Communications of the ACM
The blog archive provides access to past blog postings from Communications of the ACM and other sources by date.
December 2024
From Daniel Lemire's Blog
Simpler and faster parsing code with std::views::split
Parsing text files is often confusing irrespective of your programming language. It can also be surprising slow. As an example, let us consider the following problem. You have a comma-separated-value file. It is a text file made…
From Schneier on Security
Friday Squid Blogging: Squid Sticker
A sticker for your water bottle.
From insideHPC
DOE Issues $75M SciDAC Funding Opportunity
Washington, DC, Dec. 20, 2024The U.S. Department of Energy’s Office of Science (SC), under the Advanced Scientific Computing Research (ASCR) program, is announcing that $75 million is available to support large multi-disciplinary…
From insideHPC
DOE Releases Report on Data Center Electricity Demand
WASHINGTON, DC, Dec. 20, 2024 — The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) today announced the publication of the 2024 Report on U.S. Data Center Energy Use produced by Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL) which outlines the…
From Schneier on Security
Mailbox Insecurity
It turns out that all cluster mailboxes in the Denver area have the same master key. So if someone robs a postal carrier, they can open any mailbox.
I get that a single master key makes the whole system easier, but it’s very…From Universal Acceptance Steering Group
2024 in Review: Milestones in Universal Acceptance Progress
Authors: Anil Kumar Jain, Chair, Universal Acceptance Steering Group Sarmad Hussain, Senior Director, IDN and UA Programs, ICANN As 2024 draws to a close, it is a good time to reflect on the strides made in advancing Universal…
From insideHPC
NASA Awards Quantum Computing Inc. Contract for Phase Unwrapping Using Dirac-3 Photonic Optimization Solver
HOBOKEN, N.J., Dec. 17, 2024 — Quantum Computing Inc. ((Nasdaq: QUBT), a photonics and quantum optics technology company, today announced that the company has been awarded a prime contract by the National Aeronautics and Space…
From insideHPC
Photonic Interconnect: Lightmatter Joins UALink Consortium
Dec. 18, 2024, MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif. –Photonic interconnect company Lightmatter has joined the Ultra Accelerator Link Consortium (UALink), an industry initiative focused on creating high-speed, low-latency open interconnect standards…
From The Computing Community Consortium Blog
Supporting At-Risk Users Through Responsible Computing
Last week the CCC held a workshop on Supporting At-Risk Users Through Responsible Computing in Washington, DC. We brought together 49 experts from industry, academia, and civil society, to explore the specific challenges at-risk…
From Computational Complexity
Information is Physical?
I've heard a few times recently the phrase "Information only exists in a physical state". It come from the quantum computing world where they claim quantum changes the game when it comes to representing information.
As one who…From Schneier on Security
New Advances in the Understanding of Prime Numbers
Really interesting research into the structure of prime numbers. Not immediately related to the cryptanalysis of prime-number-based public-key algorithms, but every little bit matters.
From insideHPC
Multiverse Computing and Bundesdruckerei Use Quantum for Data Privacy and Fraud Detection
DONOSTIA-SAN SEBASTIÁN, SPAIN – December 18, 2024 – AI and quantum company Multiverse Computing and the Bundesdruckerei Gmbs, the German federal government’s technology company, are exploring the potential of quantum and quantum…
From insideHPC
Eaton Announces Data Center Battery Backup
Dec. 17, 2024 — Power management company Eaton today announced the launch of its Eaton Samsung Gen 3 lithium-ion battery system, battery backup for data center, medical and industrial customers. It provides power for energy storage…
From insideHPC
DOE: 10 National Labs to Establish Semiconductor Manufacturing Institute
WASHINGTON, DC, Dec. 17, 2024 — The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) today announced that 10 of its national labs will establish the Semiconductor Manufacturing and Advanced Research with Twins USA (SMART USA) Institute, a manufacturing…
From insideHPC
Juniper Networks, Quantum Bridge and Eurofiber Partner on Quantum-Safe Infrastructure
Maarssen, Netherlands—December 17, 2024 — Eurofiber, a provider of open digital network infrastructure in Europe, today announced partnership with Quantum Bridge, a distributed symmetric key establishment (DSKE) technology company…
