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An edited collection of advanced computing news from Communications of the ACM, ACM TechNews, other ACM resources, and news sites around the Web.


Behind the Downfall at Blackberry
From ACM Opinion

Behind the Downfall at Blackberry

Ever since Jim Balsillie and Mike Lazaridis stepped down as co-chairmen and co-chief executives of BlackBerry, neither has spoken much in public about the once-dominant...

Mars Rover's Laser-Zapping Instrument Gets Sharper Vision
From ACM News

Mars Rover's Laser-Zapping Instrument Gets Sharper Vision

Tests on Mars have confirmed success of a repair to the autonomous focusing capability of the Chemistry and Camera (ChemCam) instrument on NASA's Curiosity Mars...

Java at 20: How It Changed Programming Forever
From ACM News

Java at 20: How It Changed Programming Forever

Java synthesized sound ideas, repackaging them in a practical format that turned on a generation of coders.

Boyhood
From ACM News

Boyhood

On the first weekend of January, many of the leading researchers in artificial intelligence traveled to Puerto Rico to take part in an unusual private conference...

New Approach Trains Robots to Match Human Dexterity and Speed
From ACM News

New Approach Trains Robots to Match Human Dexterity and Speed

In an engineering laboratory here, a robot has learned to screw the cap on a bottle, even figuring out the need to apply a subtle backward twist to find the thread...

Mit's Humanoid Robot Goes to Robot Boot Camp
From ACM Careers

Mit's Humanoid Robot Goes to Robot Boot Camp

As Russ Tedrake flings up the garage door to the dusty MIT lab, light whooshes in, revealing a 360-pound humanoid robot hanging from a rope.

The House Just Passed a Bill About Space Mining
From ACM News

The House Just Passed a Bill About Space Mining

For as long as we've existed, humans have looked up at the stars—and wondered.

Oculus Rift Hack Transfers Your Facial Expressions Onto Your Avatar
From ACM TechNews

Oculus Rift Hack Transfers Your Facial Expressions Onto Your Avatar

Researchers have developed a system to track the facial expressions of users wearing a virtual-reality headset and transfer them to a virtual avatar. 

Microsoft’s Hololens Will Put Realistic 3D People in Your Living Room
From ACM News

Microsoft’s Hololens Will Put Realistic 3D People in Your Living Room

Demonstrations of augmented-reality displays typically involve tricking you into seeing animated content such as monsters and robots that aren’t really there.

How Stargazing Became a Numbers Game
From ACM News

How Stargazing Became a Numbers Game

People have long thought of astronomy as the science of looking to the stars, but discoveries in the cosmos increasingly come from a different kind of observational...

NASA's WISE Spacecraft Discovers Most Luminous Galaxy in ­niverse
From ACM News

NASA's WISE Spacecraft Discovers Most Luminous Galaxy in ­niverse

A remote galaxy shining with the light of more than 300 trillion suns has been discovered using data from NASA's Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE).

Project Oxford Apis Offer Facial, Voice Recognition Capabilities
From ACM TechNews

Project Oxford Apis Offer Facial, Voice Recognition Capabilities

Microsoft's age-guessing site, How-Old.net, is powered by Project Oxford, which now offers tools developers can use to incorporate intelligence into their apps.

Quantum Life Spreads Entanglement Across Generations
From ACM News

Quantum Life Spreads Entanglement Across Generations

Computer scientists have long known that evolution is an algorithmic process that has little to do with the nature of the beasts it creates.

Your Brain's ­nique Response to Words Can Reveal Your Identity
From ACM News

Your Brain's ­nique Response to Words Can Reveal Your Identity

Watch your language. Words mean different things to different people—so the brainwaves they provoke could be a way to identify you.

Forging Relationships
From Communications of the ACM

Forging Relationships

Michael Stonebraker didn't realize at the outset that it would take six years to create INGRES, one of the world's first relational databases.

Between the Lines
From Communications of the ACM

Between the Lines

Smartphone apps are driving changes in the way people park. Sensors, crowdsourcing, and big data are making it easier to find open parking spots.

Plenty of Proteins
From Communications of the ACM

Plenty of Proteins

The growth of structural biology brings new challenges for the world's protein data archive.

Humans Out-Play an AI at Texas Hold 'em—for Now
From ACM Careers

Humans Out-Play an AI at Texas Hold 'em—for Now

In 1997 chess master Gary Kasparov went to battle against the IBM supercomputer Deep Blue in a landmark match. After six games Deep Blue prevailed, marking the...

Oculus Rift Hack Transfers Your Facial Expressions Onto Your Virtual Avatar
From ACM News

Oculus Rift Hack Transfers Your Facial Expressions Onto Your Virtual Avatar

When Facebook bought Oculus VR back in March of 2014, many wondered exactly what the social network was going to do with it; let's face it, many of us are still wondering...

Quantum Physics: What Is Really Real?
From ACM News

Quantum Physics: What Is Really Real?

Owen Maroney worries that physicists have spent the better part of a century engaging in fraud.
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