Communications of the ACM
The news archive provides access to past news stories from Communications of the ACM and other sources by date.
August 2012
From ACM News
A Who's Who of Mideast-Targeted Malware
What do Stuxnet, Duqu, Gauss, Mahdi, Flame, Wiper, and Shamoon have in common?
From ACM TechNews
Visual Programming Means Anyone Can Be a Coder
New York University programmer Toby Schachman has developed Recursive Drawing, an experimental programming interface that enables coders to manipulate source code by building and manipulating fractal-like structures.
From ACM News
Researchers Hack Brainwaves to Reveal Pin Numbers, Other Personal Data
Don't you dare even think about your banking account password when you slap on those fancy new brainwave headsets.
From ACM TechNews
A Peace Corps For Civic-Minded Geeks
The nonprofit Code for America, a kind of Peace Corps for geeks, has led the way in bringing online efficiency to offline government systems, picking a team of tech stars each year to take time off from their jobs and offer their…
From ACM News
Inside Huawei, the Chinese Tech Giant That's Rattling Nerves in D.c.
Chen Lifang is a bit flummoxed.
From ACM TechNews
Russia Joins the Supercomputer Race
The Russian Academy of Sciences is building a supercomputer that it says will have a capacity of 10 petaflops, which would make it the most powerful in Russia.
From ACM TechNews
This Touch Screen Knows Your Touch
Rutgers University researchers have developed a device that could identify an individual user and rapidly switch a system's settings to adjust to the user, providing another layer of protection in addition to passwords.
From ACM TechNews
Software Meant to Fight Crime Is sed to Spy on Dissidents
Commercially available spyware originally designed to aid in criminal investigations is being used by repressive regimes to track political dissidents, according to Google engineer Morgan Marquis-Boire and computer science Ph…
From ACM TechNews
Computer Viruses Could Take a Lesson From Showy Peacocks
To test theories in mate attraction in nature, Michigan State University researchers developed Avida, a virtual world in which promiscuous computer programs compete and reproduce.
From ACM News
From Smart to Genius: Will Design Define Future Gadgets?
In a pre-iPhone age, mobile phones came in all shapes and sizes. Remember the clamshell, candy bar, swivel, backflip, slider, dual-slider, lipstick, and, of course, the taco?
From ACM Opinion
How Steve Jobs' Love of Simplicity Fueled A Design Revolution
Steve Jobs' interest in design began with his love for his childhood home.
From ACM TechNews
Artificial Intelligence Fights Notorious Crop Pest
National Taiwan University researchers have developed an artificial intelligence system that can predict an outbreak of crop-damaging fruit fly swarms.
From ACM News
Nasa's Dawn Prepares For Trek Toward Dwarf Planet
NASA's Dawn spacecraft is on track to become the first probe to orbit and study two distant destinations to help scientists answer questions about the formation of our solar system. The spacecraft is scheduled to leave the giant…
From ACM TechNews
New Zealand Software Patent Law 'betrays' Developers
A New Zealand politician has advanced a proposed software patent measure that contains an exemption for software embedded in other inventions. Critics say that loophole will be exploited by large corporations to patent their…
From ACM News
From Bug Drones to Disease Assassins, Super Weapons Rule .s. War Game
A rogue state is on the verge of developing a deadly biological weapon against which the rest of the world has no defense.
From ACM TechNews
Google Seeing-Hand Patent Shows Smart Glove Ambitions
Google has received a patent for a device and methods for obtaining information with one's hands. Some observers view the patent as a sign of Google's plans for smart gloves and interacting with the virtual world.
From ACM TechNews
Magnetic Vortex Reveals Key to Spintronic Speed Limit
Brookhaven National Laboratory researchers say they have precisely measured an important parameter of electron interaction known as non-adiabatic spin torque, which is essential to the future development of spintronic devices…
From ACM News
How Pacific Island Missile Tests Helped Launch the Internet
There are a thousand stories about the origin of the internet, each with their own starting point and their own heroes. Charles Herzfeld's tale began in 1961 on a series of tiny islands in the South Pacific.
From ACM News
Active in Cloud, Amazon Reshapes Computing
Within a few years, Amazon.com's creative destruction of both traditional book publishing and retailing may be footnotes to the company’s larger and more secretive goal: giving anyone on the planet access to an almost unimaginable…
From ACM TechNews
Cutting the Costs of Secure, Evolving Software
The European Union-funded SecureChange project found that only about one-third of a program's code changed from one version to the next.
From ACM TechNews
Robots to Rescue Coral Reefs
Heriot-Watt University researchers are developing a swarm of intelligent robots to help save coral reefs.
From ACM TechNews
Can 'serious Games' Be an Effective Tool For Workplace Learning?
University College London researchers are analyzing TARGET, a computer game that could help workers develop skills such as negotiating and trust building.
From ACM TechNews
'frankenstein' Programmers Test a Cybersecurity Monster
University of Texas (UT) at Dallas researchers have developed Frankenstein, a software system that can cloak itself as it steals and reconfigures information in a computer program.
From ACM TechNews
Post-'pinch'? Apple Patent-Case Could Point to New Digital Age For Smartphones
The future of smartphone development has been muddled with Apple's recent court win against Samsung in a patent infringement case involving the "pinch to zoom" and other key smartphone features.
From ACM TechNews
How to Feed Data-Hungry Mobile Devices? se More Antennas
Rice University researchers recently unveiled Argos, a multi-antenna technology that could help wireless providers keep up with the demands of data-hungry smartphones and tablets.
From ACM News
Nasa's Kepler Discovers Multiple Planets Orbiting a Pair of Stars
Coming less than a year after the announcement of the first circumbinary planet, Kepler-16b, NASA's Kepler mission has discovered multiple transiting planets orbiting two suns for the first time. This system, known as a circumbinary…
From ACM News
Gps Technology Finding Its Way Into Court
The rapid spread of cellphones with GPS technology has allowed police to track suspects with unprecedented precision—even as they commit crimes. But the legal fight is only now heating up, with prosecutors and privacy activists…
From ACM News
Smartphones Challenge Chip Limits
Smartphones and other devices keep getting smarter, but that may change if a key step in manufacturing computer chips isn't updated soon.
From ACM Careers
Visual Programming Means Anyone Can Be a Coder
Many great ideas start out as scribbles on scraps of paper, as thinking visually is an intuitive way to grapple with abstract concepts. Part of the reason is the immediacy—thoughts can be captured and communicated in a sketch…
From ACM News
Analysis Shows Traces of Wiper Malware But No Links to Flame
One of the things about the investigation into the Flame malware that's remained unclear for several months now is what ever became of the so-called Wiper virus that had been seen erasing data on machines in Iran and that led…