Communications of the ACM
The news archive provides access to past news stories from Communications of the ACM and other sources by date.
December 2015
From ACM News
How the .s. Requests ser Data from Google
The United States again topped the list of nations that request user data from Google, according to last week's Google Transparency Report.
From ACM News
How the Internet of Things Got Hacked
There was once a time when people distinguished between cyberspace, the digital world of computers and hackers, and the flesh-and-blood reality known as meatspace.
From ACM News
What's He Building in There? The Stealth Attempt to Defeat Aging at Google's Calico.
Talk about a headline that sings. "Google vs. Death." The Time magazine cover story from September 2013 heralded the creation of California Life Company, or Calico, a new firm incubated by Google with the audacious aim to extend…
From ACM News
The A.i. Anxiety
The world’s spookiest philosopher is Nick Bostrom, a thin, soft-spoken Swede.
From ACM News
Machines, Lost in Translation: The Dream of Universal Understanding
It was early 1954 when computer scientists, for the first time, publicly revealed a machine that could translate between human languages. It became known as the Georgetown-IBM experiment: an "electronic brain" that translated…
From ACM News
Nasa and the .s. Air Force Test a New Ground-Based Gps
Anyone who has struggled to pinpoint his or her location in a mall, airport or urban canyon amid skyscrapers has experienced a GPS gap firsthand.
From ACM News
Four Important Things to Expect in Virtual Reality in 2016
Virtual reality has grown immensely over the past few years, but 2016 looks like the most important year yet: it will be the first time that consumers can get their hands on a number of powerful headsets for viewing alternate…
From ACM News
Feuding Physicists Turn to Philosophy For Help
Is string theory science?
From ACM News
Nasa Suspends 2016 Launch of Insight Mission to Mars
After thorough examination, NASA managers have decided to suspend the planned March 2016 launch of the Interior Exploration using Seismic Investigations Geodesy and Heat Transport (InSight) mission.
From ACM News
Nobody Knew How Big a Deal the Cloud Would Be—they Do Now
Ten years ago, Amazon unleashed a technology that we now call, for better or for worse, cloud computing.
From ACM TechNews
How Twitter Bots Turn Tweeters Into Activists
A recent Microsoft study details the use of Twitter bots to engage Twitter users with political activism.
From ACM TechNews
China Set For Quantum Leaps in Spook-Proof Communications
China is on schedule to launch the world's biggest spook-proof quantum communications system in the next six months.
From ACM TechNews
Legacy Voting Machines Ripe For Tampering, Breakdowns
Nearly every U.S. state is using electronic touchscreen and optical-scan voting systems that are at least a decade old.
From ACM TechNews
Graphene Proves a Perfect Fit For Wearable Devices
Researchers have developed a method for printing inexpensive, flexible, wireless graphene communication devices directly into clothing and skin.
From ACM TechNews
A Fish May Hold the Key to More Efficient Wireless Networks
Researchers at the University of Georgia think the eigenmannia, a small South American fish, could hold the solution to radio frequency interference.
From ACM News
Lowdown on Ceres: Images From Dawn's Closest Orbit
NASA's Dawn spacecraft, cruising in its lowest and final orbit at dwarf planet Ceres, has delivered the first images from its best-ever viewpoint.
From ACM News
How Anyone Can Explore Mars Through Virtual Reality
Fusion, MIT, and NASA are collaborating on a VR experience that will place users on Mars long before real astronauts reach the Red Planet in the 2030s.
From ACM News
What You Need to Know About Artificial Intelligence, and the Imminent Robot Future
Do androids dream of electric sheep? That's unclear, but I know for sure that every kid dreams of intelligent, thinking robots—certainly every kid who goes on to work at CNET, in any case.
From ACM TechNews
Laser Printing a Nanoscale Mona Lisa Could Revolutionize Reproduction Technology
Plasmonics technology has the potential to revolutionize laser printing, according to researchers at the Technical University of Denmark.
From ACM TechNews
Nanodevices at One-Hundredth the Cost
In a recent paper, researchers described a method of inexpensively producing a type of microelectromechanical system with desktop fabrication system.
From ACM TechNews
Stanford Scientists Train Computer Models to Accurately Simulate Nature's Variability
Researchers have developed a way of generating "training images" that can be used to refine models of uncertainty about subterranean physical processes and structures.
From ACM News
Apple Seeks to Dethrone Cash, the King of Payments
Apple is getting ready to stake its claim in the rapidly growing person-to-person payments market.
From ACM News
Tech Companies Are Slamming a Proposed k Terrorism Law. Here's Why.
The world's biggest tech firms—including Apple, Microsoft, and Yahoo—are pressing for changes to a proposed British law aimed at expanding the government's electronic surveillance powers.
From ACM News
Cassini Completes Final Close Enceladus Flyby
NASA's Cassini spacecraft has begun transmitting data and images from the mission's final close flyby of Saturn's active moon Enceladus. Cassini passed Enceladus at a distance of 3,106 miles (4,999 kilometers) on Saturday, Dec…
From ACM News
The rban, Infrastructural Geography of 'the Cloud'
The relationship between data to space extends beyond the network equipment, services, and mobile devices that transmit and present information to a user.
From ACM News
A Master Algorithm Lets Robots Teach Themselves to Perform Complex Tasks
For all the talk of machines becoming intelligent, getting a sophisticated robot to do anything complex, like grabbing a heavy object and moving it from one place to another, still requires many hours of careful, patient programming…
From ACM TechNews
Roadmap to Safer Cyberspace
Researchers have outlined a strategy for next-generation experimental cybersecurity research in a report commissioned by the U.S. National Science Foundation.
From ACM TechNews
'plucking' Light Particles From Laser Beams Could Advance Quantum Computing
Researchers at Israel's Weizmann Institute of Science have devised a method of reliably "plucking" an individual particle of light out of a laser pulse.
From ACM TechNews
'robot Locust' Can Traverse Rocky Terrain and Assist in Search and Rescue
Tel Aviv University researchers have developed TAUB, a locust-inspired robot that can jump twice as high as existing similar robots.
From ACM TechNews
An App to Digitally Detox From Smartphone Addiction: Lock N' Lol
Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology researchers have developed an app to help people rein in their impulse to use smartphones.