Communications of the ACM
A Healthy Dose of AI
Building artificial intelligence into medical devices can speed diagnoses and potentially improve treatments and outcomes.
From ACM NewsAn edited collection of advanced computing news from Communications of the ACM, ACM TechNews, other ACM resources, and news sites around the Web.
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Inside Facebook's Bid to Reinvent Music, News, and Everything
Earlier this year, Daniel Ek, the CEO of the music service Spotify, was in a car with Mark Zuckerberg. Ek was visiting the Facebook founder in California while...
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Policing the Digital Storage Landscape
Cyberlockers are the next frontier for storing music, movies, and other personal files on the Internet, but the entertainment industry wants lawmakers to ensure...
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'stingray' Phone Tracker Fuels Constitutional Clash
For more than a year, federal authorities pursued a man they called simply "the Hacker." Only after using a little known cellphone-tracking device—a stingray—were...
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Mining Data For Better Medicine
The antidepressant Paxil was approved for sale in 1992, the cholesterol-lowering drug Pravachol in 1996. Company studies proved that each drug, on its own, works...
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The War on Red-Light Cameras
Late last month, after a drawn-out battle dating back to November, Houston finally turned off its 70 red-light cameras. City residents voted them down in a referendum...
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Schmidt Avoids a Gates-Like Disaster in D.c.
Eric Schmidt cut a confident figure today prior to his testimony before U.S. lawmakers, who later appeared determined to find out if Google abuses its supremacy...
From Communications of the ACM
Success at 16
A high school student wins first prize from ACM for developing a faster keyboard layout.
From Communications of the ACM
Living in a Digital World
Technology has created new opportunities to connect and interact. Yet, researchers are increasingly concerned that heavy technology usage is changing people's behavior...
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Privacy at Risk: Who's Watching You?
The notion of Big Brother has been around for decades, but technology has long lagged behind the Orwellian imagination. Not any more; in the era of smartphones...
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A Future For Drones: Automated Killing
One afternoon last fall at Fort Benning, GA, two model-size planes took off, climbed to 800 and 1,000 feet, and began criss-crossing the military base in search...
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The Last Days of the Old Parking Meter
Motorists' bane, magnet for thieves, and memorialized in the Beatles' "Lovely Rita," the diminutive parking meter has led an outsize life. But its days in New...
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The America Invents Act and the Individual Inventor
Much has been said about how the newly passed patent reform legislation, the Leahy-Smith America Invents Act, benefits large corporations. While that argument...
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Hacking Made Easier, Thanks To New Tools
Time was when it took a fair amount of expertise to launch the kinds of illegal computer attacks that have become the hallmarks of "hacktivist" groups like Anonymous...
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On the Internet, Nobody Knows You
Hackers have proven they can crack just about any computer network, from Sony’s to Citigroup’s. Afterward, they face another challenge: unloading the virtual...
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Walked Into a Lamppost? Hurt While Crocheting? Help Is on the Way
Today, hospitals and doctors use a system of about 18,000 codes to describe medical services in bills they send to insurers. Apparently, that doesn't allow for...
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Chinese Students Are Storming .s. Grad Schools: They Have the Money and the Brains
If you build it, they will come. No, I'm not talking about a baseball field amidst stalks of corn but the educational institutions dotting the U.S. landscape...
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Data Analytics: Crunching the Future
The technicians at SecureAlert's monitoring center in Salt Lake City sit in front of computer screens filled with multicolored dots. Each dot represents someone...
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In Plane View
An airplane’s digital flight-data recorder, or "black box," holds massive amounts of data, documenting the performance of engines, cockpit controls, hydraulic...
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Court Case Asks if 'Big Brother' Is Spelled GPS
The precedent is novel. More precisely, the precedent is a novel. In a series of rulings on the use of satellites and cellphones to track criminal suspects, judges...
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