Communications of the ACM
Why the Simplex Method, at Age 75, is Still the Go-To Algorithm
Daniel A. Spielman and colleague Shang-hua Teng solved the mystery of the Simplex Method using a technique called smoothed analysis… From ACM NewsAn 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
White House and Department of Homeland Security Want a Way Around Encryption
The White House and U.S. Department of Homeland Security officials support arguments by the nation’s law enforcement and intelligence leaders that encryption technology...
From ACM News
How Benford's Law Reveals Suspicious Activity on Twitter
Back in the 1880s, the American astronomer Simon Newcomb noticed something strange about the book of logarithmic tables in his library—the earlier pages were much...
From ACM Opinion
3 Questions on Killer Robots
Delegates to the United Nations Convention on Certain Conventional Weapons are meeting this week in Geneva to discuss fully autonomous weapons—machines that could...
From ACM Opinion
Toolkits For the Mind
When the Japanese computer scientist Yukihiro Matsumoto decided to create Ruby, a programming language that has helped build Twitter, Hulu, and much of the modern...
From ACM TechNews
Probing the Whole Internet For Weak Spots
When the FREAK encryption flaw was uncovered in early March, a team of researchers used a special tool to scan the entire Internet to identify vulnerable websites...
From ACM News
Engineering the Perfect Baby
If anyone had devised a way to create a genetically engineered baby, I figured George Church would know about it.
From ACM Opinion
Our Fear of Artificial Intelligence
Years ago I had coffee with a friend who ran a startup.
From ACM TechNews
Open Surveillance
A new encrypted search system could enable law enforcement officials to collect data more openly without compromising investigations.
From ACM News
Should Industrial Robots Be Able to Hurt Their Human Coworkers?
How much should a robot be allowed to hurt its coworkers?
From ACM News
Town Built For Driverless Cars
A mocked-up set of busy streets in Ann Arbor, Michigan, will provide the sternest test yet for self-driving cars.
From ACM TechNews
The Hidden World of Facebook "like Farms"
A new study systematically investigated the nature of so-called Facebook "like farms," services which will direct Facebook Likes to a given Facebook page for a...
From ACM News
The Hidden World of Facebook 'like Farms'
Facebook has become the advertising outlet of choice for many of the world’s businesses and companies.
From ACM News
Data Mining Reveals How Social Coding Succeeds (and Fails)
The process of developing software has undergone huge transformation in the last decade or so.
From ACM TechNews
Networked Home Gadgets Offer Hackers New Opportunities
Connecting a new home appliance to a personal Wi-Fi network or broadband modem could increase the risk that data will be taken from other computers in the house...
From ACM News
A Chinese Internet Giant Starts to Dream
Punk bands from Blondie to the Ramones once played in Broadway Studios, an age-worn 95-year-old neoclassical building surrounded by strip clubs in San Francisco’s...
From ACM TechNews
Technology Can Make Lawful Surveillance Both Open and Effective
New technology could enable law enforcement to identify people whose actions justify investigation and demonstrate probable cause via an authorized electronic...
From ACM News
Malware Traffic Spikes Preceded Russian and Israeli Conflicts
A study of malware operating on corporate and government networks suggests that the communication patterns of these programs could warn of major conflicts.
From ACM TechNews
The Growing Threat of Network-Based Steganography
Researchers have uncovered Duqu, an unusual form of steganography-based malware that embeds itself in Microsoft Windows machines.
From ACM News