Communications of the ACM
The blog archive provides access to past blog postings from Communications of the ACM and other sources by date.
August 2024
From The Computing Community Consortium Blog
CCC Weekly Computing News: NCSA Gives Students Opportunities to Learn About Machine and Deep Learning
In this installment of CCC’s Weekly Computing News, we are sharing an exciting opportunity for undergraduate students across the country to work on cutting-edge research projects at the National Center for Supercomputing Applications…
From Schneier on Security
Take a Selfie Using a NY Surveillance Camera
This site will let you take a selfie with a New York City traffic surveillance camera.
From Schneier on Security
Surveillance Watch
This is a fantastic project mapping the global surveillance industry.
From insideHPC
Sandia and Arizona State to Integrate Photonics and Light-Wave Frequency for Quantum Processing
Aug. 22, 2024 — SandiaNational Laboratories and Arizona State University are collaborating to combine quantum technology and large-scale optical systems into integrated microsystems. Nils Otterstrom, a Sandia physicist specializing…
From The Computing Community Consortium Blog
CCC Responds to the NITRD Request for Information on Digital Twins Research and Development
Envisioning a future of digital twins leads to near limitless possibilities. Researchers predict digital twins will become increasingly personalized, with every individual having access to a digital twin of their own body. Imagine…
From Putting People First
Refreshed Experientia presentation
We just shortened and refreshed our company presentation.
From The Noisy Channel
Handling Facets With Many Values
The previous post addresses the challenge of selecting which facets a search application should present to searchers as query refinements. However, there is another challenge — namely, determining which values to show from aJust…
From insideHPC
@HPCpodcast: ECP Software Leader Mike Heroux on Building and Sustaining Exascale-Class Codes
The @HPCpodcast is delighted to have Dr. Mike Heroux as special guest to discuss HPC software in general and, in particular, his work as the Exascale Computing Project’s director of software technologies., including code used…
From Computational Complexity
The Levin Translation
Earlier this summer I attended a Celebration for Leonid Levin who recently turned 75. To prepare my talk I wanted to go back to Levin's 1971 two-page Russian masterpiece that covered both his independent discovery of NP-completeness…
From Schneier on Security
Story of an Undercover CIA Agent who Penetrated Al Qaeda
Rolling Stone has a long investigative story (non-paywalled version here) about a CIA agent who spent years posing as an Islamic radical.
Unrelated, but also in the “real life spies” file: a fake Sudanese diving resort run by…From The Computing Community Consortium Blog
5 Ways to Build Resilience to Disinformation
In 2020, the Computing Community Consortium (CCC) published the quad paper “An Agenda for Disinformation Research,” where seven researchers came together to share the urgency of investing in fundamental research and interventions…
From insideHPC
Academic Supercomputing Community Gathers at TACC Frontera User Meeting
Aug. 19, 2024, Austin, TX — More than 50 scientists gathered in Austin for the 2024 Frontera User Meeting held at the Texas Advanced Computing Center (TACC), August 5-6. This community of computational scientists and engineers…
From Computer Science Teacher - Thoughts and Information From Alfred Thompson
Questions Keeping Me Awake Tonight
It’s about 2:45 AM as I start this post. Why am I writing at this hour? Well, it’s because some things are keeping my mind from shutting down and maybe by writing them out I can get back to sleep. Basically there are a bunchLet…
From insideHPC
TSMC Joint Venture Breaks Ground on Dresden Fab
DRESDEN, Germany, August 20, 2024— ESMC – a joint venture between TSMC, Robert Bosch GmbH, Infineon Technologies AG and NXP Semiconductors N.V. – today held a groundbreaking ceremony to officially mark the initial phase of land…
From insideHPC
DDN Wins Tier-1 Performance Data Platform Certification for Nvidia Partner Network Cloud Partners
CHATSWORTH, Calif. – Aug. 20, 2024 – Data intelligence platform company DDN today announced it has been certified as a tier-one performance data solution for NVIDIA Partner Network cloud partners, collaborating with NVIDIA to…
From insideHPC
NTT Demonstrates Optical Fiber Monitoring Technology for All-Photonics Network
