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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.


Craig Venter Imagines a World with Printable Life Forms
From ACM Opinion

Craig Venter Imagines a World with Printable Life Forms

Craig Venter imagines a future where you can download software, print a vaccine, inject it, and presto! Contagion averted.

Paging Dr. Watson: Artificial Intelligence As a Prescription For Health Care
From ACM News

Paging Dr. Watson: Artificial Intelligence As a Prescription For Health Care

Everyone agrees health care in the United States is a colossal mess, and IBM is betting that artificially intelligent supercomputers are just what the doctor ordered...

Pentagon Scientists: We Can't Predict Violent Outbursts. Yet.
From ACM News

Pentagon Scientists: We Can't Predict Violent Outbursts. Yet.

In the years to come, a top group of military scientists believe, the Pentagon may be able to use genomics and bio-markers to spot when a soldier is about to snap...

Judge Says Fair Use Protects Universities in Book-Scanning Project
From ACM News

Judge Says Fair Use Protects Universities in Book-Scanning Project

A federal judge on Wednesday threw out a copyright infringement lawsuit against universities that participated in a massive book-digitization project in conjunction...

Supreme Court Terminates Warrantless Electronic Spying Case
From ACM News

Supreme Court Terminates Warrantless Electronic Spying Case

The Supreme Court closed a 6-year-old chapter Tuesday in the Electronic Frontier Foundation’s bid to hold the nation’s telecoms liable for allegedly providing the...

Leonard Kleinrock, the Tx-2 and the Seeds of the Internet
From ACM News

Leonard Kleinrock, the Tx-2 and the Seeds of the Internet

It was 4:00 in the morning, and Leonard Kleinrock was sitting inside MIT's Lincoln Laboratory on the outskirts of Boston, hunched in front of a massive computer...

Larry Roberts Calls Himself the Founder of the Internet. Who Are You to Argue?
From ACM News

Larry Roberts Calls Himself the Founder of the Internet. Who Are You to Argue?

In 1966, the U.S. Department of Defense hired Roberts to design the ARPAnet, a computer network that would connect various research outfits across the country.

Google Spans Entire Planet With Gps-Powered Database
From ACM TechNews

Google Spans Entire Planet With Gps-Powered Database

A new Google research paper details the workings of the Spanner data storage and compilation system, billed as the first database capable of quickly storing and...

Warehouse 'bots Do Battle to Make Same-Day Delivery a Reality
From ACM Careers

Warehouse 'bots Do Battle to Make Same-Day Delivery a Reality

The robots zipping across the aluminum grid look less like Star Wars droids and more like little red wagons.

Why Everyone (not Just Geeks) Should Care About Big Data
From ACM Opinion

Why Everyone (not Just Geeks) Should Care About Big Data

Hugo Campos has a cardiac defibrillator implanted in his body. It sends data about his heart to his doctors and back to the manufacturer, but it takes days to get...

Twitter Reluctantly Coughs ­p Occupy Protester's Data
From ACM News

Twitter Reluctantly Coughs ­p Occupy Protester's Data

Twitter on Friday reluctantly complied with a judge's order to divulge the tweets and account information connected to an Occupy protester.

Nokia's Visionary Wants to Out-Design Apple
From ACM News

Nokia's Visionary Wants to Out-Design Apple

Marko Ahtisaari spreads out several models of Nokia's new smartphone with the self-assurance of a Tiffany diamond salesman.

Estonia Reprograms First Graders as Web Coders
From ACM TechNews

Estonia Reprograms First Graders as Web Coders

Estonian public schools recently launched a program to develop a curriculum for teaching Web and mobile application development to students as early as first grade...

What Do the H-Bomb and the Internet Have in Common? Paul Baran
From ACM News

What Do the H-Bomb and the Internet Have in Common? Paul Baran

Paul Baran set out to build a means of communication that could survive a nuclear war. And he ended up inventing the fundamental networking techniques that underpin...

'degrade, Disrupt, Deceive': ­.s. Talks Openly About Hacking Foes
From ACM News

'degrade, Disrupt, Deceive': ­.s. Talks Openly About Hacking Foes

There was a time, not all that long ago, when the U.S. military wouldn't even whisper about its plans to hack into opponents' networks.

Meet the Man Who's Rewiring Google From the Inside Out
From ACM Opinion

Meet the Man Who's Rewiring Google From the Inside Out

It was a tweet that fired the imagination like few others. On May 10, 2011, at 1:35 in the afternoon, Eric Brewer told the world he was redesigning the most important...

Researchers Hack Brainwaves to Reveal Pin Numbers, Other Personal Data
From ACM News

Researchers Hack Brainwaves to Reveal Pin Numbers, Other Personal Data

Don't you dare even think about your banking account password when you slap on those fancy new brainwave headsets.

From Bug Drones to Disease Assassins, Super Weapons Rule ­.s. War Game
From ACM News

From Bug Drones to Disease Assassins, Super Weapons Rule ­.s. War Game

A rogue state is on the verge of developing a deadly biological weapon against which the rest of the world has no defense.

How Pacific Island Missile Tests Helped Launch the Internet
From ACM News

How Pacific Island Missile Tests Helped Launch the Internet

There are a thousand stories about the origin of the internet, each with their own starting point and their own heroes. Charles Herzfeld's tale began in 1961 on...

DARPA Has Seen the Future of Computing … And It's Analog
From ACM News

DARPA Has Seen the Future of Computing … And It's Analog

By definition, a computer is a machine that processes and stores data as ones and zeroes. But the U.S. Department of Defense wants to tear up that definition and...
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