Communications of the ACM
The news archive provides access to past news stories from Communications of the ACM and other sources by date.
August 2015
From ACM TechNews
Securing Today's Data Against Tomorrow's Quantum Computers
Microsoft researchers consider it vital for encryption upgrades to be developed now, to anticipate quantum computing's decryption potential.
From ACM TechNews
Xsede Panel Highlights Diversity of Nsf Computing Resources
A panel at the XSEDE15 conference highlighted the broad spectrum of computing resources the U.S. National Science Foundation has made available in recent years.
From ACM TechNews
Remember Conficker? It's Still Around
Malware called Conficker began widely infecting computers in 2008; about 1 million computers worldwide are still infected despite years of cleanup efforts.
From ACM TechNews
Robotic Insect Mimics Nature's Extreme Moves
Researchers at Harvard University and Seoul National University say they have developed a robotic insect that can jump on the surface of water.
From ACM Careers
U.s. Researchers Show Computers Can Be Hijacked to Send Data As Sound Waves
A team of security researchers has demonstrated the ability to hijack standard equipment inside computers, printers and millions of other devices in order to send information out of an office through sound waves.
From ACM News
From a Million Miles Away, Nasa Camera Shows Moon Crossing Face of Earth
A NASA camera aboard the Deep Space Climate Observatory (DSCOVR) satellite captured a unique view of the moon as it moved in front of the sunlit side of Earth last month.
From ACM News
Cyber Attack: How Easy Is It to Take Out a Smart City?
When is a smart city not so smart?
From ACM News
Welcome to the Metaverse
Ebbe Altberg needs about a paragraph to define human life: "What humans do is create spaces," the gregarious 51-year-old executive says, leaning back at a table in a small room on the second floor of Linden Lab's headquarters…
From ACM TechNews
Self-Building 3D Printed Bricks Hint at Future Without Assembly Lines
Bar-Ilan University researchers have used an algorithm to show that high frequency vibrations can cause bricks to self-assemble into a larger three-dimensional object.
From ACM TechNews
Siebel Institute Seeks to Make the Smart Grid Smarter
The Siebel Energy Institute has a mission to meet the challenge of enhancing the global power grid with intelligent software.
From ACM TechNews
Researchers Create First Firmware Worm That Attacks Macs
Researchers discovered Mac computers can be affected by known firmware bugs, and created a proof-of-concept worm.
From ACM TechNews
For Sympathetic Ear, More Chinese Turn to Smartphone Program
The Xiaoice smartphone chatbot introduced in China by Microsoft last year has gained a major following, with people turning to it for comfort and sympathy.
From ACM TechNews
This Is What Controversies Look Like in the Twittersphere
Kiran Garimella and colleagues at Aalto University in Finland say they have developed a more reliable way of spotting controversies in the Twitterstream in real time.
From ACM News
Alan Turing Institute p and Running
The U.K.'s national institute for the development and use of advanced mathematics, computer science, algorithms and 'Big Data' will start research activities in the fall.
From ACM News
5 Mobile Technologies Help Level the Playing Field For People with Disabilities
Mobile devices have become incredibly popular for their ability to weave modern conveniences such as Internet access and social networking into the fabric of daily life.
From ACM TechNews
The Computing Power Behind the Large Hadron Collider
CERN project manager Bob Jones recently discussed the Large Hadron Collider's massive supporting computing infrastructure.
From ACM Careers
How Baseball's Tech Team Built the Future of Television
It was the first week of April, 2015, and New York's Chelsea Market, typically packed with hordes of noisy tourists, was quiet. It was close to midnight, but five stories above, things were tense.
From ACM News
Caution rged Over Editing Dna in Wildlife (intentionally or Not)
"Crap!" That was the first word out of Kevin Esvelt’s mouth as he scanned a paper1 published inScience last March.
From ACM News
For Mobile Messaging, GIFs Prove to Be Worth at Least a Thousand Words
Lucy Dikeou, a 21-year-old senior at Stanford University, has long used English and the pictorial images known as emoji to text on her iPhone.
From ACM Careers
Facing Islamic State Threat, Iraq Digitizes National Library
The dimly lit, dust-caked stacks of the Baghdad National Library hide a treasure of the ages: crinkled, yellowing papers holding the true stories of sultans and kings; imperialists and socialists; occupation and liberation; war…
From ACM TechNews
Which Programming Languages Get sed Most at Hackathons?
ChallengePost recently released data on a range of topics from about 160 hackathons with nearly 10,000 projects by 13,281 hackers over the past year.
From ACM TechNews
New Army Cyber Officers Hack Improvements Into Darpa's 'plan X'
The U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency's Plan X is a $120-million program to develop platforms to plan for, conduct, and assess cyberwarfare.
From ACM TechNews
Microsoft Describes Hard-to-Mimic Authentication Gesture
A gesture-unlock method proposed by Microsoft researchers would enable smartphone users to secure their devices without the use of lengthy passcodes.
From ACM News
What a Comet Looks Like … From 9 Meters Away!
The European Space Agency has just released some fantastic close-up images taken by the Philae lander of the comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko.
From ACM News
Google Takes On Mobile Payments
Android Pay follows hard on the heels of Apple Pay in the 'tap and pay' sector.
From ACM News
Military Robots: Armed, But How Dangerous?
An open letter calling for a ban on lethal weapons controlled by artificially intelligent machines was signed last week by thousands of scientists and technologists, reflecting growing concern that swift progress in artificial…
From ACM News
Earth's Ancient Magnetic Field Just Got a Lot Older
Earth developed a magnetic field at least four billion years ago, the latest research shows—more than half a billion years earlier than thought.
From ACM News
China to Restrict Drone, Supercomputer Exports
China will restrict the export of drones and supercomputers from Aug. 15 to help protect national security out of fears such equipment could fall into the hands of militant groups, state news agency Xinhua said on Monday.
From ACM TechNews
A Programming Language For Robot Swarms
Ecole Polytechnique de Montreal researchers have developed a programming language designed to govern the movements of heterogeneous robot swarms.
From ACM TechNews
Big Data Challenge For Food Resilience
Microsoft Research and the U.S. Department of Agriculture have launched a contest aimed at exploring the impact of climate change on the U.S. food system.