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
Upcoming Speaking Engagements
This is a current list of where and when I am scheduled to speak:
I’m speaking on “AI: Trust & Power” at Capricon 45 in Chicago, Illinois, USA, at 11:30 AM on February 7, 2025. I’m also signing books there on Saturday, February…From The Noisy Channel
Ground Truth: A Useful Fiction
A key concern about AI is that models “hallucinate” — technical jargon for saying that they make up things that look right. Keeping AI models grounded in truth is a critical challenge for everyone working in AI.
In machine learning…From Schneier on Security
The First Password on the Internet
It was created in 1973 by Peter Kirstein:
So from the beginning I put password protection on my gateway. This had been done in such a way that even if UK users telephoned directly into the communications computer provided by…From insideHPC
DOE ASCR: $35M Available for HPC Data Management, Proposal Deadline May 13
The U.S. Department of Energy’s Office of Science, Advanced Scientific Computing Research (ASCR) program, announced that $35 million dollars is available to support the advancement of high-performance computing (HPC) data management…
From insideHPC
Investment Firm: Global Data Center Market to Experience 15% CAGR through 2027
CHICAGO, Jan. 13, 2025 – To meet exponential demand, the data center sector will grow at a phenomenal pace in 2025, according to analyst firm JLL’s 2025 Global Data Center Outlook, which explores how AI is not only driving demand…
From insideHPC
ORNL Partners with EPB to Test Quantum Networks Protection
Researchers at the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory joined with network services provider EPB of Chattanooga and the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga to demonstrate the first transmission of an entangled…
From insideHPC
Telehouse Launches Liquid Cooling Lab with Accelsius, EkkoSense, JetCool and Legrand
13 January 2025 – Telehouse International Corporation of Europe, a data centre service provider, today announces the launch of its liquid cooling lab, following the development of partnerships with four liquid cooling technology…
From Schneier on Security
Microsoft Takes Legal Action Against AI “Hacking as a Service” Scheme
Not sure this will matter in the end, but it’s a positive move:
Microsoft is accusing three individuals of running a “hacking-as-a-service” scheme that was designed to allow the creation of harmful and illicit content using …From Computational Complexity
Random Thought on AI from someone in the REAL WORLD
Guest Post from Nick Sovitch.
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Bill Gasarch recently blogged on RANDOM THOUGHTS ON AI here . He is in the realm of theory. I am in the realm of applications…From Daniel Lemire's Blog
JavaScript hashing speed comparison: MD5 versus SHA-256
Hashing algorithms convert input data into a fixed-size string of characters, known as a hash value or digest. These algorithms are one-way functions, meaning the original data cannot be feasibly retrieved from the hash, which…
From CS4FN (Computer Science For Fun)
Adrian Stokes: Internet pioneer
We take the Internet for granted now, but it is not that long ago that it did not exist at all. Despite being disabled from birth with spina bifida, Adrian Stokes was one of the people who helped build it: a celebrated “Internet…
From Schneier on Security
Friday Squid Blogging: Cotton-and-Squid-Bone Sponge
News:
A sponge made of cotton and squid bone that has absorbed about 99.9% of microplastics in water samples in China could provide an elusive answer to ubiquitous microplastic pollution in water across the globe, a new report…From insideHPC
TSMC: December Monthly Revenue up 58% YoY
HSINCHU, Taiwan, R.O.C. – Jan. 10, 2025 – TSMC (TWSE: 2330, NYSE: TSM) today announced its net revenue for last mont. On a consolidated basis, revenue for December 2024 was approximately NT$278.16 billion, an increase of 0.8
…
From Schneier on Security
Apps That Are Spying on Your Location
404 Media is reporting on all the apps that are spying on your location, based on a hack of the location data company Gravy Analytics:
The thousands of apps, included in hacked files from location data company Gravy Analytics…From insideHPC
Blackstone Invests $300M in DDN at $5B Valuation
Chatsworth, CA, January 9, 2025 – AI and data intelligence solutions company DDN today announced an investment of $300 million from Blackstone, an alternative asset manager, valuing the company at $5 billion. “This investment…
From insideHPC
Hammerspace and Cloudian Partner on Unstructured Data Management
SAN MATEO, Calif. – January 9, 2025 – Data orchestration company Hammerspace and Cloudian, an S3-compatible object storage company, have announced a partnership to deliver a solution for managing unstructured data at scale. Combining…
From Schneier on Security
Zero-Day Vulnerability in Ivanti VPN
It’s being actively exploited.
