Communications of the ACM
The news archive provides access to past news stories from Communications of the ACM and other sources by date.
July 2016
From ACM Opinion
In Pursuit of Planes That Think For Themselves
Just how smart can an airplane be?
From ACM News
How to Stay Anonymous Online
Anonymity networks protect people living under repressive regimes from surveillance of their Internet use. But the recent discovery of vulnerabilities in the most popular of these networks—Tor—has prompted computer scientists…
From ACM News
In Memoriam: Rudolf Kalman 1930–2016
The engineer and mathematician was best known for the eponymous Kalman filter.
From ACM News
How Artificial Intelligence Could Help Warn S of Another Dallas
As the country reels from the spasm of gun violence that killed two black men and five police officers this week, a prominent digital vigilante is using an online tool he hacked together to keep an eye on hot spots that seem…
From ACM News
Artificial Intelligence Is Setting p the Internet For a Huge Clash With Europe
Neural networks are changing the Internet.
From ACM News
If a Driverless Car Goes Bad We May Never Know Why
Two recent accidents involving Tesla's Autopilot system may raise questions about how computer systems based on learning should be validated and investigated when something goes wrong.
From ACM TechNews
Microsoft's Project Malmo Public Release Brings AI to Minecraft
Microsoft announced the open source code underlying its Project Malmo is now publicly available, enabling artificial intelligence experimentation by Minecraft users.
From ACM TechNews
Boston Is Nation's Top Tech-Talent Exporter
The U.S. technology worker population currently totals 4.8 million, according to CBRE's 2016 Scoring Tech Talent report.
From ACM TechNews
Uw, Microsoft Researchers Break Record For Dna Data Storage
Researchers believe they have set a new world record for the amount of digital data successfully stored in and retrieved from DNA molecules.
From ACM TechNews
Eu Researchers Saw Brexit Coming
The European Union-funded SENSEI project accurately anticipated Britain's Brexit decision based on analysis of more than 6 million social media conversations.
From ACM News
Team Begins Powering Up Science Instruments
The engineers and scientists working on NASA's Juno mission have been busying themselves, getting their newly arrived Jupiter orbiter ready for operations around the largest planetary inhabitant in the solar system.
From ACM News
se of Police Robot to Kill Dallas Shooting Suspect Believed to Be First in S History
For what experts are calling the first time in history, US police have used a robot in a show of lethal force.
From ACM TechNews
Eu Plans $2b Investment in Cybersecurity Research
The European Union is contributing $500 million to fund research into cybersecurity, and is asking the private sector to contribute an additional $1.5 billion.
From ACM TechNews
No Need For Supercomputers
Researchers have developed a method for calculating complex quantum-mechanical equations with personal computers that is much faster than using supercomputers.
From ACM TechNews
Robot Eyes and Humans Fix on Different Things to Decode a Scene
Researchers are determining the differences between human minds and artificial intelligence-based machines by mapping human and AI visual attention.
From ACM TechNews
A Celebration of Women in Hpc
Recent events held by the Women in High-Performance Computing (WHPC) network have focused on resolving the lack of gender diversity in HPC.
From ACM TechNews
Are Face Recognition Systems Accurate? Depends on Your Race
The U.S. Government Accountability Office issued a report finding the Federal Bureau of Investigation has not properly tested the accuracy of its face-matching systems.
From ACM TechNews
Makers of Self-Driving Cars Ask What to Do With Human Nature
The push by some automakers to make fully autonomous vehicles a commercial reality is being tempered by others arguing against elimination of human driver intervention.
From ACM News
Mars Canyons Study Adds Clues About Possible Water
Puzzles persist about possible water at seasonally dark streaks on Martian slopes, according to a new study of thousands of such features in the Red Planet's largest canyon system.
From ACM Careers
Makers of Self-Driving Cars Ask What to Do With Human Nature
Even before Tesla revealed that a fatal accident had occurred while one of its cars was in semiautonomous driving mode, a debate was well underway between researchers and engineers: Is it possible to get a driver to safely take…
From ACM News
Putin Signs New Anti-Terror Law in Russia. Edward Snowden Is pset.
Russian President Vladimir Putin on Thursday signed into law a controversial package of counterterrorism measures, including tougher sentences for extremism and heightened electronic surveillance of Russian citizens, that have…
From ACM News
How Juno Will Peer Deep Below Jupiter's Roiling Clouds
When ground controllers begin powering up the Juno spacecraft's science instruments on July 6, one of their most important goals will be to get the microwave radiometer up and running.
From ACM Opinion
Obama's Top Scientist Talks Shrinking Budgets, Donald Trump, and His Biggest Regret
John Holdren is no stranger to the spotlight. Over his long career in science, Holdren—a physicist by training—has worked on controversial issues such as climate change and nuclear non-proliferation.
From ACM News
Control Your Smartphone with Your Eyes
In an effort to make eye tracking cheap, compact, and accurate enough to be included in smartphones, a group of researchers is crowdsourcing the collection of gaze information and using it to teach mobile software how to figure…
From ACM TechNews
Machine Learning Method Differentiates Between Healthy Male, Female Microbiomes
Researchers have used Topological Data Analysis as an unsupervised learning and data exploration tool to identify changes in microbial states.
From ACM TechNews
Girls Who Code Summer Immersion Program Reaches Record Numbers
Girls Who Code has launched its 2016 Summer Immersion Program with a record number of programs reaching 1,560 11th- and 12th-grade girls in cities across the U.S.
From ACM TechNews
Video Privacy Tool Lets You Select What Others See
Researchers at Duke University have developed software that enables users to specify what others can see when sharing images captured by camera-equipped devices.
From ACM TechNews
College Students Demonstrate Integrity in Learning and Ignore Cheating Opportunities
A University of California, Riverside study found most college students make a legitimate attempt to answer questions in homework assignments.
From ACM News
Google Tests New Crypto in Chrome to Fend Off Quantum Attacks
For anyone who cares about Internet security and encryption, the advent of practical quantum computing looms like the Y2K bug in the 1990s: a countdown to an unpredictable event that might just break everything.
From ACM News
How Today's Farmers Got a Head-Start on Tomorrow's Tech
Cory Anstey always wanted to be a farmer. It was the joy of riding in the tractor, "the smell of the dirt in the spring" that drew him to the fields.