Communications of the ACM
Pandemic Makes Modeling's Importance Clear
The number of COVID-19 models was growing so numerous that one laboratory created a COVID-19 forecasting hub featuring an ensemble… From ACM NewsAn edited collection of advanced computing news from Communications of the ACM, ACM TechNews, other ACM resources, and news sites around the Web.
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Riding Out Quarantine With a Chatbot Friend: ‘I Feel Very Connected’
The digital companions may sound like science fiction. But when social isolation became the norm, they helped deal with the loneliness, some users say.
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Quantum Backbone
An Oak Ridge early-career award recipient plots the infrastructure for a quantum-information highway.
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Activists Cite Tabulation Flaw in Georgia Mail-In Ballots
Thousands of votes in Georgia's primary may not have been counted, due to faulty software or poorly calibrated scanners used to count mailed ballots.
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Ceze, Strauss Share ACM SIGARCH Maurice Wilkes Award
The ACM Special Interest Group on Computer Architecture named Luis Ceze and Karin Strauss to share the 2020 Maurice Wilkes Award.
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Tech Companies Say They Value Diversity, but Reports Show Little Change in Last Six Years
A CNBC analysis of minority hiring by tech companies found they have made little progress since vowing to increase diversity six years ago.
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Norway Pulls Its Coronavirus Contact Tracing App After Privacy Watchdog's Warning
Norway has suspended use of a coronavirus contact tracing application to allow changes to be made.
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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.
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Elite CIA Unit that Developed Hacking Tools Failed to Secure its Own Systems, Allowing Massive Leak
The breach came nearly three years after Edward Snowden stole and disclosed classified information about NSA surveillance operations.
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Next-Generation Cockroach-Inspired Robot Is Small, but Mighty
The researchers say the new robot is one of the smallest and most dexterous robots created to date.
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KingMiner Botnet Brute-Forces MSSQL Databases to Install Cryptocurrency Miner
U.K. cybersecurity firm Sophos is advising MSSQL database owners to fortify their servers against botnet-orchestrated brute-force attacks.
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In Autonomous Russia, Tractor Drives You
Two Russian companies have partnered on an advanced autonomous driving system for agricultural vehicles.
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Who’s a Bot? Who’s Not?
It sometimes seems automated bots are taking over social media and driving human discourse. But some (real) researchers aren't so sure.
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Researchers Model the Health Benefits of Electric Cars, Find 'Large Improvement in Air Quality'
Researchers in Canada created computer simulations of the potential human health benefits of a large-scale transition to electric cars.
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Researchers Turn to Wearable Tech in Race to Track Covid-19
Researchers are using wearable technologies that monitor fluctuations in biomarkers to collect real-time patient data, to try to track the spread of Covid-19.
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Exit From the Covid-19 Lockdown: There's an App for That
The Dutch government wants every citizen to download an app for tracking and tracing potential Covid-19 infections, but the app does not yet exist.
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Silq is a High-level Programming Language for Quantum Computers
Silq is a research project that does not yet run on any of the existing quantum hardware platforms.
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Angling for Underwater Wi-Fi
A new underwater Wi-Fi system could enable divers to transmit footage from underwater to the surface instantly by sending data through light beams.
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Robots Armed with UV Light Fight Grape Mildew
A multi-institutional and international collaboration has yielded autonomous robots that use ultraviolet lamps to kill powdery mildew on crops.
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DARPA Invites Hackers to Break Hardware to Make It More Secure
The U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency is inviting white-hat hackers to identify vulnerabilities in computer chips prior to their deployment.
From ACM TechNews