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
The Internet Mapmakers Helping Nepal
The night after the earthquake hit Nepal, people feared to sleep in their homes, worrying about powerful aftershocks toppling the few buildings left standing.
From ACM News
.s. Supreme Court: Gps Trackers Are a Form of Search and Seizure
If the government puts a GPS tracker on you, your car, or any of your personal effects, it counts as a search—and is therefore protected by the Fourth Amendment...
From ACM News
The Attention Machine
Human attention isn't stable, ever, and it costs us: lives lost when drivers space out, billions of dollars wasted on inefficient work, and mental disorders that...
From ACM Careers
The Anti-Plagiarism Machine
Every day, researchers add hundreds of new papers to ArXiv, the massive public database of scientific writing and research.
From ACM News
The Quiet Rise of the Satellite Spy Agency
As far as intelligence agencies go, the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency has remained relatively low profile—attracting neither the intrigue of, say, the...
From ACM News
Listening In: The Navy Is Tracking Ocean Sounds Collected By Scientists
In a retired shore station for transpacific communications cables on the western coast of Vancouver Island sits a military computer in a padlocked cage.
From ACM Careers
Vexed in the City: Starved For Tech Talent and Yet Nobody to Hire?
Darin Wedel made headlines in 2012 when his wife, Jennifer, asked President Barack Obama during a Google+ Hangout why her husband was still out of work while H-1B...
From ACM Opinion
How to Invent a Person Online
On April 8, 2013, I received an envelope in the mail from a nonexistent return address in Toledo, Ohio.
From ACM Careers
A Rare Look Inside the Air Force's Drone Training Classroom
Learning how to drop bombs and fire Hellfire missiles is more like sitting in a regular college classroom than you might expect.
From ACM Opinion
Should .s. Hackers Fix Cybersecurity Holes or Exploit Them?
There's a debate going on about whether the U.S. government—specifically, the NSA and United States Cyber Command—should stockpile Internet vulnerabilities or disclose...
From ACM Opinion
The Not-So-Distant Future When We Can All pgrade Our Brains
In a decade, cognitive enhancement may have gone mainstream.
From ACM News
The First Look at How Google's Self-Driving Car Handles City Streets
The first rule of riding in Google's self-driving car, says Dmitri Dolgov, is not to compliment Google's self-driving car.
From ACM Opinion
Remembering Mit, When There Were Just 50 Women in a Class of 1,000
When Radia Perlman attended MIT in the late '60s and '70s, she was one of just a few dozen women (about 50) out of a class of 1,000.
From ACM News
Everything We Know About How the Nsa Tracks People's Physical Location
Glenn Greenwald is back reporting about the NSA, now with Pierre Omidyar's news organization FirstLook and its introductory publication, The Intercept.
From ACM Opinion
Stanford Researchers: It Is Trivially Easy to Match Metadata to Real People
In defending the NSA's telephony metadata collection efforts, government officials have repeatedly resorted to one seemingly significant detail: This is just metadata—numbers...
From ACM News
Intense Smog Is Making Beijing's Massive Surveillance Network Practically Useless
Beijing's surveillance network, one of the most extensive and invasive in the world, has been compromised by an unexpected foe: smog.
From ACM News
Of Course Gas Stations Will se Facial Recognition Tech to Serve 'Relevant' Ads
Say you're at a gas station. Say you're buying some supplies—bottled water, coffee, maybe some M&Ms—before you head back to your car.
From ACM News
Study: 80% of College Students Say They Text in Class
From the front of his classroom, University of Nebraska-Lincoln associate professor Barney McCoy noticed that students’ smart phones were making regular appearances...
From ACM Opinion