Communications of the ACM
The opinion archive provides access to past opinion stories from Communications of the ACM and other sources by date.
April 2014
From ACM Opinion
4 Amazing Things Nasa Invented, and 4 You Think It Did
NASA is everywhere.
From ACM Opinion
Heartbleed: Developer Who Introduced the Error Regrets 'oversight'
The developer who introduced the "Heartbleed" vulnerability to the open-source code used by thousands of websites has told the Guardian it was an "oversight"—but that its discovery validates the methods used.
From ACM Opinion
900 Years of Tree Diagrams, the Most Important Data Viz Tool in History
You'd be excused for thinking infographics are a modern invention.
From ACM Opinion
Three Questions For Eugene Kaspersky
The Moscow-based computer security firm Kaspersky Lab has analyzed major new kinds of malware, including Stuxnet, which four years ago was revealed to have damaged centrifuges in Iran's uranium-enrichment facilities.
From ACM Opinion
Bruce Schneier: Technology Magnifies Power in Survellance Era
History is not entirely kind to those responsible for the Industrial Age in the 19th century.
From ACM Opinion
The Internet's Telltale Heartbleed
The cryptography expert Bruce Schneier, who has been writing about computer security for more than fifteen years, is not given to panic or hyperbole.
From ACM Opinion
Steve Matteson: Fonts in the Time of Wearables
As gadgets get smaller, and mobile manufacturers find new ways to shrink their devices to fit on a user's wrist, people like Steve Matteson are focused on keeping said devices as usable and readable as possible.
From ACM Opinion
The Lewis Effect
Michael Lewis couldn't have timed it better if he'd tried.
From ACM Opinion
The Complexonaut
When he was in elementary school, Scott Aaronson, like many mathematically precocious kids of his generation, dreamed of making his own video games.
From ACM Opinion
A Veteran Programmer Explains How the Stock Market Became "Rigged"
A small group of financial firms are using their technological superiority to skim the top off the market, Michael Lewis claims in his new book "Flash Boys."
From ACM Opinion
If You Like Immersion, You'll Love This Reality
The news that Facebook paid $2 billion for a virtual reality start-up, Oculus VR, might strike you as a bit zany.
From ACM Opinion
The Story of Cortana, Microsoft's Siri Killer
Technically, Cortana isn't supposed to exist for at least another 500 years, but that's not stopping Microsoft from bringing her to life this week.
From ACM Opinion
While Warning of Chinese Cyberthreat, .s. Launches Its Own Attack
The U.S. government has long complained about Chinese hacking and cyberattacks, but new documents show that the National Security Agency managed to penetrate the networks of Huawei, a large Chinese telecommunications firm, gathering…
From ACM Opinion
Vint Cerf: CS Changes Needed To Address Iot Security, Privacy
The Internet of Things has tremendous potential but also poses a tremendous risk if the underlying security of Internet of Things devices is not taken into account, according to Vint Cerf, Google’s Internet Evangelist.
From ACM Opinion
How a Secret iOS Feature Could Change the Internet
A few weeks ago, a messaging app called FireChat launched.
From ACM Opinion
Why the Black Box on Airplanes Needs to Go Away
In another 10 years, the very idea of a "black box" flight data recorder on an airliner will seem as naive and outdated as a smoking section.
From ACM Opinion
3 Ways to Make Software Patents Suck Less (without Abolishing Them Altogether)
This week, the Supreme Court tackled one of the thorniest problems in tech policy: software patents.
From ACM Opinion
Bots on the Beat
On March 24 at 2:36 p.m., the New York Post reported that the body of former Nets basketball player Quinton Ross had been found in a shallow grave on Long Island.
From ACM Opinion
Hey, Robot: Which Cat Is Cuter?
One recent morning, while contemplating writing this column, I scrolled through thousands and thousands of listings for mundane microgigs on Mechanical Turk, or Mturk, a decade-old platform created by Amazon.
From ACM Opinion
10 Years On, Gmail Has Transformed the Web as We Know It
Google loves to unveil a good gag product on April Fool's Day.
From Communications of the ACM
Thinking Outside the Continent
Encouraging the opportunities for digital innovation and invention to flourish in a variety of social environments.
From Communications of the ACM
Is Multicore Hardware For General-Purpose Parallel Processing Broken?
The current generation of general-purpose multicore hardware must be fixed to support more application domains and to allow cost-effective parallel programming.
From Communications of the ACM
Small Data, Where N = Me
Seeking personalized data-derived insights from analysis of our digital traces.
From Communications of the ACM
MOOCs Revisited, With Some Policy Suggestions
Assessing the rapidly evolving realm of massive open online courses.
From Communications of the ACM
This Is the Foo Field
The meaning of bits and avoiding upgrade bogdowns.