Communications of the ACM
The news archive provides access to past news stories from Communications of the ACM and other sources by date.
August 2013
From ACM TechNews
Moore's Law Dead by 2022, Expert Says
Moore's Law could come to an end as soon as 2020 at the seven-nanometer node.
From ACM News
How Surveillance Changes Behavior: A Restaurant Workers Case Study
Surveillance is certainly much in the news lately. Most notably, of course, there is the continuing outcry over the National Security Agency’s call-tracking program, disclosed in the documents leaked by Edward Snowden.
From ACM News
NASA's Plan to Put a Landsail Rover on Venus
Venus is like a reclusive celebrity that gets the public's attention every couple of years, though in the planet's case it's more like every century.
From ACM News
Wearable Robots Are No Longer Science Fiction
Exoskeletons will address military, medical, commercial applications.
From ACM News
Why Video Games May Be Good For You
Games have long been accused of making players violent, but evidence has been building over the years that they can have positive effects.
From ACM News
How a Look at Your Gmail Reveals the Power of Metadata
Sometimes you have to give up a little privacy in order to find out how much—or how little—privacy you really have.
From ACM TechNews
Google+ Posts Getting Language Translation Services
The Google+ translation feature will enable desktop users to rapidly receive basic translations when other users make posts in languages other than their own.
From ACM TechNews
Cost-Saving Computer Chips Get Smaller Than Ever
The European Union is funding a project that seeks to improve the reliability of terascale computing by improving chip design.
From ACM TechNews
NIST Study Advances Use of Iris Images as a Long-Term Form of Identification
Biometric researchers studying iris stability have determined that no consistent change occurs in the distinguishing texture of irises for at least a decade.
From ACM News
Productivity Tools For Cybercrime
Stealing 10 million dollars a few hundred dollars at a time used to be too labor-intensive to be a great business.
From ACM News
Wormhole Is Best Bet For Time Machine, Astrophysicist Says
The concept of a time machine typically conjures up images of an implausible plot device used in a few too many science-fiction storylines.
From ACM News
How Snowden Did It
When Edward Snowden stole the crown jewels of the National Security Agency, he didn't need to use any sophisticated devices or software or go around any computer firewall.
From ACM TechNews
Twitter 'joke Bots' Shame Human Sense of Humor
Two Twitter bots generate phrases that are funny by virtue of not being particularly funny, to poke fun at human tweeters' own attempts at humor.
From ACM TechNews
New Technology Protects Against Password Theft and Phishing Attacks
Scientists say they can protect Internet users from phishing attacks with a new system called Uni-IDM.
From ACM TechNews
Kean Computer Science Students in nion Travel 'beyond the Grave'
A new smartphone app provides access to information on grave markers in the First Presbyterian Church cemetery in Elizabeth, N.J.
From ACM TechNews
As Tennis Stats Proliferate, Software Tries to Make Sense of It All
SlamTracker software sifts through 20 years of data to predict how tennis players could perform under various circumstances.
From ACM TechNews
Can an AI Get Into the University of Tokyo?
Researchers are attempting to create an artificial intelligence (AI) program capable of passing school entrance exams.
From ACM TechNews
The Walls Have Ears: Princeton Researchers Develop Walls That Can Listen, and Talk
Princeton University researchers have successfully incorporated ultrathin radios on plastic sheets, which can be applied to walls and other structures.
From ACM TechNews
Researchers Granted Patent For System That Fuses Human and Computer Intelligence
The creators of a system that integrates human and computer intelligence to support decision-making in crisis situations have been awarded a U.S. patent.
From ACM News
The Pentagon as Silicon Valley's Incubator
In the ranks of technology incubator programs, there is AngelPad here in San Francisco and Y Combinator about 40 miles south in Mountain View. And then there is the Pentagon.
From ACM News
NASA's Spitzer Telescope Celebrates 10 Years in Space
Ten years after a Delta II rocket launched NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope, lighting up the night sky over Cape Canaveral, Fla., the fourth of the agency's four Great Observatories continues to illuminate the dark side of the…
From ACM News
In Markets' Tuned-p Machinery, Stubborn Ghosts Remain
A generation ago, when the stock market crashed on Oct. 19, 1987, the Nasdaq stock market appeared to have done much better than the New York Stock Exchange.
From ACM TechNews
Why Can't My Computer nderstand Me?
University of Toronto computer scientist Hector Levesque recently presented a paper highlighting the flaws in artificial intelligence.
From ACM TechNews
Quadcopter Piloted By a Smartphone
Researchers have built a cost-efficient quadcopter that operates completely autonomously, using a smartphone to provide visual data and a control center.
From ACM TechNews
Nsa Gathered Thousands of Americans' Emails Before Court Ordered It to Revise its Tactics
The U.S. National Security Agency illegally collected up to 56,000 "wholly domestic" communications each year from 2008 to 2011.
From ACM TechNews
Twitter Hashtags Predict Rising Tension in Egypt
The Political Polarization Index uses Twitter to measure political tension in Egypt.
From ACM News
These Patterns Move, But It's All an Illusion
Focus on the ball at the center of the image. The scene appears to vibrate. If you move your head slightly forward and backward, the color fields of the rosette appear to pulsate.
From ACM TechNews
Computing Researchers Get 'schooled' on Science Policy at Lispi 2013
The Computing Research Association’s Computing Community Consortium recently held its second Leadership in Science Policy Institute (LiSPI) workshop.
From ACM News
Laser Listening: Could You Eavesdrop on the Guardian?
The U.K. government has warned the Guardian newspaper that foreign agents could use laser technology to eavesdrop on them, in the wake of recent surveillance leaks.
From ACM Careers
Seven Over 70
For over a decade, we've celebrated innovators under the age of 35. We choose to write about the young because we want to introduce you to the most promising new technologists, researchers, and entrepreneurs. But I often hear…