From Computational Complexity
When DO Names Change? When SHOULD Names Change?
BILL: Good news for Jimmy Carter! He won The Betty White Award! (see here).
LANCE: That's not good news. He had to die to get it.
BILL: Call it a mixed bag. Good news for me, in that I have a famous person for The Betty White…
From CS4FN (Computer Science For Fun)
Herman Hollerith: from punch cards to a special company
Herman Hollerith, the son of immigrants, struggled early on at school and then later in bookkeeping at college but it didn’t stop him inventing machines that used punch cards to store data. He founded a company to make and sell…
From insideHPC
PSC Interns to Represent US at ISC 2025 Student Competition
Pittsburgh — A team of interns from the Pittsburgh Supercomputing Center has been selected to represent the United States at an international high-performance computing (HPC) competition for students. PSC’s “Benchmark Beasts”…
From Daniel Lemire's Blog
Counting the digits of 64-bit integers
Given an integer in software, you may want to know how many decimal digits it needs. For example, the integer 100 requires 3 digits, the integer 9999 requires 4 digits. It would be an easy problem if we could compute the logarithm…
From insideHPC
Nvidia at CES: Omniverse Blueprint for Industry, Generative Physical AI, Access to Blackwells, Cosmos Model for Physical AI
Nvidia issued its anticipated raft of news at CES this week, here’s an overview of announcements for the HPC-AI sector: ‘Mega’ Omniverse Blueprint for Industrial Robot Fleet Digital Twins The company said Mega is an omniverse…
From The Computing Community Consortium Blog
CCC Council Member Nominations Open
The mission of Computing Community Consortium (CCC) is to enable the pursuit of innovative, high-impact computing research that aligns with pressing national and global challenges. Established in 2006 through a cooperative agreement…
From Schneier on Security
US Treasury Department Sanctions Chinese Company Over Cyberattacks
From the Washington Post:
The sanctions target Beijing Integrity Technology Group, which U.S. officials say employed workers responsible for the Flax Typhoon attacks which compromised devices including routers and internet-enabled…From CS4FN (Computer Science For Fun)
A handshaking puzzle
By Przemysław Wałęga, Queen Mary University of London Logical reasoning and proof, whether done using math notation or informally in your head, is an important tool of computer scientists. The idea of proving, however, is often…
From insideHPC
Quantum: IonQ Completes Acquisition of Qubitekk
COLLEGE PARK, MD – January 6, 2025 – IonQ (NYSE: IONQ) today announced the completion of its acquisition of substantially all of the assets of Qubitekk, Inc., a quantum networking company. The acquisition brings Qubitekk’s esteemed…
From Computational Complexity
The Betty White Award for 2024
In Jan of 2023 I estabalished the Betty White Award, see here which is given to people who died late in the prior year and hence won't be in the those who we lost in year X articles. I also gave out a few from prior years. Here…
From CS4FN (Computer Science For Fun)
Tanaka Atsuko: an electric dress
Wearable computing is now increasingly common whether wearing smart watches or clothes that light up. The pioneer of the latter was Japanese artist, Tanaka Atsuko, with her 1950s art work, Electric Dress. It was anything butContinue…
From Schneier on Security
Friday Squid Blogging: Anniversary Post
I made my first squid post nineteen years ago this week. Between then and now, I posted something about squid every week (with maybe only a few exceptions). There is a lot out there about squid, even more if you count the other…
From insideHPC
LLNL to Lead Research on Advancing Extreme Ultraviolet Lithography
EUV, extreme ultraviolet lithography, is nearly completely associated with the Dutch company ASML, the only maker of EUV machines that are used by TSMC, Intel and other chip manufacturers of advanced HPC-AI chips. Now Lawerence…