March 2019 - Vol. 62 No. 3

Features

Opinion Editor's letter Mar 1 2019

It is time for the computing community to face up to computing's growing environmental impact—and take responsibility for it.

Andrew A. Chien

Architecture and Hardware

Opinion Cerf's up Mar 1 2019

Ownership vs. Stewardship

The Internet and the World Wide Web are dependent on the stewardship of a key set of non-profit institutions.

Vinton G. Cerf

Computing Profession

Opinion Departments Mar 1 2019

Lost in Math?

While some people find mathematics befuddling, others find it elegant and beautiful. But the seductive power of mathematical beauty has come under criticism lately.

Moshe Y. Vardi

Data and Information

BLOG@CACM Mar 1 2019

Smoothing the Path to Computing; Pondering Uses for Big Data

Members of the Computing Research Association suggest ways to broaden participation in computer science, while Saurabh Bagchi looks at use cases for big data.

Computing Profession

News Mar 1 2019

Building a Better Battery

How researchers are improving energy storage devices for power generated from renewable sources like solar and wind.

Logan Kugler

Architecture and Hardware

battery with renewable energy sources, illustration

News Mar 1 2019

Exoskeletons Today

Wearable mobile machines integrate people and machines to assist the movement-impaired, and amplify the capabilities of industrial and defense workers while protecting them from injury.

Esther Shein

Architecture and Hardware

News Mar 1 2019

Electronics Need Rare Earths

Demand is expected to spike over the next few years, leading to higher prices and international trade issues.

Keith Kirkpatrick

Architecture and Hardware

Opinion Legally speaking Mar 1 2019

Questioning a New Intellectual Property Right for Press Publishers

Considering the implications of the "link tax" provision of the proposed EU Directive for the Digital Single Market for traditional press publishers.

Pamela Samuelson

Computing Profession

Monopoly Chance card stating Pay Link Tax

Opinion Economic and business dimensions Mar 1 2019

Potential ‘Dark Sides’ of Leisure Technology Use in Youth

Time for balanced reflections on technology.

Ofir Turel

Computing Profession

Opinion The profession of IT Mar 1 2019

An Interview with William Hugh Murray

A discussion of the rapidly evolving realm of practical cyber security.

Peter J. Denning

Security and Privacy

Opinion Education Mar 1 2019

It’s About Power

A call to rethink ethics and equity in computing education.

Sepehr Vakil and Jennifer Higgs

Computing Profession

Opinion Viewpoint Mar 1 2019

From Computational Thinking to Computational Action

Envisioning computing education that both teaches and empowers.

Mike Tissenbaum, Josh Sheldon, and Hal Abelson

Computing Profession

From Computational Thinking to Computational Action, illustration

Practice Mar 1 2019

A Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Blockchain Universe

Blockchain remains a mystery, despite its growing acceptance.

Jim Waldo

Computing Applications

A Hitchhiker's Guide to the Blockchain Universe, illustration

Practice Mar 1 2019

Design Patterns for Managing Up

Four challenging work situations and how to handle them.

Kate Matsudaira

Computing Profession

Design Patterns for Managing Up, illustration

Practice Mar 1 2019

Understanding Database Reconstruction Attacks on Public Data

These attacks on statistical databases are no longer a theoretical danger.

Simson Garfinkel, John M. Abowd, and Christian Martindale

Computing Profession

Research and Advances Contributed articles Mar 1 2019

The Seven Tools of Causal Inference, with Reflections on Machine Learning

The kind of causal inference seen in natural human thought can be "algorithmitized" to help produce human-level machine intelligence.

Judea Pearl

Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning

Rube Goldberg-like contraption, illustration

Research and Advances Contributed articles Mar 1 2019

Metamorphic Testing of Driverless Cars

Metamorphic testing can test untestable software, detecting fatal errors in autonomous vehicles' onboard computer systems.

Zhi Quan Zhou and Liqun Sun

Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning

Research and Advances Contributed articles Mar 1 2019

Blogging Birds: Telling Informative Stories About the Lives of Birds from Telemetric Data

The system transforms raw telemetric data into engaging and informative blog texts readily understood by all.

Architecture and Hardware

flying bird with satellite tag, illustration

Research and Advances Contributed articles Mar 1 2019

The Compositional Architecture of the Internet

A new model for describing the Internet reflects today's reality and the future's needs.

Pamela Zave and Jennifer Rexford

Computing Profession

Research and Advances Review articles Mar 1 2019

Beyond Worst-Case Analysis

The need for deeply understanding when algorithms work (or not) has never been greater.

Tim Roughgarden

Data and Information

Research and Advances Research highlights Mar 1 2019

Technical Perspective: Borrowing Big Code to Automate Programming Activities

"Predicting Program Properties from 'Big Code'" presents new techniques for leveraging big code to automate two programming activities: selecting understandable names for JavaScript identifiers and generating type annotations for JavaScript variables.

Martin C. Rinard

Computing Applications

Research and Advances Research highlights Mar 1 2019

Predicting Program Properties from ‘Big Code’

We present a new approach for predicting program properties from large codebases (aka "Big Code").

Veselin Raychev, Martin Vechev, and Andreas Krause

Computing Applications

Research and Advances Research highlights Mar 1 2019

Technical Perspective: Isolating a Matching When Your Coins Go Missing

Whether there exists a deterministic parallel algorithm for bipartite matching remains an outstanding question at the frontiers of our understanding of the role of randomness in computation. The question has been (nearly) recently resolved in "A Deterministic Parallel Algorithm for Bipartite Perfect Matching."

Nisheeth K. Vishnoi

Systems and Networking

Research and Advances Research highlights Mar 1 2019

A Deterministic Parallel Algorithm for Bipartite Perfect Matching

In this article, we give an almost complete derandomization of the Isolation Lemma for perfect matchings in bipartite graphs.

Stephen Fenner, Rohit Gurjar, and Thomas Thierauf

Systems and Networking

Opinion Last byte Mar 1 2019

Guiding Computers, Robots to See and Think

Fei-Fei Li, co-director of Stanford University's Human-Centered AI Institute, wants to create algorithms that can learn the way human babies do.

Leah Hoffmann

Architecture and Hardware

Recent Issues

Explore the Issue Archive