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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.


Facebook's New Tools to Help the Blind Navigate Social Media
From ACM TechNews

Facebook's New Tools to Help the Blind Navigate Social Media

Engineer Matt King is blind and works on Facebook's accessibility team, which helps the service make it easier for the visually impaired to interact with it.

Crispr Gene-Editing Gets Rules. Well, Guidelines, Really
From ACM News

Crispr Gene-Editing Gets Rules. Well, Guidelines, Really

If you're hoping to engineer perfect babies, you're going to have to wait.

Japan's Venus Orbiter Makes Comeback
From ACM News

Japan's Venus Orbiter Makes Comeback

Japan's Akatsuki spacecraft has entered orbit around Venus, five years after its first attempt failed.

Stanford Scientists Develop 'shazam For Earthquakes'
From ACM TechNews

Stanford Scientists Develop 'shazam For Earthquakes'

The new Fingerprint And Similarity Thresholding algorithm could transform how seismologists detect temblors not strong enough to register as earthquakes. 

A Smarter Kind of Crash Test Dummy
From ACM TechNews

A Smarter Kind of Crash Test Dummy

Car crash simulations are being run on a supercomputer using a combination of actual vehicle, scene, and medical data by Wake Forest University researchers. 

Google and Facebook Race to Solve the Ancient Game of Go With AI
From ACM TechNews

Google and Facebook Race to Solve the Ancient Game of Go With AI

Although software designed to play standard board games can now dominate even the best human players, the ancient game of Go has proven a much trickier challenge...

New Horizons Returns First, Best Images of Pluto
From ACM News

New Horizons Returns First, Best Images of Pluto

NASA's New Horizons spacecraft has sent back the first in a series of the sharpest views of Pluto it obtained during its July flyby—and the best close-ups of Pluto...

Untraceable Communication—guaranteed
From ACM News

Untraceable Communication—guaranteed

Anonymity networks, which sit on top of the public Internet, are designed to conceal people’s Web-browsing habits from prying eyes.

Can’t Put Down Your Device? That's By Design
From ACM News

Can’t Put Down Your Device? That's By Design

Greg Hochmuth was one of the first software engineers hired at Instagram.

Does Encryption Really Help Isis? Here's What You Need to Know
From ACM News

Does Encryption Really Help Isis? Here's What You Need to Know

There's the war on terrorism, and then there's the war on how to fight the war on terrorism.

Nasa Space Telescopes See Magnified Image of Faintest Galaxy from Early ­niverse
From ACM News

Nasa Space Telescopes See Magnified Image of Faintest Galaxy from Early ­niverse

Astronomers harnessing the combined power of NASA's Hubble and Spitzer space telescopes have found the faintest object ever seen in the early universe. It existed...

­w Roboticists Learn to Teach Robots From Babies
From ACM TechNews

­w Roboticists Learn to Teach Robots From Babies

Babies learn by watching and imitating what adults are doing, and robots can "learn" in much the same way, according to researchers at the University of Washington...

Researchers Enlist Gamers to Find Something Fishy About Mathematical Models
From ACM TechNews

Researchers Enlist Gamers to Find Something Fishy About Mathematical Models

Uppsala University researchers recently used an online game to assess how good mathematical models were at reproducing the collective motion of real fish schools...

Data Storage on Dna Can Keep It Safe For Centuries
From ACM TechNews

Data Storage on Dna Can Keep It Safe For Centuries

Two separate recent experiments have demonstrated the possibilities of encoding information in synthetic DNA molecules. 

What Makes Paris Look Like Paris? Let an Algorithm Tell You
From ACM News

What Makes Paris Look Like Paris? Let an Algorithm Tell You

Sure, you might be able to tell whether a city is a city by just looking at it. But can you train a machine to be even better than humans at recognizing them?

Gene-Editing Summit Supports Some Research in Human Embryos
From ACM News

Gene-Editing Summit Supports Some Research in Human Embryos

Gene-editing technology should not be used to modify human embryos that are intended for use in establishing a pregnancy, an international summit declared in a...

Patients Favor Changing the Genes of the Next Generation with Crispr
From ACM News

Patients Favor Changing the Genes of the Next Generation with Crispr

Jeff Carroll inherited the DNA mutation that causes Huntington's disease.

Zero to Expert in Eight Hours: These Robots Can Learn For Themselves
From ACM News

Zero to Expert in Eight Hours: These Robots Can Learn For Themselves

A yellow robotic arm pauses over a pile of metal cylinders, snaps a photo, then proceeds to confidently pick pieces out of the jumble.

Artificial Intelligence Ethics a New Focus at Cambridge ­niversity
From ACM News

Artificial Intelligence Ethics a New Focus at Cambridge ­niversity

A new center to study the implications of artificial intelligence and try to influence its ethical development has been established at the U.K.'s Cambridge University...

Could We Soon All Have Quantum Computers on Our Desks? Scientists Claim to Have Cracked the Problem of How They Store Data
From ACM TechNews

Could We Soon All Have Quantum Computers on Our Desks? Scientists Claim to Have Cracked the Problem of How They Store Data

The creation of a stable quantum bit by Northwestern University researchers may bring quantum computers closer to practical realization. 
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