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
Obama's Brain Project Backs Neurotechnology
The White House said that President Obama's BRAIN Initiative is generating interest from companies and philanthropies in a sign of what it calls a wider partnership...
From ACM News
Radio Waves Offer Cheap Gesture Detection on Smartphones
A research project at the University of Washington shows a way to add gesture control to phones without requiring sophisticated new sensors.
From ACM TechNews
The Hidden World of Facebook "like Farms"
A new study systematically investigated the nature of so-called Facebook "like farms," services which will direct Facebook Likes to a given Facebook page for a...
From ACM News
Robots That Learn Through Repetition, Not Programming
Eugene Izhikevich thinks you shouldn't have to write code in order to teach robots new tricks.
From ACM News
The Hidden World of Facebook 'like Farms'
Facebook has become the advertising outlet of choice for many of the world’s businesses and companies.
From ACM News
How Network Theory Is Revealing Previously nknown Patterns in Sport
If you've ever watched soccer, you'll know of the subtle differences in tactics and formation between different teams.
From ACM News
The Challenges and Threats of Automated Lip Reading
Back in the 16th century, a Spanish Benedictine monk called Pietro Ponce pioneered the seemingly magical art of lip reading.
From ACM News
Data Mining Reveals How Social Coding Succeeds (and Fails)
The process of developing software has undergone huge transformation in the last decade or so.
From ACM TechNews
Google Glass Can Now Track Your Stress Level
Researchers say they have developed a new method for using Google Glass to track a user's stress level and provide instant fitness feedback.
From ACM TechNews
Fingerprinting Infants Helps Track Vaccinations in Developing Countries
Developing countries could be able to track pediatric vaccinations with greater accuracy using a fingerprint-scanning system.
From ACM Opinion
In Praise of Efficient Price Gouging
In the four years since the car service Uber launched, it has been beset by criticism from myriad groups, including city officials annoyed by its sometimes cavalier...
From ACM News
A Chinese Internet Giant Starts to Dream
Punk bands from Blondie to the Ramones once played in Broadway Studios, an age-worn 95-year-old neoclassical building surrounded by strip clubs in San Francisco’s...
From ACM TechNews
The Emerging Pitfalls of Nowcasting With Big Data
Search query data is very powerful but must be treated with some care and caution, says Google chief economist Hal Varian, speaking at a European Bank workshop. ...
From ACM TechNews
How Yahoo Research Labs Studies Culture as a Formal Computational Concept
Yahoo Labs researchers aim to achieve a truly computational understanding of human society by analyzing the links that form on social networks.
From ACM TechNews
Prototype Display Lets You Say Goodbye to Reading Glasses
New display technology uses algorithms to alter an image based on a person's actual vision prescription.
From ACM News
No Man's Sky: A Vast Game Crafted By Algorithms
Sean Murray, one of the creators of the computer game No Man's Sky, can't guarantee that the virtual universe he is building is infinite, but he's certain that,...
From ACM News
How Can a Civilian Plane Accidentally Be Shot Down?
Pro-Russian separatists may have shot down Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 over eastern Ukraine on Thursday because they mistook the civilian plane for something else...
From ACM TechNews
A Speech Synthesizer Direct to the Brain
A San Francisco neurosurgeon says he is working toward building a wireless brain-machine interface that could translate brain signals directly into audible speech...
From ACM News
Self-Assembly Shows Promise for Extending Moore's Law
These are challenging times for computer chip engineers.
From ACM TechNews