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Surveillance-Based Manipulation: How Facebook or Google Could Tilt Elections
From ACM Opinion

Surveillance-Based Manipulation: How Facebook or Google Could Tilt Elections

Someone who knows things about us has some measure of control over us, and someone who knows everything about us has a lot of control over us.

Secrets Become History: Edward Snowden in Citizenfour Wins Documentary Oscar
From ACM Opinion

Secrets Become History: Edward Snowden in Citizenfour Wins Documentary Oscar

Citizenfour is filmmaker Laura Poitras' account of the first meetings between herself, Glenn Greenwald, and Edward Snowden.

Blackhat Brings Some Hacking Realism to Hollywood, but to What Effect?
From ACM Opinion

Blackhat Brings Some Hacking Realism to Hollywood, but to What Effect?

During one scene in the upcoming hacker action movie Blackhat, a team is sent into the control room of a burned-out nuclear power plant to gather clues about the...

The Importance of Deleting Old Stuff—another Lesson from the Sony Attack
From ACM Opinion

The Importance of Deleting Old Stuff—another Lesson from the Sony Attack


If the Supreme Court Tackles the Nsa in 2015, It'll Be One of These Five Cases
From ACM Opinion

If the Supreme Court Tackles the Nsa in 2015, It'll Be One of These Five Cases

Roughly a year and a half since the first Snowden disclosures, there's already been a judicial order to shut down the National Security Agency's bulk metadata collection...

From Pc to Navy, Ars Pits Casual Flight Sim Skills Against a Real Cockpit Trainer
From ACM Opinion

From Pc to Navy, Ars Pits Casual Flight Sim Skills Against a Real Cockpit Trainer

A little over a year ago, I was lucky enough to take a short ride in a Folland Gnat trainer—a nimble little two-seat jet maintained by Rick Sharpe of Houston's ...

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.

John Walker, the Navy Spy Who Defined Crypto-Betrayal, Dead at 77
From ACM Opinion

John Walker, the Navy Spy Who Defined Crypto-Betrayal, Dead at 77

This week, the man responsible for what is probably the biggest cryptographic failure in military history died—just a few months before he was due to be released...

Id Shows Off Double-Jumping, Skull-Crushing New Doom at Quakecon
From ACM Opinion

Id Shows Off Double-Jumping, Skull-Crushing New Doom at Quakecon

The bad news is that only people who were actually at Dallas' QuakeCon last night were able to see the world-premiere gameplay footage from the next Doom game,...

A Fast Look at Swift, Apple's New Programming Language
From ACM Opinion

A Fast Look at Swift, Apple's New Programming Language

If anyone outside Apple saw Swift coming, they certainly weren't making any public predictions.

How to Build a Gesture-Controlled Web Game with Leap Motion
From ACM Opinion

How to Build a Gesture-Controlled Web Game with Leap Motion

Modern smartphones have helped shed a light on the power of user interfaces that are driven by gesture and touch. It’s increasingly clear that touch will play a...

How Movies and Tv Give Life to the Mundane Text Message
From ACM Opinion

How Movies and Tv Give Life to the Mundane Text Message

In the last decade, movies and television have sprouted a new plot weakness: if tension hinged in any way on a situation that could have been solved by a simple...

Science Inches Closer to Real Bioshock-Style Plasmids
From ACM Opinion

Science Inches Closer to Real Bioshock-Style Plasmids

Synthetic success. That's not to say that customized transposons are limited to the hypothetical.

Ios 7, Thoroughly Reviewed
From ACM Opinion

Ios 7, Thoroughly Reviewed

When we reviewed iOS 6 a year ago, we called it a "spit-and-polish" release and stand by that assessment today.

From ACM Opinion

After Google Dustup, Should the ­.s. Ban Chinese Computers?

Should the Google/China spat over censorship start a trade war that puts an end to Chinese-made computers? One international trade lawyer argues that it should...
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