Communications of the ACM
The blog archive provides access to past blog postings from Communications of the ACM and other sources by date.
December 2023
From Gödel's Lost Letter and P=NP
Things We Did Not Know How to Compute
Artificial Intelligence and P=NP Enio Moraes is the Product and Engineering Director of Semantix in Sao Paulo, Brazil. Semantix provides AI platforms for businesses. He recently blogged on LinkedIn on what P=NP would say about…
From Daniel Lemire's Blog
Science and Technology links (December 30th 2023)
Parenting does not appear to be able to determine the personality traits of a child. When the last ice age ended, 12,000 years ago, the Sahara was green and full of life. It turned into a desert about 5,500 years ago. FadnesContinue…
From insideHPC
@HPCpodcast: A Parting Look at 2023 — What a Year for HPC-AI!
As we embark on 2024, Shahin and Doug offer this 2023 Year in Review special edition looking back at one of the most eventful years in the recent history of HPC, AI, quantum computing, open source and other advanced technologies…
From Schneier on Security
AI Is Scarily Good at Guessing the Location of Random Photos
Wow:
To test PIGEON’s performance, I gave it five personal photos from a trip I took across America years ago, none of which have been published online. Some photos were snapped in cities, but a few were taken in places nowhere…From Schneier on Security
Friday Squid Blogging: Sqids
They’re short unique strings:
Sqids (pronounced “squids”) is an open-source library that lets you generate YouTube-looking IDs from numbers. These IDs are short, can be generated from a custom alphabet and are guaranteed to be…From Schneier on Security
AI and Lossy Bottlenecks
Artificial intelligence is poised to upend much of society, removing human limitations inherent in many systems. One such limitation is information and logistical bottlenecks in decision-making.
Traditionally, people have been…From Geeking with Greg
Book excerpt: First pages of the book
(This is an excerpt from my book, "Algorithms and Misinformation: Why Wisdom of the Crowds Failed the Internet and How to Fix It". The first sentence and first page of a book hook readers in. This book starts with an entertaining…
From Schneier on Security
New iPhone Security Features to Protect Stolen Devices
Apple is rolling out a new “Stolen Device Protection” feature that seems well thought out:
When Stolen Device Protection is turned on, Face ID or Touch ID authentication is required for additional actions, including viewing …From CS4FN (Computer Science For Fun)
Tonight, 8pm on BBC Four – the first of three Christmas Lectures for young people on Artificial Intelligence
If you're near a television or computer at 8pm you can watch the first of this year's Christmas Lectures, all about artificial intelligence.
From Schneier on Security
Google Stops Collecting Location Data from Maps
Google Maps now stores location data locally on your device, meaning that Google no longer has that data to turn over to the police.
From CS4FN (Computer Science For Fun)
CS4FN Advent Calendar – Day 25 bonus Christmas crackers: have you ever seen this cracker joke?
If you’re pulling a Christmas cracker today look out for this now famous but fairly puzzling ‘joke’ – Q: What kind of cough medicine does Dracula take?A: Con medicine Apart from the fact that the joke is more suited to Hallowe…
From CS4FN (Computer Science For Fun)
CS4FN Advent 2023 – Day 23: Father Christmas – checking his list, spotting the errors
Our CS4FN Christmas Computing Advent Calendar has now been running for 23 days! That’s one post every single day, matching a computing-themed blog post to the image on the front of the advent calendar. If you’d like to see how…
From Schneier on Security
Friday Squid Blogging: Squid Parts into Fertilizer
It’s squid parts from college dissections, so it’s not a volume operation.
As usual, you can also use this squid post to talk about the security stories in the news that I haven’t covered.
Read my blog posting guidelines here…From Schneier on Security
Data Exfiltration Using Indirect Prompt Injection
Interesting attack on a LLM:
In Writer, users can enter a ChatGPT-like session to edit or create their documents. In this chat session, the LLM can retrieve information from sources on the web to assist users in creation of …From CS4FN (Computer Science For Fun)
CS4FN Advent 2023: wreaths and rope memory – weave your own space age computer
Each day throughout December (until Christmas Day) we’ll be publishing a computing-themed blog post suggested by the picture on the front of our Advent Calendar. Today’s image on the door of the CS4FN Christmas Computing Advent…
From Gödel's Lost Letter and P=NP
Have I Been Cheating at Wordle?
