Communications of the ACM
Innovation Is Overrated: A Provocation
Digital innovation is not working in the interest of the whole of society. It is time to radically rethink its purpose without…
From ACM Opinion
The Unreasonable Effectiveness of the Julia Programming Language
Fortran has ruled scientific computing, but Julia emerged for large-scale numerical work.
From ACM Opinion
3D-Printed (and CNC-Milled) Guns: Nine Questions You Were Too Afraid to Ask
By now, you've probably seen all the news regarding Defense Distributed, company founder Cody Wilson, and 3D-printed guns.
From ACM Opinion
Senior Scientist Argues that We Should Bypass Europa for Enceladus
In its quest to find extant life in the Solar System, NASA has focused its gaze on the Jovian moon Europa, home to what is likely the largest ocean known to humans...
From ACM Opinion
We Know You Hate the Internet of Things, but It's Saving Megafauna from Poachers
For much of this decade, organizations seeking to protect wildlife have attempted to use emerging technology as a conservation tool, allowing small numbers of people...
From ACM Opinion
License Expired: The Ars Technica 2018 Deathwatch
Wow, that 2017, though. Quite a year. Let's grab a Juicero and take a moment to reflect on the utter dumpster fires that we've witnessed over the past 12 months...
From ACM Opinion
The Mission to Learn Everything We Always Wanted to Know About the Universe
The Cosmic Microwave Background was created as the first atoms formed hundreds of thousands of years after the Big Bang, and it retains information about the formation...
From ACM Opinion
The Real Lesson of that Self-Driving Shuttle's First-Day Accident
Wednesday was supposed to be the triumphant launch of a free, driverless shuttle in downtown Las Vegas.
From ACM Opinion
Hacking the Vote: Threats Keep Changing, but Election It Sadly Stays the Same
The outcome of the 2016 presidential election is history. But allegations of voter fraud, election interference by foreign governments, and intrusions into state...
From ACM Opinion
The End of an Era Came Long Before the End of Cassini
I have now been writing about science for nearly a dozen years, which means my career more or less overlaps with that of the Cassini probe.
From ACM Opinion
Is Beaming Down In star Trek a Death Sentence?
In the 2009 movie Star Trek, Captain Kirk and Sulu plummeted down toward the planet Vulcan without a parachute. "Beam us up, beam us up!" Kirk shouted in desperation...
From ACM Opinion
Zuckerberg and Musk Are Both Wrong About AI
Back in 2015, a group of business leaders and scientists published an "open letter" about how controlling artificial superintelligence might be the most urgent...
From ACM Opinion
Explaining the pside and Downside of D-Wave's New Quantum Computer
D-Wave, a company based in British Columbia, has announced a new version of its quantum annealer: the D-Wave 2000Q. As the name suggests, the number of bits has...
From ACM Opinion
Y2k 2.0: Is the .s. Government Set to 'give Away the Internet' Saturday?
Remember the projected Y2K bug disaster? The world's computers would supposedly go haywire as the clock ticked to January 1, 2000, thus destroying the world and...
From ACM Opinion
Pro Evolution Soccer 2017 Review: The Finest Soccer Game Ever Made
There are many ways to interpret the beautiful game.
From ACM Opinion
Hydrogen Molecule Falls to Quantum Computer
We are at the beginning of a revolution. I've been going on about quantum computing for as long as I've been writing, but it has always been in the future tense...
From ACM Opinion
Dear Apple: Please se These Ideas to Modernize the Mac
I took a vacation last month. I traveled some. I read a lot. And I refurbished an old late 2008 MacBook Pro, one of the original aluminum unibody models.
From ACM Opinion
A Year with the Apple Watch: What Works, What Doesn't, and What Lies Ahead?
About a year ago, Apple announced and released its first Apple Watch. The long-rumored product was Apple’s first all-new product category since the iPad and its...
From ACM Opinion
Is D-Wave's Quantum Processor Really 10⁸ Times Faster Than a Normal Computer?
We have been following D-Wave's claims about its quantum hardware at Ars for a number of years. Over that time, my impression has oscillated between skepticism,...
From ACM Opinion
From Exile to Eminence: How the Alien Hunters Conquered Astronomy
When Jill Tarter first began to look for aliens, she drew looks askance from her friends and colleagues.12