Inside arXiv—the Most Transformative Platform in All of Science

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On the library’s side, some people thought Ginsparg was too hands-on. Others said he wasn’t patient enough. A “good lower-level manager,” according to someone long involved with arXiv, “but his sense of management didn’t scale.” For most of the 2000s, arXiv couldn’t hold on to more than a few developers.Continue Reading

The Best Programming Language for the End of the World

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Coding in Forth reminded me of the lawless dystopia in Mad Max. You make your own rules, subject to the limits of the context. You can redefine the IF statement if you so please. You can rewrite machine code instructions for a Word. You can even change Words during runContinue Reading

The Worm That No Computer Scientist Can Crack

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The Santa Ana winds were already blowing hard when I ran the first worm simulation. I’m no hacker, but it was easy enough: Open a Terminal shell, paste some commands from GitHub, watch characters cascade down the screen. Just like in the movies. I was scanning the passing code forContinue Reading

RISC Architecture Really Did Change Everything

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Yes. We’ve been here before. A second war of the architectures. In Hackers, a group of RISC- obsessed teens must stop a goateed villain from capsizing a fleet of oil tankers with a computer virus. Pictured here, from left: Lord Nikon, Dade, Kate, and Cereal Killer. Photograph: Everett Collection It’sContinue Reading

How Software Engineers Actually Use AI

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Will AI Fully Eat Programming Jobs One Day? Almost every coder we surveyed had strong opinions on the matter. Here’s ChatGPT’s summary of the responses (with its boldface emphasis preserved): “The coders have spoken—and they’re not packing up their keyboards just yet. While a small but vocal group insists AIContinue Reading

Quantum Computing Is Dead. Long Live Quantum Computing!

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This is the year of quantum science and technology. Literally: The United Nations said so. But no amount of pomp and hype can make something true. The fact is, it’s been the year of quantum nearly every year for many, many years now. It’s always the next big thing. It’sContinue Reading

The Quantum Apocalypse Is Coming. Be Very Afraid

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One day soon, at a research lab near Santa Barbara or Seattle or a secret facility in the Chinese mountains, it will begin: the sudden unlocking of the world’s secrets. Your secrets. Cybersecurity analysts call this Q-Day—the day someone builds a quantum computer that can crack the most widely usedContinue Reading

Hot New Thermodynamic Chips Could Trump Classical Computers

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Guillaume Verdon stands before me with a new kind of computer chip in his hand—a piece of hardware he believes is so important to the future of humanity that he’s asked me not to reveal our exact location, for fear that his headquarters could become the target of industrial espionage.Continue Reading