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
First Detailed Public Map of .s. Internet Backbone Could Make It Stronger
It may not look like much at first glance, but a map created by University of Wisconsin computer science professor Paul Barford and about a dozen colleagues took...
From ACM News
How International Monitors Spot Nukes and Other Rumblings
The ultimate nightmare for critics of the Iran nuclear deal being debated in Congress is that somehow, despite the agreement and all its built-in safeguards, Iran...
From ACM News
Tool Makes It Easier to Evade Online Censors
After the huge chemical explosion in Tianjin, China, this month, two cleanup efforts began.
From ACM News
Teaching Machines to nderstand S
The first time Yann LeCun revolutionized artificial intelligence, it was a false dawn.
From ACM News
Military Robots: Armed, But How Dangerous?
An open letter calling for a ban on lethal weapons controlled by artificially intelligent machines was signed last week by thousands of scientists and technologists...
From ACM News
Flying Robots That Can See
A tiny artificial eye inspired by the vision systems of insects could help small flying drones navigate their surroundings well enough to avoid collisions while...
From ACM TechNews
Cars May Soon nderstand More of What You Say
Many cars today now come with limited voice control, but more elaborate and robust systems could be coming to cars soon.
From ACM News
Minecraft Shows Robots How to Stop Dithering
The computer game Minecraft, which depicts a world made up of retro, pixelated blocks that can be modified and rearranged in endless architectural configurations...
From ACM News
An Algorithmic Sense of Humor? Not Yet.
In recent months, artificial-intelligence researchers have made giant strides in matching human performance in all kind of tasks that had, until recently, been...
From ACM TechNews
Collaborative Photography App Allows Smartphones to Record 'bullet Time'
Anyone can now create "bullet-time" movies using collaborative photography techniques on their smartphones.
From ACM News
Google's Deep Learning Machine Learns to Synthesize Real World Images
Google Street View offers panoramic views of more or less any city street in much of the developed world, as well as views along countless footpaths, inside shopping...
From ACM News
How Ads Follow You from Phone to Desktop to Tablet
Imagine you slack off at work and read up online about the latest Gibson 1959 Les Paul electric guitar replica.
From ACM TechNews
How Machine Vision Solved One of the Great Mysteries of 20th-Century Surrealist Art
A pair of identical paintings attributed to Belgian surrealist artist Rene Magritte has long mystified art experts as to which one is the original.
From ACM News
Injectable Implants Could Help Crack the Brain's Codes
Understanding how the brain works—or doesn't, as the case may be—depends on deciphering the patterns of electrical signals its neurons produce.
From ACM News
Who Will Own the Robots?
The way Hod Lipson describes his Creative Machines Lab captures his ambitions: "We are interested in robots that create and are creative."
From ACM News
Deep Learning Catches On in New Industries, from Fashion to Finance
A machine-learning technique that has already given computers an eerie ability to recognize speech and categorize images is now creeping into industries ranging...
From ACM News
Household Robots Are Here, but Where Are They Going?
Social robots like the quasi-anthropomorphic Jibo and Amazon's far more utilitarian Echo are beginning to find their places in our living rooms.
From ACM News
Is This the First Computational Imagination?
Imagine an oak tree in a field of wheat, silhouetted against a cloudless blue sky on a dreamy sunny afternoon.
From ACM TechNews
Oculus Rift Hack Transfers Your Facial Expressions Onto Your Avatar
Researchers have developed a system to track the facial expressions of users wearing a virtual-reality headset and transfer them to a virtual avatar.
From ACM News