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How to Devise Passwords That Drive Hackers Away
From ACM Opinion

How to Devise Passwords That Drive Hackers Away

Not long after I began writing about cybersecurity, I became a paranoid caricature of my former self.

Inside the Secret World of the Data Crunchers Who Helped Obama Win
From ACM Opinion

Inside the Secret World of the Data Crunchers Who Helped Obama Win

In late spring, the backroom number crunchers who powered Barack Obama's campaign to victory noticed that George Clooney had an almost gravitational tug on West...

Wrath of the Math: Obama Wins Nerdiest Election Ever
From ACM Opinion

Wrath of the Math: Obama Wins Nerdiest Election Ever

Congratulations, Barack Obama: You have prevailed in the nerdiest election in the history of the American Republic.

Future Mars Missions: Can Humans Actually Trump Robots?
From ACM Opinion

Future Mars Missions: Can Humans Actually Trump Robots?

For decades scientists have backed the idea of sending robots to collect Martian rocks and return them to Earth, a project that should be possible well before humans...

Why Jony Ive Shouldn't Kill Off Apple's Skeuomorphic Interfaces
From ACM Opinion

Why Jony Ive Shouldn't Kill Off Apple's Skeuomorphic Interfaces

Last week Apple fired Scott Forstall, the architect of its iOS platform, and handed his duties over to the company's chief industrial designer, Jonathan Ive. Ive...

The Strange Science of Translating Sarcasm Online
From ACM Opinion

The Strange Science of Translating Sarcasm Online

Seriously, did he really mean that?

The Most Important Education Technology in 200 Years
From ACM Opinion

The Most Important Education Technology in 200 Years

If you were asked to name the most important innovation in transportation over the last 200 years, you might say the combustion engine, air travel, Henry Ford’s...

Probability Versus Prediction in Volcanic Hazards (and Elections)
From ACM Opinion

Probability Versus Prediction in Volcanic Hazards (and Elections)

Unless you've been living on the far side of the moon for the past two years, you'll know that the U.S. presidential election is next week. Now, I'm by no means...

Should a Calendar App Look Like a Calendar?
From ACM Opinion

Should a Calendar App Look Like a Calendar?

This week, Apple fired Scott Forstall, its longtime chief of mobile software. In the wake of the shake-up—which reportedly had to do with Forstall's refusal to for...

Can You Do a Day's Work on a Cell Phone?
From ACM Opinion

Can You Do a Day's Work on a Cell Phone?

"It’s really a little computer." You remember the first time you said it, a few years ago, when you grasped just how much a smartphone can do.

What Tumblr Can Tell ­S About the Future of Media
From ACM Opinion

What Tumblr Can Tell ­S About the Future of Media

If there was any doubt left that Tumblr is trying to become more of a mainstream media entity, albeit with its own odd twist, it was removed recently when the service...

From ACM Opinion

Science Is the Key to Growth

Mitt Romney said in all three presidential debates that we need to expand the economy. But he left out a critical ingredient: investments in science and technology...

Is Failure to Predict a Crime?
From ACM Opinion

Is Failure to Predict a Crime?

I learned with disbelief last Monday about the decision of an Italian judge to convict seven scientific experts of manslaughter and to sentence them to six years...

Does a Public "find My Iphone" Search Violate Personal Privacy?
From ACM Opinion

Does a Public "find My Iphone" Search Violate Personal Privacy?

A guy stole my iPhone. I tracked it and posted his address online. Was that wrong?

The Flop That Saved Microsoft
From ACM Opinion

The Flop That Saved Microsoft

It wasn't very easy to get my hands on a Zune. After Microsoft's long-pitied music player wonSlate's Reader Takeover poll—in which I'd promised to reassess an overlooked...

The Consequences of Machine Intelligence
From ACM Opinion

The Consequences of Machine Intelligence

The question of what happens when machines get to be as intelligent as and even more intelligent than people seems to occupy many science-fiction writers.

Rapture of the Nerds: Will the Singularity Turn ­S Into Gods or End the Human Race?
From ACM Opinion

Rapture of the Nerds: Will the Singularity Turn ­S Into Gods or End the Human Race?

Hundreds of the world’s brightest minds—engineers from Google and IBM, hedge funds quants, and Defense Department contractors building artificial intelligence—were...

Few Winners in Heated Cellphone Wars
From ACM Opinion

Few Winners in Heated Cellphone Wars

If you are wondering who will be your cellphone provider next year, so are the cellphone companies.

Gartner: Top 10 Strategic Technology Trends For 2013
From ACM Careers

Gartner: Top 10 Strategic Technology Trends For 2013

On Monday, the research firm laid out "10 critical tech trends for the next five years." Tuesday, it took a look at a little closer in, providing a list of the...

The Michigan Fight Song and Four Other Reasons to Avoid Internet Voting
From ACM Opinion

The Michigan Fight Song and Four Other Reasons to Avoid Internet Voting

In a Monday article, we described the security and reliability problems that have undermined public confidence in electronic voting machines within the United States...
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