Communications of the ACM
The blog archive provides access to past blog postings from Communications of the ACM and other sources by date.
April 2025
From CS4FN (Computer Science For Fun)
Bank holiday bunting appears automatically on the GOV.UK website – thanks to a little program!
This is an updated version of a snippet that appeared previously on this blog. If you’re reading this post today (Monday 21 April 2025) it’s Easter Monday which is a Bank Holiday in England & Wales and in Northern Ireland. The…
From Daniel Lemire's Blog
Streamlined iteration: exploring keys and values in C++20
In software, we often use key-value data structures, where each key is unique and maps to a specific value. Common examples include dictionaries in Python, hash maps in Java, and objects in JavaScript. If you combine arrays with…
From CS4FN (Computer Science For Fun)
Robot runners
The first ever half marathon allowing humanoid robots to run against humans was held in Beijing this weekend (April 2025). 12,000 humans ran the event alongside 21 robots…and for now the humans definitely are the winners. A robot…
From Schneier on Security
Friday Squid Blogging: Live Colossal Squid Filmed
A live colossal squid was filmed for the first time in the ocean. It’s only a juvenile: a foot long.
As usual, you can also use this squid post to talk about the security stories in the news that I haven’t covered.
From insideHPC
Deloitte Reports on Nuclear Power and the HPC-AI Data Center Energy Gap
Even as the HPC-AI sector cheers on more powerful chips, denser servers, faster fabrics, bigger memory and mammoth, multi-hundreds of billion-dollar AI data centers, a voice is whispering in the industry’s ear: “Where’s the electricity…
From insideHPC
Registration Open for RMACC HPC Symposium, May 20
BOULDER, CO – Registration is continuing from now through May 16th for the Rocky Mountain Advanced Computing Consortium’s (RMACC) 15th annual High Performance Computing Symposium, set for Tuesday-Thursday, May 20-22 at the Wolf…
From CS4FN (Computer Science For Fun)
The CS4FN Easter Egg Hunt
Easter eggs can be chocolate but they are also hidden treasures to be found in games, websites, other software (and now even Lego sets). Especially for Easter we have hidden an Easter Egg in one of our diversity linked pages.…
From insideHPC
TSMC Reports Q1 YoY Revenue Growth of 42%
HSINCHU, Taiwan, R.O.C., Apr. 17, 2025 — TSMC (TWSE: 2330, NYSE: TSM) today announced consolidated revenue of NT$839.25 billion, net income of NT$361.56 billion, and diluted earnings per share of NT$13.94 (US$2.12 per ADR unit)…
From Schneier on Security
Age Verification Using Facial Scans
Discord is testing the feature:
“We’re currently running tests in select regions to age-gate access to certain spaces or user settings,” a spokesperson for Discord said in a statement. “The information shared to power the age…From insideHPC
Hammerspace Raises $100M
AI data platform company Hammerspace announced that several venture investors have invested $100 million in growth capital in the company. Altimeter Capital, which inveted in Meta, MongoDB, NVIDIA, Snowflake and Uber, led the…
From Computational Complexity
Eisenhower's Farewell Address
I'm short on time time this week so I thought it would be good to look back, some 64 years ago, to Dwight Eisenhower's farewell address. It calls for balance between the industrial-military Complex and the scientific-technological…
From insideHPC
NVIDIA: Grace Blackwell GPUs Live on CoreWeave
NVIDIA announced that GPU cloud platform CoreWeave is among the first cloud providers to bring NVIDIA GB200 NVL72 systems online at scale, with Cohere, IBM and Mistral AI using them for model training and deployment. The CoreWeave…
From insideHPC
SandboxAQ Using NVIDIA DGX to Build Large Quantitative Models
Palo Alto, CA; April 15, 2025 – SandboxAQ today announced a collaboration with NVIDIA across biopharma, chemicals, advanced materials, financial services, cybersecurity, navigation, and medical imaging. SandboxAQ, a member of…
From insideHPC
OmniScale Media and SC Conference Extend Partnership Through 2026
Vancouver, WA—April 16, 2025—OmniScale Media, the strategic communications partner for innovative technology brands, today announced a two-year partnership extension with the SC Conference, the international event for high-performance…
From Schneier on Security
CVE Program Almost Unfunded
Mitre’s CVE’s program—which provides common naming and other informational resources about cybersecurity vulnerabilities—was about to be cancelled, as the US Department of Homeland Security failed to renew the contact. It was…
From insideHPC
Compu Dynamics Launches HPC and AI Data Center Infrastructure Solutions
CHANTILLY, Va.– Compu Dynamics, a provider of data center construction and operations services, announced the launch of its AI and High-Performance Computing Services unit. The portfolio encompasses the spectrum of data center…
From insideHPC
Altair Partners with DATAsolution in South Korean for AI and HPC
TROY, Mich., April 14, 2025 — Altair announced a reseller partnership with DATAsolution, a company specializing in data analytics and infrastructure solutions. This collaboration combines Altair’s artificial intelligence (AI)…
From Computer Science Teacher - Thoughts and Information From Alfred Thompson
Hardware–Heat and Cold
Not all computer problems are caused by software. Sometimes the hardware is the problem. It’s not always easy to tell where the blame lies. One underappreciated factor is the environment. Both mechanical and electronic partsI…
From Schneier on Security
Slopsquatting
As AI coding assistants invent nonexistent software libraries to download and use, enterprising attackers create and upload libraries with those names—laced with malware, of course.
