Communications of the ACM
The news archive provides access to past news stories from Communications of the ACM and other sources by date.
February 2015
From ACM Careers
Virtual Creatures in a Box, Controlled By You
A Canadian startup is working to make monsters, fish, and other creatures seem to come alive inside a tabletop box.
From ACM Careers
China Draft Counterterror Law Strikes Fear in Foreign Tech Firms
China is weighing a far-reaching counterterrorism law that would require technology firms to hand over encryption keys and install security "backdoors", a potential escalation of what some firms view as the increasingly onerous…
From ACM News
How to Sabotage Encryption Software (and Not Get Caught)
In the field of cryptography, a secretly planted "backdoor" that allows eavesdropping on communications is usually a subject of paranoia and dread.
From ACM TechNews
.n. Report Focuses on Modern Technology to Improve Peacekeeping Missions
A new report says United Nations peacekeeping missions should use technology to establish situational awareness, carry out mandates, and protect themselves.
From ACM TechNews
Changing the World One Hackathon at a Time
Sixty-six teens are taking part in the My Brother's Keeper Hackathon, a group coding competition spearheaded by Qeyno Labs CEO Kalimah Priforce.
From ACM TechNews
Rise of the Fembots: Why Artificial Intelligence Is Often Female
A disproportionate percentage of artificial intelligence systems have female personas, and researchers have struggled to determine why this phenomenon occurs.
From ACM TechNews
w Researches Ways to Draw Women Toward Science Majors
Female leaders at the University of Wisconsin are looking for ways to address the inequalities for women in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics fields.
From ACM TechNews
Artificial Intelligence Bests Humans at Classic Arcade Games
A recent article recounts how a team of artificial intelligence researchers trained a computer to play, and in some cases beat, human players in several arcade games.
From ACM Opinion
Why Everyone Was Wrong About Net Neutrality
Today, the Federal Communications Commission, by a vote of three to two, enacted its strongest-ever rules on net neutrality, preserving an open Internet by prohibiting broadband providers from blocking or slowing content that…
From ACM Opinion
Invasion of the Friendly Movie Robots
Robots are becoming more of a reality in everyday life, and movies have started to overhaul their depiction of them. They're gentler, friendlier, and often better-looking.
From ACM News
Study of Atmospheric 'froth' May Help Gps Communications
When you don't know how to get to an unfamiliar place, you probably rely on a smart phone or other device with a Global Positioning System (GPS) module for guidance.
From ACM Opinion
Surveillance-Based Manipulation: How Facebook or Google Could Tilt Elections
Someone who knows things about us has some measure of control over us, and someone who knows everything about us has a lot of control over us.
From ACM Careers
How Madden Ratings Are Made
Hunched over a keyboard, surrounded by computer monitors, Donny Moore, 37, controls the fate of the National Football League.
From ACM News
Nasa's Curiosity Mars Rover Drills at 'telegraph Peak'
NASA's Curiosity Mars rover used its drill on Tuesday, Feb. 24 to collect sample powder from inside a rock target called "Telegraph Peak." The target sits in the upper portion of "Pahrump Hills," an outcrop the mission has been…
From ACM TechNews
Microsoft Leverages Tech to Preserve Languages at Risk of Disappearing
Microsoft wants to develop software that helps lost languages maintain their relevancy in the modern age.
From ACM TechNews
Techies Take on Port Authority's Data For Path Stations in 'hackathon'
Code of Jersey City recently held its second all-day Hackathon.
From ACM TechNews
Army Research Lab Lays Out Hpc Strategy
The U.S. Army Research Laboratory is utilizing supercomputing and large-scale analytics to maintain its position as the country's top laboratory for land forces.
From ACM TechNews
How Safe Are Perl, Php, and Ruby? The Experts Weigh In
Many developers of programming languages are quick to defend the security of their language.
From ACM News
S Government and Private Sector Developing 'precrime' System to Anticipate Cyber-Attacks
The USA's Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) is soliciting the involvement of the private and academic sectors in developing a new 'precrime' computer system capable of predicting cyber-incursions before they…
From ACM News
How the Military Will Fight Isis on the Dark Web
The Dark Web is not so much a place as it is a method of achieving a level of anonymity online.
From ACM News
Game-Playing Software Holds Lessons For Neuroscience
DeepMind, the Google-owned artificial-intelligence company, has revealed how it created a single computer algorithm that can learn how to play 49 different arcade games, including the 1970s classics Pong and Space Invaders.
From ACM News
New Display Technology Lets Lcds Produce Princess Leia-Style Holograms
During a famous scene in Star Wars, Princess Leia has R2D2 play a holographic video message in midair in which she pleads for help from Obi-Wan Kenobi. In the near future, smartphones and other mobile devices will have the ability…
From ACM News
Surprise! America Already Has a Manhattan Project For Developing Cyber Attacks
"What we really need is a Manhattan Project for cybersecurity." It's a sentiment that swells up every few years in the wake of some huge computer intrusion—most recently the Sony and Anthem hacks.
From ACM TechNews
The Four Main Roadblocks Holding p Self-Driving Cars
There are four major obstacles facing developers of autonomous vehicles.
From ACM TechNews
Intel: Moore's Law Will Continue Through 7nm Chips
Papers Intel plans to share this week are meant to reassure the computer industry about the viability of Moore's Law, at least for the immediate future.
From ACM TechNews
More Watchful Eye Needed on 'dark Web' and Cybercriminal Activities, Notes New Paper
New research calls for increased monitoring of the Dark Web by security researchers and government investigators.
From ACM TechNews
Spy Research Agency Is Building Psychic Machines to Predict Hacks
The U.S. Intelligence Advanced Research Projects Activity is working on a new contest aimed at creating a system to predict cyberthreats a network may face ahead of time.
From ACM TechNews
What Clever Robots Mean For Jobs
For a long time economists maintained that new technology would not result in a net loss of jobs, but some economists now think the situation is more nuanced than that.
From ACM News
The Plan to Find Alien Life in Europa's Icy Seas
How do you solve a problem like Europa?
From ACM TechNews
Professor Develops Tool to Speed Data Collection
The Computer Assisted Neighborhood Visual Assessment System is a Web application that helps accelerate the collection of research data.