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 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…From insideHPC
SandboxAQ Adds Former U.S. Treasury Secretary Dr. Lawrence H. Summers to Board
Aug. 16, 2024 — AI and quantum technology company SandboxAQ announced that Dr. Lawrence H. Summers, former U.S. Secretary of the Treasury, has joined SandboxAQ’s advisory board. “I am excited to join the Board of Advisors at
…
From The Computing Community Consortium Blog
CCC Weekly Computing News: Using Minecraft to Teach AI Social Intelligence
In this installment of CCC Weekly Computing News, we are sharing an interesting relationship between Minecraft and Arizona State University (ASU) as a part of the The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency’s (DARPA) AI Forward…
From Schneier on Security
New Windows IPv6 Zero-Click Vulnerability
The press is reporting a critical Windows vulnerability affecting IPv6.
As Microsoft explained in its Tuesday advisory, unauthenticated attackers can exploit the flaw remotely in low-complexity attacks by repeatedly sending …From insideHPC
Dec. 15 Nomination Deadline for ACM Award to Recognize Researchers from Historically Underrepresented Communities
New York, Aug. 13, 2024 – ACM, the Association for Computing Machinery, today announced that it has initiated the Luiz André Barroso Award to recognize researchers from historically underrepresented communities who have made
…
From ACM-W supporting, celebrating and advocating for Women in Computing
[On Demand] Celebrating Technology Leaders: Generative AI in Enterprise Software
![[On Demand] Celebrating Technology Leaders: Generative AI in Enterprise Software](/system/assets/0001/9523/041715_ACM_ACMWlogo.small_square.jpg?1476779479&1429278281)
On August 7th, 2024, Bushra Anjum hosted the 15th episode of “ACM-W Celebrating Technology Leaders” with our esteemed panel of experts to discuss the current trends, challenges, and future prospects of integrating generative…
From insideHPC
Quantum Circuits Closes $60M Series B Investment
August 15, 2024 – New Haven, CT – Quantum Circuits announced it has secured a final Series B investment round of more than $60 million. The company said the funds will provide “additional capital support as the company prepares…
From Schneier on Security
NIST Releases First Post-Quantum Encryption Algorithms
From the Federal Register:
After three rounds of evaluation and analysis, NIST selected four algorithms it will standardize as a result of the PQC Standardization Process. The public-key encapsulation mechanism selected was CRYSTALS…From The Noisy Channel
Facets, But Which Ones?
This post dives into a particular challenge of faceted search, exploring the challenge of selecting which facets a search application should present to searchers as query refinements.
Faceted Search
Faceted search is a standard…From ACM-W supporting, celebrating and advocating for Women in Computing
Now Recruiting: Website Editors
The ACM-W Communications Committee is seeking a volunteer to maintain the ACM-W website (women.acm.org). The successful candidate will work directly with the ACM-W Communications Chairs to edit, update, and maintain content on…
From insideHPC
Ke Fan and Daniel Nichols Win ACM-IEEE CS George Michael Memorial HPC Fellowships
New York, August 14, 2024 – ACM, the Association for Computing Machinery, and the IEEE Computer Society announced today that Ke Fan of the University of Illinois at Chicago and Daniel Nichols of the University of Maryland are…
From insideHPC
SiFive Announces RISC-V Datacenter Processor
Santa Clara, Calif., Aug. 14, 2024 – Today RISC-V computing company SiFive announced its SiFive PerformanceTM P870-D datacenter processor for highly parallelizable infrastructure workloads including video streaming, storage,
…
From Schneier on Security
Texas Sues GM for Collecting Driving Data without Consent
Texas is suing General Motors for collecting driver data without consent and then selling it to insurance companies:
From CNN:
In car models from 2015 and later, the Detroit-based car manufacturer allegedly used technology to…From Schneier on Security
Upcoming Speaking Engagements
This is a current list of where and when I am scheduled to speak:
- I’m speaking at eCrime 2024 in Boston, Massachusetts, USA. The event runs from September 24 through 26, 2024, and my keynote is on the 24th.
