Communications of the ACM
The news archive provides access to past news stories from Communications of the ACM and other sources by date.
December 2013
From ACM TechNews
Judge: Nsa’s Collecting of Phone Records Is Probably Unconstitutional
A district court judge has ruled the U.S. National Security Agency's daily collection of virtually all Americans' phone records is almost certainly unconstitutional.
From ACM TechNews
Low-Power Tunneling Transistor For High-Performance Devices at Low Voltage
A new type of transistor could make possible fast and low-power computing devices for energy-constrained applications.
From ACM TechNews
That Thing Attached to Your Hand? It Might Be Doomed
Harvard University professor Woodward Yang says the personal technology market will experience business disruptions due to constant innovation.
From ACM TechNews
Keeping the Lights On
The Koopman Mode Analysis is an algorithm that could predict future instabilities in the power grid and make power outages a thing of the past.
From ACM TechNews
Welcome to the Super Bowl For Robots
The U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency's robotics competition is aimed at developing a robot that can function in disaster zones.
From ACM News
Google Glass Update Lets Users Wink and Take Photos
Google has introduced a new feature to its Google Glass, which allows users to take a photo with a "wink of the eye."
From ACM TechNews
Meteor Aims to Make Javascript Programming Fun Again
The Meteor open source JavaScript platform is moving toward its 1.0 release in early 2014.
From ACM News
4 Reasons Why Apple's Ibeacon Is About to Disrupt Interaction Design
You step inside Walmart and your shopping list is transformed into a personalized map, showing you the deals that'll appeal to you most.
From ACM News
Are We in the Matrix? Science Looks For Signs We're Not Real
Over the years, some science fiction has popularized the notion that our world might not be what it seems—that we might all be living in the Matrix (to use perhaps the most well-known version of the concept).
From ACM TechNews
Drone Gets Its Smarts From a Smartphone
Smartphones could be the key to building low-cost, autonomous drones.
From ACM TechNews
Microsoft Joins Group Seeking to Replace Passwords
Microsoft has joined the Fast IDentity Online Alliance, which seeks to develop standards to curb corporate reliance on passwords.
From ACM TechNews
Adding MUSCLE to Multiscale Simulations
The Multiscale Coupling Library and Environment 2 project is aimed at implementing and executing multiscale models with feedback loops.
From ACM News
Eye-Tracker Lets You Drag and Drop Files With a Glance
Bored of using a mouse?
From ACM News
Judge's Word on Nsa Program Won't Be the Last
A federal judge made headlines Monday by declaring that the National Security Agency's bulk collection of millions of Americans' telephone records is likely unconstitutional.
From ACM News
Thinking in Silicon
Picture a person reading these words on a laptop in a coffee shop.
From ACM News
The Startling Beauty of the Microscopic
When Robert Hooke first looked at a piece of cork under a microscope in 1665, he was looking for scientific reasons–but that didn’t keep him from seeing the intrinsic beauty in the slides.
From ACM News
Officials Say .s. May Never Know Extent of Snowden's Leaks
American intelligence and law enforcement investigators have concluded that they may never know the entirety of what the former National Security Agency contractor Edward J. Snowden extracted from classified government computers…
From ACM TechNews
Hi-Tech Sensors Aim to Help Prevent Obesity
The European Union is funding a project that intends to use high-tech sensors to get young people to adopt healthy lifestyles.
From ACM TechNews
Programming Smart Molecules
Researchers have shown that an important class of artificial intelligence algorithms could be implemented using chemical reactions.
From ACM TechNews
By Cracking Cellphone Code, Nsa Has Capacity For Decoding Private Conversations
The U.S. National Security Agency is able to crack the A5/1 encryption technology used on most cellphones worldwide.
From ACM TechNews
New Wave Display Technology Rises at Uc San Diego
The nw Wide-Angle Virtual Environment (WAVE) display is a curved wall array of 35 55-inch LG commercial liquid crystal display monitors.
From ACM TechNews
Physical Keys Could Take Away the Pain of Passwords
Technology companies are experimenting with physical keys to take the place of passwords.
From ACM TechNews
New System Allows For High-Accuracy, Through-Wall, 3D Motion Tracking
WiTrack is a new a three-dimensional (3D) motion-tracking technology that uses radio signals to track a person through walls and other obstacles.
From ACM TechNews
Arms Deal Sets Limits on Cyber Technologies
Additions to the Wassenaar Arrangement will require technology companies to get permission from governments to sell a range of security and surveillance software.
From ACM News
Google Adds to Its Menagerie of Robots
BigDog, Cheetah, WildCat, and Atlas have joined Google's growing robot menagerie.
From ACM News
Show S a Better Way Than Collecting Metadata, Nsa Director Says to Critics
Critics of the U.S. National Security Agency's bulk collection of U.S. residents' telephone records should offer a better way to track terrorists and protect the country against attacks, the agency's director said Wednesday.
From ACM Opinion
Nasa's Chief Scientist on Mars, Moons, and Money
Planetary geologist Ellen Stofan joined NASA in August as the agency's chief scientist, an overarching role in which she advises on the science of all NASA programmes.
From ACM News
New Results Send Mars Rover on a Quest For Ancient Life
When the Curiosity rover landed in Gale crater 16 months ago, its goal was to find a place on Mars that was habitable 4 billion years ago.
From ACM TechNews
Home Appliance Makers Connect with Open Source 'internet of Things' Project
The AllSeen Alliance has developed an open source framework to enable systems to discover, connect, and interact with each other, regardless of manufacturer or OS.
From ACM TechNews
Hipster, Surfer or Biker? Computers May Soon Be Able to Tell the Difference
Researchers are developing an algorithm that uses group pictures to determine what urban tribe a specific person belongs to, with up to 48-percent accuracy.