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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.


Food: The Rarely Seen Robots That Package What We Eat
From ACM News

Food: The Rarely Seen Robots That Package What We Eat

Last July, while touring a jelly bean factory, I came upon a startling sight.

An Interface For Tracking Botnets That's Fit For a Sci-Fi Starship
From ACM News

An Interface For Tracking Botnets That's Fit For a Sci-Fi Starship

What do you get when you ask a bunch of digital artists to dream up a state-of-the-art tool for fighting cybercrime?

Saturn's Moons: What a Difference a Decade Makes
From ACM News

Saturn's Moons: What a Difference a Decade Makes

Almost immediately after NASA's twin Voyager spacecraft made their brief visits to Saturn in the early 1980s, scientists were hungry for more.

Uncrackable Encryption Could Secure More Than Weapons
From ACM TechNews

Uncrackable Encryption Could Secure More Than Weapons

A scientist working on a novel approach to encrypting nuclear weapons says the concept also could offer security in areas such as communications and the IT supply...

Rosetta Fuels Debate on Origin of Earth's Oceans
From ACM News

Rosetta Fuels Debate on Origin of Earth's Oceans

ESA's Rosetta spacecraft has found the water vapour from its target comet to be significantly different to that found on Earth.

Tech's Lost Chapter: An Oral History of Boston's Rise and Fall
From ACM Opinion

Tech's Lost Chapter: An Oral History of Boston's Rise and Fall

In the popular telling, the dawn of personal computing begins in the summer of 1976, when Steve Wozniak showed off the Apple I at a meeting of the Homebrew Computer...

The Sun and Jupiter Could Reveal Space-Time Ripples
From ACM News

The Sun and Jupiter Could Reveal Space-Time Ripples

Ripples in space-time could squeeze and stretch the sun and Jupiter, forming a gigantic gravitational-wave detector in our own celestial backyard.

Nasa's Curiosity Rover Finds Clues to How Water Helped Shape Martian Landscape
From ACM News

Nasa's Curiosity Rover Finds Clues to How Water Helped Shape Martian Landscape

Observations by NASA's Curiosity Rover indicate Mars' Mount Sharp was built by sediments deposited in a large lake bed over tens of millions of years.

Titan's Giant Dunes Track Ancient Climate
From ACM News

Titan's Giant Dunes Track Ancient Climate

Long sand dunes that ripple across Saturn's moon Titan may have been there for thousands of years, results from NASA's Cassini spacecraft suggest.

On Pluto’s Doorstep, NASA's New Horizons Spacecraft Awakens for Encounter
From ACM News

On Pluto’s Doorstep, NASA's New Horizons Spacecraft Awakens for Encounter

After a voyage of nearly nine years and three billion miles—the farthest any space mission has ever traveled to reach its primary target—NASA's New Horizons spacecraft...

Who Owns the Biggest Biotech Discovery of the Century?
From ACM News

Who Owns the Biggest Biotech Discovery of the Century?

Last month in Silicon Valley, biologists Jennifer Doudna and Emmanuelle Charpentier showed up in black gowns to receive the $3 million Breakthrough Prize, a glitzy...

Baer's Odyssey: Meet the Serial Inventor Who Built the World's First Game Console
From ACM Opinion

Baer's Odyssey: Meet the Serial Inventor Who Built the World's First Game Console

Even if you're a devoted fan of video games, there's a decent chance you're not familiar with the name Ralph H. Baer.

Dawn Snaps Its Best-Yet Image of Dwarf Planet Ceres
From ACM News

Dawn Snaps Its Best-Yet Image of Dwarf Planet Ceres

The Dawn spacecraft has delivered a glimpse of Ceres, the largest body in the main asteroid belt, in a new image taken 740,000 miles (1.2 million kilometers) from...

Stanford Engineers Take Big Step Toward ­sing Light Instead of Wires Inside Computers
From ACM TechNews

Stanford Engineers Take Big Step Toward ­sing Light Instead of Wires Inside Computers

Stanford University researchers have developed a device that can split and bend a beam of light, which they say could lead to computers that use optics to carry...

Hacked vs. Hackers: Game On
From ACM News

Hacked vs. Hackers: Game On

Paul Kocher, one of the country's leading cryptographers, says he thinks the explanation for the world's dismal state of digital security may lie in two charts.

Ground Team Ready to Rouse Pluto Probe For Historic Flyby
From ACM News

Ground Team Ready to Rouse Pluto Probe For Historic Flyby

On the final stretch of a speedy nine-year trek through the solar system, NASA's New Horizons spacecraft will be awakened from hibernation Dec. 6 for an encounter...

A Googler's Quest to Teach Machines How to ­nderstand Emotions
From ACM Careers

A Googler's Quest to Teach Machines How to ­nderstand Emotions

Quoc Le sees the world as a series of numbers.

Finding an Image with an Image and Other Feats of Computer Vision
From ACM Opinion

Finding an Image with an Image and Other Feats of Computer Vision

"We found that people were searching for squirrels just to favorite them, just to click 'like.' And the same with buses."

Carnegie Mellon's Cobot Robots Reach 1,000-Kilometer Milestone of Autonomous Operation
From ACM TechNews

Carnegie Mellon's Cobot Robots Reach 1,000-Kilometer Milestone of Autonomous Operation

Robots deployed at Carnegie Mellon University have collectively reached 1,000 kilometers of autonomous operation.

Google and Nasa Ride D-Wave to a Quantum Future
From ACM News

Google and Nasa Ride D-Wave to a Quantum Future

They could be the most powerful computers in the world—so perhaps it's no surprise that the biggest internet company on the planet is testing one out.
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