Communications of the ACM
The blog archive provides access to past blog postings from Communications of the ACM and other sources by date.
January 2025
From Schneier on Security
Fake Reddit and WeTransfer Sites are Pushing Malware
There are thousands of fake Reddit and WeTransfer webpages that are pushing malware. They exploit people who are using search engines to search sites like Reddit.
Unsuspecting victims clicking on the link are taken to a fakeLumma…From Daniel Lemire's Blog
Programmer time and the pitfalls of wasteful work
Programmer time is precious. This realization should shape our approach to software development, focusing our efforts on tasks that genuinely contribute to the improvement of our code and the software ecosystem. What does matter…
From insideHPC
Emerald Invests in NLM Photonics Data Center Efficiency
SEATTLE, January 29, 2025 – Emerald, a venture capital company, has invested in NLM Photonics to help bring energy-efficient, high performance electro-optic modulation technology to AI, data centers, quantum computing, and more…
From insideHPC
Quantum Computing: Alice & Bob Closes €100M Series B Round
Paris, Jan. 28, 2025 — Quantum computing company Alice & Bob announced a raise of €100 million in its Series B funding round, led by Future French Champions (FFC), AVP (AXA Venture Partners) and Bpifrance. FFC is a partnership…
From insideHPC
DDC Report: Data Center Operators Must Lower Risk Exposure as Costs Rise
SAN DIEGO – January 29, 2025 – DDC Solutions, a provider of data center solutions, today announced the release of their Business Impact Report, “New Considerations for Datacenter Risk Exposure,” commissioned with S&P Global Market…
From Computational Complexity
Lautemann's Beautiful Proof
In writing the drunken theorem post, I realized I never wrote a post on Lautemann's amazing proof that BPP is contained in \(\Sigma^p_2\), the second level of the polynomial-time hierarchy.
Clemens Lautemann, who passed away in…From CS4FN (Computer Science For Fun)
Designing an interactive prayer mat
Successful interactive systems design is often based on detecting a need that really good solutions do not yet exist for, then coming up with a realistic solution others haven’t thought of. The real key is then having the technical…
From Schneier on Security
ExxonMobil Lobbyist Caught Hacking Climate Activists
The Department of Justice is investigating a lobbying firm representing ExxonMobil for hacking the phones of climate activists:
The hacking was allegedly commissioned by a Washington, D.C., lobbying firm, according to a lawyer…From insideHPC
SoftBank Corp. and Quantinuum in Quantum Partnership
SoftBank Corp. and Quantinuum today announced a partnership in quantum computing intended to "unlock innovative quantum computing solutions that will overcome the limitations of classical artificial intelligence and realize next…
From insideHPC
Argonne Releases Aurora Exascale Supercomputer to Researchers
The U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) Argonne National Laboratory has released its Aurora exascale supercomputer to researchers across the world to support computing-driven discoveries. With powerful capabilities for simulation…
From ACM-W supporting, celebrating and advocating for Women in Computing
New Year, New Goals: Celebrating and Advancing Women in Computing with ACM-W
Cigdem Sengul & Adriana Wilde At the ACM-W communications committee, we are happy to share updates on our ongoing and upcoming initiatives to support, celebrate, and advocate for women in computing. Whether you’re a student,…
From ACM-W supporting, celebrating and advocating for Women in Computing
Becoming a Senior Member of ACM: My Journey and Why You Should Consider It Too
By Dr Adriana WildeAbout a year ago, I made a decision that turned out to be a very rewarding experience in my professional life: I applied to become a Senior Member of the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM). In the words…
From ACM-W supporting, celebrating and advocating for Women in Computing
All India Celebration for Women in Computing
All India Celebration for Women in Computing (AICWiC 2024) is an annual community-building conference dedicated to increasing the participation, retention, and advancement of technical women. On 30th November 2024, the ACM-W…
From CS4FN (Computer Science For Fun)
A sound social venture: recognising birds
Dan Stowell was a researcher at Queen Mary University of London when he founded an early version of what is now known as a Social Venture: a company created to do social good. With Florence Wilkinson, he turned birdsong intoContinue…
From Schneier on Security
CISA Under Trump
Jen Easterly is out as the Director of CISA. Read her final interview:
There’s a lot of unfinished business. We have made an impact through our ransomware vulnerability warning pilot and our pre-ransomware notification initiative…From insideHPC
Bodo.ai Open-Sources HPC Python Compute Engine
SAN MATEO, Calif., Jan. 27, 2025 — Bodo.ai, an open source start-up focused on transformative Python, has released its high performance computing engine for Python under the Apache License. The need to process ever-larger amounts…
From Schneier on Security
New VPN Backdoor
A newly discovered VPN backdoor uses some interesting tactics to avoid detection:
When threat actors use backdoor malware to gain access to a network, they want to make sure all their hard work can’t be leveraged by competing…From CS4FN (Computer Science For Fun)
Oh no! Not again…
What a mess. There’s flour all over the kitchen floor. A fortnight ago I opened the cupboard to get sugar for my hot chocolate. As I pulled out the sugar, it knocked against the bag of flour which was too close to the edge… Luckily…
From Computational Complexity
People who live through two square years
44*44=1936.
