Welcome to the March 26, 2025 edition of ACM TechNews, providing timely information for computer professionals three times a week.

HEADLINES AT A GLANCE

• Hoefler Receives 2024 ACM Prize in Computing
• Why Government Workers, Military Planners Use Signal Now
• DNA Testing Site 23andMe Files for Bankruptcy
• Turing Laureate Among ICBS 2025 Lifetime Honorees
• AI-Powered Databases Boost Alzheimer's Drug Discovery Process
• Malaysia to Crack Down on Nvidia Chip Flows Under U.S. Pressure
• AI Breakthrough Makes DNA Data Retrieval Faster, More Accurate
• Over 3 Million Applicants' Data Leaked on NYU's Website
• Sensor Pokes Plants' Leaves to Let Farmers Know if They're Stressed
• Computer Scientists Oppose BSI-Google Cloud Deal
• Cloud Datacenters Get Bigger, Denser
• Scientists Use Laser Drones to Count China's Trees
• Can We Make AI Less Power-Hungry? These Researchers Are Working on It

Hoefler Receives 2024 ACM Prize in Computing

Torsten Hoefler, a professor who directs the Scalable Parallel Computing Laboratory at ETH Zurich in Switzerland, has been named to receive the 2024 ACM Prize in Computing for fundamental contributions to high-performance computing and AI. Hoefler developed many of the core capabilities of modern supercomputers and defined key aspects of the algorithms for distributing AI models on them. Said ACM President Yannis Ioannidis, "While Hoefler introduced many of these innovations while he was still a student, they remain the definitive way to program massively parallel systems today."
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Why Government Workers, Military Planners Use Signal Now

This week's revelation that U.S. officials planned a recent military attack in Yemen on Signal highlights increasing use of the messaging app by U.S. government workers to communicate with colleagues, journalists, and family members without fear of monitoring or retaliation. The switch to Signal among federal workers and top government officials has raised concerns about transparency and the preservation of government correspondence and internal communications.
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DNA Testing Site 23andMe Files for Bankruptcy

DNA testing firm 23andMe has filed for bankruptcy protection and will now attempt to sell itself under the supervision of a court. 23andMe said in a press release it plans to continue operating throughout the sale process with "no changes to the way the company stores, manages, or protects customer data." On Friday, the Attorney General in 23andMe's home state of California issued a consumer alert advising customers to delete their data from the site.
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Turing Laureate Among ICBS 2025 Lifetime Honorees

The 2025 International Congress of Basic Science named this year’s Basic Science Lifetime Award (BSLA) recipients on Friday, honoring them for bringing about fundamental changes in their disciplines over the last three decades or more. The six scientists recognized included Nobel laureate Steven Chu of Stanford University and ACM A.M. Turing Award laureate Robert Endre Tarjan of Princeton University, both of whom were awarded the 2025 BSLA in Information Science and Engineering.
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AI-Powered Databases Boost Alzheimer's Drug Discovery Process

Researchers at the U.K.'s Oxford Drug Discovery Institute collaborated with Graphwise to produce a large-scale knowledge graph of their life sciences research information, which could speed up the discovery process for potential drugs to treat Alzheimer's disease. The knowledge graph enables researchers to sift through large amounts of biomedical data, including scientific journals and datasets, to identify information on a specific gene or protein almost 10 times faster than previously possible.
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Malaysia to Crack Down on Nvidia Chip Flows Under U.S. Pressure

Malaysian Trade Minister Zafrul Aziz said the U.S. government has urged his country to monitor shipments of high-end Nvidia chips due to concerns that many are entering China via Malaysia, in violation of U.S. export rules. Zafrul said he had established a task force with Digital Minister Gobind Singh Deo to strengthen regulations on the burgeoning domestic datacenter sector, which relies on chips from Nvidia.
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AI Breakthrough Makes DNA Data Retrieval Faster, More Accurate

An AI tool developed by researchers at Technion – Israel Institute of Technology is 3,200 faster times and up to 40% more accurate in retrieving digital information stored in DNA compared to the best current methods. With the new DNAformer approach, 100MB of data can be processed in just 10 minutes, versus several days with current techniques. While the new tool is still too slow for the commercial market, the researchers believe they are moving in the right direction.
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Over 3 Million Applicants' Data Leaked on NYU's Website

A hacker infiltrated the New York University (NYU) website for at least two hours on March 22, exposing data on more than 3 million applicants dating back to at least 1989. The exposed data included applicants' names, test scores, majors, zip codes, and information related to family members and financial aid. The hacker also posted charts claiming to be the admitted SAT scores, ACT scores, and GPAs for the 2024-25 admissions cycle.
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Sensor Pokes Plants' Leaves to Let Farmers Know if They're Stressed

A sensor developed by Iowa State University researchers can alert farmers to elevated levels of hydrogen peroxide in plants, indicating the presence of stressors such as infections, pest damage, and drought. The flat, flexible polymer patch features an array of gold-coated microneedles that enter the top layer of tissue on a leaf. A farmer is alerted via Bluetooth or Wi-Fi if the level of hydrogen peroxide indicates stressors are present.
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Computer Scientists Oppose BSI-Google Cloud Deal

The German Informatics Society (GI) opposes a cooperation agreement between the German Federal Office for Information Security (BSI) and Google to create "secure and sovereign cloud solutions for public authorities." An analysis by GI working groups concluded that the agreement raises "significant security and economic policy as well as competition and data protection issues" and "is a potential booster for Germany's digital dependence on and blackmailability by the USA."
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Cloud Datacenters Get Bigger, Denser

Research by Synergy Research Group (SRG) found that the number of datacenters operated by hyperscale providers rose to 1,136 last year from 992 at the end of 2023. The companies with the broadest datacenter footprint—Amazon, Microsoft, and Google—jointly account for 59% of all hyperscale datacenter capacity, according to SRG. Said SRG’s John Dinsdal, “The average size of newly opened datacenters has increased recently and will continue to increase, meaning that total hyperscale datacenter capacity increases even more rapidly than the datacenter count.”
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Scientists Use Laser Drones to Count China's Trees

Researchers at China's Peking University estimate the country has 142.6 billion trees, based on data collected by LiDAR-equipped drones over 540 square miles since 2015. The data, analyzed by the Lidar360 AI-powered software system, produced a tree density estimate that was used to calculate the national figure, which Peking University’s Qinghua Guo said could actually be an underestimate. The data could be used to monitor forest ecosystem conditions and focus the country's tree-planting efforts as part of its ecological and climate goals.
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Can We Make AI Less Power-Hungry? These Researchers Are Working on It

Researchers working with the ML Energy Initiative are trying to reduce AI power consumption without impacting performance. To alter the internal workings of AI models, the researchers leveraged techniques to reduce a model's parameters and optimization to reduce the amount of memory needed by the remaining parameters. To optimize how datacenters run AI models, they developed a software tool that can slow certain GPUs in a cluster to use less energy, while ensuring the GPUs finish processing workloads at the same time.
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