From insideHPC
Planckian Announces Architecture Addressing Quantum Wiring Problems
Pisa, Italy – December 17, 2024 – Quantum technology company Planckian today announced the release of a blueprint for a superconducting quantum chip designed to address the quantum wiring problems. The chip architecture employs…
From insideHPC
Synopsys and SiMa.ai in Collaboration to Develop Automotive Edge AI Solutions
Dec 17, 2024, SUNNYVALE, Calif. and SAN JOSE, Dec. 17, 2024 — Synopsys (Nasdaq: SNPS) and SiMa.ai today announced a collaboration to deliver a solution for automotive companies to accelerate development of workload-specific silicon…
From Schneier on Security
Hacking Digital License Plates
Not everything needs to be digital and “smart.” License plates, for example:
Josep Rodriguez, a researcher at security firm IOActive, has revealed a technique to “jailbreak” digital license plates sold by Reviver, the leading…From The Computing Community Consortium Blog
Future of Information Retrieval Research in the Age of Generative AI CCC Workshop Report Published
For many of us, it is hard to remember a time when finding information wasn’t ubiquitous with an internet search. With the rising popularity and influence of AI, what is next for the future of information retrieval? CCC addressed…
From insideHPC
NSF Launches 6 Quantum Pilot Projects
Dec. 16, 2024 — The U.S. National Science Foundation has launched six pilot projects “to bridge scientific gaps between current quantum technological capabilities and those needed to fully harness quantum properties of energy…
From insideHPC
Castrol Announces New Direct-to-Chip Cooling Fluid for HPC and AI
PANGBOURNE, UK, 13 December 2024:Castrol has announced the launch of Castrol ON Direct Liquid Cooling PG 25, a propylene glycol-based cooling fluid designed for direct-to-chip cooling applications in high-performance data centres…
From Daniel Lemire's Blog
Accessing the attributes of a struct in C++ as array elements?
In C++, it might be reasonable to represent a URL using a class or a struct made of several strings, like so: struct basic { std::string protocol; std::string username; std::string password; std::string hostname; std::stringContinue…
From ACM-W supporting, celebrating and advocating for Women in Computing
Co-Chairs Joint End of Year Message and Holiday Greetings!
Celebrating Milestones and Gratitude: ACM-W’s Remarkable 2024 Journey As we say goodbye to 2024, we want to take this moment to reflect on the remarkable journey we’ve shared. We want to show our deep gratitude for the leadership…
From Computational Complexity
Random Thoughts on AI (Human Generated)
(I wrote this post without any AI help. OH- maybe not- I used spellcheck. Does that count? Lance claims he proofread it and found some typos to correct without any AI help.)
I saw a great talk on AI recently…
From CS4FN (Computer Science For Fun)
Eating at Quonk: a tough puzzle?
by Paul Curzon Queen Mary University of London, from the archive The puzzle is based on one devised by psychologists as part of research into whether we humans naturally think logically or not. A group of friends: 2 women (Alice…
From Schneier on Security
Upcoming Speaking Events
This is a current list of where and when I am scheduled to speak:
I’m speaking at a joint meeting of the Boston Chapter of the IEEE Computer Society and GBC/ACM, in Boston, Massachusetts, USA, at 7:00 PM ET on Thursday, January…From ACM-W supporting, celebrating and advocating for Women in Computing
Welcoming the New ACM-W Asia-Pacific Committee
The ACM-W Global Leadership team is happy to announce the new ACM-W Asia Pacific Committee that will support a wide range of initiatives in the ACM-W Asia-Pacific region. The team includes the following roles and the associated…
From Schneier on Security
Friday Squid Blogging: Biology and Ecology of the Colossal Squid
Good survey paper.
From insideHPC
HPE to Build €250M Liquid Cooled HPC at Leibniz Supercomputing Center
The Leibniz Supercomputing Center (LRZ) in Germany has commissioned Hewlett Packard Enterprise (NYSE: HPE) to build an Nvidia-powered €250 million high-performance computer, “Blue Lion.” The system the HPE Slingshot a high-performance…
From insideHPC
Lambda Launches Inference API
Dec. 13, 2024 — AI company Lambda today announced its Inference API, which the company said enables access to LLMs through a serverless AI for “a fraction of a cent.” The company said Lambda Inference API offers low-cost, scalable…