Communications of the ACM
The news archive provides access to past news stories from Communications of the ACM and other sources by date.
November 2021
From ACM TechNews
Identity Verification Technique Offers Robust Solution to Hacking
Scientists have developed a secure identity verification technique based on the precept that information cannot exceed the speed of light.
From ACM TechNews
Toward Speech Recognition for Uncommon Spoken Languages
The new Prune, Adjust, and Re-Prune (PARP) technique allows an advanced speech-learning model learn uncommon spoken languages more easily.
From ACM News
The Booming Underground Market for Bots That Steal Your 2FA Codes
The bots convincingly and effortlessly help hackers break into Coinbase, Amazon, PayPal, and bank accounts.
From ACM News
Zillow Quits Home-Flipping Business, Cites Inability to Forecast Prices
Zillow used an algorithm to make home price estimates, called the "Zestimate," and determine what it would pay home sellers.
From ACM News
Biden Administration Orders Federal Agencies to Fix Hundreds of Cyber Flaws
Agencies come under new pressure to close cybersecurity flaws after sometimes balking at such measures in the past.
From ACM News
Autonomous Robotic Rover Provides New Insight Into Life on the Deep Abyssal Seafloor
Autonomous robotic rover helps scientists with long-term monitoring of deep-sea carbon cycle and climate change.
From ACM News
Deep Learning AI Explained: Neural Networks
Ballyhooed artificial-intelligence technique known as "deep learning" revives 70-year-old idea.
From ACM TechNews
Making ML More Useful to High-Stakes Decision Makers
An international research team developed a visual analytics tool to address challenges faced by child welfare specialists using machine learning models to screen cases.
From ACM TechNews
Climate Change Now the Main Driver of Increasing Wildfire Weather
Scientists say climate change is now the primary driver of extreme wildfires in the western U.S., with global warming largely responsible for conditions fueling the blazes.
From ACM TechNews
Tech Companies Push Users to Adopt Two-Factor Authentication
Technology companies are more aggressively urging the use of two-factor authentication by users, with some making the process mandatory.
From ACM TechNews
Robotic Pet Boosts Mood, Cognition in Adults with Dementia
Florida Atlantic University researchers studied the effectiveness of interactive robotic pet cats in improving mood, behavior, and cognition in older adults with dementia.
From ACM News
Crowdsourced Cybersecurity: Hunting for Bugs
Companies offer big money to 'white-hat hackers' to find flaws in software products before the black hats do.
From ACM News
A Novel Way to Optimize Robots
It harks back to a 19th-century idea about evolution.
From ACM News
This Group Pushed More AI in US Security—and Boosted Big Tech
The National Security Commission on AI included members from Oracle, Google, Microsoft, and Amazon. Some of its recommendations are already federal law.
From ACM News
Eight Ways Quantum Computing Is Going to Change the World
Businesses are already exploring the future potential of quantum computers, and some industries anticipate big changes ahead.
From ACM TechNews
For Black Women, Online Prediction Tool Could Reduce Breast Cancer Deaths
A risk prediction model tailored to Black women has been developed for use in primary care settings to identify those at higher-than-average risk of breast cancer.
From ACM TechNews
Firefighting Robots Go Autonomous
Firefighting robots can enter buildings that human firefighters cannot. Researchers are working to develop firefighting robots that can make decisions autonomously.
From ACM TechNews
Academy Student's Math Project Wins National STEM Competition
A ninth grader at Albuquerque Academy in New Mexico won the $25,000 Samueli Foundation Prize at the Broadcom MASTERS science and engineering contest.
From ACM TechNews
Afghan Girls Learn, Code 'Underground' to Bypass Taliban Curbs
Hundreds of girls and women in Afghanistan continue to learn, either online or in hidden makeshift classrooms.
From ACM TechNews
Smart Scheduling for Big Computing Tasks Cuts Emissions Up to a Third
Researchers found that shifting large computing jobs to nights or weekends can lower carbon emissions from datacenters by as much as a third.
From ACM TechNews
Can Seeds Planted by Drones Spawn New Forests?
Spanish startup CO2 Revolution aims to use big data analytics and drones to drop millions of enhanced seeds for trees native to Spain's forests over inaccessible, deforested areas.
From ACM News
Brain Implants Could Be the Next Computer Mouse
What the world's fastest brain-typist is telling us about the future of computer interfaces.
From ACM News
Google Introduces Pathways, a 'New Generation of AI'
A new artificial intelligence architecture that will handle many tasks at once.
From ACM News
Quantum Computing: IBM Just Created This New Way to Measure the Speed of Quantum Processors
Big Blue has released a new metric, CLOPS, which puts a number on the speed of a quantum computer.
From ACM News
Companies Are Rushing to Use AI—But Few See a Payoff
A study finds that only 11% of firms that have deployed artificial intelligence are reaping a "sizable" return on their investments.
From ACM News
America's Crypto Conundrum
Protecting security without crushing innovation.
From ACM News
Big Teacher Is Watching: How AI Spyware Took Over Schools
The pandemic caused schools to embrace laptops, tablets, Zoom, and an app called GoGuardian that tracks everything students (and, sometimes, parents) do online.
From ACM News
Facebook is Shutting Down its Facial Recognition System, Affecting Over a Billion People
The company will delete all of its face scan data, citing societal concerns and regulatory uncertainty.
From ACM TechNews
ML Algorithms Can Be Improved Significantly for Medical Purposes
Researchers at South Africa's University of Johannesburg have demonstrated that machine learning algorithms can be enhanced significantly for medical purposes.
From ACM TechNews
State Department to Form New Cyber Office to Face Proliferating Global Challenges
The U.S. State Department will establish a new bureau of cyberspace and digital policy as part of a reorganization intended to address international cybersecurity challenges.