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 BLOG@CACM
COLT/ICML Open Problems and ICML Instructions
Open problems will be presented in a joint session in the evening of the COLT/ICML overlap day. If you have a difficult, theoretically definable problem in machine...
From ACM Opinion
Nobody Wants to Learn How to Program
Many programming tutorials begin with basic programming principles: variables, loops, data types. This is an obvious way to teach programming to adults, but not...
From ACM Opinion
.s. Senators: No Time to Lose on Strengthening Cybersecurity
Four U.S. senators sound a warning on cybersecurity, comparing the present to the days prior to September 11, 2001. The system is blinking red, and we are failing...
From ACM Opinion
The Dark Side of Facebook
Your social networking pages are being policed by outsourced, unvetted moderators from third-world countries paid just $1 an hour.
From ACM News
Here's The Best (and Prettiest) Way To See Exactly How You're Being Tracked Online
Firefox-browser provider Mozilla has released an awesome new tool for seeing how you're being tracked on the Web.
From ACM TechNews
Stroustrup Reveals What's New in C++ 11
Texas A&M University professor Bjarne Stroustrup recently spoke with InfoWorld's Paul Krill about the past, present, and future of C++, which was recently upgraded...
From ACM Opinion
Why Driverless Cars Will Increase Tensions in Cities and Suburbs Alike
Driverless cars sound less and less like science fiction with each passing month, and that's prompted widespread discussion about how they might change society.
From ACM Opinion
Https and Tor: Working Together to Protect Your Privacy and Security Online
This week EFF released a new version its HTTPS Everywhere extension for the Firefox browser and debuted a beta version of the extension for Chrome. EFF frequently...
From ACM Opinion
Windows Without Windows
Microsoft's new version of Windows is fantastic, jarring, and risky at the same time. Fantastic because it marks the clearest sign yet that Microsoft is embracing...
From ACM Opinion
How Young Is Too Young to Learn to Code?
When the American Academy of Pediatrics recommends that children under 2 spend exactly zero time in front of screens, what its members are concerned about is substitution—all...
From ACM Opinion
Is Ted Elitist?
In a nutshell, no. It certainly attracts people who are regarded as elite in their area of expertise. But the word "elitist" implies exclusionary, and there have...
From ACM Opinion
Building Responsive Web Sites: How to Handle Navigation Menus
The Web is moving rapidly away from its fixed-layout past into what it arguably should have been all along—a flexible medium that adapts to any screen size.
From ACM News
Stem, Gender Parity, and Faculty Retention
Universities retain and promote men and women at similar rates in STEM departments, except for mathematics, according to a new study. However, the odds that any...
From ACM Opinion
How Does Siri Knockoff Evi Compare to the Iphone's Original Digital Assistant?
Evi, the Siri knockoff that got attention last week for looking too much like Siri, has beendownloaded over 200,000 times, leading us to believe that this one might...
From ACM Opinion
Social Media in 2012 Elections Will Make 2008 Look Like the Digital Dark Ages
Forget all the jibber-jabber in this presidential campaign about policy and strategy. The highlight for me of this election cycle came when the Obama campaign released...
From ACM Opinion
The Coming Entanglement: Bill Joy and Danny Hillis
Digital innovators Bill Joy, co-founder of Sun Microsystems, and Danny Hillis, co-founder of the Long Now Foundation, talk with Scientific American Executive Editor...
From ACM Opinion
Web Privacy Standards: Easy to Break, Hard to Enforce
Over the past week, Google has been called out for bypassing default privacy settings in both Safari and Internet Explorer in order to serve up advertising cookies...
From ACM Opinion
Pinterest: Hot New Network or Another Quora?
After a decade of struggle, the social networking battlefield has quietened down. Facebook is the undisputed champion, while Twitter serves for instant news and...
From ACM TechNews
IBM Says Future Computers Will Be Constant Learners
Tomorrow's computers will constantly improve their understanding of the data they work with, which will help them provide users with more appropriate information...
From ACM Opinion