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The Search for Anti-Conservative Bias on Google
From ACM Opinion

The Search for Anti-Conservative Bias on Google

Last Wednesday, a day after Google's C.E.O., Sundar Pichai, sat before the House Judiciary Committee to answer questions about the company's search engine,Donald...

Why Did the European Commission Fine Google Five Billion Dollars?
From ACM Opinion

Why Did the European Commission Fine Google Five Billion Dollars?

Acording to some estimates, about eighty-five per cent of the world's smartphones run on Google's Android operating system.

We May Own Our Data, But Facebook Has a Duty to Protect It
From ACM Opinion

We May Own Our Data, But Facebook Has a Duty to Protect It

Two years ago, Jack M. Balkin, a constitutional-law professor at Yale, published a fifty-page article in the U.C. Davis Law Review examining what he called problems...

Teddy Roosevelt Wouldn't ­nderstand the E.u.'s Antitrust Fine Against Google
From ACM Opinion

Teddy Roosevelt Wouldn't ­nderstand the E.u.'s Antitrust Fine Against Google

Back in 1980, Milton Friedman, the University of Chicago economist, starred in a public-television series called "Free to Choose," in which he presented his free...

Why Facebook Is Really Blocking the Ad Blockers
From ACM Opinion

Why Facebook Is Really Blocking the Ad Blockers

Ads can seem like the bane of the Internet.

Lessons from Apple vs. the F.b.i.
From ACM Opinion

Lessons from Apple vs. the F.b.i.

It's welcome news that the Federal Bureau of Investigation has dropped its legal effort to force Apple to help it create a method of accessing data on a lockedSan...

Why Companies Won't Learn From the T-Mobile/experian Hack
From ACM Opinion

Why Companies Won't Learn From the T-Mobile/experian Hack

Last Thursday, John Legere, the C.E.O. of T-Mobile, joined the ranks of the dozens of chief executives who, in the past few years, have had to inform their customers...

Why Larry Page Is Stepping Away
From ACM Opinion

Why Larry Page Is Stepping Away

In the ten years that I’ve been watching him, Larry Page has always wanted to play by his own rules.

Germanwings Flight 9525, Technology, and the Question of Trust
From ACM Opinion

Germanwings Flight 9525, Technology, and the Question of Trust

Shortly before the dreadful crash of Germanwings Flight 9525, I happened to be reading part of "The Second Machine Age," a book by two academics at M.I.T., Erik...

Net Neutrality: How the Government Finally Got It Right
From ACM Opinion

Net Neutrality: How the Government Finally Got It Right

For years, the federal government supported the principle of net neutrality: the idea that broadband providers should treat all Internet traffic the same.

Netflix's Secret Special Algorithm Is a Human
From ACM Opinion

Netflix's Secret Special Algorithm Is a Human

On the opening night of this year's Sundance Film Festival, two films, as usual, had their premières, gaining maximum exposure to reporters and critics.

Will Moocs Be Flukes?
From ACM Opinion

Will Moocs Be Flukes?

On July 23rd, 1969, Geoffrey Crowther addressed the inaugural meeting of the Open University, a British institution that had just been created to provide an alternative...

The Hazards of Going on Autopilot
From ACM Opinion

The Hazards of Going on Autopilot

At 9:18 P.M. on February 12, 2009, Continental Connection Flight 3407, operated by Colgan Air, took off from Newark International Airport.

Google Bets a Billion Dollars on Twitch
From ACM Opinion

Google Bets a Billion Dollars on Twitch

Video gaming differentiates itself from the older forms of escapism—literature, theatre, film, television—with interactivity.

Do We Really Need to Learn to Code?
From ACM Opinion

Do We Really Need to Learn to Code?

"Learn to Code!" This imperative to program seems to be everywhere these days. Bill Gates and Mark Zuckerberg recently donated ten million dollars to Code.org,...

Spy vs. Spy
From ACM Opinion

Spy vs. Spy

Last month, Attorney General Eric Holder announced that the United States was charging members of the Chinese military with economic espionage.

How a Raccoon Became an Aardvark
From ACM Opinion

How a Raccoon Became an Aardvark

In July of 2008, Dylan Breves, then a seventeen-year-old student from New York City, made a mundane edit to a Wikipedia entry on the coati.

One-Hit Wonders
From ACM Opinion

One-Hit Wonders

For more than a year now, tens of millions of Americans have found time each day to devote themselves to an essential task: swiping at their phones and tablets...

Google's Robot Army
From ACM Opinion

Google's Robot Army

A couple of weeks ago, shortly after the Amazon C.E.O. Jeff Bezos unveiled, on "60 Minutes," that his company plans to deliver packages to customers with a swarm...

E-Book Vs. P-Book
From ACM Opinion

E-Book Vs. P-Book

When Barnes & Noble announced, a couple of weeks ago, that its Nook division lost almost five hundred million dollars last year and that its C.E.O. was resigning...
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