Computer Science – Quanta Magazine https://www.quantamagazine.org Illuminating science Fri, 21 Feb 2025 21:18:44 -0500 en-US hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=6.6.2 Catalytic Computing Taps the Full Power of a Full Hard Drive https://www.quantamagazine.org/catalytic-computing-taps-the-full-power-of-a-full-hard-drive-20250218/ https://www.quantamagazine.org/catalytic-computing-taps-the-full-power-of-a-full-hard-drive-20250218/#respond Tue, 18 Feb 2025 15:15:12 +0000 https://www.quantamagazine.org/?p=146655 The post Catalytic Computing Taps the Full Power of a Full Hard Drive first appeared on Quanta Magazine

]]> “Obviously” is a dangerous word, even in scenarios that seem simple. Suppose, for instance, you need to do an important computation. You get to choose between two computers that are almost identical, except that one has an extra hard drive full of precious family photos. It’s natural to assume that the two options are equally good — that an extra drive with no space remaining won’t aid your…

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]]> https://www.quantamagazine.org/catalytic-computing-taps-the-full-power-of-a-full-hard-drive-20250218/feed/ 0 Undergraduate Upends a 40-Year-Old Data Science Conjecture https://www.quantamagazine.org/undergraduate-upends-a-40-year-old-data-science-conjecture-20250210/ https://www.quantamagazine.org/undergraduate-upends-a-40-year-old-data-science-conjecture-20250210/#respond Mon, 10 Feb 2025 15:17:37 +0000 https://www.quantamagazine.org/?p=146421 The post Undergraduate Upends a 40-Year-Old Data Science Conjecture first appeared on Quanta Magazine

]]> Sometime in the fall of 2021, Andrew Krapivin, an undergraduate at Rutgers University, encountered a paper that would change his life. At the time, Krapivin didn’t give it much thought. But two years later, when he finally set aside time to go through the paper (“just for fun,” as he put it), his efforts would lead to a rethinking of a widely used tool in computer science. The paper’s title…

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]]> https://www.quantamagazine.org/undergraduate-upends-a-40-year-old-data-science-conjecture-20250210/feed/ 0 The Poetry Fan Who Taught an LLM to Read and Write DNA https://www.quantamagazine.org/the-poetry-fan-who-taught-an-llm-to-read-and-write-dna-20250205/ https://www.quantamagazine.org/the-poetry-fan-who-taught-an-llm-to-read-and-write-dna-20250205/#respond Wed, 05 Feb 2025 15:58:11 +0000 https://www.quantamagazine.org/?p=146267 The post The Poetry Fan Who Taught an LLM to Read and Write DNA first appeared on Quanta Magazine

]]> DNA is often compared to a written language. The metaphor leaps out: Like letters of the alphabet, molecules (the nucleotide bases A, T, C and G, for adenine, thymine, cytosine and guanine) are arranged into sequences — words, paragraphs, chapters, perhaps — in every organism, from bacteria to humans. Like a language, they encode information. But humans can’t easily read or interpret these…

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]]> https://www.quantamagazine.org/the-poetry-fan-who-taught-an-llm-to-read-and-write-dna-20250205/feed/ 0 Chatbot Software Begins to Face Fundamental Limitations https://www.quantamagazine.org/chatbot-software-begins-to-face-fundamental-limitations-20250131/ https://www.quantamagazine.org/chatbot-software-begins-to-face-fundamental-limitations-20250131/#respond Fri, 31 Jan 2025 15:37:15 +0000 https://www.quantamagazine.org/?p=146131 The post Chatbot Software Begins to Face Fundamental Limitations first appeared on Quanta Magazine

]]> On December 17, 1962, Life International published a logic puzzle consisting of 15 sentences describing five houses on a street. Each sentence was a clue, such as “The Englishman lives in the red house” or “Milk is drunk in the middle house.” Each house was a different color, with inhabitants of different nationalities, who owned different pets, and so on. The story’s headline asked: “Who Owns…

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]]> https://www.quantamagazine.org/chatbot-software-begins-to-face-fundamental-limitations-20250131/feed/ 0 New Book-Sorting Algorithm Almost Reaches Perfection https://www.quantamagazine.org/new-book-sorting-algorithm-almost-reaches-perfection-20250124/ https://www.quantamagazine.org/new-book-sorting-algorithm-almost-reaches-perfection-20250124/#respond Fri, 24 Jan 2025 14:42:25 +0000 https://www.quantamagazine.org/?p=145951 The post New Book-Sorting Algorithm Almost Reaches Perfection first appeared on Quanta Magazine

]]> Computer scientists often deal with abstract problems that are hard to comprehend, but an exciting new algorithm matters to anyone who owns books and at least one shelf. The algorithm addresses something called the library sorting problem (more formally, the “list labeling” problem). The challenge is to devise a strategy for organizing books in some kind of sorted order — alphabetically…

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