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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.


Why Wi-Fi Is Often So Slow
From ACM Opinion

Why Wi-Fi Is Often So Slow

A number of Internet service providers, including Comcast Corp. and Verizon Communications Inc., have recently upped the maximum speeds of broadband they offer...

A Robot With a Reassuring Touch
From ACM News

A Robot With a Reassuring Touch

If you grab the hand of a two-armed robot named Baxter, it will turn its head and a pair of cartoon eyes—displayed on a tablet-size computer-screen "face"—will...

New Breed of Robotics Aims to Help People Walk Again
From ACM News

New Breed of Robotics Aims to Help People Walk Again

When Joey Abicca pokes a metal crutch into the ground with his right arm, tiny motors start whirling around his left leg, lifting it and moving it forward.

Tech's New Wave, Driven by Data
From ACM News

Tech's New Wave, Driven by Data

Technology tends to cascade into the marketplace in waves. Think of personal computers in the 1980s, the Internet in the 1990s, and smartphones in the last five...

Amateur Mapmakers Redraw Boundaries, Working Online
From ACM News

Amateur Mapmakers Redraw Boundaries, Working Online

Reshaped and renamed by generations of developers and gentrifiers, the borders of New York City’s neighborhoods are often hazy at best. Yesterday's Chinatown is...

Software Meant to Fight Crime Is ­sed to Spy on Dissidents
From ACM TechNews

Software Meant to Fight Crime Is ­sed to Spy on Dissidents

Commercially available spyware originally designed to aid in criminal investigations is being used by repressive regimes to track political dissidents, according...

Active in Cloud, Amazon Reshapes Computing
From ACM News

Active in Cloud, Amazon Reshapes Computing

Within a few years, Amazon.com's creative destruction of both traditional book publishing and retailing may be footnotes to the company’s larger and more secretive...

A Hardware Renaissance in Silicon Valley
From ACM News

A Hardware Renaissance in Silicon Valley

In recent years, Silicon Valley seems to have forgotten about silicon. It’s been about dot-coms, Web advertising, social networking, and apps for smartphones.

Coming Soon, Google Street View of a Canadian Village You'll Never Drive To
From ACM News

Coming Soon, Google Street View of a Canadian Village You'll Never Drive To

There are no cars in Cambridge Bay, Nunavut. Aside from a few trucks, snowmobiles are the preferred form of transportation for much of the year in the hamlet high...

From ACM News

Secrets Learned in Apple-Samsung Trial

When companies go to trial, as Apple and Samsung have learned, the public gets to hear corporate secrets. Among those revealed:

In Apple’s Patent Case, Tech Shifts May Follow
From ACM News

In Apple’s Patent Case, Tech Shifts May Follow

This week, nine jurors are expected to hunker down in a federal courthouse here to decide a case that could change how the world's smartphones and tablet computers...

New Wave of Adept Robots Is Changing Global Industry
From ACM News

New Wave of Adept Robots Is Changing Global Industry

At the Philips Electronics factory on the coast of China, hundreds of workers use their hands and specialized tools to assemble electric shavers. That is the old...

How Big Data Became So Big
From ACM News

How Big Data Became So Big

This has been the crossover year for Big Data—as a concept, as a term, and, yes, as a marketing tool.

The Campaign to Digitize Your Wallet Is Intensifying
From ACM News

The Campaign to Digitize Your Wallet Is Intensifying

Last week, Starbucks joined forces with Square, a technology start-up that lets you pay for things with a smartphone. Coming from a company whose cafes seem to...

New Google Tools to Make the Search Engine More All-Knowing
From ACM News

New Google Tools to Make the Search Engine More All-Knowing

When Google imagines the future of Web search, it sees a search engine that understands human meaning and not just words, that can have a spoken conversation with...

Strong and Fast Markets, but No Time to Think
From ACM News

Strong and Fast Markets, but No Time to Think

Financial markets have greatly improved over the past quarter-century.

Talk to Me, One Machine Said to the Other
From ACM News

Talk to Me, One Machine Said to the Other

Ocado, an online grocery store in England, prides itself on its delivery of refrigerated foods: When the company says the goods will arrive at a certain temperature...

The Frightening Things You Hear at a Black Hat Conference
From ACM Opinion

The Frightening Things You Hear at a Black Hat Conference

Here is a look at some of the highlights and scarier happenings taking place at the annual Black Hat hacker conference in Las Vegas last week.

From ACM News

Rise Is Seen in Cyberattacks Targeting ­.s. Infrastructure

The top American military official responsible for defending the United States against cyberattacks said Thursday that there had been a 17-fold increase in computer...

Silicon Valley Says Step Away From the Device
From ACM News

Silicon Valley Says Step Away From the Device

Stuart Crabb, a director in the executive offices of Facebook, naturally likes to extol the extraordinary benefits of computers and smartphones. 
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