Communications of the ACM
The blog archive provides access to past blog postings from Communications of the ACM and other sources by date.
June 2025
From Daniel Lemire's Blog
Life expectancy of men in Canadian provinces
In North America, my home province of Quebec has a slightly higher life expectancy than the rest of the country. It is also a poorer-than-average province, so that is maybe surprising. For 2023, the life expectancy at birth in…
From Schneier on Security
Friday Squid Blogging: Gonate Squid Video
This is the first ever video of the Antarctic Gonate Squid.
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
5 Million Simulations: Frontier Exascale Supercomputer for Carbon-Fiber Material Science
Stronger than steel and lighter than aluminum, carbon fiber is a staple in aerospace and high-performance vehicles — and now, scientists at the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory have found a way to make it
…
From Schneier on Security
Surveillance in the US
Good article from 404 Media on the cozy surveillance relationship between local Oregon police and ICE:
In the email thread, crime analysts from several local police departments and the FBI introduced themselves to each other…From insideHPC
IonQ and Kipu Quantum Report Protein Folding and Optimization Problem Records
Kipu Quantum and IonQ (NYSE: IONQ) announced what they said is a record achievement: the successful solution of "the most complex known protein folding problem" using Kipu’s algorithmic framework and IonQ quantum ....
The post…
From Schneier on Security
Self-Driving Car Video Footage
Two articles crossed my path recently. First, a discussion of all the video Waymo has from outside its cars: in this case related to the LA protests. Second, a discussion of all the video Tesla has from inside its cars.
Lots…From insideHPC
At ISC 2025: Goethe University Discusses AI-Powered Scientific Research on the VDURA Data Platform
At last week’s ISC 2025 conference in Hamburg, we spoke with Prof. Volker Lindenstruth, Director of the Center for Scientific Computing at Goethe University, Frankfurt. Researchers ....
The post At ISC 2025: Goethe University…
From insideHPC
At ISC 2025: DriveNets Talks Ethernet-based AI Networking
In this interview, Kikozashvili looks at DriveNets’ AI Ethernet solution that is used as a back-end network fabric for large GPU clusters and storage networking solution and how it supports the high-performance Ethernet alternative…
From The Computing Community Consortium Blog
Securing our Digital Future: CCC Computing Futures Symposium Panel Recap
CCC’s recent Computing Futures Symposium featured a wealth of thought-provoking panels, including an in-depth discussion on the state of cybersecurity. This panel brought together leading experts, including Yan Shoshitaishvili…
From Schneier on Security
Ghostwriting Scam
The variations seem to be endless. Here’s a fake ghostwriting scam that seems to be making boatloads of money.
This is a big story about scams being run from Texas and Pakistan estimated to run into tens if not hundreds of millions…From Computational Complexity
Fulbright Memories
As the entire Fulbright board resigned last week and as the program that promotes international visits for US researchers, and vice-versa, may not survive the Trump administration, I thought I would recount some memories from…
From insideHPC
Voltage Park Partners with VAST Data
NEW YORK CITY – June 17, 2025 – AI operating system company VAST Data, the AI Operating System company, today announced that Voltage Park, the enterprise-grade AI factory company, has partnered with VAST to deliver the high-performance…
From insideHPC
Datavault AI to Deploy AI-Driven HPC for Biofuel R&D
BEAVERTON, OR– Datavault AI Inc. (Nasdaq: DVLT) announced it will develop an AI-driven multi-modal machine learning system to support biofuel crop optimization. The initiative focuses on increasing fatty acid metabolism efficiency…
From insideHPC
OpenAI Wins $200M Contract Targeting Defense Department Efficiency
OpenAI announced it has won a $200 million, one-year pilot project contract with the U.S. Department of Defense to help DOD “identify and prototype how frontier AI can transform its administrative operations, from improving how…
From insideHPC
DARPA Funding Ecosystem Event July 9
A DARPAConnect Virtual Pop-Up Event will be held Wednesday, July 9 from 1-3:30 pm CT to provide insights directly from DARPA’s program managers and staff on how to navigate the funding ecosystem and align with DARPA’s processes…
From insideHPC
Penguin Solutions Announces Stratus ztC Endurance Fault Tolerant Computing Platforms
MILPITAS, Calif. – June 17, 2025 Penguin Solutions (Nasdaq: PENG) today announced the second generation of its Stratus ztC Endurance fault tolerant computing platform with seven nines (99.99999 percent) availability. This new…
From insideHPC
André Seznec Wins ACM-IEEE CS Eckert-Mauchly Award
New York, June 17, 2025 – ACM, the Association for Computing Machinery, and IEEE CS, the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers Computer Society, have announced that André Seznec is the recipient of the 2025 ACM-IEEE…
From Schneier on Security
Where AI Provides Value
If you’ve worried that AI might take your job, deprive you of your livelihood, or maybe even replace your role in society, it probably feels good to see the latest AI tools fail spectacularly. If AI recommends glue as a pizza…
From The Computing Community Consortium Blog
Catalyzing Collaboration: New Best Practices for Interdisciplinary Computing Research Leadership Released!
