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Why Animal Extinction Is Crippling Computer Science
From ACM Opinion

Why Animal Extinction Is Crippling Computer Science

Dodos. Western black rhinoceros. Tasmanian tigers. Bennett's seaweed. The list of extinct animal and plant species goes on and on.

How Bots Ruined Clicktivism
From ACM Opinion

How Bots Ruined Clicktivism

I recently came across two tweets—or rather, thousands of tweets sharing the same two ideas over and over again.

3-D Printed Gun Blueprints Are Back, and Only New Laws Can Stop Them
From ACM Opinion

3-D Printed Gun Blueprints Are Back, and Only New Laws Can Stop Them

Attorneys general from 20 states celebrated on Monday when a district court judge in Seattle extended an injunction against the sharing of 3-D printed gun blueprints...

The Future of Television Is … More Television
From ACM Opinion

The Future of Television Is … More Television

Call it Jeffrey Katzenberg's unicorn newborn. An operating company has come into being, ex nihilo, with the blandest of names—NewTV—and a valuation north of $1...

Google Tracks You Even If Location History's Off. Here's How to Stop It
From ACM Opinion

Google Tracks You Even If Location History's Off. Here's How to Stop It

If, like most people, you thought Google stopped tracking your location once you turned off Location History in your account settings, you were wrong.

Online Hate Is Rampant. Here's How to Keep It From Spreading
From ACM Opinion

Online Hate Is Rampant. Here's How to Keep It From Spreading

Back in the last presidential campaign season, reporters on the tech and politics beats began noticing a rise in far-right memes that supported Trump. Memes being...

China's Numbers Force Google to Recalculate Its Morals
From ACM Opinion

China's Numbers Force Google to Recalculate Its Morals

In 2010, Google made a moral calculus. The company had been censoring search results in China at the behest of the Communist government since launching there in...

Why Westerners Fear Robots and the Japanese Do Not
From ACM Opinion

Why Westerners Fear Robots and the Japanese Do Not

As a Japanese, I grew up watching anime like "Neon Genesis Evangelion," which depicts a future in which machines and humans merge into cyborg ecstasy.

How Plausible Are All Those Mission: Impossible Gadgets, Anyway?
From ACM Opinion

How Plausible Are All Those Mission: Impossible Gadgets, Anyway?

It's been 22 years since Tom Cruise infiltrated a CIA vault suspended from a wire in the first Mission: Impossible flick.

Want Facebook to Censor Speech? Be Careful What You Wish For
From ACM Opinion

Want Facebook to Censor Speech? Be Careful What You Wish For

The only figure as capable as Donald Trump of spinning up an instant and frantic media cycle these days is Mark Zuckerberg, whose ubiquitous company can't manage...

A Landmark Legal Shift Opens Pandora's Box for DIY Guns
From ACM Opinion

A Landmark Legal Shift Opens Pandora's Box for DIY Guns

Five years ago, 25-year-old radical libertarian Cody Wilson stood on a remote central Texas gun range and pulled the trigger on the world's first fully 3-D-printed...

Anthony Kennedy's Retirement May Have Huge Consequences for Privacy
From ACM Opinion

Anthony Kennedy's Retirement May Have Huge Consequences for Privacy

Justice Anthony Kennedy, the current Supreme Court's longest-serving member, announced his retirement Wednesday, paving the way for Trump to shape the future America's...

A Plea for AI That Serves Humanity Instead of Replacing It
From ACM Opinion

A Plea for AI That Serves Humanity Instead of Replacing It

Sixty-two years ago this summer, Dartmouth professor John McCarthy coined the term artificial intelligence. Joi Ito, director of MIT's Media Lab, has come to think...

Autonomous Vehicles Might Drive Cities to Financial Ruin
From ACM Opinion

Autonomous Vehicles Might Drive Cities to Financial Ruin

In Ann Arbor, Michigan, last week, 125 mostly white, mostly male, business-card-bearing attendees crowded into a brightly lit ballroom to consider "mobility."

Going To the World Cup? Leave the Laptop at Home
From ACM Opinion

Going To the World Cup? Leave the Laptop at Home

A Russian sports official earlier this year estimated that as many as 2 million people would flock to the country during the World Cup, the month-long celebration...

Self-Driving Cars Likely Won't Steal Your Job (­ntil 2040)
From ACM Opinion

Self-Driving Cars Likely Won't Steal Your Job (­ntil 2040)

The self-driving robots are coming to transform your job. Kind of. Also, very slowly.

The Many Shades of Bad Physics
From ACM Opinion

The Many Shades of Bad Physics

What happens when you see bad physics in the world? Does it make you angry? Does it make you laugh?

The Responsibility of Immortality: Welcome to the New Transhumanism
From ACM Opinion

The Responsibility of Immortality: Welcome to the New Transhumanism

In the summer of 1990, I was running a pretty weird nightclub in the Roppongi neighborhood of Tokyo.

How Wired Lost $100,000 in Bitcoin
From ACM Opinion

How Wired Lost $100,000 in Bitcoin

Back in 2013, when you could still mine bitcoins at home, Wired was sent a small, sleek mining device manufactured by the now-defunct Butterfly Labs.

Europe's New Data Protections Will Affect You Too. Here's How.
From ACM Opinion

Europe's New Data Protections Will Affect You Too. Here's How.

Starting tomorrow, a new framework for consumer data protection goes into effect in Europe.
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