Communications of the ACM
The news archive provides access to past news stories from Communications of the ACM and other sources by date.
November 2014
From ACM News
Learning How Little We Know About the Brain
Research on the brain is surging.
From ACM News
Why You Probably Won't Understand the Web of the Future
The giants of the connected world are finally waking up to one of the biggest obstacles in their stated missions of connecting billions more people to the internet: The language barrier.
From ACM News
Leap Into the Future?
Whatever Magic Leap is working on, it could revolutionize the fields of augmented and virtual reality.
From ACM News
Philae Lander Nears a Cosmic Touchdown
In its 10-year chase of a comet, the European Space Agency’s ambitious Rosetta mission has pushed the edges of engineering ingenuity.
From ACM News
U.s. Agencies Struggle vs. Cyberattacks
A $10 billion-a-year effort to protect sensitive government data, from military secrets to Social Security numbers, is struggling to keep pace with an increasing number of cyberattacks and is unwittingly being undermined by federal…
From ACM TechNews
Umd Cyber Experts Discover Lapses in Heartbleed Bug Fix
The efforts of website administrators tasked with correcting security holes exploited by the Heartbleed bug may have fallen short.
From ACM TechNews
Big Data Sparks Interest in Statistical Programming Languages
The latest Tiobe index for language popularity features several statistical programming languages.
From ACM TechNews
'more Diverse' Emoji Faces Planned
Emoji face icons could soon reflect greater racial diversity.
From ACM News
Newest Nasa Mars Orbiter Demonstrates Relay Prowess
The newest node in NASA's Mars telecommunications network—a radio aboard the MAVEN orbiter custom-designed for data links with robots on the surface of Mars—handled a copious 550 megabits during its first relay of real Mars data…
From ACM News
A Super-Simple Way to nderstand the Net Neutrality Debate
It's one of the most important policy disputes that will determine the future of the Internet, and now President Obama has formally weighed in in favor of so-called net neutrality.
From ACM Careers
Hacking a niverse's Worth of Data
On a Friday night in New York City you can find just about anything. And this past Friday about 130 hackers gathered in the Hayden Planetarium to participate in the American Museum of Natural History's very first hackathon.
From ACM TechNews
U.S., European Authorities Strike Against Internet's Black Markets
U.S. and European law enforcement agencies last week launched a massive, coordinated strike on the so-called Dark Web.
From ACM Careers
For Rosetta Mission's Scientists, the Thrill Is in the Comet Chase
Claudia Alexander has spent the last 15 years of her life waiting for this moment: landing a spacecraft the size of a washing machine on the surface of a speeding comet.
From ACM TechNews
Google's New Open Source Privacy Effort Looks Back to the '60s
Google has announced a new open source tool for massive data sets based on differential privacy, a technique developed in the 1960s.
From ACM TechNews
Next For Darpa: 'autocomplete' For Programmers
Rice University researchers have launched an $11-million initiative to create a tool that will both autocomplete and autocorrect code for programmers.
From ACM News
Dark Net Experts Trade Theories on 'de-Cloaking' After Raids
The hidden web community has started trying to find out how services and identities were compromised after police raids led to 17 arrests.
From ACM TechNews
Microsoft Headset to Help Blind People Navigate Cities
Microsoft is collaborating with a British charity to develop a headset that could help the blind and the visually impaired navigate urban locations.
From ACM TechNews
Testing the 'safety Alarm 2.0'
Researchers have developed a belt-based system designed for the elderly that triggers an alarm if the user falls down.
From ACM TechNews
Diagnostic Exhalations
Researchers say an algorithm they developed can accurately determine whether a patient is suffering from emphysema or heart failure based on their breath.
From ACM TechNews
Can an Algorithm Tell US Who Influenced an Artist?
Rutgers University researchers are training a computer to analyze thousands of paintings to understand which artists influenced others.
From ACM News
Google Scholar Pioneer on Search Engine’s Future
As the search engine approaches its 10th birthday, Nature speaks to the co-creator of Google Scholar.
From ACM News
Computer Scientists Ask Supreme Court to Rule Apis Can’t Be Copyrighted
EFF files Amicus Brief on behalf of tech pioneers in Oracle v. Google court battle.
From ACM News
What Is Tor? Did Police Outfox It?
European police Friday said they had figured out how to pierce an Internet privacy tool used by dissidents, journalists and online drug dealers.
From ACM News
Bound For Pluto, Carrying Memories of Triton
On Aug. 25, 1989, the Voyager 2 spacecraft slipped over the north pole of Neptune, then the most distant planet in the solar system, swerved south at Neptune’s big moon Triton and left the known worlds forever.
From ACM News
The $11m Tool That Could Help Computers Write Their Own Code
Nowadays, if you start typing something into Google, it tries to guess what you’re looking for.
From ACM News
Digital Reconstruction Restores Rare Dino Skull
Dinosaur fossils are valuable resources—yet access to them can be tricky.
From ACM TechNews
Students Get Hands-on Experience With Open Testbed For Cybersecurity Research
The University of Southern California's Cyber Defense Technology Experimental Research Project oversees the DETERLab Education Site, a free global resource.
From ACM TechNews
Contactless Cards Fail to Recognize Foreign Currency
A flaw in Visa's EMV-based contactless payment card system could enable hackers with Android smartphones to approve unlimited cash transactions without a PIN.
From ACM TechNews
Uw Study Shows Direct Brain Interface Between Humans
Researchers at the University of Washington say they have replicated a direct brain-to-brain connection they first demonstrated in August.
From ACM TechNews
Giving Robots a (better Than) Human Touch
A new robot can grasp an unattached USB cable and insert it into a USB port.