Communications of the ACM
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How the “Frontier” Became the Slogan of Uncontrolled AI
Artificial intelligence (AI) has been billed as the next frontier of humanity: the newly available expanse whose exploration …
From Daniel Lemire's Blog
In C++, is empty() faster than comparing the size with zero?
Most C++ programmers rely on “STL” for their data structures. The most popular data structure is probably vector, which is just a dynamic array. The set and the...
From Daniel Lemire's Blog
Science and Technology links (October 23rd 2021)
Apple announced new processors for its computers. Here is a table with the transistor count of some recent Apple processors: processor release year transistorsContinue...
From Daniel Lemire's Blog
Converting binary floating-point numbers to integers
You are given a floating-point number, e.g. a double type in Java or C++. You would like to convert it to an integer type… but only if the conversion is exact.Continue...
From Daniel Lemire's Blog
Science and Technology links (October 16th 2021)
The thymus is an important component of our immune system. As we age, the thymus degenerates and our immune system becomes less fit: emotional and physical distress...
From Daniel Lemire's Blog
Calling a dynamically compiled function from Go
Compiled programming languages are typically much faster than interpreted programming language. Indeed, the compilation step produces “machine code” that is ideally...
From Daniel Lemire's Blog
Science and Technology links (October 10th 2021)
Evans and Chu suggest, using data and a theoretical model, that as the number of scientists grow, progress may stagnate. Simply put, in a large field, with many...
From Daniel Lemire's Blog
For software performance, can you always trust inlining?
It is easier for an optimizing compiler to spot and eliminate redundant operations if it can operate over a large block of code. Nevertheless, it is still recommended...
From Daniel Lemire's Blog
Working in virtual reality
Inspired by a post by Paul Tomlinson, I wrote my last blog post entirely in virtual reality (VR). You put on goggles and see a virtual version of your computerContinue...
From Daniel Lemire's Blog
Science and Technology links (October 3rd 2021)
Most people were able to cure their diabetes by losing weight in a clinical trial. Video games improve intelligence over many years, while socializing has no effect...
From Daniel Lemire's Blog
Word-aligned Bloom filters
Programmers often need to ‘filter out’ data. Suppose that you are given a database of users where only a small percentage are ‘paying customers’ (say 5% or less)...
From Daniel Lemire's Blog
Science and Technology links (September 26th 2021)
Radiation-therapy can rejuvenate heart cells. (source: Nature) Within members of the same species, cancer risk increases with body size. Large human beings areContinue...
From Daniel Lemire's Blog
New release of the simdjson library: version 1.0
The most popular data format on the web is arguably JSON. It is a simple and convenient format. Most web services allow to send and receive data in JSON. Unfortunately...
From Daniel Lemire's Blog
Science and Technology links (September 18th 2021)
4.5% of us are psychopaths. U.S. per capita CO2 emissions are lower than they were in 1918. 9/10 of People With Alzheimer’s Lose Some of Their Sense of Smell. Graphene...
From Daniel Lemire's Blog
Random identifiers are poorly compressible
It is common in data engineering to find that we have too much data. Thus engineers commonly seek compression routines. At the same time, random identifiers are...
From Daniel Lemire's Blog
How I debate
Many of us feel that the current intellectual climate is difficult to bear. When I first noticed the phenomenon, people told me that it was because of Donald Trump...
From Daniel Lemire's Blog
The big-load anti-pattern
When doing data engineering, it is common for engineers to want to first load all of the data in memory before processing the data. If you have sufficient memory...
From Daniel Lemire's Blog
How fast can you pipe a large file to a C++ program?
Under many operating systems, you can send data from from one process to another using ‘pipes’. The term ‘pipe’ is probably used by analogy with plumbing and we...
From Daniel Lemire's Blog
Science and Technology links (July 31st 2021)
Researchers built a microscope that might be 10 times better than the best available microscopes. Subsidizing college education can lower earnings due to lowerContinue...
From Daniel Lemire's Blog
Measuring memory usage: virtual versus real memory
Software developers are often concerned with the memory usage of their applications, and rightly so. Software that uses too much memory can fail, or be slow. Memory...
From Daniel Lemire's Blog