Communications of the ACM
The blog archive provides access to past blog postings from Communications of the ACM and other sources by date.
February 2023
From Daniel Lemire's Blog
Computing the UTF-8 size of a Latin 1 string quickly (AVX edition)
Computers represent strings using bytes. Most often, we use the Unicode standard to represent characters in bytes. The universal format to exchange strings online is called UTF-8. It can represent over a million characters while…
From The Computing Community Consortium Blog
NITRD Publishes a Request for Information on the 2023 Federal Cybersecurity Research and Development Strategic Plan
On behalf of Federal agencies and the Networking and Information Technology Research and Development (NITRD) Cyber Security and Information Assurance Interagency Working Group, the National Coordination Office (NCO) for NITRD…
From insideHPC
Sylabs Releases SingularityCE 3.11 for HPC Workflows with OCI Compatibility
Reno, NV – February 16, 2022 – Sylabs, a provider of performance-intensive container technology, today announced the release of SingularityCE 3.11, which the company said takes a step towards full OCI compatibility in the future…
From BLOG@CACM
ChatGPT for Provost!
Three to five years from now, we won’t be talking about what ChatGPT can or can’t do, but we could be talking about how ChatGPT brought us all together, and the intellectual culture of the university began to shift.
From insideHPC
Rolos Selects Virtuozzo for Scientific Research Cloud Platform
Seattle and Schaffhausen, Switzerland, February 14, 2023 — Cloud platform Virtuozzo has announced a partnership with Rolos by Constructor group (formerly known as Schaffhausen Institute of Technology or SIT), to develop a research…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Relevant Podcasts for CACM
Click through to list of podcasts and addresses
Ears on AI and Data, By Karen Emslie
Commissioned by CACM Staff, February 16, 2023
According to DemandSage (https://www.demandsage.com/podcast-statistics/), at the end of 2022 there…From Geeking with Greg
Huge numbers of fake accounts on Twitter
It seems like this should get more attention, "hundreds of thousands of counterfeit Twitter accounts set up by Russian propaganda and disinformation" that are "still active on social media today."
There has been widespread manipulation…From Geeking with Greg
Details on personalized learning at Duolingo
There's a new, great, long article on how Duolingo's personalized learning algorithms work, "How Duolingo's AI learns what you need to learn".
An excerpt as a teaser: When students are given material that’s too difficult, they…From The Eponymous Pickle
What Is ChatGPT Doing... and Why Does It Work?
Good piece by Stephen Wolfram, below the intro:
What Is ChatGPT Doing... and Why Does It Work?
It’s Just Adding One Word at a Time
That ChatGPT can automatically generate something that reads even superficially like human-written…From insideHPC
GlobalConnect Claims First with Submerged Cooling Colo in Europe
Copenhagen — Feb. 16, 2023 — Digital infrastructure provider GlobalConnect Groupsaid today it is the first colocation provider in Europe to offer submerged cooling to its customers, reducing datacenter power consumption for cooling…
From Computational Complexity
Blurry JPEG or Frozen Concentrate
From The Eponymous Pickle
The New AI Planned to be Delivered by Microsoft
Impressive look at the direction to enhance all search with an intelligent Co-Pilot.
AI Powered Bing and MS Edge
Intro talk: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rOeRWRJ16yY
Reinventing search with a new AI-powered Microsoft Bing…From Geeking with Greg
Massive fake crowds for disinformation campaigns
The Guardian has a good article, "'Aims': the software for hire that can control 30,000 fake online profiles", on fake crowds faking popularity and consensus to manipulate opinion. Misinformation and disinformation are the biggest…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Make Siri Elite with OpenAI and ChatGPT
Brought to my attention, installing. A means to use OpenAI directly from Siri, creating a 'Siri Elite' as a new assistant tool accessible with a Siri shortcut. - FAD
Make Siri Elite with OpenAI and ChatGPT
From Zollotech.com…From Schneier on Security
ChatGPT Is Ingesting Corporate Secrets
According to internal Slack messages that were leaked to Insider, an Amazon lawyer told workers that they had “already seen instances” of text generated by ChatGPT that “closely” resembled internal company data.
