Communications of the ACM
Blinding the Watchman
Internet constellations could thwart killer asteroid discovery algorithms.
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.
From ACM News
Your Sloppy Bitcoin Drug Deals Will Haunt You For Years
Perhaps you bought some illegal narcotics on the Silk Road half a decade ago, back when that digital black market for every contraband imaginable was still online...
From ACM News
DARPA Wants to Build an Image Search Engine Out of Dna
Most people use Google's search-by-image feature to either look for copyright infringement, or for shopping.
From ACM TechNews
Meet Antifa's Secret Weapon Against Far-Right Extremists
Computer science professor Megan Squire has created an array of programs that monitor approximately 400,000 accounts of white nationalists on Facebook and elsewhere...
From ACM News
Thank the Planet's Shifty Magnetic Poles For Runway Renaming
For decades, pilots heading into or out of Wichita Eisenhower National Airport in southeast Kansas have had three runways to choose from: 1L/19R, 1R/19L, and 14...
From ACM News
A New Way to Track Down Bugs Could Help Save Iot
On a clear day this summer, security researcher Ang Cui boarded a boat headed to a government biosafety facility off the northeastern tip of Long Island.
From ACM News
Nasa Just Proved It Can Navigate Space Using Pulsars. Where to Now?
Half a century ago, astronomers observed their first pulsar: a dead, distant, ludicrously dense star that emitted pulses of radiation with remarkable regularity...
From ACM News
When Wi-Fi Won't Work, Let Sound Carry Your Data
If you've ever struggled to pair your phone with a Bluetooth speaker or set up a wireless printer, you know that it's often easier to connect to a server halfway...
From ACM News
Triple Meltdown: How So Many Researchers Found a 20-Year-Old Chip Flaw At the Same Time
Four groups of researchers independently found the vulnerabilities behind the devastating Meltdown and Spectre attacks within months of each other.
From ACM TechNews
A Dead-Simple Algorithm Reveals the True Toll of Voter Id Laws
Researchers have demonstrated it is possible to match individuals across government databases with nearly 100% accuracy by using a few basic identifiers.
From ACM News
A Critical Intel Flaw Breaks Basic Security For Most Computers
One of the most basic premises of computer security is isolation: If you run somebody else's sketchy code as an untrusted process on your machine, you should restrict...
From ACM News
Physics Found Gravitational Waves. Now Come the Existential Questions
On September 14, 2015, at 3:50 AM Central time, a tiny vibration shuddered down the 2.5-mile-long arms of a massive machine in Livingston, Louisiana.
From ACM TechNews
An Early Flu Season Thwarts Cdc's Forecasting Challenge
The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has hosted a flu forecasting challenge for the last five years in which academic and industry participants organize...
From ACM News
Researchers Fooled a Google AI Into Thinking a Rifle Was a Helicopter
Tech giants love to tout how good their computers are at identifying what's depicted in a photograph.
From ACM News
'oumuamua Probably Isn't a Spaceship, But It Could Have Passengers
Last Wednesday, at 3:45 pm, scientists from the Breakthrough Listen project trained the Green Bank Telescope in West Virginia on 'Oumuamua—the mysterious, oblong...
From ACM TechNews
The Hard Math Behind Bitcoin's Global Warming Problem
A recent report calculated that the global electricity consumption of bitcoin mining would exceed that of the U.S. by July 2019, and of the entire world by November...
From ACM TechNews
Artificial Intelligence Is Killing the Uncanny Valley and Our Grasp on Reality
As deep-learning artificial intelligence technologies advance, the "Uncanny Valley"--the unease people feel toward realistic computer-generated humans--is beginning...
From ACM News
Unprecedented Malware Targets Industrial Safety Systems in the Middle East
Since Stuxnet first targeted and destroyed uranium enrichment centrifuges in Iran last decade, the cybersecurity world has waited for the next step in that digital...
From ACM News
It's Super Hard to Find Humans in the Fcc's Net Neutrality Comments
The Federal Communications Commissions''public comment period on its plans to repeal net neutrality protections was bombarded with bots, memes, and input from people...
From ACM News
Google Is Giving Away AI That Can Build Your Genome Sequence
Today, a teaspoon of spit and a hundred bucks is all you need to get a snapshot of your DNA. But getting the full picture—all 3 billion base pairs of your genome—requires...
From ACM News