Communications of the ACM
The news archive provides access to past news stories from Communications of the ACM and other sources by date.
August 2023
From ACM TechNews
Teen's Pill-Tracking Device Attracts Interest from CVS Pharmacy
U.S. pharmacy chain CVS is among those interested in a pill-tracking device created by Virginia-based high school student Archishma Marrapu.
From ACM TechNews
YouTube Ads May Have Led to Online Tracking of Children, Research Says
Adalytics reported Google's YouTube advertised adult products from over 300 brands on close to 100 YouTube videos geared toward children, with several ads displaying violent content.
From ACM TechNews
Making Your Phone Screen Blurry Could Stop Snooping
A new system can blur smartphone screens to prevent snooping.
From ACM TechNews
Google Algorithm Makes FIDO Encryption Safe from Quantum Computers
A post-quantum cryptography (PQC) algorithm developed by researchers at Google and Switzerland's ETH Zurich enables quantum-resistant encryption for FIDO2 security keys.
From ACM TechNews
Engineers Create Battery Alternative Using Cement, Carbon Black
Engineers have produced a supercapacitor from cement and carbon black, a development that could expedite the shift to renewable energy.
From ACM TechNews
Research Hack Reveals Call Security Risk in Smartphones
A multi-institutional team of researchers developed malware to extract caller information by screening vibration data from ear speakers recorded by a smartphone's accelerometers.
From ACM TechNews
Driverless Cars May Struggle to Spot Children, Dark-Skinned People
Scientists evaluated eight artificial intelligence-based pedestrian detectors used in driverless car research, and found they may have difficulty detecting children and dark-skinned people.
From ACM News
The AI-Powered, Totally Autonomous Future of War Is Here
Ships without crews. Self-directed drone swarms. How a U.S. Navy task force is using off-the-shelf robotics and artificial intelligence to prepare for the next age of conflict.
From ACM TechNews
Octopus' Complex Cells Are Key to Their High Intelligence
Researchers explored the octopus's neural makeup that defines its learning processes using automated tissue preparation and new machine learning reconstruction algorithms.
From ACM TechNews
Researchers Helping Robots Teach Themselves to Open Dishwashers, Doors
Scientists at Switzerland's ETH Zurich have formulated a "minimal manual guidance" model to train robots to learn how to open doors and dishwashers.
From ACM TechNews
UC San Diego Computer Scientists Tackle Annual Waste of 1.5 Billion Junked Smartphones
University of California, San Diego computer scientists have proposed a method for repurposing deactivated smartphones.
From ACM News
An AI Scans Eyes to Spot Parkinson's Years Before Diagnosis
Turns out the windows to the soul can teach us a lot about our own health.
From ACM News
Scientists Recreate Pink Floyd Song by Reading Brain Signals of Listeners
The audio sounds like it's being played underwater. Still, it's a first step toward creating more expressive devices to assist people who can't speak.
From ACM News
Lifelong Learning at the Edge
Learning how not to forget is a crucial skill.
From ACM News
This Startup Engineered a Clever Way to Reuse Waste Heat from Cloud Computing
Heata is now using these busy servers to heat water for homes.
From ACM News
Cruise Agrees to Reduce Driverless Car Fleet in San Francisco After Crash
A driverless Cruise taxi with a passenger collided with a fire truck Thursday night, just one week after state officials allowed the service to expand.
From ACM News
The AI Power Paradox
Can states learn to govern Artificial Intelligence—before it's too late?
From ACM News
The Desperate Hunt for the A.I. Boom's Most Indispensable Prize
To power artificial intelligence products, start-ups and investors are taking extraordinary measures to obtain critical chips known as graphics processing units, or GPUs.
From ACM News
Complexity Theory's 50-Year Journey to the Limits of Knowledge
How hard is it to prove that problems are hard to solve? Meta-complexity theorists have been asking questions like this for decades. A string of recent results has started to deliver answers.
From ACM TechNews
Google Tests AI Assistant That Offers Life Advice
Google is testing generative artificial intelligence technology programmed to serve as a life coach.
From ACM TechNews
ChatGPT Leans Liberal
Research by scientists at the U.K.'s University of East Anglia suggests OpenAI's ChatGPT has a liberal slant.
From ACM TechNews
Humanoid Robot Can Pilot an Airplane Better Than a Human
Engineers and researchers are developing a humanoid robot that can fly airplanes without requiring cockpit modifications.
From ACM TechNews
Rice and IIT Kanpur Announce Collaborative Research Award Winners
Rice University and the Indian Institute of Technology Kanpur have announced the first recipients of the Rice-IITK Strategic Collaboration Awards program, which aims to foster joint research and innovation in computer science…
From ACM TechNews
Superconducting Device Could Dramatically Cut Energy Use in Computing, Other Applications
A simple superconducting device developed by MIT researchers could help achieve significant reductions in energy usage by high-power computing systems and potentially improve quantum computing technologies.
From ACM TechNews
LLM Tool Finds and Remediates Software Vulnerabilities
Software company Vicarius unveiled vuln_GPT, a generative artificial intelligence tool that automatically identifies and repairs software vulnerabilities, at the Black Hat USA conference earlier this month.
From ACM TechNews
Computer Science Researchers Create Modular, Flexible Robots
Flexible robotic blocks developed by computer scientists at Dartmouth College, Rutgers University, and Yale University can be assembled into structures of different shapes for a variety of functions, with the ability to roll,…
From ACM News
Faster Spin Waves May Enable Magnonic Computing Systems
A team of scientists says it has solved the challenge of exciting spin waves with normalized amplitudes by exploiting a deeply non-linear phenomenon for forward volume spin waves in 200-nm-wide nanoscale waveguides.
From ACM TechNews
Data Centers at Risk Due to Flaws in Power Management Software
Cybersecurity researchers at Trellix have identified vulnerabilities in commonly used applications in data centers that could allow hackers to gain access and shut off power to specific servers.
From ACM TechNews
Computer Scientists Tap AI to Identify Risky Apps
University of Massachusetts Amherst's Brian Levine and a dozen computer scientists have developed a computational model that evaluates customer reviews of social networking apps for contextual indicators that they may not be …
From ACM TechNews
ChatGPT Answers More than Half of Software Engineering Questions Incorrectly
ChatGPT answered 52% of 517 Stack Overflow questions incorrectly, and 77% of answers were unnecessarily wordy, according to a study by Purdue University researchers.