Accountability and Liability in Computing

The slow progress in cybersecurity is leading many to conclude the problem is not due to just a lack of technical solution but reflects a market failure, which disincentivizes those who may be able to fix serious security vulnerabilities …

Moshe Y. Vardi

The Many Shapes of a Computer Science Career

When you apply for a career in tech, it often means having to decide: Am I a product manager? A software engineer? A researcher? A designer? Most of us have a variety of skills that don't all neatly fall into one box.

Andreea Danielescu

The Blood Price of Unrestricted Privacy

Reinhard von Hanxleden ends his May 2022 Communications Viewpoint by pointing out the unthinking application of unconditional criteria to privacy "seems like a dead end in the long run." It has already proven to be a "dead end" …

CACM Staff

Up with Data Science, and the First Programmer

Orit Hazzan and Koby Mike suggest a more focused approach to teaching machine learning, while Herbert Bruderer considers the identity of the first programmer.

Orit Hazzan, Koby Mike, Herbert Bruderer

Go Backward, Save Energy

Reversible computing principles point a way toward more efficient computers.

Chris Edwards

Applying the Metaverse

Business, entertainment, and fashion companies already are staking their claims in this enhanced virtual world.

Keith Kirkpatrick

The Impact of Virtual Meetings

Virtual meetings have mixed effects on employee productivity, creativity, and relationships.

Logan Kugler

An Emergent Legal Right to Repair Electronic Devices

Parsing the fine print on repair tolerances.

Pamela Samuelson

Mobile-App Privacy Nutrition Labels Missing Key Ingredients for Success

Android and iOS privacy labels confuse developers and end users.

Lorrie Faith Cranor

What Must All Post-Secondary Students Learn about Computing?

Expanding students' understanding of computing's potential.

Valerie Barr

Rethinking Silicon Valley: Stewart Brand's Lost Journal

Discovering a hidden chapter in computing history.

John Markoff

Intelligent Futures in Task Assistance

Applying lessons learned developing and deploying task management software.

Ryen W. White

Welcome Back!

This second regional special section from India represents the diversity and excitement of the computational sciences in India through 15 articles, all co-written by authors from the Indian subcontinent.

Hemangee Kalpesh Kapoor, Mausam, Venkatesh Raman

Computing and Assistive Technology Solutions for the Visually Impaired

While accessibility normally refers only to the modality for making information accessible, in the Indian context, it is tightly tied to affordability.

M. Balakrishnan

Building the SHAKTI Microprocessor

The SHAKTI Processor Program started as an academic initiative in 2014 aimed to create open source, industrial-grade processors and build associated components of a more extensive ecosystem.

Kamakoti Veezhinathan

Impactful Research and Tooling for Program Correctness

We have been developing two frameworks — VeriAbs and VeriFuzz — to solve the problems of formal methods to improve software quality, which often fail to scale to the size and complexity of software.

Priyanka Darke, Ravindra Metta, Raveendra Kumar Medicherla, R. Venkatesh

Digital Interventions at Scale: Lessons from NPTEL and IIT Madras B.S. Degree Program

Online learning provides an effective approach to some of the systemic challenges related to higher education in India. Two key initiatives have demonstrated positive results.

Jayakrishnan Warriem, Andrew Thangaraj, Madhavan Mukund, Bharathi Balaji

National Digital Library of India: Democratizing Education in India

The National Digital Library of India was conceptualized with an aim to bring equity of access to educational resources for every Indian through a single window access mechanism.

Plaban Kumar Bhowmick, Partha Pratim Das, Partha Pratim Chakrabarti, Debarshi Kumar Sanyal

Prutor: An Intelligent Learning and Management System for Programming Courses

The Prutor browser-based tutoring system offers an integrated development environment (IDE) with a text editor, linter, interactive access to a remote compiler, and a debugger.

Amey Karkare, Purushottam Kar

Bringing the Missing Women Back: CS Education for Women in India's Engineering Institutions

Several initiatives have come up to address gender gaps in the context of engineering education in India.

Bidisha Chaudhuri, Meenakshi D'Souza, Janaki Srinivasan

Toward Explainable Deep Learning

Explainability has become a cornerstone of responsible AI use and deployment.

Vineeth N. Balasubramanian

A Formal Approach to Identifying the Impact of Noise on Neural Networks

An overview of the state of the art and its limitations for analyzing the impacts of noise on artificial neural networks.

Iram Tariq Bhatti, Mahum Naseer, Muhammad Shafique, Osman Hasan

Computing for Climate Resilience in Agriculture

A report on the Project on Climate Resilient Agriculture (PoCRA) program whose main objective is to make smallholder farmers resilient to climate variability through targeted interventions.

Hemant Belsare, Milind Sohoni, Rahul Gokhale, Pooja Prasad, Asim R. P., Chirag Marathe, Parth Gupta, Shubhada Sali, Swapnil Patil, Sudhanshu Deshmukh

Fake News in India: Scale, Diversity, Solution, and Opportunities

The massive proliferation of fake news in India has created a dire need to consider solutions explicitly catering to the region.

Shivangi Singhal, Rishabh Kaushal, Rajiv Ratn Shah, Ponnurangam Kumaraguru

COVID-19 Modeling for India and a Roadmap for the Future

A look at models developed in India to forecast the spread of the coronavirus disease in the country.

Siva Athreya, Gautam I. Menon, Rajesh Sundaresan

Theory Research in India: 2019–2022

We explore some of the results of exciting new research in the field of algorithms in India.

C. Aiswarya, V. Arvind, Saket Saurabh

AI and Data Science Centers in Top Indian Academic Institutions

A ook at the activities of artificial intelligence and data science centers located at seven top Indian institutes.

B. Ravindran, Sunita Sarawagi, Aditi Jain

Cybersecurity in India

A look at some of the major research accomplishments resulting from the efforts of several academic institutes to secure cyberspace.

Debdeep Mukhopadhyay

Research for Practice: Convergence

The return of a popular feature that shares the joy and utility of reading CS research between academics and their counterparts in industry.

Martin Kleppmann, Peter Alvaro

Intent-Based Networking for the Enterprise: A Modern Network Architecture

IBN promises to better align network operations with enterprise intent, but several challenges must be resolved before it can reach its full potential.

Matthias Falkner, John Apostolopoulos

Reliability at Multiple Stages in a Data Analysis Pipeline

Data-centric methods designed to increase end-to-end reliability of data-driven decision systems.

Yuval Moskovitch, H. V. Jagadish

Technical Perspective: The Power of Low-Power GPS Receivers for Nanosats

The work explored in "Hummingbird," by Sujay Narayana et al., focuses on the energy consumption of a typical GPS receiver and its operational challenges in a nanosat setting.

Karthik Dantu

Hummingbird: An Energy-Efficient GPS Receiver for Small Satellites

In this work, we elucidate the design of a low-cost, low-power GPS receiver for small satellites.

Sujay Narayana, R. Venkatesha Prasad, Vijay S. Rao, Luca Mottola, T. V. Prabhakar

The New Wizard of Menlo Park

An ambitious reporter's quest to interview a reclusive tech CEO leads her to find out who really pulls the strings.

Brian Clegg