Communications of the ACM
The blog archive provides access to past blog postings from Communications of the ACM and other sources by date.
March 2024
From insideHPC
Ardian Acquires Verne Global
London – 15 March 2024 – Private investment firm Ardian has completed the acquisition of the entire share capital of Verne (formerly Verne Global), a data center platform headquartered in the UK, from Digital 9 Infrastructure…
From The Computing Community Consortium Blog
Former CCC Council Chair Gregory D. Hager Announced as Next NSF CISE AD
We are excited and proud to pass on the news that former CCC Chair and long time Council member Gregory D. Hager was selected by the National Science Foundation (NSF) to serve as the Assistant Director (AD) of the Directorate…
From insideHPC
Survey: 94% of IT Leaders Rely on Immutable Storage for Ransomware Protection
SAN FRANCISCO – Data storage company Scality recently announced the results of a survey of 500 IT decision-makers across France, Germany, the U.K. and the U.S. to gain insight into the role immutable data storage plays in an
…
From CS4FN (Computer Science For Fun)
Do something computationally funny for money
by Paul Curzon, Queen Mary University of London It is Red nose day in the UK the day of raising money for the comic relief charity by buying and wearing red noses and generally doing silly things for money. Red noses are not…
From Schneier on Security
Improving C++
C++ guru Herb Sutter writes about how we can improve the programming language for better security.
The immediate problem “is” that it’s Too Easy By Default™ to write security and safety vulnerabilities in C++ that would havetype…From Gödel's Lost Letter and P=NP
Does Pi Conspire?
With integers like 222, perhaps his site James Franklin is a mathematician and philosopher at the University of New South Wales in Sydney. He wrote an article in 2016 for the Mathematical Intelligencer titled, “Logical probability…
From CS4FN (Computer Science For Fun)
Calculating Pi for Pi Day
by Paul Curzon, Queen Mary University of London Today is Pi Day (14 March: 3.14) so we should look at how on earth you compute a number like Pi (3.1.4159….). It has an infinite number of digits containing no repeating pattern…
From The Noisy Channel
Hierarchy is Hard!
A fundamental concept in language understanding is that of semantic hierarchy. In linguistics, a hyponym is a more specific or subordinate word, while a hypernym is a broader or superordinate word. For example, “cat” is a hyponym…
From insideHPC
Applied Digital Wins Contract with Together AI
DALLAS, March 14, 2024 — Applied Digital Corporation (Nasdaq: APLD), a designer, builder, and operator of digital infrastructure designed for HPC applications, today announced the onboarding of Together AI. Applied Digital received…
From Schneier on Security
Automakers Are Sharing Driver Data with Insurers without Consent
Kasmir Hill has the story:
Modern cars are internet-enabled, allowing access to services like navigation, roadside assistance and car apps that drivers can connect to their vehicles to locate them or unlock them remotely. In…From insideHPC
Survey on AI Infrastructure Spotlights GPU Challenges
SAN FRANCISCO – March 13, 2024 – ClearML today announced new research findings from a global AI survey conducted with FuriosaAI and the AI Infrastructure Alliance (AIIA) called “The State of AI Infrastructure at Scale 2024“:…
From insideHPC
CGG Commences Global Natural Hydrogen Screening Project
Paris, March 13, 2024 — Global technology and earth sciences company CGG has commenced a worldwide natural hydrogen screening project with industry support. The project leverages CGG’s subsurface data, multi-disciplinary geoscience…
From insideHPC
Lenovo and NVIDIA at GTC 2024: An Alliance Enabling AI at Scale
The technology alliance between Lenovo and NVIDIA is one whose total is greater than the sum of its parts. NVIDIA processors are changing the world and Lenovo servers are the platforms in which world-changing compute is happening…
From Computational Complexity
Translation in Context
 |
| La Scala in Milan |
Google translate generally impresses but consider this translation from a short Italian news article. I boldfaced a few items. Not scheduled at the premiere of Mozart's Die Entführung aus dem Serail (The…
From Schneier on Security
Burglars Using Wi-Fi Jammers to Disable Security Cameras
The arms race continues, as burglars are learning how to use jammers to disable Wi-Fi security cameras.