…From The Computing Community Consortium Blog
NSF Partners with Ericsson, IBM, Intel, and Samsung to Support Semiconductor Design and Manufacturing
Late last month, the National Science Foundation (NSF) announced a partnership with Ericsson, IBM, Intel, and Samsung to support the manufacturing and design of the next generation of semiconductors. The nearly $50 million partnership…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Very Tiny Cameras, Consider the Possibilities
I like the realm of the very small, for sensors and the ability to combine multiple tiny views. Healthcare would for example could be an interesting application.
Researchers shrink Camera to the Size of a Salt Grain In Princeton…From The Eponymous Pickle
Resumes, Jobs, Interviews and ChatGPT Challenges HR
Ethical? But does show advanced thinking. Are responses reasonable? Some early stats.
Most Job Seekers Who Used ChatGPT to Write Their Resume Get an Interview
By ResumeBuilder, February 14, 2023
Forty percent of respondentsChatGPT…From The Eponymous Pickle
Cosmic Rays Can 3D-Scan Nuclear Reactors
Scanning reactors in 3D. For analysis, maintenance.
Cosmic Rays Can 3D-Scan Nuclear Reactors
IEEE Spectrum.Charles Q. Choi, February 8, 2023
Researchers at the French Alternative Energies and Atomic Energy Commission found that…From The Eponymous Pickle
Exascale Supercomputer Can Do a Quintillion Calculations a Second
Supercomputer advances as well
Exascale Supercomputer Can Do a Quintillion Calculations a Second
Scientific American, Sarah Scoles, , ORNL, February 9, 2023
Oak Ridge National Laboratory's Frontier supercomputer, the world's first…From Schneier on Security
Camera the Size of a Grain of Salt
Cameras are getting smaller and smaller, changing the scale and scope of surveillance.
From The Eponymous Pickle
3D-Printed Models Help Preserve Endangered Languages
Quite surprising work. Can you 3D Print Languages to preserve them?
Researchers' 3D-Printed Models Help Preserve Endangered Languages
Interesting Engineering, Nergis Firtina, February 10, 2023
Researchers at the U.K.'s University…From insideHPC
Quantum Brilliance Raises $18M to Advance Miniaturized Quantum Computers
SYDNEY, AUSTRALIA, February 15, 2023 – Quantum Brilliance, a developer of room-temperature miniaturised quantum computing products, today announced an $18 million USD fundraise. Investors include Breakthrough Victoria, Main Sequence…
From Computer Science Teacher - Thoughts and Information From Alfred Thompson
People Are Bad At Giving Instructions
One of the things that make me sure that programming will be around for awhile even with better and better artificial intelligences is that people are bad at giving instructions. Well, that may be unfair. They are reasonablyThe…
From insideHPC
Quantinuum Names HPC Industry Veteran Raj Hazra CEO
Tokyo, Cambridge, UK, Broomfield, CO — Feb. 14, 2023 — Quantum computing company Quantinuum today announced that HPC industry veteran Rajeeb (Raj) Hazra has been appointed chief executive officer. Quantinuum was formed in 2021…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Croatian Restaurant Offers One-Pot Menu Cooked by Robotic Chef
A bit of a cook myself, with interest in the dynamics of 'one-pot' cooking. (or minimal pot) So appreciate what it takes and the results. Robotics will become a big component.
Croatian Restaurant Offers One-Pot Menu Cooked…From insideHPC
Generative AI Platform Writer Launches 3 Enterprise Models
San Francisco – February 13, 2023 – Writer, a generative AI platform built for business, today launches three new proprietary large language models (LLMs) designed for enterprise-ready generative AI. Palmyra Small (128M), Palmyra…
From The Eponymous Pickle
NVIDIA Event to Push Avatars
Making a point of 'uncanny valley', aspect of Avatars. Not sure that would be an issue at a conference, but for typical human interactions, perhaps. Has this been cleansed by more people getting into gaming use? ThoughDeveloper…
From Schneier on Security
Upcoming Speaking Engagements
This is a current list of where and when I am scheduled to speak:
From The Eponymous Pickle
NFT's and Art Definition in Court
Where will this lead? Definition fading? Not even artistically relevant? Investment Caution.
ACM NEWS
Jury Rules that NFTs Aren't Really Art By Futurism, February 13, 2023
This case seems to boil down to one of the most well…