Communications of the ACM
The news archive provides access to past news stories from Communications of the ACM and other sources by date.
February 2012
From ACM TechNews
Google Unveils 'secret Lab' For Radical Ideas
Google recently held a private technology gathering for innovators, and plans to share some of the discussions and related materials through the Web site WeSolveForX.com.
From ACM TechNews
Engineers Boost Computer Processor Performance By Over 20 Percent
North Carolina State University researchers have developed a technique that combines GPUs and CPUs on a single chip, boosting processor performance by an average of more than 20 percent.
From ACM Careers
The Future of Hiring: Human Resources, Without the Humans
Imagine a scenario where your next job interview isn't face-to-face, but face-to-screen. There are no questions about your former work experience and office habits. There's simply a computer game.
From ACM TechNews
Scientists Develop Biological Computer to Encrypt and Decipher Images
Scientists at the Scripps Research Institute and the Technion-Israel Institute of Technology have developed a computer made entirely from biomolecules that can decipher images encrypted onto DNA chips.
From ACM News
Hackers Outwit Online Banking Identity Security Systems
After logging in to the bank's real site, account holders are being tricked by the offer of training in a new "upgraded security system."
From ACM TechNews
Double-Sided Touchscreen Changes When You Fold It
Juergen Steimle, working with developer Mo Khalilbeigi and his team at the Darmstadt University of Technology, Germany, has developed a range of foldable displays that support novel user interactions.
From ACM News
Burning Man
On his first tour of duty in Afghanistan, Sam Brown was set on fire by an improvised explosive device. He survived, only to find himself, like thousands of other vets, doomed to a post-traumatic life of unbearable pain. Even…
From ACM TechNews
How to Predict the Spread of News on Twitter
Bernardo Huberman and colleagues at Hewlett-Packard's Social Computing Lab have developed an algorithm that can predict how popular new stories will become.
From ACM News
Slow Graphene Down, Speed Computers Up
Astonishing conductivity helped the discoverers of graphene win the Nobel prize in physicsin 2010. Now a way to switch off the easy flow of electrons in this wonder form of carbon is bringing superfast graphene computers closer…
From ACM News
Api: Three Letters That Change Life, the niverse, and Even Detroit
Sam Ramji met AT&T chief technology officer John Donovan on a speed date—or at least the tech world equivalent of a speed date.
From ACM TechNews
Hp R&d Chief Shows Road to Terabyte Backplane
New technologies will be the key to dealing with the coming flood of digital data, says HP Labs director Prith Banerjee.
From ACM TechNews
A New Question of Internet Freedom
European activists are taking a page from the recent U.S. Web protests to halt the progress of domestic antipiracy legislation, and applying similar pressure to stop the international Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement.
From ACM Opinion
Designing Windows 8, or How to Redesign a Religion
There are lot of hard jobs at Microsoft. But Sam Moreau just might have the hardest of all. Or at least the most harrowing. Over the past five years, he's taken on the tiny task of redesigning the operating system used by like…
From ACM TechNews
A Discussion With David Farber: Bandwidth, Cyber Security, and the Obsolescence of the Internet
Internet technology veteran David Farber projects that within a decade, computers will be outfitted with optical connections rather than pins for networking, and routers will be swamped by the sheer volume of transmitted data…
From ACM News
Wolfram, a Search Engine, Finds Answers Within Itself
Stephen Wolfram, a 52-year-old scientist, software designer and entrepreneur, tends to go his own way—often with noteworthy results.
From ACM News
Researchers se Social Bots To Expand Twitter Networks and Influence People
That next tweet you receive on Twitter may not be from a person but from a social bot, a tiny program designed to mimic real users and influence their behavior.
From ACM News
Fast Phones, Dead Batteries
Days after buying his Samsung Electronics Co. Galaxy Nexus smartphone from Verizon Wireless, David Jacobs found himself switching off the fourth-generation broadband connection that had drawn him to the $300 device in the first…
From ACM News
Symantec Warns of Android Trojans that Mutate with Every Download
Researchers from security vendor Symantec have identified a new premium-rate SMS Android Trojan horse that modifies its code every time it gets downloaded in order to bypass antivirus detection.
From ACM TechNews
Oscars Vote Vulnerable to Cyber Attack Under New Online System, Experts Warn
The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences recently announced that starting next year members will be able to vote for the Oscars using electronic ballots instead of the existing vote-by-mail system. However, many computer…
From ACM TechNews
Microsoft Researchers Say Anonymized Data Isn't So Anonymous
Data routinely gathered in Web logs, such as IP address, cookies, operating systems, browser type, and user-agent strings can threaten online privacy because they can be used to identify the activity of individual machines, according…
From ACM TechNews
Harnessing the Predictive Power of Virtual Communities
University of Ljubljana researchers say they have developed an algorithm that can detect virtual communities better than existing state-of-the-art algorithms.
From ACM TechNews
Embodiment, Computation and the Nature of Artificial Intelligence
Although many AI researchers have adopted the idea that true intelligence requires a body, known as embodiment, a growing group of researchers, led by the University of Zurich's Rolf Pfeifer, say the notion of intelligence makes…
From ACM TechNews
Industry-Funded Software Research Goes Open Source
Several large companies that fund software research on university campuses are engaged in open source research in the hope of drawing a thriving developer community.
From ACM News
Letting Hackers Compete, Facebook Eyes New Talent
Late this January, some 75,000 people around the planet sat in front of their computers and pondered how to make anagrams from a bowl of alphabet soup.
From ACM News
How Did That Ad Make You Feel? Ask A Computer
If you have ever called your bank, your phone company or even your own office and slammed head-on into a voicemail system that has made you want to scream, this story is for you.
From ACM News
Four Telescope Link-Up Creates World's Largest Mirror
Astronomers have created the world's largest virtual optical telescope linking four telescopes in Chile, so that they operate as a single device.
From ACM TechNews
Quarter of Tweets Not Worth Reading, Twitter Users Tell Researchers
Researchers evaluating tweets found that Twitter users liked just 36 percent of the tweets they received and disliked 25 percent.
From ACM News
How the View From a Comet Might Look
The European Space Agency's Rosetta spacecraft is heading for a comet.
From ACM TechNews
Risk-Based Passenger Screening Could Make Air Travel Safer
University of Illinois researchers recently examined the benefit of matching passenger risk with security assets and found that intensive screening of all airline passengers makes the system less secure by overtaxing security…
From ACM TechNews
Fast and Easy Programming
A European Union consortium known as ALMA is developing a tool chain based on open source software designed to simplify the development of software for embedded multicore processors.