  Should every plug and switch plate be able to talk to you?

Amazom's…


From The Eponymous Pickle

AR Games for Grocery Aisles

AR Games for Grocery Aisles

Interesting,  but how well will this interact with traffic in store?  Gets in the way of of basic goals I believe.    Article contains other examples of the concepts that have been tested.

Giant thinks AR-games are ripe for grocery…


From The Eponymous Pickle

Sorting Legos is Intelligent

Sorting Legos is Intelligent

An example of sorting that is fun and interesting.  Discerning, categorizing and selecting is a classic kind of intelligence

AI-powered Lego sorter knows the shape of every brick
It’s powered by motors, a Raspberry Pi and, of course…


From The Eponymous Pickle

Vehicle Hacking Spreads

Vehicle Hacking Spreads

Increasing amount of vehicle hacking is occuring.  Note the increasing ability to effect these cybercrimes remotely.    Some telling statistics.

New Study Shows Just How Bad Vehicle Hacking Has Gotten
in CNet   By Kyle Hyatt
December…


From insideHPC

Video: Optimizing Flash at Scale at CEA

Video: Optimizing Flash at Scale at CEA

In this video from the DDN User Group at SC19, Gael Delbray from CEA presents: Optimizing Flash at Scale. "The major challenges that the HPC will face in the coming years are manifold, such as the development of hardware and …


From insideHPC

XSEDE Supercomputers Advance Skin Cancer Research

XSEDE Supercomputers Advance Skin Cancer Research

In this TACC podcast, UC Berkeley scientists describe how they are using powerful supercomputers to uncover the mechanism that activates cell mutations found in about 50 percent of melanomas. "The study's computational challenges…


From Putting People First

Anthropology of Smartphones and Smart Ageing

Anthropology of Smartphones and Smart Ageing

The Anthropology of Smartphones and Smart Ageing, a multi-sited research project based at UCL Anthropology, employs a team of 11 anthropologists conducting simultaneous 16-month ethnographies in Ireland, Italy, Cameroon, Uganda…


From insideHPC

IBM Launches Quantum Computing Initiative for Japan

IBM Launches Quantum Computing Initiative for Japan

IBM and the University of Tokyo have announced an agreement to partner to advance quantum computing and make it practical for the benefit of industry, science and society. "Under the agreement, an IBM Q System One will be installed…


From The Eponymous Pickle

Digital Twin for Electricity Grid

Digital Twin for Electricity Grid

Grids have a potential for hacking, also the potential for reacting to things like solar mass ejections and other completely natural events. So stimulating them well makes lots of sense.   As well as how the grids interact with…


From The Eponymous Pickle

Hacking Connected Cars

Hacking Connected Cars

No doubt increasingly connected cars are the future.   And they can be hacked like other IOT systems can.  Here a short piece on how this is evolving and companies are responding.

What to expect from car hackers in 2020 and beyond…


From The Eponymous Pickle

Data Science in Film Industry

Data Science in Film Industry

Fairly generalized thoughts, but an areas which is underdeveloped. 

How Data Science Is Used Within the Film Industry

As Data Science is becoming pervasive across so many industries, Hollywood is certainly not being left behind…


From Gödel's Lost Letter and P=NP

Predicting When P=NP is Resolved

Has it outlasted the ability to estimate when? Composite of src1, src2 Ryohei Hisano and Didier Sornette wrote in 2012 a paper titled, “On the distribution of time-to-proof of mathematical conjectures.” Today Ken and I discuss…


From insideHPC

Student Cluster Winners Get Ready to take ISC by Storm

Student Cluster Winners Get Ready to take ISC by Storm

In this podcast, the Radio Free HPC recaps the recent CHPC National Conference in South Africa. "Now a 5-day conference with two days of workshops as book-ends, multiple tracks and many speakers, and yes, a very exciting Student…


From insideHPC

The Coming Age of Extreme Heterogeneity in HPC

The Coming Age of Extreme Heterogeneity in HPC

Jeffrey Vetter from ORNL gave this talk at ATPESC 2019. "In this talk, I'm going to talk about the high-level trends guiding our industry. Moore’s Law as we know it is definitely ending for either economic or technical reasons…


From The Eponymous Pickle

Sweden Examining E-Krona

Sweden Examining E-Krona

After the recent information from China.  Interest in E-Currency expanding.

Accenture Picked to Build Sweden’s E-Krona Digital Currency Pilot
By Danny Nelson in Coindesk

Sweden’s central bank has tapped Accenture to develop its

Accenture…


From The Eponymous Pickle

Recorded Future Engine for Security Intelligence

Recorded Future Engine for Security Intelligence

Interesting look at an analytical and visual approach that is worth a look. Note the long term use of data, and the Digital Twin model evoked.

The Engine RF Uses for  Security Intelligence Explained  By  Staffan Truve

Recorded

Having…


From The Eponymous Pickle

Apple, Google and Amazon

Apple, Google and Amazon

More on this, good direction for assistants.  And security is a good place to start.   This is key way to make the average consumer invest in such infrastructure, the assurance that today and tomorrow they will work together.…


From The Eponymous Pickle

Mapping Job Personalities

Mapping Job Personalities

At very least an organization could see how these mapped internally, then use them to understand how they relate to internal skills, goals and results.  Also, how about group clusters using the same idea?

Mapping Job Personalities…


From insideHPC

Video: Using Supercomputers to Explore the Earth’s Crust

Video: Using Supercomputers to Explore the Earth’s Crust

In this video, Mark Lindsay from the University of Western Australia describes how his research enables Australia's mining industry to efficiently explore for important mineral deposits called e-minerals once associated with …


From The Eponymous Pickle

Use 2-Factor Authentication for Home

Use 2-Factor Authentication for Home

Am a big proponent of 2 Factor Authentication, should be in general use

Protect your Ring camera from hackers by setting up two-factor authentication
A rash of takeovers of Ring cameras is a good reminder to lock down your security…


From The Eponymous Pickle

EU Data Transfers Approved

EU Data Transfers Approved

Appears to be a fundamental result.   Likely much more in the details.

Facebook Wins Landmark Case as EU Finds Data Transfers Legal
The Telegraph (U.K.)

By Hasan Chowdhury
December 19, 2019

An adviser to the European Court of Justice…


From insideHPC

Job of the Week: Research Computing Technical Facilitator at University of Arkansas

Job of the Week: Research Computing Technical Facilitator at University of Arkansas

The University of Arkansas is seeking a Research Computing Technical Facilitator in our Job of the Week. "The Research Computing Technical Facilitator is an integral member of the University of Arkansas central IT Services research…


From The Eponymous Pickle

Azure Kinect DK for AI Sensors

Azure Kinect DK for AI Sensors

Microsoft continues to expand from the developer direction.   Like I have said before was impressed by their capabilities for delivering in Azure from the basic knowledge structure level.

Azure Kinect DK
Developer kit with advanced…


From Daniel Lemire's Blog

Science and Technology links (December 21st 2019)

Science and Technology links (December 21st 2019)

The number of research papers with more than 1000 authors is increasingly quickly and reaching many fields. Researchers at Facebook use neural networks to solve fancy algebraic problems that may be out of reach of computer algebra…