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China's Cyber-Generals Are Reinventing the Art of War
From ACM Opinion

China's Cyber-Generals Are Reinventing the Art of War

The conventional wisdom is that the future of war will involve private robot armies, predator drones carrying out precision strikes, and maybe even the militarization...

The End Is A.i.: The Singularity Is Sci-Fi's Faith-Based Initiative
From ACM Opinion

The End Is A.i.: The Singularity Is Sci-Fi's Faith-Based Initiative

In 1993, Vernor Vinge wrote a paper about the end of the world.

Man Behind the First Computer Password: It's Become a Nightmare
From ACM Opinion

Man Behind the First Computer Password: It's Become a Nightmare

In the early 1960s, Fernando Corbató helped deploy the first known computer password.

EMV
From Communications of the ACM

EMV: Why Payment Systems Fail

What lessons might we learn from the chip cards used for payments in Europe, now that the U.S. is adopting them too?

Secrets, Lies and Snowden's Email: Why I Was Forced to Shut Down Lavabit
From ACM Opinion

Secrets, Lies and Snowden's Email: Why I Was Forced to Shut Down Lavabit

My legal saga started last summer with a knock at the door, behind which stood two federal agents ready to to serve me with a court order requiring the installation...

Should ­.s. Hackers Fix Cybersecurity Holes or Exploit Them?
From ACM Opinion

Should ­.s. Hackers Fix Cybersecurity Holes or Exploit Them?

There's a debate going on about whether the U.S. government—specifically, the NSA and United States Cyber Command—should stockpile Internet vulnerabilities or disclose...

The Internet's History Isn’t As "open" As You Think
From ACM Opinion

The Internet's History Isn’t As "open" As You Think

This spring, the Federal Communications Commission is deciding how to regulate the "Open Internet"—a term it uses to refer to the movement for net neutrality.

Every Little Byte Counts
From ACM Opinion

Every Little Byte Counts

In "On What We Can Not Do," a short and pungent essay published a few years ago, the Italian philosopher Giorgio Agamben outlined two ways in which power operates...

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.

How Google Built Its 3-D Interactive Rubik's Cube Doodle
From ACM News

How Google Built Its 3-D Interactive Rubik's Cube Doodle

Today Google launched one of its coolest doodles yet: a 3-D interactive Rubik's Cube.

Ungoogle Me: The Case For Scrubbing Search Results
From ACM Opinion

Ungoogle Me: The Case For Scrubbing Search Results

The Internet has much to say about the recent ruling by the Court of Justice of the European Union, which determines that if a person wants some personal information...

Forget 'the Cloud'; 'the Fog' Is Tech's Future
From ACM Opinion

Forget 'the Cloud'; 'the Fog' Is Tech's Future

I'm as big a believer in the transformational power of cloud computing as anyone you'll meet.

Who Watches the Watchers? Big Data Goes ­nchecked
From ACM Opinion

Who Watches the Watchers? Big Data Goes ­nchecked

The National Security Agency might be tracking your phone calls. But private industry is prying far more deeply into your life.

Do We Need Asimov's Laws?
From ACM News

Do We Need Asimov's Laws?

In 1942, the science fiction author Isaac Asimov published a short story called Runaround in which he introduced three laws that governed the behaviour of robots...

Should Young Children Learn Coding?
From ACM Opinion

Should Young Children Learn Coding?

Re "Reading, Writing, Arithmetic and Now Coding" (front page, May 11): Schools and parents are really off the mark in introducing coding (and technology in general)...

A Sad Day
From ACM Opinion

A Sad Day

We lost Nereus today

Ordering Google to Forget
From ACM Opinion

Ordering Google to Forget

In a ruling that could undermine press freedoms and free speech, the highest court of the European Union said on Tuesday that Google must comply with requests from...

Our Smartphones Are Making Live Tv Better Than Ever
From ACM Opinion

Our Smartphones Are Making Live Tv Better Than Ever

The history of the Internet is one of lonely ­people trying to find one another.

Glenn Greenwald's Pulse-Pounding Tale of Breaking the Snowden Leaks
From ACM Opinion

Glenn Greenwald's Pulse-Pounding Tale of Breaking the Snowden Leaks

In June 2013, Edward Snowden was sitting in his room at the Mira hotel in Hong Kong, watching the world react to the first of his explosive leaks about the NSA's...

The Peril of Knowledge Everywhere
From ACM Opinion

The Peril of Knowledge Everywhere

Thanks to advances in technology, we may soon revisit a question raised four centuries ago: Are there things we should try not to know?
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