Communications of the ACM
Generative AI Degrades Online Communities
How large language models are influencing online communities.
From ACM Opinion
China's Cyberassault on America
In justifying U.S. involvement in Libya, the Obama administration cited the "responsibility to protect" citizens of other countries when their governments engage...
From ACM News
All Your Bitcoins Are Ours
Malware authors move fast. Following on from the previous blog post on Bitcoin botnet mining, we have seen a recent Trojan in the wild targeting Bitcoin wallets...
From ACM News
Has Facebook Peaked?
Facebook's active user base grew by only 1.7% in May. That's about half its usual growth rate, and it came after similarly slow growth in April. According to Inside...
From ACM News
Who Is Behind the Hacks?
Every day there's another report of a computer hack. Yesterday it was a video game company and a U.S. Senate database. And today it could be the Federal Reserve...
From ACM Opinion
Palin Fans Trying to Edit Wikipedia Paul Revere Page
Man, you've gotta almost admire the sheer blind dedication of Sarah Palin's wingnut acolytes.
From ACM Opinion
Weiner's Law
The Web makes it easier than ever to cheat—and easier than ever for cheaters to get caught.
From ACM Opinion
Internet Piracy and How to Stop It
Online piracy is a huge business. A recent study found that Web sites offering pirated digital content or counterfeit goods, like illicit movie downloads or bootleg...
From ACM Opinion
Feds Versus the Hacker nderground: Army of Informers Turned By Fear
When Jeff Moss, popularly known as the Dark Tangent, started holding underground hacker conferences in Las Vegas he knew he had a problem. All previous gatherings...
From ACM Opinion
On the Latest Google Chinese-Hacking News
Thanks to many people who have written in asking whether the recent Google announcement of a new China-based wave of attacks on Gmail accounts is related to the...
From ACM News
Parting Shots from a Mars Rover
NASA is no longer sending commands to the Spirit rover on Mars, but the long-silent robot still has a few more chances to phone home. Not that anyone is expecting...
From ACM News
Bill Would Keep Big Brother's Mitts Off Your Gps Data
The reauthorization of the Patriot Act looks like a forgone conclusion. But next month, a bipartisan band of legislators will try to mitigate a different kind...
From ACM Opinion
A Brief Lesson in American History, or Why 'world of Warcraft' Matters
Many readers are probably too young too remember Senator William Proxmire. I am sorry to say he served in the U.S. Senate from 1957 to 1989. Despite some good...
From ACM Opinion
Critical Mass: How to Maintain the Power of Online Reviews
The wisdom of crowds can be brilliant. It can also be corrupt.
From ACM Opinion
Windows 8: What Should Be, If You Ask Me
What's next for Microsoft Windows? With Windows 7 now 19 months old, plenty of people are curious about its successor, a product that everybody's calling Windows...
From ACM Opinion
What Big Data Needs: A Code of Ethical Practices
In this era of Big Data, there is little that cannot be tracked in our online lives—or even in our offline lives. Consider one new Silicon Valley venture, called...
From ACM Opinion
When the Internet Thinks It Knows You
Once upon a time, the story goes, we lived in a broadcast society. In that dusty pre-Internet age, the tools for sharing information weren’t widely available....
From Communications of the ACM
Computer Science Can Use More Science
Software developers should use empirical methods to analyze their designs to predict how working systems will behave.
From Communications of the ACM
The Risks of Stopping Too Soon
Good software design is never easy, but stopping too soon makes the job more difficult.
From Communications of the ACM
Practical Application of Theoretical Estimation
One of the most popular and successful approaches to estimating software projects is the Putnam model. Developed in the 1970s by...
From Communications of the ACM