From Computational Complexity
Favorite Theorems: Random Oracles
From CS4FN (Computer Science For Fun)
Much ado about nothing
by Paul Curzon, Queen Mary University of London The nurse types in a dose of 100.1 mg [milligrams] of a powerful drug and presses start. It duly injects 1001 mg into the patient without telling the nurse that it didn’t do what…
From insideHPC
NSF: Call for Nominations for $1M Alan T. Waterman Award, Sept. 20 Deadline
Aug. 13, 2024 — The National Science Foundation said it is seeking nominations for candidates that represent the diversity of the U.S. Nominations for the Alan T Waterman Award will be accepted until Friday, Sept. 20, 2024. Visit…
From Daniel Lemire's Blog
Reflection-based JSON in C++ at Gigabytes per Second
JSON (JavaScript Object Notation) is a popular format for storing and transmitting data. It uses human-readable text to represent structured data in the form of attribute–value pairs and arrays. E.g., {"age":5, "name":"Daniel"…
From The Noisy Channel
Searching for Discovery
Search and Discovery
If search has one job, it is to help searchers find what they are looking for. However, many search application developers feel that search has a second job: to help searchers discover things they are notHaving…From Gödel's Lost Letter and P=NP
Guess Which Way?
Math problems get solved from time to time. Today I wonder if they are solved the way we guessed they were going to be solved? For example do most feel that P vs NP is likely to be equal or unequal? William Gasarch has conducted…
From insideHPC
IBM-Developed Algorithms Accepted for Post-Quantum Cryptography Standards
YORKTOWN HEIGHTS, N.Y., Aug. 13, 2024 — Two IBM-developed algorithms have been formalized within the world’s first three post-quantum cryptography standards, which were published today by the U.S. Department of Commerce’s National…
From Schneier on Security
On the Voynich Manuscript
Really interesting article on the ancient-manuscript scholars who are applying their techniques to the Voynich Manuscript.
No one has been able to understand the writing yet, but there are some new understandings:
Davis presented…From CS4FN (Computer Science For Fun)
Double or nothing: an extra copy of your software, just in case
by Paul Curzon, Queen Mary University of London If you spent billions of dollars on a gadget you’d probably like it to last more than a minute before it blows up. That’s what happened to a European Space Agency rocket. How do…
From insideHPC
EU Launches Cryogenic Quantum Project
Aug. 12, 2024 — The ARCTIC (“Advanced Research on Cryogenic Technologies for Innovative Computing”), an EU project, is intended to establish a European supply chain for cryogenic photonics, microelectronics, and, in general,
…
From insideHPC
HPC News Bytes 20240812: UK Cuts Exascale, Big Round for AI Inference, Llama 3.1 and Open AI, SC24 the Biggest Ever?
A good mid-August morn to you! Here's a rapid (6:30) romp through recent HPC-AI developments, including: the UK government cuts more than £1 billion for an exascale-class system in Edinburgh and AI projects; Groq scores major…
From insideHPC
DOE Announces 2024 Office of Science Distinguished Scientist Fellows
Four scientists have each been awarded $1 million in direct funding via the Department of Energy (DOE) Office of Science Distinguished Scientist Fellows program. The 2024 DOE Office of Science Distinguished Fellows ....
The post…
From Schneier on Security
Taxonomy of Generative AI Misuse
Interesting paper: “Generative AI Misuse: A Taxonomy of Tactics and Insights from Real-World Data“:
Generative, multimodal artificial intelligence (GenAI) offers transformative potential across industries, but its misuse poses…From CS4FN (Computer Science For Fun)
Navajo Code Talkers
Mary Ann Horton was transitioning to female at the time that she made one of her biggest contributions to our lives with a simple computer science idea with a big impact: a program that allowed binary email attachments.
From Computational Complexity
The combinatorics of Game Shows
(Inspired by Pat Sajak stepping down from Wheel of Fortune)
How many different game show are there? Many. How many could there be?
1) Based on Knowledge or something else. Jeopardy is knowledge. Wheel and Deal-No Deal are something…From Schneier on Security
Friday Squid Blogging: SQUID Is a New Computational Tool for Analyzing Genomic AI
Yet another SQUID acronym:
SQUID, short for Surrogate Quantitative Interpretability for Deepnets, is a computational tool created by Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory (CSHL) scientists. It’s designed to help interpret how AI models…