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
Robots Get Around By Mimicking Primates
Give a friend directions, such as, "it's across the street from a petrol station, just after a red brick building on the right..." and you can be pretty sure they'll...
From ACM Opinion
Patent Could Shackle 3D Printers with Drm
One of the greatest benefits of 3D printing technology—the ability to make replacements or parts for household objects like toys, utensils and gadgets—may be denied...
From ACM News
Graphics Chips Are For More Than Just Eye Candy
Chances are there is a graphics chip in your desktop computer, and it is fuelling a revolution.
From ACM News
The Real Tron: It Security As a Shoot 'em p
Alert to a sudden threat, you race down a virtual corridor of servers, hot on the tail of malicious software.
From ACM News
Mimicry Beats Consciousness in Gaming's Turing Test
The Turing test might still be too hard for software to crack—but two programs have already aced video gaming's answer to this famous evaluation of machine intelligence...
From ACM News
Cameras Know You By Your Walk
Everyone knows how easy it is to recognize a friend or family member from their walk—even from a distance.
From ACM News
Wired Is the New Wireless: Spreading the Web in China
It's not easy to give over 1.3 billion people access to the internet—especially if that population is spread across a vast area that ranges from hinterland to sprawling...
From ACM TechNews
Harnessing nused Smartphone Power For a Computing Boost
Technical University of Braunschweig researchers have found that smartphones can be joined together in a network, which when connected via Wi-Fi, can carry out...
From ACM News
Harness Unused Smartphone Power For a Computing Boost
Smarphone owners carry around more processing power in their pocket than a 1970s-era supercomputer, but most of the time it languishes unused.
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...
From ACM News
Watson Turns Medic: Supercomputer to Diagnose Disease
It is more than a year since Watson, IBM's famous supercomputer, opened a new frontier for artificial intelligence by beating human champions of the quiz show Jeopardy...
From ACM News
3D Printers Tell You When Your Design Will Fail
Make a mistake with your average office printer and the worst that happens is a paper jam and some wasted ink. Do the same with a 3D printer, though, and your newly...
From ACM News
Cheap Chips Herald Future of Wave and Pay
Small, cheap smart-tag devices that are printed as digital circuits in rolls like newspapers could help kickstart the wireless payment industry. The devices, known...
From ACM News
Micro-Drones: The New Face of Cutting-Edge Warfare
Micro-aerial vehicles (MAVs) with uncanny navigation and real-time mapping capabilities could soon be zipping through indoor and outdoor spaces, running reconnaissance...
From ACM TechNews
Bot With Boyish Personality Wins Biggest Turing Test
The chatbot Eugene Goostman fooled Turing test judges 29 percent of the time into thinking it was human to take first place in the recent contest in the United...
From ACM TechNews
Touchscreens Learn Your Habits to Help You Type Faster
Personalized keyboards could help improve typing speeds or reduce mistakes when typing and walking, according to the University of Maryland's Leah Findlater and...
From ACM News
Telerobotics Offers Third Way For Space Exploration
Space exploration may have a new direction. In the 1960s, humans did the exploring but since the last moon landing in 1972, NASA's only explorers beyond low Earth...
From ACM News
Gps Loss Kicked Off Fatal Drone Crash
Hopes that a new breed of commercial drones can be easily integrated into civilian airspace have been dashed after it was revealed that the loss of the technology...
From ACM TechNews
Snow Snaps Give You a Better Weather Picture
Photos taken of snowfall and posted online could help fill holes in satellite weather data caused by cloud cover, says Indiana University Ph.D. student Haipeng...
From ACM News