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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.


Finding the 'holy Grail' of Making Smarter Robots
From ACM News

Finding the 'holy Grail' of Making Smarter Robots

Robots that can learn how to do just about anything, including anticipating what their human owners are about to do, may be lurking around the corner if scientists...

Memory Reformat Planned For Opportunity Mars Rover
From ACM News

Memory Reformat Planned For Opportunity Mars Rover

An increasing frequency of computer resets on NASA's Mars Exploration Rover Opportunity has prompted the rover team to make plans to reformat the rover's flash...

Baby X, The Intelligent Toddler Simulation, Is Getting Smarter Every Day
From ACM News

Baby X, The Intelligent Toddler Simulation, Is Getting Smarter Every Day

Holding a children's picture book up to his computer screen, a researcher for the Auckland Bioengineering Institute Laboratory for Animate Technologies in New Zealand...

Experiment Tests Whether ­niverse Is a Hologram
From ACM News

Experiment Tests Whether ­niverse Is a Hologram

The search for the fundamental units of space and time has officially begun.

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...

Entangled Photons Make a Picture from a Paradox
From ACM News

Entangled Photons Make a Picture from a Paradox

Physicists have devised a way to take pictures using light that has not interacted with the object being photographed.

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...

Sleeping with the Enemy
From ACM News

Sleeping with the Enemy

The Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, in Leipzig, is a large, mostly glass building shaped a bit like a banana.

In Praise of Efficient Price Gouging
From ACM Opinion

In Praise of Efficient Price Gouging

In the four years since the car service Uber launched, it has been beset by criticism from myriad groups, including city officials annoyed by its sometimes cavalier...

Helping Researchers Cope With the Medical Literature Knowledge Explosion
From ACM TechNews

Helping Researchers Cope With the Medical Literature Knowledge Explosion

The new Knowledge Integration Toolkit will help research scientists make better use of the massive volumes of scientific research that is available in public databases...

Skype's Real-Time Translator Learns How to Speak From Social Media
From ACM TechNews

Skype's Real-Time Translator Learns How to Speak From Social Media

Microsoft says its upcoming Skype Translator app will translate multilingual conversations in real time. 

Realistic Robo-Hawks Designed to Fly Around and Terrorize Real Birds
From ACM Careers

Realistic Robo-Hawks Designed to Fly Around and Terrorize Real Birds

Birds are nice enough, unless you work at places like airports, farms, and landfills, in which case they’re the sworn enemy.

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...

Robotic Brain 'learns' Skills from the Internet
From ACM News

Robotic Brain 'learns' Skills from the Internet

Robo Brain is designed to acquire a vast range of skills and knowledge from publicly available information sources such as YouTube.

Robotics: How Machines See the World
From ACM News

Robotics: How Machines See the World

Can you tell the difference between a human and a soda can?

R Programming Language Gains on Traditional Statistics Packages
From ACM TechNews

R Programming Language Gains on Traditional Statistics Packages

A recent survey gauging the popularity of statistical software programs found the R programming language is rapidly gaining on traditional statistics packages. 

The Cookies You Can't Crumble
From ACM News

The Cookies You Can't Crumble

If you've used the Internet for longer than the iPhone has been around, you're probably familiar with cookies, those little packets of personal data that help load...
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