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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 Last Survivors of the End of the World
From ACM News

The Last Survivors of the End of the World

In 2 billion years' time, life on Earth will be confined to pockets of liquid water deep underground, according to PhD astrobiologist Jack O'Malley James of the...

The Immortal Life of the Enron E-Mails
From ACM News

The Immortal Life of the Enron E-Mails

Former Enron executive Vincent Kaminski is a modest, semi-retired business school professor from Houston who recently wrote a 960-page book explaining the fundamentals...

Meet the Most Important Tech Company You've Probably Never Heard Of
From ACM Opinion

Meet the Most Important Tech Company You've Probably Never Heard Of

Never trust gadget-makers’ claims about battery life.

What It's Like to Get a National-Security Letter
From ACM Opinion

What It's Like to Get a National-Security Letter

In the summer of 2011, while he was fighting an indictment for alleged computer crimes, Aaron Swartz, an information activist, read Kafka’s "The Trial" and ...

Google Creates Developers Cloud Playground For Code Testing
From ACM TechNews

Google Creates Developers Cloud Playground For Code Testing

Google has created a Cloud Playground environment in which developers can quickly try out new ideas. 

New ATM Designs Imitate Online and Mobile Banking
From ACM News

New ATM Designs Imitate Online and Mobile Banking

Before heading to lunch, Kirsten Keary-Taylor, 29, uses an iPhone app to request $20 from a nearby ATM. Passing the cash machine on her way out, she scans it with...

Manage Your Smart Home with a Single Gesture
From ACM News

Manage Your Smart Home with a Single Gesture

Our homes will get a lot smarter in the coming years, allowing us to use a smartphone to manage an integrated system of appliances and other electronics from any...

Investors Buy Into Software-Defined Networks, Will Customers Follow?
From ACM News

Investors Buy Into Software-Defined Networks, Will Customers Follow?

As Superstorm Sandy bore down on the East coast last year, companies with data centers in its path needed another location fast. But moving computer servers is...

Encryption Has Foiled Wiretaps For First Time Ever, Feds Say
From ACM News

Encryption Has Foiled Wiretaps For First Time Ever, Feds Say

For the first time, encryption is thwarting government surveillance efforts through court-approved wiretaps, U.S. officials said Friday.

Nasa Decommissions Its Galaxy Hunter Spacecraft
From ACM News

Nasa Decommissions Its Galaxy Hunter Spacecraft

NASA has turned off its Galaxy Evolution Explorer (GALEX) after a decade of operations in which the venerable space telescope used its ultraviolet vision to study...

A Cutting-Edge Second Look at the Battle of Gettysburg
From ACM News

A Cutting-Edge Second Look at the Battle of Gettysburg

The technological limits of surveillance during the American Civil War dictated that commanders often decided where to deploy their troops based largely on what...

Bitcoin Draws Attention of California Regulators
From ACM News

Bitcoin Draws Attention of California Regulators

Even the state of California can't quite figure out what the bitcoin Internet currency phenomenon is all about—or whether it's legal in California.

New System ­ses Low-Power Wi-Fi Signal to Track Moving Humans—even Behind Walls
From ACM News

New System ­ses Low-Power Wi-Fi Signal to Track Moving Humans—even Behind Walls

The comic-book hero Superman uses his X-ray vision to spot bad guys lurking behind walls and other objects.

The Seventy-Billion-Mile Telescope
From ACM News

The Seventy-Billion-Mile Telescope

When I was a teen-ager, I spent many nights gazing through a telescope at an amateur observatory in Cranford, New Jersey. Saturn, to the naked eye, is a shining...

Siri's Creators Demonstrate an Assistant That Takes the Initiative
From ACM News

Siri's Creators Demonstrate an Assistant That Takes the Initiative

In a small, dark, room off a long hallway within a sprawling complex of buildings in Silicon Valley, an array of massive flat-panel displays and video cameras track ...

The Internet of Things: Open Garden
From ACM News

The Internet of Things: Open Garden

When the Large Hadron Collider went online in 2009, most scientists saw it as an unprecedented opportunity to conduct experiments involving the building blocks...

Nasa's Voyager 1 Explores Final Frontier of Our 'solar Bubble'
From ACM News

Nasa's Voyager 1 Explores Final Frontier of Our 'solar Bubble'

Data from Voyager 1, now more than 11 billion miles (18 billion kilometers) from the sun, suggest the spacecraft is closer to becoming the first human-made object...

Researcher Dreams ­p Machines That Learn Without Humans
From ACM News

Researcher Dreams ­p Machines That Learn Without Humans

Yoshua Bengio recently had a vision—a vision of how to build computers that learn like people do.

The Race to a $100 Genome
From ACM News

The Race to a $100 Genome

Mark Costa has a higher-than-average risk of stomach cancer, a lower-than-average risk for Alzheimer's, and he metabolizes caffeine very slowly.

Overprotection May Be Hampering Hunt For Mars Life
From ACM News

Overprotection May Be Hampering Hunt For Mars Life

There are aliens on Mars—and they came from Earth.
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