TOKYO – August 20, 2024 – NTT Corporation (NTT) has developed technology to visualize the state of end-to-end fiber-optic links without using measuring equipment and succeeded, according to the company, for the first time in
…
From insideHPC
Aug. 21 Argonne Webinar on chipStar: a HIP implementation for Aurora Exascale
Aug. 20, 2024 — The Argonne Leadership Computing Facility will hold a webinar tomorrow from 11 am to noon Central Time covering chipStar, a HIP implementation for Aurora, the exascale-class supercomputer housed at Argonne. Registration…
From insideHPC
Diraq Says It Drives 2-Qubit Gate Accuracy in CMOS above 99%
SYDNEY, AUSTRALIA – AUGUST 20, 2024 – Quantum computing company Diraq announced it has demonstrated consistent and repeatable operation with above 99 percent fidelity of two-qubit gates in the SiMOS (silicon metal-oxide-semiconductor)…
From insideHPC
Female-led Swiss Start-up Apheros Secures $1.85M for Data Center Cooling Systems
Zurich – August 19, 2024: Deep tech startup Apheros is today announcing a $1.85m funding round the company will use to introduce its metal foam technologyfor data center cooling. Apheros said its patented manufacturing process…
From The Computing Community Consortium Blog
CCC Q&A: A Look into the CAR Lab with Founder Weisong Shi
CCC spoke with one of its council members, Weisong Shi about his passion for autonomous research which led him to start the Connected and Autonomous Research (CAR) Lab. What drove you to start the CAR Lab? In 2016, I worked on…
From Schneier on Security
Hacking Wireless Bicycle Shifters
This is yet another insecure Internet-of-things story, this one about wireless gear shifters for bicycles. These gear shifters are used in big-money professional bicycle races like the Tour de France, which provides an incentive…
From insideHPC
HPC News Bytes Podcast 20240819: Adding AI-Centric Servers, Post Quantum Cryptography, Liberal Arts Profs Look at Exascale
Good August day to you! Here's a quick (5:43) review of recent goings on in the world of HPC-AI, including: AI-centric servers from non-traditional HPC suppliers form new market segment, NIST announcement heralds Post Quantum…
From insideHPC
Upping the AI Ante: AMD to Acquire Data Center Server Company ZT Systems for $5B
In a vertical integration move, AMD today announced an agreement to acquire data center and hyperscale systems supplier ZT Systems for nearly $5 billion. The acquisition underscores the high-stakes competition AMD is waging against…
From The Computing Community Consortium Blog
CCC Council Member Michela Taufer Speaks at 53rd International Conference on Parallel Processing
The Computing Community Consortium (CCC) is proud to announce that council member Michela Taufer was a keynote speaker at the 53 International Conference on Parallel Computing, one of the oldest continuously running computer…
From insideHPC
Fabric Cryptography Raises $33M for Cryptography Chip
August 19, 2024: Silicon Valley hardware startup Fabric Cryptography announced a $33 million Series A funding round to build computing chips, software and cryptographic algorithms. The round was co-led by Blockchain Capital and…
From Schneier on Security
The State of Ransomware
Palo Alto Networks published its semi-annual report on ransomware. From the Executive Summary:
Unit 42 monitors ransomware and extortion leak sites closely to keep tabs on threat activity. We reviewed compromise announcements…From Computational Complexity
Request open problems in honor of Luca Trevisan
Request for Open Problems In Memory of Luca Trevisan
Luca Trevisan passed away on June 19, 2024 at the age of 52, of cancer.
I am putting together an open problems column of open problems in his honor.
If you are interested in1)…From insideHPC
2 English Professors Win NSF Grant to Open Aurora Exascale Black Box
English professors at Clemson University and Portland State University have been awarded a six-figure research grant from the National Science Foundation to conduct fieldwork and interviews at Argonne National Laboratory about…
From Daniel Lemire's Blog
Faster random integer generation with batching
We often generate random integers. Quite often these numbers must be within an interval: e.g., an integer between 0 and 100. One application is a random shuffle. A standard algorithm for a fair random shuffle is the Knuth algorithm…
From Schneier on Security
Friday Squid Blog: The Market for Squid Oil Is Growing
How did I not know before now that there was a market for squid oil?
The squid oil market has experienced robust growth in recent years, expanding from $4.56 billion in 2023 to $4.94 billion in 2024 at a compound annual growth…