Communications of the ACM
The news archive provides access to past news stories from Communications of the ACM and other sources by date.
December 2016
From ACM News
Why the Computing Cloud Will Keep Growing and Growing
Jeff Bezos of Amazon, along with a couple of his rivals, may eventually control much of the $1 trillion global market for business computers and software.
From ACM News
Settling p via Closed Loop Digital Wallets
Starbucks and others are providing app-based alternatives to Apple Pay, Android Pay.
From ACM News
Canadians Solve Key Puzzle For Future of Encryption
Students at the University of Waterloo’s Institute for Quantum Computing have developed a system to transmit numerical keys that will unlock coded messages no future computer can hack.
From ACM News
Apple and Nokia Battle Over Cellphone Patents
Apple's iPhone is a technological marvel.
From ACM News
.s. Government Begins Asking Foreign Travelers About Social Media
The U.S. government quietly began requesting that select foreign visitors provide their Facebook, Twitter and other social media accounts upon arriving in the country, a move designed to spot potential terrorist threats that …
From ACM TechNews
Artificial Intelligence: The 3 Big Trends to Watch in 2017
Experts expect artificial intelligence trends to progress in three major areas in 2017.
From ACM TechNews
Bat Chat: Machine Learning Algorithms Provide Translations For Bat Squeaks
Researchers from Tel Aviv University in Israel studying Egyptian fruit bats have found a way to determine which bats are communicating with which other bats, what they are communicating about, and predict the outcome of a disagreement…
From ACM TechNews
Open Source Challenger Takes on Google Translate
A new open source machine translation framework could serve as an alternative to closed-source projects such as Google Translate.
From ACM TechNews
A Level Playing Field: Lab Adapts Toys For Disabled Children
A University of North Florida program is now in its third year of adapting toys from store shelves for disabled children.
From ACM TechNews
Mimicking Biological Movements With Soft Robots
Harvard University researchers have developed a method to automatically design soft actuators based on a desired movement, in order to create a soft robot that moves organically.
From ACM TechNews
Ford Studies sing Drones to Guide Self-Driving Cars
Ford Motor researchers are studying a system to use drones to help guide self-driving vehicles, including on off-road adventures.
From ACM News
The Year Encryption Won
Between the revelations of mega-hacks of Yahoo and others, Russia's meddling in the US electoral system, and the recent spike in ransomware, it's easy to look at 2016 as a bleak year for security.
From ACM News
Intel Bets It Can Turn Everyday Silicon Into Quantum Computing's Wonder Material
Sometimes the solution to a problem is staring you in the face all along.
From ACM News
The Long-Term Jobs Killer Is Not China. It's Automation.
The first job that Sherry Johnson, 56, lost to automation was at the local newspaper in Marietta, Ga., where she fed paper into the printing machines and laid out pages.
From ACM News
Swearing Dolls, Other Iot Intrusions Threaten Children's Well-Being, Privacy, Data
The Internet of Playthings is not necessarily a safe place.
From ACM TechNews
Why Microsoft Believes We're on the Threshold of Quantum Computing
Most researchers aiming to make quantum computing a reality focus on superconducting quantum bits (qubits), but Microsoft's approach avoids harnessing electronic properties in favor of exploiting the order in which exotic particles…
From ACM TechNews
Rice, Baylor Team Sets New Mark For 'deep Learning'
A new deep learning method developed by researchers at Rice University and the Baylor College of Medicine enables computers to learn about the visual world with less human instruction.
From ACM TechNews
Motion-Planning Chip Speeds Robots
Duke University researchers say they have developed a custom processor to perform robotic motion planning that accelerates the process by three orders of magnitude while using 1/20th the power.
From ACM TechNews
CLA Researchers Combat Antimicrobial Resistance sing Smartphones
New technology from a University of California, Los Angeles research team could help combat the spread of antimicrobial-resistant bacteria.
From ACM News
Andrew Moore
Andrew Moore, dean of Carnegie Mellon University's school of computer science, discusses artificial intelligence and robotics.
From ACM News
European Court of Justice Rules Against Mass Data Retention in Eu
The Court of Justice of the European Union (ECJ) ruled on Wednesday that laws allowing for the blanket collection and retention of location and traffic data are in breach of EU law.
From ACM Opinion
Building Jarvis
My personal challenge for 2016 was to build a simple AI to run my home—like Jarvis in Iron Man.
From ACM News
Nvidia Surges in 2016 Using Graphics Chips to Challenge Intel
When Paulina Sliwinska, a fund manager at Edinburgh-based Baillie Gifford & Co., made the trip to Silicon Valley looking for the next big thing in technology, she found it—not in a hot startup run by a 23-year-old whiz kid just…
From ACM TechNews
Report rges States to Take Action on Computer Science Education
The Southern Regional Education Board has published a report recommending actions states and schools can take to help more young people learn computer science.
From ACM TechNews
Researchers Propose sing Software-Defined Networking to nify Cloud and Edge
Researchers from Germany, Canada, and the U.S. have proposed a method to use cloud and fog computing structures to complement one another.
From ACM TechNews
Obama White House's Final Tech Recommendation: Invest in AI
The White House has recommended continued investment in artificial intelligence research and development to shore up the U.S. economy and help the country "stay on the cutting edge of innovation."
From ACM TechNews
Slowing the Spread of Viral Misinformation: Can Crowdsourcing Help?
Social media platforms play a pivotal role in the modern information-sharing environment's facility with virally spreading misinformation, which leads to speculation as to what actions such platforms can and should take to address…
From ACM TechNews
Driverless Platoons
Massachusetts Institute of Technology researchers have developed a mathematical model to study the effects of scheduling policies on fuel consumption and travel delays in order to determine the optimal deployment of trucks.
From ACM News
Grids of Defects Make Diamonds Practical For Quantum Computing
One of the more exciting things happening in physics at the moment is the development of quantum computers that may actually be able to do something useful.
From ACM News
The Great A.i. Awakening
Late one Friday night in early November, Jun Rekimoto, a distinguished professor of human-computer interaction at the University of Tokyo, was online preparing for a lecture when he began to notice some peculiar posts rolling…