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How to Hack an Election (Without Touching the Machines)
From ACM Opinion

How to Hack an Election (Without Touching the Machines)

On Monday morning, just 24 hours before polls opened in the US midterm elections, President Trump sounded an alarm with a Tweet: "Law Enforcement has been strongly...

The House Science Committee May Soon Become... Pro-Science
From ACM Opinion

The House Science Committee May Soon Become... Pro-Science

For the past eight years, climate science has been under a sort of spell in the House of Representatives.

What the Midterm Election Results Mean for Big Tech
From ACM Opinion

What the Midterm Election Results Mean for Big Tech

It may not have been the tsunami some expected, but the Democrat's long-promised blue wave was enough to carry the party to a majority in the House of Representatives ...

What the Boston School Bus Schedule Can Teach ­s About AI
From ACM Opinion

What the Boston School Bus Schedule Can Teach ­s About AI

When the Boston public school system announced new start times last December, some parents found the schedules unacceptable and pushed back.

The Real Houseguest of the Ecuadorian Embassy
From ACM Opinion

The Real Houseguest of the Ecuadorian Embassy

If Julian Assange of WikiLeaks denies the Ecuadorian government's stinging charge that he's a disgusting houseguest, he'd do well not to deny that charge "categorically...

Paper and the Case for Going Low-Tech in the Voting Booth
From ACM Opinion

Paper and the Case for Going Low-Tech in the Voting Booth

In September 2017, barely two months before Virginians went to the polls to pick a new governor, the state's board of elections convened an emergency session. The...

Paul Allen Thought Like a Hacker and Never Stopped Dreaming
From ACM Opinion

Paul Allen Thought Like a Hacker and Never Stopped Dreaming


You're Expecting Too Much Out of Boston Dynamics' Robots
From ACM Opinion

You're Expecting Too Much Out of Boston Dynamics' Robots

At the WIRED25 festival in San Francisco Sunday evening, Boston Dynamics' SpotMini robot got onstage and did what no other quadruped robot has done before: It danced...

Brett Kavanaugh and the Information Terrorists Trying to Reshape America
From ACM Opinion

Brett Kavanaugh and the Information Terrorists Trying to Reshape America

Since the advent of Donald Trump's candidacy, there's been a ton of focus on botnets and sockpuppets—automated and semiautomated social media accounts that use...

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...
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