Communications of the ACM
The blog archive provides access to past blog postings from Communications of the ACM and other sources by date.
September 2024
From Universal Acceptance Steering Group
New EAI Self-Certification Guide Defines Categories for Email Products Based on EAI-Readiness
By Mark Svancarek, Chair, UA EAI Working Group The Universal Acceptance Steering Group (UASG) has published a new guide to help email service or tool providers, software vendors, and developers to self-certify the readiness of…
From Computational Complexity
I thought I knew what pizza was...
On Page 75 of
The Existential Theory of the Reals as a Complexity Class: A Compendium
by Marcus Schaefer, Jean Cardinal, Tillmann Mitzow
(see here for the paper)
I came across the following definition:
From insideHPC
HPC News Bytes 20240923 Podcast: Intel-Qualcomm, Responses to AI Energy Crisis, HPC-AI Beyond GPUs
A belated happy autumnal equinox to you! The white-water HPC-AI world produced major news over the past week, including: previously unthinkable Intel M&A reports, chips and software ....
The post HPC News Bytes 20240923 Podcast…
From Schneier on Security
Hacking the “Bike Angels” System for Moving Bikeshares
I always like a good hack. And this story delivers. Basically, the New York City bikeshare program has a system to reward people who move bicycles from full stations to empty ones. By deliberately moving bikes to create artificial…
From insideHPC
January 14 Deadline: NSF $15M Funding Opportunity to Safeguard Open Source Ecosystems
Sept. 23, 2024 — The U.S. National Science Foundation launched a $15 million funding opportunity to address vulnerabilities of open-source ecosystems. Preliminary proposals for the Safety, Security, and Privacy of Open-Source…
From The Computing Community Consortium Blog
CCC Q&A: A Look Into A Pilot Project to Enhance Data Access
The National Science Data Fabric (NSDF) is an pilot project funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF), designed to enhance data access and management for research institutions around the country and globally. The project…
From Schneier on Security
Friday Squid Blogging: Squid Game Season Two Teaser
The teaser for Squid Game Season Two dropped.
From Gödel's Lost Letter and P=NP
Women In Theory
My dear wife, Kathryn Farley, just woke me this Friday the 20th from a nap with something that she said was amazing. She told me it was the top most viewed video of the entire day—over a million views. It was indeed terrific—especially…
From insideHPC
Virtual Webinar: Transforming Physics Simulations with Ansys and Microsoft Azure
[SPONSORED VIDEO]: Check out this virtual webinar introducing Ansys Access on Microsoft Azure, a newly released option designed to streamline the transition to the cloud. This solution allows a hybrid ....
The post Virtual Webinar…
From Schneier on Security
Clever Social Engineering Attack Using Captchas
This is really interesting.
It’s a phishing attack targeting GitHub users, tricking them to solve a fake Captcha that actually runs a script that is copied to the command line.
Clever.
From The Computing Community Consortium Blog
CCC Weekly Computing News: Two AI Institutes Launched To Help Astronomers Understand the Universe
In this installment of CCC’s Weekly Computing News, we are sharing the exciting launch of two AI Institutes funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF) and the Simon Foundation to understand the cosmos. NSF and Simons Foundation…
From Schneier on Security
FBI Shuts Down Chinese Botnet
The FBI has shut down a botnet run by Chinese hackers:
The botnet malware infected a number of different types of internet-connected devices around the world, including home routers, cameras, digital video recorders, and NAS…From insideHPC
HSBC and Quantinuum Pilot Quantum Security for Tokenized Gold
Sept. 19, 2023, London – HSBC, a British bank and financial services group, announced today that it has successfully trialled quantum-secure technology for buying and selling tokenised physical gold. The company said this marks…
From insideHPC
LiquidStack Secures $20M Series B Funding from Tiger Global
CARROLLTON, Texas, September 19, 2024 — LiquidStack today announced it has secured a $20 million Series B extension investment from leading investment firm Tiger Global, bringing LiquidStack’s total Series B funding round to
…
From ACM-W supporting, celebrating and advocating for Women in Computing
ACMW Celebrating Technology Leaders Episode 15: Generative AI in Enterprise Software
We are at the forefront of a technological revolution where generative AI is redefining the boundaries of what’s possible within enterprise environments. In episode 15 of “ACM-W Celebrating Technology Leaders,” our host, Bushra…
From insideHPC
SiFive Introduces Intelligence XM Series for AI
SANTA CLARA, Calif.– RISC-V computing company SiFive announced the SiFive Intelligence XM Series designed for accelerating high performance AI workloads. This is the first IP from SiFive to include a scalable AI matrix engine…
From Computational Complexity
Embracing the Future of Manufacturing
Last week I walked around the International Manufacturing Technology Show with 89,000 other participants at the McCormick Center in Chicago. I went to see how AI was affecting manufacturing and it wasn't quite the way I was expecting…
From The Noisy Channel
Seriously or Literally?
