Communications of the ACM
The news archive provides access to past news stories from Communications of the ACM and other sources by date.
September 2012
From ACM TechNews
Stuxnet Tricks Copied By Computer Criminals
Security researchers warn that the techniques used in sophisticated, state-supported malware are being used by less-skilled programmers to target Web users.
From ACM TechNews
New Tool Gives Structural Strength to 3-D Printed Works
Researchers at Purdue University and Adobe Advanced Technology Labs have developed a program that automatically adds strength to objects before they are printed.
From ACM News
Intel's Tiny Wi-Fi Chip Could Have a Big Impact
This month, Intel unveiled a Wi-Fi radio almost completely made of the same sort of transistors that go into one of its microprocessors.
From ACM News
Curiosity Finishes Close Inspection of Rock Target
NASA's rover Curiosity touched a Martian rock with its robotic arm for the first time on Sept. 22, assessing what chemical elements are in the rock called "Jake Matijevic."
From ACM News
Facebook Raises Fears with Ad Tracking
Facebook is working with a controversial data company called Datalogix that can track whether people who see ads on the social networking site end up buying those products in stores.
From ACM News
Facebook Can Id Faces, but Using Them Grows Tricky
Facebook on Friday confronted a new obstacle over what to do with one of its most vital assets—pictures.
From ACM News
New Pcs That Ship With Preloaded Malware
Open the bubble wrap on a new PC and the one thing you don't expect to find is preloaded malware.
From ACM News
Official: Iran's N. Facilities Vaccinated Against Malwares
Head of Iran's Civil Defense Organization Brigadier General Gholam Reza Jalali stressed that Iranian experts and engineers are fully capable of detecting and repelling enemies' cyber attacks against Iran's nuclear facilities…
From ACM News
Iran Readies Domestic Internet System, Blocks Google
Iran plans to switch its citizens onto a domestic Internet network in what officials say is a bid to improve cyber security but which many Iranians fear is the latest way to control their access to the Web.
From ACM Opinion
Why Wi-Fi Is Often So Slow
A number of Internet service providers, including Comcast Corp. and Verizon Communications Inc., have recently upped the maximum speeds of broadband they offer residential customers to as much as 305 megabits per second.
From ACM TechNews
Reality Checker: How to Cut Nonsense From the Net
Several organizations are developing technologies that can prevent falsehoods from spreading on the Internet.
From ACM TechNews
Project Gives Computers a More Powerful Way to Detect Threats
University of Texas at Dallas researchers have developed "space travel," a technique that automatically enables one computer in a virtual network to monitor another for intrusions, viruses, or other malicious programs.
From ACM Careers
Employee Shopping: 'acqui-Hire' Is the New Normal in Silicon Valley
Tech companies like Google, Facebook and Zynga are on a shopping spree. They're buying small startups with innovative products and apps. But, many times, the tech giants don't care about what the small companies were producing…
From ACM TechNews
For Energy-Efficient Hpc, Less Is More
Intel researchers recently demonstrated their NTV technology by operating an x86 microprocessor on just two milliwatts of power.
From ACM TechNews
Breakthrough in Bid to Create First Quantum Computer
UNSW researchers say they have created the first working quantum bit based on a single atom in silicon, which could lead to the development of ultra-powerful computers.
From ACM TechNews
Big Data Brings Big Academic Opportunities
Many colleges and universities are developing advanced degree programs in analytics to manage big data.
From ACM News
Nasa Actually Working on Faster-Than-Light Warp Drive
You know that scene in the film Contact where the "Machine" is spooling up, its three spinning rings kicking out crazy light and an electromagnetic field powerful enough to pitch nearby Navy battleships sideways, as Ellie (Jodie…
From ACM News
Big Data and Its Big Problems
Imagine every thousandth blood cell in your body has a tiny radio transmitter in it.
From ACM TechNews
Home Sweet Lab: Computerized House to Generate as Much Energy as It Uses
The U.S. National Institute of Standards and Technology recently unveiled a laboratory designed to demonstrate that a typical suburban home for a family of four can generate as much energy as it uses in a year.
From ACM TechNews
The Machines Are Taking Over
Giving computer programs the ability to educate students like a personal tutor is the goal of Worcester Polytechnic Institute professor Neil Heffernan, whose efforts have yielded ASSISTments, a program that helps students learn…
From ACM TechNews
Wired Is the New Wireless: Spreading the Web in China
Although 538 million of China's 1.3 billion people had access to the Internet as of June 2012, most of the country's population is still offline, which led Chinese researchers to develop new technology they say revolutionizes…
From ACM TechNews
India Plans Fastest Supercomputer By 2017
India's Center for Development of Advanced Computing has drafted a proposal for developing a range of petaflop and exaflop computers over five years.
From ACM TechNews
Iran Preparing Internal Version of Internet
The Iranian government reportedly has established a technical platform for a national online network that would exist independent of the Internet and allow for tighter information regulation.
From ACM News
Watch Your Tongue: Law Enforcement Speech Recognition System Stores Millions of Voices
Intercepting thousands of phone calls is easy for government agencies. But quickly analyzing the calls and identifying the callers can prove a difficult task.
From ACM News
Cameras Know You By Your Walk
Everyone knows how easy it is to recognize a friend or family member from their walk—even from a distance.
From ACM News
Bionic Eyes: Sensors That se Lookout's Brainwaves to Spot Trouble
As good as surveillance technology has gotten at some tasks, computers still frequently fail when it comes to figuring out the difference between a threat and a tumbleweed.
From ACM News
Does Rise of Biometrics Mean a Future Without Anonymity?
Long envisioned as an alternative to remembering scores of computer passwords or lugging around keys to cars, homes and businesses, technology that identifies people by their faces or other physical features finally is gaining…
From ACM TechNews
Google Translates Java to Objective-C With J2objc Tool
Java developers can more easily build apps for the iPhone and iPad using a new open source command-line tool released by Google.
From ACM TechNews
'flame' Malware May Have Siblings, Study Finds
A new Flame malware report suggests that the malware's command-and-control interface was made to manage at least four different types of malware, meaning that there may be at least three more pieces of malware from Flame's creators…
From ACM TechNews
Computer Simulations for Multiscale Systems Can Be Faster, Better, More Reliable
University of Oregon researchers have developed a method to reproduce the structure and thermodynamic qualities of large, multiscale systems at variable levels of molecular coarse-graining.