Communications of the ACM
An edited collection of advanced computing news from Communications of the ACM, ACM TechNews, other ACM resources, and news sites around the Web.
From ACM News
Ethiopian Air Pilots Turned Off 737 MAX Anti-Stall System. Then It Turned On Again
The pilots of Ethiopia Airlines Flight 302 apparently followed the proper steps to shut down an errant flight control system as they struggled to regain control...
From ACM News
They Didn't Buy the DLC: Feature that Could've Prevented 737 Crashes Was Sold As an Option
The crashed Lion Air 737 MAX and the Ethiopian Airlines 737 MAX aircraft had more in common than aircraft design and the apparently malfunctioning flight system...
From ACM News
ber Escapes Criminal Charges for 2018 Self-Driving Death in Arizona
A prosecutor in Arizona has decided not to press charges against Uber in the March 2018 death of Elaine Herzberg. One of Uber's self-driving cars crashed into Herzberg...
From ACM News
String of Ions May Out-Compute Best Quantum Computers
Usually, I reflexively delete press releases. This one was no different, but as the message vanished, the subject line registered—"IonQ… quantum computing."
From ACM News
Bless the Overclockers: In the Data Center World, Liquid Cooling Is Becoming King
In Iron Man 2, there is a moment when Tony Stark is watching a decades-old film of his deceased father, who tells him "I'm limited by the technology of my time,...
From ACM News
Imaging Ever Closer to the Event Horizon
While black holes themselves swallow any light beyond their event horizon, the area outside the event horizon tends to emit lots of light.
From ACM News
Milky Way to Face a One-Two Punch of Galaxy Collisions
If our knowledge of galaxy structures was limited to the Milky Way, we'd get a lot of things wrong. The Milky Way, it turns out, is unusual.
From ACM News
All Hail the AI Overlord: Smart Cities and the AI Internet of Things
Cities generate lots of data. The exact amount depends on the size of the city and its sophistication and ambitions, but it's certainly more than mere humans can...
From ACM News
NASA's Next Mars Rover Will se AI to Be a Better Science Partner
NASA can't yet put a scientist on Mars. But in its next rover mission to the Red Planet, NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory is hoping to use artificial intelligence...
From ACM News
More Than an Auto-Pilot, AI Charts Its Course in Aviation
Ask anyone what they think of when the words "artificial intelligence" and aviation are combined, and it's likely the first things they'll mention are drones.
From ACM Opinion
Nailing Down the Nature of 'Oumuamua; It's Probably a Comet, but . . .
Shortly before Halloween, the chairman of Harvard's astronomy department openly declared that an interstellar object hurtling through our Solar System might just...
From ACM News
Rough-and-Ready Quantum Memory May Link Disparate Quantum Systems
I'm a simple person. To me, a computer consists of three parts: data that goes in and out, operations that modify the data, and storage that holds the data.
From ACM News
Intel CPs Fall to New Hyperthreading Exploit That Pilfers Crypto Keys
Side-channel leak in Skylake and Kaby Lake chips probably affects AMD CPUs, too.
From ACM News
NOAA Is About to Make Some Big Changes to Its Global Weather Model
The nation's weather and climate organization, NOAA, has appointed a new director of its Environmental Modeling Center.
From ACM News
Turbulence, the Oldest nsolved Problem in Physics
Werner Heisenberg won the 1932 Nobel Prize for helping to found the field of quantum mechanics and developing foundational ideas like the Copenhagen interpretation...
From ACM News
Two Japanese Robots Are Now Happily Hopping on an Asteroid
More than 24 hours after they were released by the Hayabusa2 spacecraft to fly down to the surface of the asteroid Ryugu, the Japanese Space Agency has finally...
From ACM News
Top Drone: Reaper Scores Drone Kill in Air-to-Air Missile Test
The US Air Force has revealed that an MQ-9 Reaper uncrewed aircraft successfully shot down a smaller drone with a heat-seeking air-to-air missile in a test last...
From ACM News
This Nifty Flying Robot Can Hover, Bank, and Turn as Deftly as a Fruit Fly
Flying insects like bees, dragonflies, and fruit flies can perform impressive aerodynamic feats, particularly when seeking to evade predators or the swatting motion...
From ACM News
Engineering Tour de Force Births Programmable Optical Quantum Computer
There comes a moment in every physicist's life when they think the unthinkable: I wish I were an engineer. I suspect this thought crossed the minds of the 14-odd...
From ACM News