Communications of the ACM
Building a Practical Quantum Computer
Quantum computation has a long road ahead.
From Communications of the ACMAn 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
Spoof, Jam, Destroy: Why We Need a Backup for GPS
Earth got a warning shot on January 25, 2016. On that day, Air Force engineers were scheduled to kill off a GPS satellite named SVN-23—the oldest in the navigation...
From ACM News
Microsoft's Supreme Court Case Has Big Implications For Data
Five years ago, US law enforcement served Microsoft a search warrant for emails as part of a US drug trafficking investigation. In response, Microsoft handed over...
From ACM News
Inside the Two Years that Shook Facebook, and the World
One day in late February of 2016, Mark Zuckerberg sent a memo to all of Facebook's employees to address some troubling behavior in the ranks.
From ACM News
Mind the Gap: This Researcher Steals Data With Noise, Light, and Magnets
The field of cybersecurity is obsessed with preventing and detecting breaches, finding every possible strategy to keep hackers from infiltrating your digital inner...
From ACM Careers
Inside Amazon's Artificial Intelligence Flywheel
In early 2014, Srikanth Thirumalai met with Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos.
From ACM News
Your Sloppy Bitcoin Drug Deals Will Haunt You For Years
Perhaps you bought some illegal narcotics on the Silk Road half a decade ago, back when that digital black market for every contraband imaginable was still online...
From ACM TechNews
Meet Antifa's Secret Weapon Against Far-Right Extremists
Computer science professor Megan Squire has created an array of programs that monitor approximately 400,000 accounts of white nationalists on Facebook and elsewhere...
From ACM News
Thank the Planet's Shifty Magnetic Poles For Runway Renaming
For decades, pilots heading into or out of Wichita Eisenhower National Airport in southeast Kansas have had three runways to choose from: 1L/19R, 1R/19L, and 14...
From ACM News
Triple Meltdown: How So Many Researchers Found a 20-Year-Old Chip Flaw At the Same Time
Four groups of researchers independently found the vulnerabilities behind the devastating Meltdown and Spectre attacks within months of each other.
From ACM TechNews
A Dead-Simple Algorithm Reveals the True Toll of Voter Id Laws
Researchers have demonstrated it is possible to match individuals across government databases with nearly 100% accuracy by using a few basic identifiers.
From ACM TechNews
An Early Flu Season Thwarts Cdc's Forecasting Challenge
The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has hosted a flu forecasting challenge for the last five years in which academic and industry participants organize...
From ACM TechNews
The Hard Math Behind Bitcoin's Global Warming Problem
A recent report calculated that the global electricity consumption of bitcoin mining would exceed that of the U.S. by July 2019, and of the entire world by November...
From ACM TechNews
Artificial Intelligence Is Killing the Uncanny Valley and Our Grasp on Reality
As deep-learning artificial intelligence technologies advance, the "Uncanny Valley"--the unease people feel toward realistic computer-generated humans--is beginning...
From ACM News
Unprecedented Malware Targets Industrial Safety Systems in the Middle East
Since Stuxnet first targeted and destroyed uranium enrichment centrifuges in Iran last decade, the cybersecurity world has waited for the next step in that digital...
From ACM News
It's Super Hard to Find Humans in the Fcc's Net Neutrality Comments
The Federal Communications Commissions''public comment period on its plans to repeal net neutrality protections was bombarded with bots, memes, and input from people...
From ACM News
Google Is Giving Away AI That Can Build Your Genome Sequence
Today, a teaspoon of spit and a hundred bucks is all you need to get a snapshot of your DNA. But getting the full picture—all 3 billion base pairs of your genome—requires...
From ACM News
The Genesis of Kuri, the Friendly Home Robot
Over the course of thousands of years, dogs have evolved alongside humans to be awesome.
From ACM TechNews
Captcha Is Dying. This Is How It's Being Reinvented For the AI Age
Completely Automated Public Turing Tests to tell Computers and Humans Apart (CAPTCHAs) appear to be heading toward obsolescence.
From ACM News
It Takes Just $1,000 to Track Someone's Location with Mobile Ads
When you consider the nagging privacy risks of online advertising, you may find comfort in the thought of a vast, abstract company like Pepsi or Nike viewing you...
From ACM TechNews