Communications of the ACM
The news archive provides access to past news stories from Communications of the ACM and other sources by date.
July 2019
From ACM News
The Fantastic Seven
Technion awarded honorary doctorates to seven distinguished men and women, including past ACM president Stuart I. Feldman.
From ACM TechNews
Recognizing Kidney Injury Due to Burns Is Improved by AI
A new artificial intelligence/machine learning model can predict burn-related acute kidney injury quicker and more accurately than ever.
From ACM TechNews
Spurred by Amazon, Supermarkets Try Swapping Cashiers for Cameras
Supermarket chains in Europe are testing cashierless stores with cameras that monitor items shoppers pick, with transactions recorded as they exit.
From ACM TechNews
A Zoom Flaw Gives Hackers Easy Access to Your Webcam
Hackers can exploit vulnerabilities in the Zoom videoconferencing desktop app to commandeer a user's Webcam, a security researcher warns.
From ACM News
Contention Over H-1B Visas is Hot Again
Should the U.S. admit more, or fewer, foreign technology workers?
From ACM News
Apollo 11 Had a Hidden Hero: Software
The moon landing was one of the most important moments in the history of computing, laying the foundations of much of our digital world.
From ACM News
Craigslist's Craig Newmark: 'Outrage is Profitable. Most Online Outrage is Faked for Profit'
The founder of the online classifieds site is a survivor of the era of Internet optimism. He rejects the idea his website helped cause journalism's financial crisis.
From ACM TechNews
NASA Chooses MSU Researchers' Computer for Trial on Moon
A radiation-hardened computer designed by Montana State University researchers was chosen by the U.S. National Aeronautics and Space Administration to be tested on the Moon.
From ACM TechNews
Baseball's Robot Umpires Are Here. You Might Not Notice the Difference.
The Atlantic League was the first U.S. professional baseball league to use a "robot" umpire, at its recent All-Star Game.
From ACM TechNews
AI Can Edit Photos with Zero Experience
Researchers are using deep internal learning, in which a machine learning algorithm ascertains the internal structure of a single image from scratch, to edit photos without previous training.
From ACM TechNews
Hackers Breach Greece's Top-Level Domain Registrar
Researchers said Greece's top-level domain registrar has suffered a hacker breach, and identified the state-sponsored "Sea Turtle" hacker group as the perpetrator.
From ACM TechNews
Chameleon Theory Could Change Our Thoughts on Gravity
Massive supercomputer simulations of the universe will be used to test whether the Chameleon Theory (f(R)-gravity) could explain the formation of cosmological structures.
From ACM News
American Voters Feel More Prepared for Election Hacking in 2020
Democrats were 35% more likely to say that they were at least slightly confident that the U.S. will be ready for any cyber attack in the 2020 Presidential elections than they were right before the 2018 midterm elections.
From ACM News
Fernando Corbató, a Father of Your Computer (and Your Password), Dies at 93
Computers, he said, were so expensive to use that any idle time was a huge waste. But with time-sharing, computer time was carefully metered and wasted time all but eliminated.
From ACM News
Alan Turing Will Be New Face of £50 Note, Bank of England Says
Alan Turing will be the face of Britain's new 50-pound note, the Bank of England announced.
From ACM TechNews
AI Poker Bot Is First to Beat Professionals at Multiplayer Game
A new artificial intelligence program beat elite professional poker players at six-player no-limit Texas hold'em poker.
From ACM TechNews
German Scientists Pull Off Autonomous Aircraft Landing
C2Land is an automated landing system that uses GPS for flight control, but does not require any ground-based antennas.
From ACM TechNews
Storing Data in Music
Researchers have developed a method of embedding data in music in a way that is imperceptible to the human ear.
From ACM TechNews
Coast Guard Calls for Ships to Update Their Systems After Malware Attack
The U.S. Coast Guard is recommending all ships update their cybersecurity, following a February malware attack on a vessel that "significantly degraded" its computer system.
From ACM TechNews
UC3M Programs a Humanoid Robot to Communicate in Sign Language
Researchers programmed a humanoid robot to communicate in sign language.
From ACM News
Coding for Disaster
At a U.N. hackathon, open source developers strive to mitigate the impact of natural disasters.
From ACM News
Major League Baseball 'Robot Ump' Calls 1st Professional Baseball Game with 1 Hitch, No Controversy
A computer in the press box communicated to the umpire whether each pitch was in or out of the strike zone, and the umpire relayed the calls to the field as usual.
From ACM TechNews
Waze Data Can Help Predict Car Crashes, Cut Response Time
City leaders, academic researchers, and the U.S. Department of Transportation are working to predict car crashes and reduce emergency response times using data from traffic app Waze.
From ACM TechNews
Robot Uses Machine Learning to Harvest Lettuce
A new vegetable-picking robot uses machine learning to identify and harvest iceberg lettuce.
From ACM TechNews
Shopping Centers Exploring Facial Recognition in Brave New World of Retail
U.S. mall owners and retailers are ramping up their use of facial recognition to ascertain shoppers' traffic patterns, employee performance, and consumer response to displays and marketing.
From ACM News
Chipping Away at Big Data
Neural network chips whittle big data down to size.
From ACM News
Not Just Tech Bros
Northwestern University's Sara Sood and Ian Horswill are working to make computer science more inclusive and appealing.
From ACM TechNews
U.K.'s ICO Fines British Airways Record £183M Over GDPR Breach That Leaked Data From 500,000 Users
The U.K.'s Information Commissioner’s Office has leveled a £183.39-million fine against British Airways for a violation of the General Data Protection Regulation.
From ACM TechNews
Lennon or McCartney? Machine Learning Tries to Crack Disputed Beatles Authorship
Researchers used machine learning to ascertain the authorship of disputed Beatles songs.
From ACM TechNews
Drone Explodes into Maple Seed Microdrones in Midair
Samara-inspired drones can help deliver airborne payloads in a simple, reliable, inexpensive manner.