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
When Will Computers Have Common Sense? Ask Facebook
Facebook is well known for its early and increasing use of artificial intelligence.
From ACM News
Tech Turns to Biology as Data Storage Needs Explode
Researchers have decoded the genomes of mammoths and a 700,000-year-old horse using DNA fragments extracted from fossils in the past few years. DNA clearly persists...
From ACM News
How to Hack the Hackers: The Human Side of Cyber Crime
Say what you will about cybercriminals, says Angela Sasse, "their victims rave about the customer service".
From ACM News
How Nasa's Next Big Telescope Could Take Pictures of Another Earth
Can NASA's next big space telescope take a picture of an alien Earth-like planet orbiting another star?
From ACM Opinion
Scott Aaronson Answers Every Ridiculously Big Question I Throw at Him
Scott Aaronson has one of the highest intelligence/pretension ratios I’ve ever encountered.
From ACM News
Are We Living in a Computer Simulation?
If you, me and every person and thing in the cosmos were actually characters in some giant computer game, we would not necessarily know it.
From ACM News
Mysterious Gravitational Tug on Orbiter May Help Find Planet Nine
The hunt is on to find "Planet Nine"—a large undiscovered world, perhaps 10 times as massive as Earth and four times its size—that scientists think could be lurking...
From ACM News
Driverless Cars Must Have Steering Wheels, Brake Pedals, Feds Say
Driverless cars should have a fairly easy time getting the green light to operate on U.S. roadways, as long as they look and act like the vehicles people have been...
From ACM Careers
Pentagon Paying Techies to Think Like Terrorists
To stop a terrorist, it helps to think like one.
From ACM News
The .s. Government Launches a $100-Million 'apollo Project of the Brain'
Three decades ago, the U.S. government launched the Human Genome Project, a 13-year endeavor to sequence and map all the genes of the human species.
From ACM News
Exoplanet Census Suggests Earth Is Special After All
More than 400 years ago Renaissance scientist Nicolaus Copernicus reduced us to near nothingness by showing that our planet is not the center of the solar system...
From ACM News
Gps and the World's First 'space War'
Twenty-five years ago U.S.-led Coalition forces launched the world’s first "space war" when they drove Iraqi troops out of Kuwait.
From ACM News
Robotic Comet Lander Philae Says Good-Bye
On a dark stretch of the chilly Comet 67P/Churyumov–Gerasimenko the lander Philae has begun a lonely and silent vigil.
From ACM News
Deciphering the Language of the Brain
Understanding how brains work is one of the greatest scientific challenges of our times, but despite the impression sometimes given in the popular press, researchers...
From ACM Opinion
Wikipedia Turns 15
It must be difficult for the roughly half a billion people who visit Wikipedia every month to remember a world without the free online encyclopedia.
From ACM News
Nasa and the .s. Air Force Test a New Ground-Based Gps
Anyone who has struggled to pinpoint his or her location in a mall, airport or urban canyon amid skyscrapers has experienced a GPS gap firsthand.
From ACM News
'improving' Humans with Customized Genes Sparks Argument Among Scientists
"Today we sense we are close to be being able to alter human heredity," Nobel Laureate and California Institute of Technology virologist David Baltimore said December...
From ACM News
The Most Important Number in Climate Change
The furious majesty of a thunderstorm defies computer simulation.
From ACM News
A Quick Guide to the Cybersecurity Bill Passed By the .s. Senate
After more than a year of bickering, stalling and revising, the Senate passed its most significant cybersecurity bill to date 74–21.
From ACM Opinion