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
Algorithms Quietly Run the City of DC—and Maybe Your Hometown
A new report finds that municipal agencies in Washington deploy dozens of automated decision systems, often without residents' knowledge.
From ACM News
The 'Viral' Secure Programming Language That's Taking Over Tech
Rust makes it impossible to introduce some of the most common security vulnerabilities. And its adoption can't come soon enough.
From ACM News
The Sci-Fi Dream of a 'Molecular Computer' Is Getting More Real
Chemists have long conceptualized tiny machines that could fabricate drugs, plastics, and other polymers that are hard to build with bigger tools.
From ACM News
A Long-Awaited Defense Against Data Leaks May Have Just Arrived
MongoDB claims its new "Queryable Encryption" lets users search their databases while sensitive data stays encrypted. Oh, and its cryptography is open source.
From ACM TechNews
Bot Hunting Is All About the Vibes
Though several bot detection systems are available, there is no standard definition of "bot" and the results of the detection systems can differ.
From ACM News
Bot Hunting Is All About the Vibes
At the heart of every bot-detection tool is a human's gut feeling—and all the messiness that comes with it.
From ACM News
Amazon Wants to Cocoon You With 'Ambient Intelligence'
The company's new smart gadget uses radar to track your breathing while you sleep. It's part of Amazon's plan to weave its products invisibly into your life.
From ACM News
Electric Vehicles Could Rescue the Power Grid
By 2035, the batteries in California's zero-emission cars could power every home in the state for three days.
From ACM News
Everything Apple Announced
Wednesday's iPhone launch event saw the release of four new iPhone models, plus an Apple Watch built to take a beating.
From ACM News
The Low Threshold for Face Recognition in New Delhi
Police in India's capital say they only require an 80% accuracy rate for matches, raising new alarm bells for civil liberty advocates.
From ACM News
Sloppy Use of Machine Learning Is Causing a 'Reproducibility Crisis' in Science
AI hype has researchers in fields from medicine to sociology rushing to use techniques they don't always understand—causing a wave of spurious results.
From ACM News
Sloppy Software Patches Are a 'Disturbing Trend'
The Zero Day Initiative has found a concerning uptick in security updates that fail to fix vulnerabilities.
From ACM TechNews
Flaw in VA's Medical Records Platform May Put Patients at Risk
Security researcher Zachary Minneker discovered a flaw in the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs' VistA records platform and determined that hackers easily can...
From ACM TechNews
The Hacking of Starlink Terminals Has Begun
Lennert Wouters at Belgium's Katholieke Universiteit Leuven hacked SpaceX's Starlink network.
From ACM TechNews
NASA is Crowdsourcing Cloud Research--on Mars
Scientists have recruited volunteers to identify clouds on Mars through the Zooniverse, a platform that hosts crowdsourced citizen projects.
From ACM News
Crypto and the U.S. Government Are Headed for a Decisive Showdown
The Securities and Exchange Commission accused Ishan Wahi, a former product manager at the Coinbase cryptocurrency exchange, of insider trading and securities fraud...
From ACM TechNews
Datacenters Are Facing Climate Crisis
With studies predicting more extreme weather in the coming years, datacenters need to be prepared.
From ACM News
New Attack Can Unmask Anonymous Users on Any Major Browser
Researchers have found a way to use the web's basic functions to identify who visits a site—without the user detecting the hack.
From ACM News
Cruise's Robot Car Outages Are Jamming Up San Francisco
In a series of incidents, the GM subsidiary lost contact with its autonomous vehicles, leaving them frozen in traffic and trapping human drivers.
From ACM News