Communications of the ACM
The news archive provides access to past news stories from Communications of the ACM and other sources by date.
February 2021
From ACM News
Facebook, Australia Reach Deal to Restore News Pages After Shutdown
The deal came after intense negotiations and backlash.
From ACM News
In the Pandemic, Online Home-Buying Picks Up Speed
First-time buyers have the tech-smarts and now the tools to do all or part of their purchase online, sometimes even before seeing their new houses in person.
From ACM News
Why an Animated Flying Cat With a Pop-Tart Body Sold for Almost $600,000
A fast-growing market for digital art, ephemera and media is marrying the world's taste for collectibles with cutting-edge technology.
From ACM News
In Memoriam: Ronald E. Anderson, 1941-2020
Better known as a sociologist than a computer scientist, Anderson specialized in secondary data analysis—finding new uses for data collected for another purpose.
From ACM TechNews
AI Can Help Reduce the Risk of HIV in High-Risk Communities
A new artificial intelligence system can help lower the risk of human immunodeficiency virus transmission in high-risk communities.
From ACM TechNews
Alibaba, Pinduoduo Fight China's Looming Food Crisis
Internet retailer Alibaba and Chinese agriculture technology platform Pinduoduo are working on government initiatives to stave off a looming food crisis in China.
From ACM TechNews
Malware Now Targeting Apple's M1 Processor
Security researchers have identified malware customized to run on Apple's new M1 processors in the MacBook Pro, MacBook Air, and Mac Mini computers.
From ACM TechNews
To Infinity and Beyond: Linux, Open Source Go to Mars
The Perseverance rover will explore Mars with the self-flying Ingenuity helicopter drone, using Linux and NASA-built software.
From ACM TechNews
Sharing Your Route in Advance Could Cut Electric Car Charging Queue
Researchers have developed a computer model that could reduce wait times for charging electric cars by using information about each vehicle’s planned journey.
From ACM TechNews
Computer History Museum Honors Tech Legend Raj Reddy
Raj Reddy was named one of the Computer History Museum's 2021 Fellow Award honorees.
From ACM News
Microsoft's Big Win in Quantum Computing Was an 'Error' After All
In a 2018 paper, researchers said they found evidence of an elusive theorized particle. A closer look now suggests otherwise.
From ACM TechNews
Researchers Develop Alien-Inspired Robotic 'Worm Blob' Swarms
Georgia Institute of Technology researchers developed robots that mimic blackworms blobs and could pave the way for the creation of swarm robots that function as a team.
From ACM TechNews
Computer Love
A computer simulation developed by Dan Conroy-Beam at the University of California, Santa Barbara offers a framework for evaluating theories of human mate choice.
From ACM TechNews
In Nevada Desert, a Technology Firm Aims to Be a Government
Blockchains LLC's CEO Jeffrey Berns aims to create a futuristic "smart city" in Nevada where residents purchase goods and services with digital currency and record their financial statements, medical records, personal data, and…
From ACM News
IBM and ExxonMobil Are Building Quantum Algorithms to Solve Maritime Routing Problems
Research teams from ExxonMobil and IBM are using quantum devices to model maritime routing to optimize fleet management, with an aim of shortening the distance and time traveled by merchant ships.
From ACM News
Team Demonstrates Spontaneous Quantum Error Correction
Researchers from the University of Massachusetts Amherst and Northwestern University have devised a novel type of quantum error correction where errors are spontaneously corrected.
From ACM TechNews
Children Less Likely to Catch, Spread COVID-19, Modeling Shows
Simulations of COVID-19 transmission within households conducted by researchers at the University of Haifa found that persons 20 years and younger have less coronavirus in their bodies and were 43% as "susceptible" to the virus…
From ACM TechNews
San Diego Supercomputer Center Helps Advance Computational Chemistry
Researchers from MIT developed an artificial intelligence approach to detect electron correlation, which could help further computational chemistry.
From ACM TechNews
Swiss Company Says It Found Weakness That Imperils Encryption
Swiss technology company Terra Quantum said that it used quantum computers to expose vulnerabilities in commonly used encryption, which could threaten the confidentiality of the world's Internet data, banking transactions, and…
From ACM TechNews
Lygon Blockchain Platform Mints Digital Bank Guarantee
A new blockchain platform named Lygon, formed by Australian banks ANZ, the Commonwealth Bank of Australia, and Westpac, IBM, and shopping center company Scentre Group, has minted a standardized digital bank guarantee.
From ACM News
This Robot Doesn't Need Any Electronics
Engineers at the University of California San Diego have created a four-legged soft robot that doesn't need any electronics to work. The robot only needs a constant source of pressurized air for all its functions, including its…
From ACM TechNews
AI Can Use the Veins on Your Hand Like Fingerprints to Identify You
Researchers at the University of New South Wales trained a neural network to identify individuals using the unique pattern of veins on the back of their hands.
From ACM TechNews
Quantum Computing Enables Simulations to Unravel Mysteries of Magnetic Materials
Materials science simulations conducted by a multi-institutional research team on a quantum computer generated accurate results that can be confirmed with neutron scattering experiments and other practical methods.
From ACM TechNews
AI Agents Learned Object Permanence by Playing Hide and Seek
Researchers at the Allen Institute for AI demonstrated that artificial intelligence agents learned the concept of object permanence — that objects hidden from view are still there — by playing hide and seek.
From ACM TechNews
'Multiplying' Light Could Be Key to Ultra-Powerful Optical Computers
Researchers at the University of Cambridge and the Skolkovo Institute of Science and Technology have proposed a new optical computing method for solving higher-order binary optimization problems by reducing light signals while…
From ACM TechNews
Cathédrale Notre-Dame Rescue Is Buttressed by Digital Wizardry
Art historians, architects, computer scientists, and digital designers are leveraging virtual reality, 3D modeling, and cloud computing technologies to create a "virtual twin" of the Notre-Dame cathedral in Paris as part of its…
From ACM News
Forget Self-Driving Cars – the Pentagon Wants Autonomous Ships, Choppers, and Jets
From pilotless jets engaging in dogfights to huge undersea vessels ferrying troops, the Pentagon is pushing to increase the U.S. military's use of automation.
From ACM TechNews
Phishing Attack Uses Morse Code to Hide Malicious URLs
BleepingComputer has identified a new targeted phishing campaign in which emails pretending to be company invoices use Morse code in an attachment to hide malicious URLs and bypass secure mail gateways and mail filters.
From ACM TechNews
New Type of DRAM Could Accelerate AI
Teams of researchers in the U.S. and Belgian have proposed a new kind of capacitorless dynamic random-access memory that could benefit AI applications.
From ACM TechNews
Computer Can Determine Risk of Dying from COVID
Artificial intelligence developed by researchers at the University of Copenhagen can predict a patient's likelihood of dying from COVID-19 with up to 90% accuracy.