From insideHPC
Liquid Cooling: CoolIT Systems Announces Row-Based Coolant Distribution Unit
Calgary, AB, April 15, 2025 — AI ad HPC liquid cooling company CoolIT Systems today introduced the CHx2000, which the company said is the highest-performance row-based coolant distribution unit (CDU). This follows CoolIT’s announcement…
From insideHPC
PROFILE: ZincFive – The Power of Good Chemistry
At the recent DCD NYC event, we had the opportunity to speak with Steve Jennings, Senior Vice President of Sales & Marketing at ZincFive, about the role of nickel-zinc (NiZn) batteries in supporting green data centers in then…
From insideHPC
Intel Selling 51% of Altera FPGA Business for $8.7B
Intel Corporation today announced that it has entered into a definitive agreement to sell 51 percent of its Altera business to Silver Lake, a technology investing firm. The transaction, which values Altera at $8.75 billion, establishes…
From Schneier on Security
Upcoming Speaking Engagements
This is a current list of where and when I am scheduled to speak:
- I’m giving an online talk on AI and trust for the Weizenbaum Institute on April 24, 2025 at 2:00 PM CEST (8:00 AM ET).
The list is maintained on this page.
From insideHPC
NVIDIA to Manufacture AI Supercomputers in U.S.
NVIDIA today it is working with manufacturing partners to design and build factories that will produce NVIDIA AI supercomputers -- i.e., "AI factories" -- entirely in the United States... NVIDIA said that within four years, it…
From insideHPC
Survey: 83% Say Quantum Utility to Be Achieved within a Decade
Quantum industry professionals are optimistic that quantum utility will be achieved within the next decade, research from Economist Impact today reveals. According to the study, which surveyed quantum professionals across the…
From insideHPC
BluSky AI Inc. Introduces Modular AI Data Center Solutions
Salt Lake City, Utah – April 10, 2025 – BluSky AI Inc. (OTCPink: BSAI) announced that it is becoming a modular data center company. BluSky AI said it focuses on scalable and efficient compute infrastructure. By planning to deliver…
From Computational Complexity
I want an applicaion of this application of Ramsey Theory to Semigroups
I recently read the following theorem
Def: A semigroup is a pair \((G,*)\) where \(G\) is a set and * is a binary operation on \(G\) such that * is associative. NOTE: we do not require an identity element, we do not requireTheorem…From Schneier on Security
China Sort of Admits to Being Behind Volt Typhoon
The Wall Street Journal has the story:
Chinese officials acknowledged in a secret December meeting that Beijing was behind a widespread series of alarming cyberattacks on U.S. infrastructure, according to people familiar with…From CS4FN (Computer Science For Fun)
A Sea Hero Quest to understand our navigation skills
Video games can be a very successful way to do citizen science, getting ordinary people involved in research. Sea Hero Quest is an extremely successful example. It involves a boy setting out on a sea quest to recover his father…
From Daniel Lemire's Blog
How can really smart people appear totally incompetent?
It is often puzzling to encounter organizations run by highly capable and ambitious people… appear dysfunctional. An example that I like are colleges that claim to provide great learning experience… while providing their students…