Communications of the ACM
The news archive provides access to past news stories from Communications of the ACM and other sources by date.
February 2014
From ACM Careers
The Rags-To-Riches Tale of How Jan Koum Built Whatsapp Into Facebook's New $19 Billion Baby
Jan Koum picked a meaningful spot to sign the $19 billion deal to sell his company WhatsApp to Facebook earlier today. Koum, cofounder Brian Acton and venture capitalist Jim Goetz of Sequoia drove a few blocks from WhatsApp's…
From ACM News
The Six Types of Conversations on Twitter
A new report from the Pew Research Center and the Social Media Research Foundation says that Twitter conversations have distinct shapes—at least six of them with differing structures reflecting their social activity.
From ACM News
Atom Circuits a Step Closer
A memory effect that is crucial in electronics has been seen for the first time in a cloud of ultracold atoms.
From ACM News
Nasa's Nustar ntangles Mystery of How Stars Explode
One of the biggest mysteries in astronomy, how stars blow up in supernova explosions, finally is being unraveled with the help of NASA's Nuclear Spectroscopic Telescope Array (NuSTAR).
From ACM Opinion
Satya Nadella, Chief of Microsoft, on His New Role
Q. What leadership lessons have you learned from your predecessor, Steve Ballmer?
From ACM TechNews
Shortage of Mainframe Skills Looms but Companies Remain in Denial
A mainframe skills shortage is approaching, but only about 40 percent of CIOs surveyed by Compuware said they had a formal plan in place to address the issue.
From ACM TechNews
Researchers Show High-Speed Laser Communications Device For Space
A prototype array can read more information than usual from single particles of light, and can achieve much higher data rates than conventional systems.
From ACM TechNews
A Stretchable Highway For Light: Researchers Build the First Circuit With Stretchable Optical Interconnections
Belgian researchers have developed the first optical circuit that uses interconnections that are bendable and stretchable.
From ACM TechNews
ISC'14 S. African Student Cluster Team Visits Austin
The Texas Advanced Computing Center recently welcomed foreign students preparing for the International Supercomputing Conference Student Cluster Competition.
From ACM News
As Military Robots Increase, So Does the Complexity of Their Relationship With Soldiers
For a glimpse at the future of human-robot interactions, it might be better to look at what's happening in the United States military than analyzing Her, in which Joaquin Phoenix's character falls in love with an OS voiced by…
From ACM News
Visiting Mauna Kea, the World's Best Spot For Stargazing
I was recently having lunch at a lovely and only slightly overpriced cafe overlooking the Pacific in the historic resort region of Kailua-Kona on the dry side of Hawaii's "Big Island" (the island itself is also named Hawaii).
From ACM Opinion
Starman
It was a mild October day in Hollywood, but a trace of artificial snow remained on the ground as Neil deGrasse Tyson, the director of the Hayden Planetarium, at the American Museum of Natural History, walked around a back lot…
From ACM News
Ancient Structures Rebuilt sing 3D-Printed Bricks
Eight centuries on, the flying buttresses of Bourges Cathedral in France still beguile engineers.
From ACM TechNews
Hackathons on the Rise
This year a record 1,500 hackathons are planned around the world, up from just a handful in 2010.
From ACM TechNews
Facebook Tells the Computer Who You Love
New algorithms can correctly identify a person's spouse, fiance, or other romantic partner, based on a map of Facebook friends, with about 70-percent accuracy.
From ACM News
Networking Nature
Conservation is for the first time beginning to operate at the pace and on the scale necessary to keep up with, and even get ahead of, the planet’s most intractable environmental challenges.
From ACM TechNews
Half of Americans Want to Live in a Smart City With Driverless Cars
Nearly half of Americans want to live in a city where all vehicles are driverless, and a third think that might happen in the next 10 years, according to an Intel survey.
From ACM TechNews
Revamped Computer Science Classes Attracting More Girls
A growing number of universities are overhauling their computer science courses to attract more women, and the efforts appear to be working.
From ACM TechNews
Connected Cars: Apps, Networks, and Storage on Wheels
Mobile apps are being designed to help make transportation safer, but a better way is needed to integrate information services within the transportation segment.
From ACM TechNews
How Hpc Is Hacking Hadoop
The Hadoop open source framework increasingly is being used in high-performance computing environments, particularly for data-intensive scientific computing.
From ACM News
At Newark Airport, the Lights Are On, and They're Watching You
Visitors to Terminal B at Newark Liberty International Airport may notice the bright, clean lighting that now blankets the cavernous interior, courtesy of 171 recently installed LED fixtures.
From ACM News
Can 'robotic' Pills Replace Injections?
The adage "Take two aspirin and call me in the morning" is destined for a futuristic makeover.
From ACM News
Nyc's Touchscreen Subway Maps Are Finally Here, and They're Amazing
New York subway riders first were promised futuristic touchscreen wayfinding maps a year ago.
From ACM News
Netflix Is Building an Artificial Brain sing Amazon's Cloud
Nothing beats a movie recommendation from a friend who knows your tastes.
From ACM TechNews
Stirring-p Atomtronics in a Quantum Circuit
Researchers used a superfluid atomtronic circuit to create a hysteresis, the first time hysteresis has been observed in an ultracold atomic gas.
From ACM News
3d Printing a Speaker
Makers manipulate multiple materials through additive manufacturing.
From ACM News
What Can nite Liberals and Tea Partyers? The Nsa
Hoyt Sparks says he has no use for liberal Democrats and their "socialistic, Marxist, communist" ways.
From ACM TechNews
How to Design an Interstellar Communications System
University of California, Berkeley professor David Messerschmitt is studying the design of end-to-end communications between stellar systems.
From ACM TechNews
Palestinian Women Make Strides in High-Tech
Palestinian women are joining the high-tech industry, despite obstacles presented by the economy and traditional culture.
From ACM News
The Last Places on Earth Without the Internet
It can be easy to forget what life was like before the Internet.