From insideHPC
Vast Data Annouces AI Cloud Architecture Built on Nvidia DPUs
AI data platform company VAST Data today announced a AI cloud architecture designed to deliver space/cost/power efficiency that buildson Nvidia BlueField-3 data processing unit (DPU) technology. The architecture makes it possible…
From insideHPC
DOE Awards $5.2M to HPC for Energy Projects, Announces Intent for Spring 2024 Solicitation
March 11, 2024 — The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) announced a $5.2 million federal investment for 13 projects that will tap into the DOE national laboratories’ high performance computing (HPC) resources to help industry partners…
From CS4FN (Computer Science For Fun)
Could AI end science?
by Nick Ballou, Oxford Internet Institute Scientific fraud is worryingly common, though rarely talked about. It has been happening for years, but now Artificial Intelligence programs could supercharge it. If they do that could…
From Daniel Lemire's Blog
How to read files quickly in JavaScript
Suppose you need to read several files on a server using JavaScript. There are many ways to read files in JavaScript with a runtime like Node.js. Which one is best? Let us consider the various approaches. Using fs.promises const…
From The Computing Community Consortium Blog
Visioning Workshop Report Released: Community Driven Approaches to Research in Technology & Society
The Community Driven Approaches to Research in Technology & Society visioning workshop was held in the Spring of 2023, bringing together a diverse group of 53 civil society representatives, activists, non-profit leaders, and…
From Schneier on Security
Jailbreaking LLMs with ASCII Art
Researchers have demonstrated that putting words in ASCII art can cause LLMs—GPT-3.5, GPT-4, Gemini, Claude, and Llama2—to ignore their safety instructions.
Research paper.
From Putting People First
The primacy of the personal
A new report from the Weber Shandwick Collective suggests a “me over we” mentality is driving more buying decisions, explains the publisher of Fast Company, Stephanie Mehta, CEO of Mansueto Ventures.
From The Noisy Channel
An Update on Search Classes
In 2022, Grant Ingersoll and I launched our first four-week Search with Machine Learning class on Uplimit, then called Corise. I still have a special place in my heart for the over 100 students who braved our debut cohort and…
From insideHPC
HPC News Bytes: IndiaAI Mission, New Fabs around the World, Atos-Eviden
A happy mid-March day to you. Last week in the world of HPC-AI the emphasis was on the latter, including: the expanding IndiaAI Mission will include a 10,000-GPU supercomputer, TSMC's biggest customers, countries court chip manufacturers…
From Schneier on Security
Using LLMs to Unredact Text
Initial results in using LLMs to unredact text based on the size of the individual-word redaction rectangles.
This feels like something that a specialized ML system could be trained on.
From CS4FN (Computer Science For Fun)
Find your own time zone – #BSW24
Time is the theme for this year's British Science Week. Here's how to calculate your own personal time zone. We also have a new time portal with some other 'timely' articles.
From Computational Complexity
The Thrill of Seeing Your Name in Print is Gone
In the 1980's and 1990's when I got a paper accepted to a journal or conference it seemed important to see it in print. Having a paper accepted was nice, but it didn't seem real until I held the conference proceedings or journal…
From Putting People First
[Book] Guardrails
When we make decisions, our thinking is informed by societal norms, “guardrails” that guide our decisions, like the laws and rules that govern us. But what are good guardrails in today’s world of overwhelming information flows…
From Schneier on Security
Friday Squid Blogging: New Plant Looks Like a Squid
Newly discovered plant looks like a squid. And it’s super weird:
The plant, which grows to 3 centimetres tall and 2 centimetres wide, emerges to the surface for as little as a week each year. It belongs to a group of plantsRelictithismia…From Gödel's Lost Letter and P=NP
P=NP and Bitcoin
The present value of working on conjectures… Anil Nerode of Cornell University has served over sixty years—he’s believed to be the longest such faculty member in university history. He helped found Cornell’s computer science…