DEPARTMENT:
Editor's letter
Here Comes Everybody . . . to Communications
I am pleased to announce a new Communications of the ACM initiative with the ambitious goal of expanding the Communications community globally to include important voices and perspectives in the conversation about the present …
Andrew A. Chien
Page 5
DEPARTMENT:
Cerf's up
Unintended Consequences
The Internet as we know it today has driven the barrier to the generation and sharing of information to nearly zero. But there are consequences of the reduced threshold for access to the Internet.
Vinton G. Cerf
Page 7
DEPARTMENT:
Vardi's insights
A Declaration of the Dependence of Cyberspace
Just as you cannot separate the mind and the body, you cannot separate cyberspace and physical space. It is time to accept this dependence and act accordingly.
Moshe Y. Vardi
Page 9
DEPARTMENT:
Letters to the editor
Keep the ACM Code of Ethics As It Is
The proposed changes to the ACM Code of Ethics and Professional Conduct as discussed in "ACM Code of Ethics: A Guide for Positive Action" (Digital Edition, Jan. 2018), are generally misguided and should be rejected by the ACM …
CACM Staff
Pages 10-11
DEPARTMENT:
[email protected]
The Costs and Pleasures of a Computer Science Teacher
Mark Guzdial considers the enormous opportunity costs of computer science teachers, while Bertrand Meyer ponders the pleasures of arguing with graduate students.
Mark Guzdial, Bertrand Meyer
Pages 12-13
COLUMN:
News
In Pursuit of Virtual Life
Scientists are simulating biological organisms and replicating evolution in the lab. How far can they expand the boundaries of virtual life?
Samuel Greengard
Pages 15-17
The Construction Industry in the 21st Century
Three-dimensional printing and other new technologies are revitalizing the business of building buildings.
Keith Kirkpatrick
Pages 18-20
The State of Fakery
How digital media could be authenticated, from computational, legal, and ethical points of view.
Esther Shein
Pages 21-23
COLUMN:
Privacy and security
Making Security Sustainable
Can there be an Internet of durable goods?
Ross Anderson
Pages 24-26
COLUMN:
Legally speaking
Will the Supreme Court Nix Reviews of Bad Patents?
Considering the longer-term implications of a soon-to-be-decided U.S. Supreme Court case.
Pamela Samuelson
Pages 27-29
COLUMN:
Computing ethics
Ethics Omission Increases Gases Emission
A look in the rearview mirror at Volkswagon software engineering.
Simon Rogerson
Pages 30-32
COLUMN:
The profession of IT
The Computing Profession
Taking stock of progress toward a computing profession since this column started in 2001.
Peter J. Denning
Pages 33-35
COLUMN:
Viewpoint
Impediments with Policy Interventions to Foster Cybersecurity
A call for discussion of governmental investment and intervention in support of cybersecurity.
Fred B. Schneider
Pages 36-38
Responsible Research with Crowds: Pay Crowdworkers at Least Minimum Wage
High-level guidelines for the treatment of crowdworkers.
M. S. Silberman, B. Tomlinson, R. LaPlante, J. Ross, L. Irani, A. Zaldivar
Pages 39-41
Computational Social Science ≠ Computer Science + Social Data
The important intersection of computer science and social science.
Hanna Wallach
Pages 42-44
SECTION:
Practice
Bitcoin's Underlying Incentives
The unseen economic forces that govern the Bitcoin protocol.
Yonatan Sompolinsky, Aviv Zohar
Pages 46-53
Operational Excellence in April Fools' Pranks
Being funny is serious work.
Thomas A. Limoncelli
Pages 54-57
Monitoring in a DevOps World
Perfect should never be the enemy of better.
Theo Schlossnagle
Pages 58-61
SECTION:
Contributed articles
A Programmable Programming Language
As the software industry enters the era of language-oriented programming, it needs programmable programming languages.
Matthias Felleisen, Robert Bruce Findler, Matthew Flatt, Shriram Krishnamurthi, Eli Barzilay, Jay McCarthy, Sam Tobin-Hochstadt
Pages 62-71
The Wisdom of Older Technology (Non)Users
Older adults consistently reject digital technology even when designed to be accessible and trustworthy.
Bran Knowles, Vicki L. Hanson
Pages 72-77
Evolution Toward Soft(er) Products
As software becomes a larger part of all products, traditional (hardware) manufacturers are becoming, in essence, software companies.
Tony Gorschek
Pages 78-84
SECTION:
Review articles
How Can We Trust a Robot?
If intelligent robots take on a larger role in our society, what basis will humans have for trusting them?
Benjamin Kuipers
Pages 86-95
SECTION:
Research highlights
Technical Perspective: A Graph-Theoretic Framework Traces Task Planning
In "Time-Inconsistent Planning: A Computational Problem in Behavioral Economics," Kleinberg and Oren describe a graph-theoretic framework for task planning with quasi-hyperbolic discounting.
Nicole Immorlica
Page 98
Time-Inconsistent Planning: A Computational Problem in Behavioral Economics
We propose a graph-theoretic model of tasks and goals, in which dependencies among actions are represented by a directed graph, and a time-inconsistent agent constructs a path through this graph.
Jon Kleinberg, Sigal Oren
Pages 99-107
Technical Perspective: On Heartbleed: A Hard Beginnyng Makth a Good Endyng
When a serious security vulnerability is discovered in the SSL/TLS protocol, one would naturally expect a rapid response. "Analysis of SSL Certificate Reissues and Revocations in the Wake of Heartbleed," by Zhang et al., paints …
Kenny Paterson
Page 108
Analysis of SSL Certificate Reissues and Revocations in the Wake of Heartbleed
We use Heartbleed, a widespread OpenSSL vulnerability from 2014, as a natural experiment to determine whether administrators are properly managing their X.509 certificates.
Liang Zhang, David Choffnes, Tudor Dumitraş, Dave Levin, Alan Mislove, Aaron Schulman, Christo Wilson
Pages 109-116
COLUMN:
Last byte
Q&A: The Network Effect
The developer of convolutional neural networks looks at their impact, today and in the long run.
Leah Hoffmann
Pages 120-ff