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
John Deere Doubles Down on Silicon Valley and Robots
Farm-equipment giant is buying Bear Flag Robotics, which makes autonomous tractors
From ACM News
Controversial Tool Calls Out Thousands of Hackable Websites
PunkSpider is back, and crawling hundreds of millions of sites for vulnerabilities.
From ACM TechNews
Rats Took Over This Pacific Island. Now Drones Are Leading the Fightback
The conservation group Island Conservation plans to use drones to try to eliminate rats on Tetiaroa atoll and two other islands in French Polynesia, beginning in...
From ACM TechNews
Algorithm That Predicts Deadly Infections Is Often Flawed
An algorithm designed to forecast sepsis infections is significantly lacking in accuracy.
From ACM News
Algorithm that Predicts Deadly Infections is Often Flawed
A study found that a system used to identify cases of sepsis missed most instances and frequently issued false alarms.
From ACM News
U.K. Has a Plan for a New 'Pandemic Radar' System
Disease surveillance schemes to catch the next rising virus already exist—they're just not communicating with each other.
From ACM News
Ford's Ever-Smarter Robots Are Speeding Up the Assembly Line
A transmission factory shows how artificial intelligence may creep into industrial processes in gradual and often imperceptible ways.
From ACM News
This AI Could Help Wipe Out Colon Cancer
Medtronic's GI Genius, recently cleared by the FDA, will help doctors identify precancerous polyps.
From ACM News
AI Could Enable 'Swarm Warfare' for Tomorrow's Fighter Jets
A Pentagon project is testing scenarios involving multiple aircraft that could change the dynamics of air combat.
From ACM News
Google's Antitrust Cases: A Guide for the Perplexed
The company is facing multiple lawsuits from the U.S. Department of Justice and three dozen states.
From ACM News
Internet Freedom Has Taken a Hit During the Covid-19 Pandemic
From surveillance to arrests, governments are using the novel coronavirus as cover for a crackdown on digital liberty.
From ACM TechNews
Split-Second 'Phantom' Images Can Fool Tesla's Autopilot
Researchers at Israel's Ben Gurion University of the Negev found they could fool Tesla's Autopilot driver-assistance systems into automatically reacting without...
From ACM News
Lidar Is Finally Becoming a Real Business
The success of lidar companies was unclear until this summer, when three leading makers offered glimpses of their finances.
From ACM TechNews
Kids' Smartwatches a Security Nightmare, Despite Years of Warnings
Researchers at Germany's Münster University of Applied Sciences found smartwatch brands marketed for children are exploitable, based on years of similar findings...
From ACM TechNews
Spies Can Eavesdrop by Watching a Light Bulb's Vibrations
Researchers have developed a long-distance eavesdropping method that exploits vibrations on the glass surface of a light bulb's interior.
From ACM TechNews
This Robot Can Guess How You're Feeling by the Way You Walk
A new algorithm enables a small four-wheeled robot to perform real-time gait analysis in order to determine a walker's emotional state.
From ACM News
The Secret History of Facial Recognition
Sixty years ago, a sharecropper's son invented a technology to identify faces. Then the record of his role all but vanished.
From ACM News
Artificial Intelligence Confronts a 'Reproducibility' Crisis
Machine-learning systems are black boxes even to the researchers that build them. That makes it hard for others to assess the results.
From ACM News
Google Wants to Help Tech Companies Know Less About You
By releasing its homegrown differential privacy tool, Google will make it easier for any company to boost its privacy bona fides.
From ACM News