MIT CSAIL

MIT researchers developed “Insum,” a technique for speeding up computations on datasets replete w/zeros. It rewrites Einstein summation (“einsum”) operations to avoid inefficient handling of zeros, improving memory efficiency & performance: bit.ly/4upJM5s

"Anyone who has lost track of time when using a computer knows the propensity to dream, the urge to make dreams come true, & the tendency to miss lunch." — Tim Berners-Lee

Classic tech: booting up an old school (mid-90s) computer.

Free MIT course breaks down deep learning: bit.ly/4t9gHJL Here, MIT ass't prof. Sara Beery discusses how it's driven breakthroughs in areas like image generation, coding, & playing games (Lecture 1).

What really happens inside a computer chip? MIT CSAIL built an operating system kernel called "Fractal" that gives researchers a clearer view. It revealed that the Apple M1 could be vulnerable to a class of speculative attack known as "Phantom": bit.ly/4nErKty

What’s an invention you feel deserves more credit?

Bathroom decor inspired by GitHub 😂 v/@r0ktech

Classic computer animation techniques from the 90s, as used in Toy Story. v/@0xmitsurii

"Commenting your code is like cleaning your bathroom — you never want to do it, but it really does create a more pleasant experience for you & your guests." — Ryan Campbell (credit: @CodeWisdom)

In May 1967, two computer scientists introduced Simula 67, an early programming language that pioneered concepts like classes & objects, laying the groundwork for object-oriented programming: bit.ly/2RqFkGn

I built an operating system just for reverse engineering CPUs. We used it to poke around the branch predictors on Apple Silicon and found some cool stuff (including Phantom fetches!). See what we found here: csail.mit.edu/news/study-how…

Different types of matrices, v/@codek_tv.

Ranking every birthday, from most to least common. Where does yours rank?

Einstein's notes from 1913 about relativity. Images v/@LensScientific

"I was born not knowing & have had only a little time to change that here & there." — Richard P. Feynman '39

New @washingtonpost story details the secret instructions AI companies give to chatbots to steer them towards certain behaviors: wapo.st/4ffQ96k One example from OpenAI: "Never talk about goblins, gremlins, raccoons, trolls, ogres, pigeons, or other animals or creatures unless it is absolutely & unambiguously relevant to the user’s query."

Happy birthday to the late Edsger Dijkstra, whose algorithm solved the "single-source shortest path" problem: tinyurl.com/y5ee6jdb

What's one thing AI agents can't do yet, but you wish they could?

Happy birthday to Caltech professor Katie Bouman! As a PhD student at MIT & CSAIL researcher, she was part of the team that helped create the first-ever image of a black hole.