CoCalc News
Dear CoCalc users -- as many of you may have noticed, CoCalc was not as reliable recently as one would hope for. (For some users this is definitely an understatement.) To shed some light on what has happened and what to expect in the future:
on Sunday, April 13, we have performed a major infrastructure update that was supposed to be completely transparent to the users apart from the need to restart once;
the purpose of this update was to switch to a new messaging model between various components of CoCalc, including your browser, which would allow us to make many improvements to performance and reliability of the system;
despite the stress testing before the update, real life usage patterns uncovered some new issues and the process was not as smooth as anticipated;
while there are no problems that are fundamentally unsolvable, debugging and resolving them took some time and iterations, that were disruptive to the users;
the system is mostly stable now, although there are still some less common issues that we are working on;
going forward, changes and updates should be much more incremental and unlikely to cause such disruptions.
Please accept our apologies for the caused inconvenience and do file a support request if you need any help!
The software environments "Ubuntu 22.04 (Default)" and "Ubuntu 24.04 (Testing)" now contain the most recent version of SageMath 10.6. You can select the software environment in Project Settings → Project Control → Software Environment. If you're already on the default Ubuntu 22.04 line, then you might have to restart your project to get the latest version.
Apart from that, don't forget to update the Sage Jupyter Kernel to run the latest version 😉
You can now use compute servers very easily with CoCalc's course management system. This video shows how to create a compute server associated to an assignment in a CoCalc course, then make private copies of that compute server available to all students in the class. You can easily set idle timeout, spend limits and a shutdown time for all student compute servers. You can also very easily control some or all servers in a class or install custom software on all servers.
This new functionality is the result of extensive discussions with many teachers who are already using CoCalc in the courses, and want to expand their classes to gives students real experience involving AI, deep learning and more using state of the art GPU's.
https://youtu.be/ikktaiw14Tw?si=_a6HxTRgDeN2NrVg
There are now four new compute server automatic shutdown and health check strategies: idle timeout, shutdown time, spending limit, and generic health check. Each can give you better insight into how your compute servers are used and save you substantial money. This video describes each in detail:
https://youtu.be/Kx_47fs_xcI?si=99Ex4yNQ14IVzkmD
Join Us at JMM for an Exclusive Meet & Greet and Live Demo with William Stein!
We are thrilled to announce a special opportunity to meet William Stein, the CEO and Founder of CoCalc, at the JMM meeting in Seattle, WA.
Don't miss this chance to engage with William as he presents a live demo of CoCalc! With numerous publications under his belt, William previously served as a tenured professor at the University of Washington until 2019, at which point he committed full-time to growing the CoCalc Platform.
William has made significant contributions to the field of Computational Algebraic Number Theory and is the creator of the Computer Algebra System Sage.
Come find us at booth 507 in the Exhibit Hall during the Grand Opening Reception.
SageMath, Inc. is pleased to announce successfully passing the SOC 2 Type II audit!
Service Organization Controls 2 (SOC 2) is a framework that is governed by the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants (AICPA). With a SOC 2 audit, an independent service auditor reviewed our policies, procedures, and evidence to determine if the controls are designed and operating effectively. A SOC 2 report communicates our commitment to data security and protection of our customers information.
Request access to the report and view the current status of controls at https://trust.cocalc.com/
Come Visit CoCalc's Exhibition at INFORMS 2024
We wanted to send out this quick message to let everyone know that CoCalc will be hosting booth (#208) at INFORMS 2024 in Seattle, WA!
We will live demo our platform in the exhibit hall all week and present a Technology Showcase on Tuesday, Oct. 22nd, at 2:15 p.m. PT.
As a short aside, you might also be interested to know that accessing on-demand H100 GPUs starts at $1.98 per hour via our compute server functionality. (It is all metered per second.) Other more budget-friendly options are available as well.
We are excited to announce that CoCalc has launched a brand-new "How-To" tutorial series on our YouTube Channel! These tutorials are designed to help you get the most out of our platform by providing quick, two-minute videos that cover everything from navigating the CoCalc UI to auto-generating LaTeX/Markdown documents and Jupyter Notebooks.
Our goal is to make your experience with CoCalc as smooth and efficient as possible. To ensure you stay up-to-date with the latest tips and tricks, we highly encourage you to subscribe! That way, you'll never miss a new tutorial and can always access the latest content right as it's released.
Please let us know what you want to see next! For more in-depth information, don't forget to visit our detailed Documentation.
Also, if you have any questions or want to chat with us directly, don't hesitate to book a video chat with our team.
Our most recent update to the LaTeX editor allows you to see more information about a running build process. It also gives you the opportunity to stop it, if it takes too long or causes problems. The build frame now shows memory and CPU usage, as well as the tail of the log while the job is running.
Under the hood, this is accomplished by an improved /api/v2/exec endpoint. The parameter async_call returns an ID, which you can use to monitor and control the underlying process. See /api/v2/exec for more details.
SageMath 10.4 is now available in all CoCalc projects and via the SageMath compute server images.
Older versions of Sage remain available. For Sage Worksheets and on the terminal, you can configure the version of sage in your project by running sage_select ... in a Terminal. Regarding Jupyter, you can switch to the newer kernel any time!