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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.


The Weather Channel's Secret: Less Weather, More Clickbait
From ACM Careers

The Weather Channel's Secret: Less Weather, More Clickbait

The writers and editors at the Weather Channel's weather.com don’t often talk about the weather.

Still Seeking the Optical Transistor
From Communications of the ACM

Still Seeking the Optical Transistor

Optical information handling is a critical staple for communications and the Internet, but using light for computer-scale computation remains a distant dream.

Museums Go High-Tech with Digital Forensics
From Communications of the ACM

Museums Go High-Tech with Digital Forensics

Scientists are using cutting-edge scanning and visualization techniques to wow visitors and find new stories in ancient artifacts.

The New Digital Medicine
From Communications of the ACM

The New Digital Medicine

Affordable, connected, personal medical devices are slowly changing the nature of health care.

The Power of Memory
From Communications of the ACM

The Power of Memory

In-memory databases promise speedier processing.

The Solace of Oblivion
From ACM News

The Solace of Oblivion

October 31, 2006, an eighteen-year-old woman named Nikki Catsouras slammed her father's sports car into the side of a concrete toll booth in Orange County, California...

Gaze-Tracker Lets You Connect to Devices with a Glance
From ACM News

Gaze-Tracker Lets You Connect to Devices with a Glance

An eye-tracking camera calculates where the wearer is looking, and transmits it to all the nearby Internet-connected devices, such as stereos and TVs, via Wi-Fi...

Visualizing 4-Dimensional Asteroids
From ACM Opinion

Visualizing 4-Dimensional Asteroids

One of the largest treasure troves of astronomical data comes from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS), an ongoing scan of the firmament that began 15 years ago...

The Smithsonian Works to Digitize Millions of Documents
From ACM News

The Smithsonian Works to Digitize Millions of Documents

During the past six months, retired pharmaceutical researcher Irv Cantor helped transcribe a 641-page field book written by an archaeologist traveling through 1920s...

The Challenges and Threats of Automated Lip Reading
From ACM News

The Challenges and Threats of Automated Lip Reading

Back in the 16th century, a Spanish Benedictine monk called Pietro Ponce pioneered the seemingly magical art of lip reading.

Google Is Target of European Backlash on ­.s. Tech Dominance
From ACM News

Google Is Target of European Backlash on ­.s. Tech Dominance

A top German official called for Google to be broken up.

The Defenders of Anonymity on the Internet
From ACM Opinion

The Defenders of Anonymity on the Internet

You may not realise it, but every time you open up your laptop or switch on your phone, you are at the heart of one of the greatest battles now taking place in...

Nasa Telescopes ­ncover Early Construction of Giant Galaxy
From ACM News

Nasa Telescopes ­ncover Early Construction of Giant Galaxy

Astronomers have for the first time caught a glimpse of the earliest stages of massive galaxy construction.

How Social Media Silences Debate
From ACM News

How Social Media Silences Debate

The Internet might be a useful tool for activists and organizers, in episodes as momentous as the Arab Spring or as trivial as the Ice Bucket Challenge. But overall...

Why Big Data Has Some Big Problems When It Comes to Public Policy
From ACM Opinion

Why Big Data Has Some Big Problems When It Comes to Public Policy

For all the talk about using big data and data science to solve the world’s problems—and even all the talk about big data as one of the world’s problems—it seems...

Looking to the Future of Data Science
From ACM News

Looking to the Future of Data Science

The Association for Computing Machinery, a leading professional association in computer science, is holding its annual conference this week, focusing on what we’re...

The Surveillance Engine: How the Nsa Built Its Own Secret Google
From ACM News

The Surveillance Engine: How the Nsa Built Its Own Secret Google

The National Security Agency is secretly providing data to nearly two dozen U.S. government agencies with a "Google-like" search engine built to share more than...

For Sale: Systems that Can Secretly Track Where Cellphone ­sers Go Around the Globe
From ACM News

For Sale: Systems that Can Secretly Track Where Cellphone ­sers Go Around the Globe

Makers of surveillance systems are offering governments across the world the ability to track the movements of almost anybody who carries a cellphone, whether they...

A Chinese Internet Giant Starts to Dream
From ACM News

A Chinese Internet Giant Starts to Dream

Punk bands from Blondie to the Ramones once played in Broadway Studios, an age-worn 95-year-old neoclassical building surrounded by strip clubs in San Francisco’s...

As Data Overflows Online, Researchers Grapple With Ethics
From ACM News

As Data Overflows Online, Researchers Grapple With Ethics

Scholars are exhilarated by the prospect of tapping into the vast troves of personal data collected by Facebook, Google, Amazon, and a host of start-ups, which...
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