Today marks a significant step forward in fostering groundbreaking interdisciplinary collaborations within the computing research community. The Computing Research Association (CRA) and CRA’s Computing Community Consortium…
From insideHPC
HPC News Bytes 20250616: Wave of AI Hardware-Software from AMD, Fujitsu Chip, SIGHPC SC25 Travel Grants, HPC Guru Signs Off
A happy day after Father’s Day! It was a week full of news, what with ISC and major vendor activities, here’s a quick (8:52) run-through: AMD’s new GPUs, ROCm 7.0 software and Helios rackscale system; Fujitsu Monaka chip, SIGHPC…
From Computational Complexity
Lance never thought he would see a Pope who roots for the same team as him. And now...
A year ago if I showed you a picture of The Pope wearing a Baseball cap for the Chicago White Sox (or any Amercan team) you would assume it was computer-generated. And you would likely be right.
Are there any real pictures…From CS4FN (Computer Science For Fun)
Dr Who? Dr You???
A flatworm
From Schneier on Security
Upcoming Speaking Engagements
This is a current list of where and when I am scheduled to speak:
- I’m speaking at the International Conference on Digital Trust, AI and the Future in Edinburgh, Scotland on Tuesday, June 24 at 4:00 PM.
From CS4FN (Computer Science For Fun)
How did the zebra get its stripes?
There are many myths and stories about how different animals gained their distinctive patterns. In 1901, Rudyard Kipling wrote a “Just So Story” about how the leopard got its spots, for example. The myths are older than thatContinue…
From Schneier on Security
Friday Squid Blogging: Stubby Squid
Video of the stubby squid (Rossia pacifica) from offshore Vancouver Island.
As usual, you can also use this squid post to talk about the security stories in the news that I haven’t covered.
From The Computing Community Consortium Blog
Call for Papers: CCC Sponsored Blue Sky Track at ACM SIGKDD 2025 Health Day
CCC is pleased to announce we are sponsoring another Blue Sky Ideas track at the ACM SIGKDD 2025 Health Day conference on August 5 in Toronto, Canada, and submissions are open until Friday, June 27. If you are interested in submitting…
From insideHPC
AMD Announces New GPUs, Development Platform, Rack Scale Architecture
AMD issued a raft of news at their Advancing AI 2025 event this week, an update on the company’s response to NVIDIA’s 90-plus percent market share dominance in the GPU and AI markets. And the company offered a sneak peak at what…
From Schneier on Security
Paragon Spyware used to Spy on European Journalists
Paragon is a Israeli spyware company, increasingly in the news (now that NSO Group seems to be waning). “Graphite” is the name of their product. Citizen Lab caught them spying on multiple European journalists with a zero-click…
From insideHPC
Vultr Cloud to Provide AI Workloads with AMD Instinct MI355X GPU
West Palm Beach, FL. – June 12, 2025 – Vultr, a cloud infrastructure company, today announced that it is among the first cloud providers to offer the new AMD Instinct MI355X GPU. Vultr said it is taking pre-orders for early access…
From The Computing Community Consortium Blog
Beyond the Giants: Why Federal Funding is the “Secret Sauce” of Tech Innovation: A Conversation with Beth Mynatt
In our previous post, “From Science Fiction to Science Fact: Beth Mynatt Traces the Multi-Trillion Dollar Impact of Computing Innovation in the U.S.”, we explored how Beth Mynatt, Dean of the Khoury College of Computer Sciences…