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 Daniel Lemire's Blog
Replace strings by views when you can
C++ programmers tend to represent strings using the std::string class. Though the implementation might vary, each instance of an std::string might use 32 bytes. Though it is not a large amount of memory, it can add up. In the…
From insideHPC
DOE Announces $68M for AI for Scientific Research
September 5, 2024, WASHINGTON, D.C. – The U.S. Department of Energy announced $68 million in funding for 11 AI for science multi-institution projects, comprising 43 awards lasting up to three years, with $20 million in Fiscal…
From Schneier on Security
Australia Threatens to Force Companies to Break Encryption
In 2018, Australia passed the Assistance and Access Act, which—among other things—gave the government the power to force companies to break their own encryption.
The Assistance and Access Act includes key components that outline…From Computational Complexity
Very few problems are in NP intersect coNP but not known to be in P. What to make of that?
Someone once told me:
I was not surprised when Linear Programming was in P since it was already in \( NP \cap coNP \), and problems in that intersection tend to be in P.
The same thing happened for PRIMALITY.
However FACTORING…From Putting People First
[Book] Code Dependent
![[Book] Code Dependent](/system/assets/0000/1953/030209_Vanderbeeken_Mark_250.small_square.jpg?1476779420&1260281963)
"A riveting story of what it means to be human in a world changed by artificial intelligence, revealing the perils and inequities of our growing reliance on automated decision-making"
From CS4FN (Computer Science For Fun)
Working in Computer Science: An Autistic Perspective (Part 1)
by Daniel Gill, Queen Mary University of London Autism is a condition with many associated challenges, but for some people it presents some benefits. This distinction is greatly apparent in the workplace, where autistic people…
From Schneier on Security
Live Video of Promachoteuthis Squid
The first live video of the Promachoteuthis squid, filmed at a newly discovered seamount off the coast of Chile.
From CS4FN (Computer Science For Fun)
Scilly cable antics
by Paul Curzon, Queen Mary University of London From the archive Autumn 1869. Undersea telecommunications cables let the world communicate and led to the world spanning Internet. It was all started by the Victorians. Continents…
From insideHPC
CoreWeave Partners with Run:ai on AI Inference
Sept. 6, 2024 — AI cloud hyperscaler CoreWeave announced an integration with AI workload and GPU orchestration company Run:ai that the companies say is designed to offers AI enterprises and labs options for deployment of AI inference…
From Schneier on Security
YubiKey Side-Channel Attack
There is a side-channel attack against YubiKey access tokens that allows someone to clone a device. It’s a complicated attack, requiring the victim’s username and password, and physical access to their YubiKey—as well as some…
From insideHPC
Nominations Open for 2024 HPC Innovation Excellence Awards
Sept. 5, 2024 — HPC-AI industry analyst firm Hyperion Research and the HPC User Forum announced that nominations are open for the 2024 HPC Innovation Excellence Award. Winners will be announced at the Hyperion Research AI/HPC…
From insideHPC
Nvidia and Others Invest $160M in HPC Data Center Company Applied Digital
DALLAS, Sept. 05, 2024 — Applied Digital Corporation, a builder of digital infrastructure designed for high performance computing applications, today announced it has entered into definitive agreements for a $160 million private…
From insideHPC
HPE Introduces Private Cloud AI Co-Developed with Nvidia
HOUSTON – September 5, 2024 – Hewlett Packard Enterprise (NYSE: HPE) announces HPE Private Cloud AI is available to order and introduces new solution accelerators to automate and streamline artificial intelligence applications…
From Gödel's Lost Letter and P=NP
Biblical Codes
This Sunday’s NYTimes had an article on Eliyahu Rips who just just passed away at 75. He was an Israeli mathematician known for his research in geometric group theory. He had became known to the general public years ago following…
From The Computing Community Consortium Blog
CCC Q&A: Trustworthy Intelligent Systems From An Interdisciplinary Lens
CCC spoke with one of its council members, Rachel Greenstadt about her work in trustworthy intelligent systems and her approach to this research through an interdisciplinary lens. What interests you about trustworthy intelligence…
From Schneier on Security
Long Analysis of the M-209
Really interesting analysis of the American M-209 encryption device and its security.
From insideHPC
atNorth Announces Heat Reuse at Denmark Data Center
Copenhagen – September 4th, 2024 – Nordic coloction HPC and AI service provider atNorth has announced plans to build its largest data center to date in Ølgod in Varde Denmark. The site, to be known as DEN02, will cater to colocation…
From insideHPC
VDURA Announces Partnership with Jeskell Systems for IT Modernization
SAN JOSE and LAUREL, Md.– High performance storage and management company VDURA has announced a partnership with Jeskell Systems, a renowned IT modernization specialist with nearly two decades of experience serving Federal and…
From The Noisy Channel
Take Searchers Seriously, Not Literally
Search application developers manage numerous tradeoffs, foremost the tradeoff between precision and recall. Precision measures the fraction of search results that are relevant, while recall measures the fraction of relevantUnfortunately…
From insideHPC
DOE Awards $118M for Energy Frontier Research Centers
Sept. 4, 2024 — Ten Energy Frontier Research Centers (EFRCs) designed to bring together teams of scientists for fundamental research have been funded in nine states by the U.S. Department of Energy. The projects are: A Center…
From Computational Complexity
Favorite Theorems: Parity Games
A quasipolynomial-time algorithm for a long standing open problem. Yes, we have two of them this decade.
Cristian Calude, Sanjay Jain, Bakhadyr Khoussainov, Wei Li and…From The Computing Community Consortium Blog
Call for Participation: Grand Challenges for the Convergence of Computational and Citizen Science Research
The Community Computing Consortium (CCC) is engaging in a new visioning activity to craft a research agenda focused on how human-computer collaborations can solve some of the most pressing scientific problems through citizen…
From Schneier on Security
Security Researcher Sued for Disproving Government Statements
This story seems straightforward. A city is the victim of a ransomware attack. They repeatedly lie to the media about the severity of the breach. A security researcher repeatedly proves their statements to be lies. The city gets…
From Schneier on Security
List of Old NSA Training Videos
The NSA’s “National Cryptographic School Television Catalogue” from 1991 lists about 600 COMSEC and SIGINT training videos.
There are a bunch explaining the operations of various cryptographic equipment, and a few code words…From Daniel Lemire's Blog
Compressing floating-point numbers quickly by converting them to brain floats
We sometimes have to work a large quantity of floating-point numbers. This volume can be detrimental to performance. Thus we often want to compress these numbers. Large-language models routinely do so. A sensible approach isContinue…
From insideHPC
HPC News Bytes Podcast 20240902: Nvidia and Blackwell Hit Limits, Revved-Up AI Inference and Oncoming Regulations, HPC in Russia
Happy Labor Day to you! From the world of HPC-AI, we offer a rapid (5:57) review of recent news, including: Nvidia and Blackwell push technology's limits, big AI inference numbers from Cerebras, the uncertainties of oncoming…
From Schneier on Security
SQL Injection Attack on Airport Security
Interesting vulnerability:
…a special lane at airport security called Known Crewmember (KCM). KCM is a TSA program that allows pilots and flight attendants to bypass security screening, even when flying on domestic personal …From Computational Complexity
Six degrees of separation has been proven. Really?
There is a paper (see here for an article about the paper, the link to the paper itself is later) that claims to PROVE that, on average, the distance (for some definition of distance) between any two people is 6.
1) We've blogged…