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subjectTheory
authorThe Atlantic
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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.


A Game-Changing AI Tool for Tracking Animal Movements
From ACM News

A Game-Changing AI Tool for Tracking Animal Movements

In a video, a rodent reaches out and grabs a morsel of food, while small, colored dots highlight the positions of its knuckles.

The Computer Scientist Who Prefers Paper
From ACM News

The Computer Scientist Who Prefers Paper

For years, Barbara Simons was the loneliest of Cassandras—a technologist who feared what technology had wrought. Her cause was voting: Specifically, she believed...

The Coming Software Apocalypse
From ACM News

The Coming Software Apocalypse

There were six hours during the night of April 10, 2014, when the entire population of Washington State had no 911 service.

Facebook's New 'ai Camera' Team Wants to Add a Layer to the World
From ACM Careers

Facebook's New 'ai Camera' Team Wants to Add a Layer to the World

Take a video of a birthday cake's candles sparkling in an Instagram story, then tap the sticker button. Near the top of the list you'll see a slice of birthday...

Inside Waymo's Secret World For Training Self-Driving Cars
From ACM Careers

Inside Waymo's Secret World For Training Self-Driving Cars

In a corner of Alphabet's campus, there is a team working on a piece of software that may be the key to self-driving cars.

The Algorithm That Makes Preschoolers Obsessed With Youtube
From ACM News

The Algorithm That Makes Preschoolers Obsessed With Youtube

Toddlers crave power. Too bad for them, they have none. Hence the tantrums and absurd demands.

Darpa's Ex-Leader's Speculative Dream of Mind-Melding Empathy
From ACM News

Darpa's Ex-Leader's Speculative Dream of Mind-Melding Empathy

The former head of DARPA, Arati Prabhakar, has a dream. It's a civilian utopian neuroscience dream that's kind of the inverse of the scenarios that the far-out...

Beyond the Five Senses
From ACM News

Beyond the Five Senses

The world we experience is not the real world. It's a mental construction, filtered through our physical senses. Which raises the question: How would our world...

An Artificial Intelligence Developed Its Own Non-Human Language
From ACM News

An Artificial Intelligence Developed Its Own Non-Human Language

A buried line in a new Facebook report about chatbots' conversations with one another offers a remarkable glimpse at the future of language.

If Google Teaches an AI to Draw, Will That Help It Think?
From ACM News

If Google Teaches an AI to Draw, Will That Help It Think?

Imagine someone told you to draw a pig and a truck.

A Brief History of Seti@home
From ACM Careers

A Brief History of Seti@home

The year was 1999, and the people were going online. AOL, Compuserve, mp3.com, and AltaVista loaded bit by bit after dial-up chirps, on screens across the world...

Don't Use the Force, Luke, Use the Targeting Computer
From ACM News

Don't Use the Force, Luke, Use the Targeting Computer

Remember when Luke's running the trench in the Death Star, and he's about to fire his fateful shot, and at the last minute he decides to turn off the targeting...

The Founding Fathers Encrypted Secret Messages, Too
From ACM News

The Founding Fathers Encrypted Secret Messages, Too

Thomas Jefferson is known for a lot of things—writing the Declaration of Independence, founding the University of Virginia, owning hundreds of slaves despite believing...

Machine Learning Is Bringing the Cosmos Into Focus
From ACM News

Machine Learning Is Bringing the Cosmos Into Focus

The telescope offers one of the most seductive suggestions a technological object can carry: the idea that humans might pick up a thing, peer into it, and finally...

Even Bugs Will Be Bugged
From ACM News

Even Bugs Will Be Bugged

When mark zuckerberg posted a picture of himself on Facebook in June, a sharp-eyed observer spotted a piece of tape covering his laptop’s camera.

The Human Remembering Machine
From ACM News

The Human Remembering Machine

They called it the Hubble Telescope of the mind.

The Many Ways to Map the Brain
From ACM News

The Many Ways to Map the Brain

Brain mapping has come a long way since the days of Korbinian Brodmann.

The Internet's Favorite Website
From ACM News

The Internet's Favorite Website

It's usually idle curiosity that drives me to Wikipedia.

Facebook Is Making a Map of Everyone in the World
From ACM News

Facebook Is Making a Map of Everyone in the World

Americans inhabit an intricately mapped world.

A Search Engine For Your Memories
From ACM News

A Search Engine For Your Memories

People are always forgetting names. That's because, at least in part, names are arbitrary. A name, in and of itself, doesn't offer much context.
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