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How to Produce Innovations
From Communications of the ACM

How to Produce Innovations

Making innovations happen is surprisingly easy, satisfying, and rewarding if you start small and build up.

What Are You Trying to Pull?
From Communications of the ACM

What Are You Trying to Pull?

A single cache miss is more expensive than many instructions.

The Risks of Self-Auditing Systems
From Communications of the ACM

The Risks of Self-Auditing Systems

Unforeseen problems can result from the absence of impartial independent evaluations.

The Oracle-Google Case Will Decide the Future of Software
From ACM Opinion

The Oracle-Google Case Will Decide the Future of Software

The legal battle  between Oracle and Google is about to come to an end. And nothing less is as stake than the future of programming.

To Write Better Code, Read Virginia Woolf
From ACM Opinion

To Write Better Code, Read Virginia Woolf

The humanities are kaput. Sorry, liberal arts cap-and-gowners. You blew it. In a software-run world, what's wanted are more engineers.

My 10 Favorite Books: Bill Gates
From ACM Opinion

My 10 Favorite Books: Bill Gates

"Seveneves," Neal Stephenson: This novel about how the human race responds to the end of life on Earth rekindled my love for sci-fi. Some readers will lose patience...

Let's Hope Drone ­sers All Follow These 8 Simple Government Guidelines
From ACM Opinion

Let's Hope Drone ­sers All Follow These 8 Simple Government Guidelines

Don't be a jerk. That's essentially what a new set of U.S. government guidelines boils down to when it comes to flying drones.

Nasa and the Author of 'the Martian' Tell ­s Exactly How We'll Get to Mars
From ACM Opinion

Nasa and the Author of 'the Martian' Tell ­s Exactly How We'll Get to Mars

In "The Martian," Matt Damon plays a NASA astronaut who's been stranded on Mars and has to figure out how to survive until the space agency can devise a daring...

Google Doubles Down on AI
From ACM Opinion

Google Doubles Down on AI

Google announced something for everyone yesterday at its 10th annual I/O developer conference.

How Will Virtual Reality Change Our Lives?
From ACM Opinion

How Will Virtual Reality Change Our Lives?

And it's not just gamers who are benefiting from the immersive possibilities it offers.

Eske Willerslev Is Rewriting History With Dna
From ACM Opinion

Eske Willerslev Is Rewriting History With Dna

As a boy growing up in Denmark, Eske Willerslev could not wait to leave Gentofte, his suburban hometown. As soon as he was old enough, he would strike out for the...

Q&a: Hitomi Researchers Talk About Satellite's Tragic End and the Data It Sent Home
From ACM Opinion

Q&a: Hitomi Researchers Talk About Satellite's Tragic End and the Data It Sent Home

Three researchers from the Kavli Institute for Particle Astrophysics and Cosmology, explain the circumstances of Hitomi's tragic accident and express their hopes...

What If Facebook Gave ­S an Opposing-Viewpoints Button?
From ACM Opinion

What If Facebook Gave ­S an Opposing-Viewpoints Button?

Imagine if you could flip a switch on Facebook, and turn all the conservative viewpoints that you see liberal, or vice versa. You'd realize your news might look...

Peek Into the Weird and Wonderful Age of AI (yes, There's a Chatbot)
From ACM Opinion

Peek Into the Weird and Wonderful Age of AI (yes, There's a Chatbot)

On March 23, Microsoft revealed Tay, a Twitter bot trained to chat like a millennial. It worked … too well.

Six Creative Ways to Solve Biomedicine's Big Data Problem
From ACM Opinion

Six Creative Ways to Solve Biomedicine's Big Data Problem

Biomedical research generates an obscene amount of data. Now, three funding agencies are trying to spur the development of tools and platforms to improve researchers'...

Is Big Data and Artificial Intelligence a (r)evolution in Outsourcing?
From ACM Opinion

Is Big Data and Artificial Intelligence a (r)evolution in Outsourcing?

The combination of big data and artificial intelligence (AI) are playing an increasingly useful role in a broad spectrum of traditionally outsourced functions such...

Doom Is a Gleefully Gory Ballet Set in a Nightmare
From ACM Opinion

Doom Is a Gleefully Gory Ballet Set in a Nightmare

My instinct upon leaping into id Software's hyper-gruesome Doom, a gonzo shooter out May 13 for PC, PlayStation 4 and Xbox One, is to dawdle.

The Coming Horror of Virtual Reality
From ACM Opinion

The Coming Horror of Virtual Reality

If Kitchen, a five-minute virtual-reality demo created by the Japanese studio Capcom, were a short film, few viewers would be moved to panic by its misery of horror...

Okcupid Study Reveals the Perils of Big-Data Science
From ACM Opinion

Okcupid Study Reveals the Perils of Big-Data Science

On May 8, a group of Danish researchers publicly released a dataset of nearly 70,000 users of the online dating site OkCupid, including usernames, age, gender,...

Should We Synthesise a Human Genome?
From ACM Opinion

Should We Synthesise a Human Genome?

At Harvard today, an invitation-only group of about 150 scientists, lawyers, and entrepreneurs, met to discuss if and how to construct from scratch an entire human...
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