What natural streaks say about recent facile chess cheating accusations Sundials source Frank King programmed an ancestor of Wordle at Cambridge University in the late 1960s. That game, called “Bulls and Cows” or “Moo,” was popular…
From insideHPC
Lightmatter Announces $155M Funding Round, Expands Photonic Chip Deployments
December 19, 2023, BOSTON — Photonics company Lightmatter announced it has raised a $155M Series C-2 led by GV (Google Ventures) and Viking Global Investors, with participation from others. With this round, Lightmatter has raised…
From CS4FN (Computer Science For Fun)
CS4FN Advent 2023 – Day 21: stars and celestial navigation
Every day from the 1st to the 25th of December this blog will publish a Christmas Computing post, as part of our CS4FN Christmas Computing Advent Calendar. On the front of the calendar for each day is a festive cartoon whichContinue…
From insideHPC
Arrcus Joins Ultra Ethernet Consortium for AI and HPC Data Center Networking
SAN JOSE –Dec. 19, 2023 – Arrcus, a hyperscale networking software company, announced it has joined the Ultra Ethernet Consortium (UEC), a Linux Foundation initiative dedicated to developing next-generation Ethernet technologies…
From insideHPC
EuroHPC JU Issues Quantum Hosting Call
Dec. 19, 2023 — The European High Performance Computing Joint Undertaking (EuroHPC JU) has launched a call for expression of interest to select hosting entities which will host and operate new EuroHPC quantum computers. Applications…
From insideHPC
qPOC: QauntumBasel, D-Wave and VINCI Energies in HVAC Design Proof-of-Concept
PALO ALTO, Calif. & BURNABY, British Columbia–December 19, 2023 — A quantum proof of concept (qPoC) project in the area of sustainable building design has been announced by VINCI Energies | DIANE, uptownBasel | QuantumBasel,
…
From The Noisy Channel
Query Understanding and Ecommerce
Yesterday, I had the privilege to deliver a “last lecture” at eBay, where I have been working with the query science team for nearly 6 years. I took the opportunity to deliver an opinionated presentation on topics like relevance…
From Computational Complexity
2023 Complexity Year in Review
Result of the year goes to
Polynomial-Time Pseudodeterministic Construction of Primes
Lijie Chen, Zhenjian Lu, Igor C. Oliveira, Hanlin Ren and Rahul Santhanam
From Schneier on Security
GCHQ Christmas Codebreaking Challenge
Looks like fun.
Details here.
From Geeking with Greg
Book excerpt: Wisdom of the trustworthy
(This is an excerpt from drafts of my book, "Algorithms and Misinformation: Why Wisdom of the Crowds Failed the Internet and How to Fix It")
Wisdom of the crowds is the idea that combining the opinions of a lot of people will…
From insideHPC
Quantum Technology Companies Qubitekk and Qunnect Claim First Equipment Interoperability on EPB Quantum Network
CHATTANOOGA, Tenn. (Dec. 19, 2023) – In an industry collaboration to establish quantum networking interoperability on a commercial network, quantum networking hardware companies Qubitekk and Qunnect conducted a compatibility
…
From CS4FN (Computer Science For Fun)
CS4FN Advent 2023 – Day 19: jingle bells or warning bells? Avoiding computer scams
It’s Day 19 of the CS4FN Christmas Computing Advent Calendar. Every day throughout Advent we’ll be doing our best to publish a computing-themed post that relates to the picture on the advent calendar’s door. If you’d like toContinue…
From Schneier on Security
OpenAI Is Not Training on Your Dropbox Documents—Today
There’s a rumor flying around the Internet that OpenAI is training foundation models on your Dropbox documents.
Here’s CNBC. Here’s Boing Boing. Some articles are more nuanced, but there’s still a lot of confusion.
It seems not…From CS4FN (Computer Science For Fun)
CS4FN Advent 2023 – Day 18: cracker or hacker? Cyber security
It’s Day 18 of the CS4FN Christmas Computing Advent Calendar. We’ve been posting a computing-themed article linked to the picture on the ‘front’ of the advent calendar for the last 17 days and today is no exception. The picture…
From The Noisy Channel
Indexing by Intent
Search developers mostly focus on mapping queries to results. This perspective is natural, insofar as search starts with the user formulating a query and (hopefully) ends with finding a result that satisfies the query. But sometimes…