45*45=2025. This year!
46*46= 2116.
Since my fake birthday is Oct 1, 1960 (I do not reveal my real birthday to try to prevent ID theft), which is past 1936, and I won't live to 2116 unless Quantum-AI finds a way toSince…From Daniel Lemire's Blog
Regular expressions can blow up!
Regular expressions, often abbreviated as regex, are a powerful tool for pattern matching within text. For example, the expression \d*\.?\d+ would match a positive number such as 1.1 or 12. If designed and tested with care, regular…
From Schneier on Security
Friday Squid Blogging: Beaked Whales Feed on Squid
A Travers’ beaked whale (Mesoplodon traversii) washed ashore in New Zealand, and scientists conlcuded that “the prevalence of squid remains [in its stomachs] suggests that these deep-sea cephalopods form a significant part of…
From insideHPC
$200M HPC Data Center for AI in Wisconsin Launched by DPO and Billerud
NEW YORK, Jan. 23, 2025 — Digital Power Optimization, Inc. (“DPO”), a developer and operator of power-dense data centers, today announced it has secured land and a power supply to develop a $200 million high-performance computing…
From insideHPC
Pipeshift Raises $2.5M for AI Infrastructure Platform
San Francisco – January 23, 2025: Today, AI infrastructure startup Pipeshift announced their $2.5 illion seed round to address the challenge of deploying open source AI models, launching a Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) that enables…
From Schneier on Security
Third Interdisciplinary Workshop on Reimagining Democracy (IWORD 2024)
Last month, Henry Farrell and I convened the Third Interdisciplinary Workshop on Reimagining Democracy (IWORD 2024) at Johns Hopkins University’s Bloomberg Center in Washington DC. This is a small, invitational workshop on the…
From insideHPC
DigitalOcean Launches Generative AI Platform
Austin, TX – January 22, 2025 – Today, scalable cloud provider DigitalOcean (NYSE: DOCN) introduced its new GenAI Platform at the company’s biannual developer conference, Deploy, in Austin, Texas. The GenAI Platform allows customers…
From The Computing Community Consortium Blog
Call for CCC Council Member Nominations
Thank you to everyone who has nominated a colleague or nominated themselves for the opportunity to be a CCC Council member for the three-year term beginning July 1, 2025 and concluding June 30, 2028. Read more here. As a reminder…
From Computational Complexity
The Fighting Temeraire
From Schneier on Security
AI Will Write Complex Laws
Artificial intelligence (AI) is writing law today. This has required no changes in legislative procedure or the rules of legislative bodies—all it takes is one legislator, or legislative assistant, to use generative AI in the…
From insideHPC
QuEra: Quantum Budgets to Grow by 20%
Boston – January 22, 2025 – Research from neutral-atom quantum coputing company QuEra Computing indicates global budgets for quantum applications projected to rise nearly 20 percent in 2025, according to the company. The findings…
From insideHPC
White House Announces $500B AI Data Center Infrastructure Build-Out
The Trump Administration ended its first full day of business with a major AI business announcement, that hundreds of billions of dollars – potentially trillions of dollars – will be invested in the build-out of AI infrastructure…