Communications of the ACM
The blog archive provides access to past blog postings from Communications of the ACM and other sources by date.
February 2025
From Schneier on Security
Friday Squid Blogging: The Colossal Squid
Long article on the colossal squid.
From insideHPC
@HPCpodcast: Addison Snell on the Present and Future of HPC-AI, Quantum, DeepSeek, Interconnects, Leadership Supercomputing
We delve into current market sizing for HPC-AI (the conjoining of the two being a relatively new focus), a look ahead at the rest of the year and the decade, the impact of hyperscalers on AI, the future of leadership computing…
From Schneier on Security
Screenshot-Reading Malware
Kaspersky is reporting on a new type of smartphone malware.
The malware in question uses optical character recognition (OCR) to review a device’s photo library, seeking screenshots of recovery phrases for crypto wallets. Based…From insideHPC
Barcelona Supercomputing Center Unveils Quantum Systen Developed with 100% European Technology
Feb. 6, 2025 — The Barcelona Supercomputing Center – Centro Nacional de Supercomputación (BSC-CNS) – has presented what it said is the first quantum computer developed with 100 percent European technology. “This milestone consolidates…
From insideHPC
DOE Office of Science: Applications for Graduate Student Research Awards Due May 7
Feb. 7, 2025 — The U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) Office of Science announce that the Office of Science Graduate Student Research (SCGSR) program is now accepting applications for the 2025 solicitation 1 cycle. Applications…
From insideHPC
Sandia Rolls out Custom Instance of ChatGPT — SandiaAI Chat
In May 2024, Sandia National Laboratories began providing its employees with a large language model chatbot, called SandiaAI Chat, which the lab said is the first facility within the U.S. nuclear security enterprise to do so,…
From insideHPC
MOSTLY AI Releases Open Source Toolkit for Synthetic Data Creation
4 February 2025, Vienna – Austrian synthetic data startup MOSTLY AI announces the release of the world’s first industry-grade open source toolkit for producing synthetic data from real customer data. The open source toolkit is…
From insideHPC
IQM, Riverlane and Zurich Instruments to Launch Quantum Error Correction Platform
Cambridge, UK; Espoo, Finland; Zurich, Switzerland, Feb. 6, 2025 – IQM Quantum Computers, Riverlane, and Zurich Instruments have announced the launch of the SurgeonQ project, a collaboration to create what they said is the first…
From CS4FN (Computer Science For Fun)
A puzzle, spies … and a beheading
A puzzle about secrets Ayo wants to send her friends Guang and Elham who live together secret messages that only the person she sends the message to can read. She doesnt want Guang to read the messages to Elham and vice versa…
From Schneier on Security
AIs and Robots Should Sound Robotic
Most people know that robots no longer sound like tinny trash cans. They sound like Siri, Alexa, and Gemini. They sound like the voices in labyrinthine customer support phone trees. And even those robot voices are being madeAI…
From insideHPC
Supermicro Launches Rack-Scale Systems with NVIDIA Blackwell
San Jose, Calif. – February 5, 2025 – Supermicro, Inc. (NASDAQ: SMCI) announced full availability of its AI data center Building Block Solutions accelerated by the NVIDIA Blackwell platform. The Supermicro Building Block portfolio…
From Schneier on Security
On Generative AI Security
Microsoft’s AI Red Team just published “Lessons from
Red Teaming 100 Generative AI Products.” Their blog post lists “three takeaways,” but the eight lessons in the report itself are more useful:
From insideHPC
With Accelerator SOC, South Korean Institute Says Country on Track to Become 5th HPC Manufacturer
The ETRI said that after its commercialization, this technology "will be a game-changer for Korea to become the world’s fifth nation to manufacture supercomputers," after the U.S., China, Japan and the E.U. (France).
The post…
From insideHPC
Trane Expands Thermal Management with Direct-to-Chip Liquid Cooling
DAVIDSON, N.C., Feb. 4, 2025 – Trane – by Trane Technologies (NYSE: TT), a global climate company, announced the expansion of its thermal management systems. A company focused on sustainable thermal management systems for commercial…
From Schneier on Security
Deepfakes and the 2024 US Election
Interesting analysis:
We analyzed every instance of AI use in elections collected by the WIRED AI Elections Project (source for our analysis), which tracked known uses of AI for creating political content during elections taking…From insideHPC
HPC News Bytes 20250203: DeepSeek Lessons, Intel Reroutes GPU Roadmap, LLNL and OpenAI for National Security, Nuclear Reactors for Google Data Centers
The HPC-AI world was upended last week by DeepSeek AI benchmark numbers, as the dust settles we offer commentary on what it may, at this stage, mean: Five lessons from DeepSeek, Intel GPU rack scale architecture redux, Livermore…
From insideHPC
EuroHPC JU Acquires €8.5M Qilimanjaro Quantum Annealer to be at Barcelona Supercomputing Center
Feb. 1, 2025 — The European High-Performance Computing Joint Undertaking (EuroHPC JU) has signed a procurement contract with Qilimanjaro Quantum Tech for MareNostrum-Ona, a quantum annealer to be hosted at the Barcelona Supercomputing…
From insideHPC
Women in HPC and Alces Flight Announce Move the Needle Project Results
Feb. 3, 2025 — The team at Alces Flight, a UK-based company specializing in high performance computing and volunteers from Women in HPC announced the final report and facilitation guide from the Move the Needle Project, which…
From Schneier on Security
Journalists and Civil Society Members Using WhatsApp Targeted by Paragon Spyware
This is yet another story of commercial spyware being used against journalists and civil society members.
The journalists and other civil society members were being alerted of a possible breach of their devices, with WhatsApp…From insideHPC
Los Alamos and OpenAI Partner on National Security
Los Alamos National Laboratory has entered a partnership with OpenAI to install its latest o-series models — which the lab said are capable of expert reasoning for complex scientific problems — on the lab’s Venado supercomputer…