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
Fighting Cancer With the Google Pagerank Algorithm. Sort Of.
In cancer parlance, metastasize is a four-letter word.
From Communications of the ACM
Looking Back at Big Data
As computational tools open up new ways of understanding history, historians and computer scientists are working together to explore the possibilities.
From ACM Careers
Youtube Reaches a Billion Monthly Viewers, Boosted By 'generation C'
YouTube has a billion unique users visiting the video-sharing website every month, equivalent to one out of every two people on the Internet—and the generationsmartphones...
From ACM News
Revealed: The 1962 CIA Paper That Predicts the Big Deal With Big Data
The Central Intelligence Agency has published for the first time "Some Far-Out Thoughts on Computers," a 1962 internal document that shows how eager the agency...
From ACM News
Smartphones Are Reinventing—and Ditching—the Keyboard
In the future, your smartphone won't auto-correct your errors. It will correct them before they're even made.
From ACM News
When 'likes' Can Shed Light
Patterns of "Likes" posted by people on Facebook can unintentionally expose their political and religious views, drug use, divorce, and sexual orientation, researchers...
From ACM News
Google Concedes That Drive-By Prying Violated Privacy
Google on Tuesday acknowledged to state officials that it had violated people's privacy during its Street View mapping project when it casually scooped up passwords...
From ACM News
Skype's Been Hijacked in China, and Microsoft Is O.k. With It
Jeffrey Knockel is an unlikely candidate to expose the inner workings of Skype's role in China’s online surveillance apparatus.
From ACM News
Facebook 'likes' Predict Personality
Researchers at Cambridge University used algorithms to predict religion, politics, race and sexual orientation.
From ACM TechNews
Algorithms Get a Human Hand in Steering Web
While the work computers do becomes increasingly complex, humans still may be called upon to provide the programs with context and nuance.
From ACM Opinion
Sxsw: Google's Amit Singhal Talks Natural-Language Search, Mobile
How do you build a search engine that's more attuned to natural language, capable of divining what you mean, and giving back what you want?
From ACM News
Everything We Know About What Data Brokers Know About You
Data companies are scooping up enormous amounts of information about almost every American. They sell information about whether you're pregnant or divorced or trying...
From ACM News
The History of Hadoop: From 4 Nodes to the Future of Data
Depending on how one defines its birth, Hadoop is now 10 years old. In that decade, Hadoop has gone from being the hopeful answer to Yahoo’s search-engine woes...
From ACM TechNews
Unreported Side Effects of Drugs Are Found Using Internet Search Data, Study Finds
Researchers found evidence of unreported prescription drug side effects before the U.S. Food and Drug Administration did by analyzing search engine query data.
From ACM News
Massive Fiber-Optic Installation Lights p Library Queries
Getting a glimpse into the curious minds of others has never been so beautiful—or so bright.
From ACM Opinion
Computer Interfaces: Tech's Next Great Frontier
Consider the tongue. It's sensitive yet muscular, packed with taste buds and nerves, and without its acrobatic ability humans wouldn’t be able to eat or talk. It's...
From ACM News
A Genetic Code For Genius?
At a former paper-printing factory in Hong Kong, a 20-year-old wunderkind named Zhao Bowen has embarked on a challenging and potentially controversial quest: uncovering...
From ACM News
Any Two Pages on the Web Are Connected By 19 Clicks or Less
No one knows for sure how many individual pages are on the web, but right now, it’s estimated that there are more than 14 billion.
From ACM Careers
Data Mining Is New Lobbying Gold
A congressman gets an earful from his neighbor after church about a tax bill. A senator suddenly finds old high school classmates calling her about an upcoming...
From ACM News