Communications of the ACM
The news archive provides access to past news stories from Communications of the ACM and other sources by date.
November 2013
From ACM TechNews
Nsa Leaks Could Inspire a Global Boom in Intrusive Surveillance
The recent leaks of U.S. National Security Agency (NSA) surveillance programs could inspire authoritarian governments in developing economies to boost NSA-style data collection programs, according to a recent report.
From ACM Opinion
Will Ibm's Watson sher in a New Era of Cognitive Computing?
Computers as we know them have are close to reaching an inflection point—the next generation is in sight but not quite within our grasp.
From ACM Opinion
Blinded By the Light
The probe sails through space, traveling the distance of the LA-to-Chicago red-eye in a minute.
From ACM News
Google Books Ruling Is a Huge Victory For Online Innovation
It's taken almost a decade, but the courts have finally handed down a ruling on Google's audacious project to scan millions of books to build a book search engine.
From ACM TechNews
MIT Big Data Initiative Launches Transportation Challenge, Privacy Working Group
The Massachusetts Institute of Technology Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Lab's Big Data Initiative recently announced two new activities aimed at improving the use and management of big data.
From ACM TechNews
Facebook Releases Query Engine to Open Source Community
Facebook has developed Presto, a distributed SQL query engine optimized for running ad-hoc interactive analytic queries against data sources ranging in size from gigabytes to petabytes.
From ACM TechNews
Researchers Find Way to Increase Range of Wireless Frequencies in Smartphones
Researchers have developed a method for tuning the radio frequency in smartphones and other wireless devices that reduces costs and improves the performance of semiconductors used in defense, satellite, and commercial communications…
From ACM News
The Computer That Got Down to Business
A U.K. museum's quest to get a 5.5-ton computer up and running is about more than preserving a piece of computing history; it's about understanding the constraints of programming a 50-year-old system.
From ACM News
Intelligence Agency Seeks Facial Recognition pgrade
The U.S. intelligence community is pushing a leap forward in facial recognition software that will enable it to determine better the identity of people through a variety of photographs, video, and other images.
From ACM News
Ibm to Announce More Powerful Watson via the Internet
Welcome to the age of supercomputing for everyone.
From ACM News
The Daunting Challenge of Secure Email
When users of Lavabit, an encrypted e-mail service, logged on to the site this past August, they found a bewildering letter on the site's main page.
From ACM Careers
Big Data's Little Brother
David Soloff is recruiting an army of "hyperdata" collectors.
From ACM TechNews
Tech Firms Furious After Denied Full View of Government Reply to Fisa Court
Microsoft, Google, Yahoo, Facebook, and LinkedIn said in a court filing that the U.S. government has offered them only a "heavily redacted version" of its response to the FISA Court with regards to the companies' request for…
From ACM TechNews
Delving Into Digital Learning
Carnegie Mellon University has announced the Simon Initiative, which will publicly launch the world's largest student learning database to determine best practices and standards for the use of technology in the classroom.
From ACM TechNews
Program Seeks to Nurture 'data Science Culture' at Universities
Academia at New York University, the University of Washington, and the University of California, Berkeley are collaborating on the Sloan Foundation's five-year Digital Information Technology program to create a data science culture…
From ACM TechNews
Internet Security: Besieged
The Internet Engineering Task Force recently met to discuss concerns about recent reports of the U.S. National Security Agency undermining cryptographic software and standards.
From ACM Opinion
The Head of Google X Thinks We're All Too Risk-Averse
Google X is responsible for some of Google's most literally fantastic projects: Google Glass, self-driving cars, gigantic inflatable balloons that beam Internet down to the disconnected.
From ACM TechNews
Social Media Helps Aid Efforts After Typhoon Haiyan
In the wake of typhoon Haiyan, disaster relief teams are descending on the Philippines from all over the world, trying to aid the victims. Volunteers are mining social media to provide aid workers with real-time maps to show…
From ACM News
Physicists Plan to Build a Bigger Lhc
When Europe's Large Hadron Collider (LHC) started up in 2008, particle physicists would not have dreamt of asking for something bigger until they got their US$5-billion machine to work.
From ACM TechNews
Ieee Wants the Cloud to Grow Like the Internet
The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) is developing an Intercloud Testbed to show how various types of cloud computing environments can combine and exchange data.
From ACM News
Stores Sniff Out Smartphones to Follow Shoppers
You've just tossed a jar of peanut butter in your grocery cart when your smartphone buzzes.
From ACM News
Sunny Fix Would Let Defunct Kepler Hunt Planets Again
NASA's champion planet-hunter, which recently suffered a fatal breakdown, is now looking on the sunny side.
From ACM News
Nasa Cassini Spacecraft Provides New View of Saturn and Earth
NASA has released a natural-color image of Saturn from space, the first in which Saturn, its moons and rings, and Earth, Venus and Mars, all are visible.
From ACM TechNews
Enhancing Security in Apple Devices
Apple addressed some complicated security issues before releasing iOS 7 in September, thanks to A*STAR's Institute for Infocomm Research.
From ACM TechNews
Researchers Develop At-Home 3-D Video Game For Stroke Patients
A new three-dimensional video game developed by Ohio State University researchers should make it easier for stroke patients to receive constraint-induced movement therapy at home.
From ACM TechNews
New Game App Keeps Teens on Track Taking Their Asthma Medicine
Researchers at the Rush University Medical Center in Chicago are testing a game-based asthma application designed for teenagers. Young people seem to be responding well, says Giselle Mosnaim, co-principal investigator for the…
From ACM News
Social Media Helps Aid Efforts After Typhoon Haiyan
Ten million people affected. Half a million displaced. Ten thousand feared dead.
From ACM News
Ads Could Soon Know If You're an Introvert (on Twitter)
Trying to derive a person's wants and needs—conscious or otherwise—from online browsing and buying habits has become crucial to companies of all kinds.
From ACM News
How Corporate America Fights Hackers
To defend themselves against hackers, some of America's largest corporations have adopted shadowy tactics usually reserved for government spies.
From ACM Opinion
Nest's Tony Fadell on Smart Objects, and the Singularity of Innovation
Tony Fadell is the founder and chief executive of Nest, a company that is trying to bring a high-end technology experience to some of the most prosaic areas of the home.