Communications of the ACM
The news archive provides access to past news stories from Communications of the ACM and other sources by date.
November 2018
From ACM TechNews
Waymo Gets Green Light for Robot Cars in California; No Humans Needed
The California Department of Motor Vehicles has granted a permit to Waymo to test fully autonomous cars with no human driver on public roads.
From ACM TechNews
A Better Way to Predict Election Outcomes
Researchers have developed a way to correlate Web browsing patterns with public opinion polls to create more accurate election predictions.
From ACM TechNews
San Francisco Program Trains Homeless for Tech Jobs
A formerly homeless man has created a nonprofit organization to combat homelessness in San Francisco by teaching needy individuals the skills needed to work in technology firms.
From ACM News
E.T., We're Home
If extraterrestrial intelligence exists somewhere in our galaxy, a new MIT study proposes that laser technology on Earth could, in principle, be fashioned into something of a planetary porch light—a beacon strong enough to attract…
From ACM News
The Impact of Moore’s Law Ending
Chips will cost more to design and manufacture even without pushing to the latest node, but that's not the whole story.
From ACM News
Marvin Minsky Medal for Outstanding Achievements in AI
Libratus team announced as IJCAI Minsky medal recipients.
From ACM News
sing Wi-Fi to 'See' Behind Closed Doors Is Easier than Anyone Thought
Wi-Fi fills our world with radio waves. In your home, in the office, and increasingly on city streets, humans are bathed in a constant background field of 2.4- and 5-gigahertz radio signals.
From ACM News
Astronomers Creep p to the Edge of the Milky Way's Black Hole
For the first time, scientists have spotted something wobbling around the black hole at the core of our galaxy.
From ACM News
Google Says 'Exponential' Growth of AI is Changing Nature of Compute
Google software engineer Cliff Young explains how the explosion in deep learning algorithms is coinciding with a breakdown in Moore's Law, forcing new computer designs.
From ACM TechNews
Another se for AI: Finding Millions of nregistered Voters
IBM's Jeff Jonas has for several years used his artificial intelligence software for a multistate project to identify eligible voters and purge voter rolls of inaccuracies.
From ACM TechNews
The Robot Revolution Is Coming, and Dang Is It Cute
How adorable robots are may be a critical factor for their public acceptance.
From ACM TechNews
Oregon Schools to Receive Federal Grant Funds to Boost Computer Science Education
Schools in three Oregon counties will use a federal grant to help high school students in Career Technical Education programs transition to post-secondary education and employment.
From ACM News
Make People Valuable Again
David Nordfors and Vint Cerf suggest that innovation can, and should, make people more valuable.
From ACM News
The New Face of Law Enforcement
Facial recognition and augmented reality are changing the way law enforcement agencies investigate crime, but there are important privacy issues to consider.
From ACM News
Machine Learning Spots Natural Selection at Work in Human Genome
Pinpointing where and how the human genome is evolving can be like hunting for a needle in a haystack.
From ACM News
Quantum Physicists Found a New, Safer Way to Navigate
In 2015, the U.S. Naval Academy decided that its graduates needed to return to the past and learn how to navigate using the stars.
From ACM Opinion
Even a Few Bots Can Shift Public Opinion in Big Ways
Nearly two-thirds of the social media bots with political activity on Twitter before the 2016 U.S. presidential election supported Donald Trump.
From ACM TechNews
Colleges Grapple With Teaching the Technology, Ethics of AI
Many U.S. colleges and universities are investing in and expanding artificial intelligence education, confronting new challenges for teaching the discipline.
From ACM TechNews
'Human Brain' Supercomputer Switched On to nlock Secrets of the Mind
Researchers are about to launch a supercomputer designed to mimic the human brain.
From ACM TechNews
To Fight Email Scammers, Take a Different View. Literally.
Researchers have developed a visual analytics tool that dramatically speeds up forensic email investigations and highlights critical links within email data.
From ACM TechNews
Fleets of Drones Could Aid Searches for Lost Hikers
Massachusetts Institute of Technology researchers have developed an autonomous system to direct a fleet of drones.
From ACM TechNews
Technology, Slow to the Restaurant Scene, Is Now On the Menu
The Canadian restaurant industry has been more significantly transformed by technology in the last five years than in the preceding 50.
From ACM TechNews
How to Encode a Secret Message in a Fingerprint
Researchers have developed a method for constructing digital fingerprints that encode secret messages into the spiral points on the prints.
From ACM News
Intel CPs Fall to New Hyperthreading Exploit That Pilfers Crypto Keys
Side-channel leak in Skylake and Kaby Lake chips probably affects AMD CPUs, too.
From ACM News
English Has the Scientific Edge, for Now
For centuries, science was a multilingual affair, powered by French, German, English and other tongues. But since the early 1970s, English has become the undisputed lingua franca of scientific papers, conferences, and discourse…
From ACM News
Wormholes Could be Portals to Other niverses
Wormholes are theoretical objects that could serve as portals between two points in space and time. Some believe they could even act as passageways to other universes. But if one did exist, what would it look like?
From ACM TechNews
Travel Industry Brings Innovative Technology Along for the Ride
Travel and tourism firms are deploying next-generation technologies such as robots, data analytics, artificial intelligence, and augmented reality to improve the traveler experience.
From ACM TechNews
An AI Lie Detector Will Interrogate Travelers at Some E Borders
An artificial intelligence-based lie detector system will be used on international travelers during a six-month pilot program at border crossings in Hungary, Latvia, and Greece.
From ACM TechNews
C Berkeley's Fastest-Growing Class Is Data Science 101
The University of California, Berkeley's introduction to data science course is the fastest-growing class on campus.
From ACM TechNews
niversity of Tokyo Team Performs Most Complex Earthquake Simulation to Date
Researchers have created a record-setting earthquake wave simulation.