Communications of the ACM
The news archive provides access to past news stories from Communications of the ACM and other sources by date.
September 2013
From ACM TechNews
Music Site Chatbot Wins AI Loebner Contest
A chatbot called Mitsuku was judged most convincingly human artificial intelligence program of the contestants in the Loebner contest.
From ACM News
Academics Launch Fake Social Network to Get an Inside Look at Chinese Censorship
Harvard University professor Gary King this year launched a social media site to gain firsthand experience of online censorship in China.
From ACM TechNews
Robots Take Over
A recent study suggests that for periods of less than one second, the financial world becomes a cyberenvironment inhabited by packs of aggressive trading algorithms.
From ACM News
Google's Coder Tool Turns Raspberry Pi Into a Mini Web Server
A new open source development tool from Google is designed to make it easier to use Raspberry Pi computers to build Web applications.
From ACM News
Experts See Potential Perils in Brazil Push to Break With U.s.-Centric Internet Over Nsa Spying
Brazil is planning to remove itself from the U.S.-centric Internet in the aftermath of the U.S. National Security Agency's online spying program.
From ACM TechNews
Carnegie Mellon Researchers Say Twitter Analysis Can Help Gamblers Beat the Spread on NFL Games
Researchers are studying how to use analyses of Twitter feeds to predict the outcomes of National Football League football games.
From ACM News
Machine Language: How Siri Found Its Voice
GM Voices is nestled on a rolling, leafy road in Alpharetta, Georgia, an affluent suburb of Atlanta.
From ACM Opinion
Cryptographers Have an Ethics Problem
Last week, I visited the MIT computer science department looking for a very famous cryptographer.
From ACM Opinion
How Robots Can Trick You Into Loving Them
I like to think of my Roomba as cute and industrious.
From ACM News
Say Goodbye to the Password
Here's the fundamental problem with passwords: They are most effective in protecting a company when they are long, complicated and changed frequently. In other words, when employees are least likely to remember them.
From ACM TechNews
Bug Bounty Program Slates $300k Mobile Hacking Contest For November
Hewlett-Packard Tipping Point's bug bounty program will sponsor the second annual Mobile Pwn2Own contest this fall.
From ACM TechNews
Mapping the 'geography' of the Internet
Morningside Analytics chief scientist John Kelly maps the Internet's "cybersocial geography" to visualize topics of conversation and the participants involved in them.
From ACM TechNews
Disney Develops 'magical' Device to Make Fingertips Sing
The Inshin-Den-Shin technology developed at Disney Research transmits sound through the human body, and turns fingertips into speakers.
From ACM News
Ready or Not, Here They Come
EMV payment cards make their way to the U.S.A.
From ACM News
The Skies. The Limits.
Long ago, in a dreamier era, space stations were imagined as portals to the heavens.
From ACM Careers
Security Tech Firms Hit Jackpot in Asia Casino Boom
Asia's new mega-casinos are driving sales and innovation in advanced surveillance technology, from chips with built-in radio transmitters to high-definition, multi-lens, digital cameras that can scan huge gaming floors and catch…
From ACM Careers
Taiwan Chip Industry Powers the Tech World, but Struggles For Status
Tien Wu, chief operating officer of Advanced Semiconductor Engineering, has a problem: the brightest young people in Taiwan do not want to work in the island’s signature business, chip making.
From ACM News
E-Zpasses Get Read All Over New York (not Just at Toll Booths)
After spotting a police car with two huge boxes on its trunk—that turned out to be license-plate-reading cameras—a man in New Jersey became obsessed with the loss of privacy for vehicles on American roads.
From ACM TechNews
Moose Enables 'plug and Play' Simulations
Idaho National Laboratory researchers are developing MOOSE, a software framework for simulating the behavior of complex systems.
From ACM TechNews
Vote Early, Vote Often: Inside Norway's Pioneering Open Source E-Voting Trials
Norway recently held its second e-voting pilot, following an initial trial that took place during the local government elections in 2011.
From ACM TechNews
Tough Robo-Challenge Casts Robots as Rescuers
Global robotics specialists are competing to design a robot that can perform emergency-response duties during disasters.
From ACM TechNews
Wireless Network Detects Falls by the Elderly
New fall-detection technology would not require the elderly to wear any monitoring devices.
From ACM TechNews
The Brogrammer Effect: Women Are a Small (and Shrinking) Share of Computer Workers
The percentage of women who are computer workers has been dropping over the past 20 years, according to a recent U.S. Census Bureau report.
From ACM TechNews
Girls-Only Coding Class Looks to Increase Female Tech Startup Presence
Female students at six of Britain's top universities will be able to take a free coding course this academic year.
From ACM TechNews
New Magnetic Semiconductor Material Holds Promise For 'spintronics'
A new compound that can be integrated into silicon chips potentially could be used to make spintronic devices.
From ACM Careers
The Boy Genius of lan Bator
Days before I was to meet Battushig Myanganbayar at his home in Mongolia, he sent me an e-mail with a modest request: Would I bring him a pair of tiny XBee wireless antennas?
From ACM News
Tiny Recon Robots Herald New Generation of Drones
Ex-U.S. Marine Ernest Langdon pulls a pin and throws a small black object onto the ground. But it doesn't explode.
From ACM Opinion
The Message Voyager 1 Carries For Alien Civilizations
The year was 1977.
From ACM Opinion
Grand Theft Auto 5: Inside the Creative Process with Dan Houser
We're four days away now. After a year of pre-publicity and a five-year wait since GTA IV, the latest instalment in Rockstar's gangland opus is almost upon us.
From ACM TechNews
The Man Who Would Build a Computer the Size of the Entire Internet
Solomon Hykes has started an open source software project called Docker that aims to use the Internet as one enormous computer.