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Dark Clouds Over the Internet
From ACM Opinion

Dark Clouds Over the Internet

The Internet is routinely described as borderless, and that is often how it feels.

Crispr Is Getting Better. Now It's Time to Ask the Hard Ethical Questions
From ACM Opinion

Crispr Is Getting Better. Now It's Time to Ask the Hard Ethical Questions

When Chinese scientists announced in April they had edited human embryos using a new genetic tool called Crispr, the headlines blared "designer babies," and the...

Better Than Sci-Fi
From ACM Opinion

Better Than Sci-Fi

Science fiction has imagined some pretty wild ideas about the universe and our place in it.

Metadata Surveillance Didn't Stop the Paris Attacks
From ACM Opinion

Metadata Surveillance Didn't Stop the Paris Attacks

Since terrorists struck Paris last Friday night, the debate over whether encryption prevents intelligence services from stopping attacks has reignited.

What Digital Trash Dumped in Games Tells ­S About the Players
From ACM Opinion

What Digital Trash Dumped in Games Tells ­S About the Players

A strawberry Christmas cake, sexy pants, a pool table, three red jet planes, a hippy bandana, a dog sled, a jetpack, a pair of Adidas trainers, a Tudor throne,an...

Pickled Patches
From Communications of the ACM

Pickled Patches

On repositories of patches and tension between security professionals and in-house developers.

Why Our Theories of Innovation Fail Us
From Communications of the ACM

Why Our Theories of Innovation Fail Us

Until we moderate our fascination with creating ideas, we will not achieve the rate of innovations we seek.

Stopping Whatsapp Won't Stop Terrorists
From ACM Opinion

Stopping Whatsapp Won't Stop Terrorists

Is the ability to send encrypted messages making it hard to stop terrorists?

Oh the Places We Won't Go: Humans Will Settle Mars, and Nowhere Else
From ACM Opinion

Oh the Places We Won't Go: Humans Will Settle Mars, and Nowhere Else

Humans will become a multi-planet species by making it to Mars, but no farther.

Crispr: A Path Through the Thicket
From ACM Opinion

Crispr: A Path Through the Thicket

The ease of use, accuracy and efficiency of the genome-editing tool CRISPR/Cas9 has led to its broad adoption in research, as well as to preliminary applications...

Get Ready For Your Digital Model
From ACM Opinion

Get Ready For Your Digital Model

Entrusting your money to a bank once seemed strange and risky.

Leading Theory of Solar System Formation Just Disproved!
From ACM Opinion

Leading Theory of Solar System Formation Just Disproved!

Looks like the inner planets formed *after* the gas giants moved to their current position, and Jupiter ejected a fifth giant, too!

Why Google Is Willing to Give Away Its Latest Machine-Learning Software
From ACM Opinion

Why Google Is Willing to Give Away Its Latest Machine-Learning Software

Google's move to give away its latest machine-learning software, key to its speech- and photo-recognition programs, isn’t as crazy as it may appear.

­pdate: Seti Sees No Alien Signals From Weird Star
From ACM Opinion

­pdate: Seti Sees No Alien Signals From Weird Star

A few weeks ago, I (and a zillion other people) reported on a star about 1,500 light-years away that was acting … weirdly.

From Army of One to Band of Tweeters
From ACM Opinion

From Army of One to Band of Tweeters

It was the end of a long combat patrol near a district called Adhamiyah, in northwest Baghdad, in the fall of 2008.

Tangled Up in Entanglement
From ACM Opinion

Tangled Up in Entanglement

No area of physics causes more confusion, not just among the general public but also among physicists, than quantum mechanics.

The Hot New Job in Silicon Valley Is Being a Robot's Assistant
From ACM Opinion

The Hot New Job in Silicon Valley Is Being a Robot's Assistant

"I, for one, welcome our new robot overlords." So goes the joke every time artificial intelligence threatens to supersede humans in another job.

If There Is Water on Mars, Who Gets to ­se It?
From ACM Opinion

If There Is Water on Mars, Who Gets to ­se It?

Humans settle around water, especially in the desert.

The Master Algorithm: A World Remade By Machines that Learn
From ACM Opinion

The Master Algorithm: A World Remade By Machines that Learn

Pedro Domingos's new book is a compelling but rather unquestioning insider view of the search for the ultimate in machine learning.

The Room Where the Internet Was Born
From ACM Opinion

The Room Where the Internet Was Born

Starting a cross-country drive to New York in Los Angeles is pretty inconvenient, unless your cross-country drive is also a vision quest to see the Internet.
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