The other day, I posted about the need for search applications to take searchers seriously, not literally. This need holds even when searchers practically ask to be taken literally.
Quotation Marks
By using quotation marks, a searcher…From insideHPC
David Padua to Receive Ken Kennedy HPC Award
David A. Padua, professor emeritus in Engineering at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, has been named the recipient of the 2024 ACM-IEEE CS Ken Kennedy Award. The award recognizes groundbreaking achievements in parallel…
From insideHPC
The Next Big Interconnect Technology Could Be Plastic
.... large language models and generative AI applications are driving hyperscalers to adopt a new data center-scale switch fabric, called the AI backend network. And there is a new interconnect technology for this switch fabric…
From insideHPC
NCSA and CliMAS to Host Climate Supercomputing Summit Sept. 29-Oct. 2
Champaign-Urbana, IL, Sept. 17, 2024 — The National Center for Supercomputing Applications (NCSA) and the Univerity of Illinois’ Department of Climate, Meteorology & Atmospheric Sciences (CliMAS) will bring together more than…
From insideHPC
e6data Raises $10M for Analytics Engine
San Francisco – September 17, 2024; In today’s digital-first landscape, enterprises rely on powerful data and AI capabilities to fuel innovation, enhance customer experiences, and optimize operations. However, they are set to…
From insideHPC
ZutaCore and Munters Team on Waterless Data Center Architecture for AI Factories
SAN JOSE, Sept. 17, 2024 — ZutaCore, a provider of direct-to-chip, waterless liquid cooling solutions, and Munters, an air treatment and climate solutions company, today announced the integration of their two platforms to provide…
From insideHPC
Firebolt Introduces Cloud Data Warehouse
KIRKLAND, WA, September 17, 2024 — Today, Firebolt announced a data warehouse that the company said delivers low latency analytics with 10x more efficiency. “Built across five years of relentless development, it reflects continuous…
From Schneier on Security
Remotely Exploding Pagers
Wow.
It seems they all exploded simultaneously, which means they were triggered.
Were they each tampered with physically, or did someone figure out how to trigger a thermal runaway remotely? Malicious code update, or natural …From Schneier on Security
Python Developers Targeted with Malware During Fake Job Interviews
Interesting social engineering attack: luring potential job applicants with fake recruiting pitches, trying to convince them to download malware. From a news article
These particular attacks from North Korean state-funded hacking…From The Noisy Channel
Cold Start, Practical Edition
If you are a search application developer or some other kind of machine learning practitioner, you have probably encountered a cold start problem: launching a data-driven application without any data to drive it. There are many…
From Schneier on Security
Legacy Ivanti Cloud Service Appliance Being Exploited
CISA wants everyone—and government agencies in particular—to remove or upgrade an Ivanti Cloud Service Appliance (CSA) that is no longer being supported.
Welcome to the security nightmare that is the Internet of Things.
From The Computing Community Consortium Blog
CCC Q&A: Upcoming CCC Citizen Science Workshop Organizers Give A Sneak Peak
The Computing Community Consortium (CCC) will be hosting the Grand Challenges for the Convergence of Computational and Citizen Science Research workshop in-person from April 8 – 9, 2025 and virtual discussions. Their goal is…
From insideHPC
Q-CTRL Delivering New Services to IBM Quantum Network
Montréal, Sept. 16, 2024 – Quantum sofware company Q-CTRL today announced that it offers two services via IBM’s new Qiskit Functions Catalog to simplify application development and performance management services. Q-CTRL’s performance…