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What Oculus's $2 Billion Payday Teaches ­S About Innovation
From ACM Opinion

What Oculus's $2 Billion Payday Teaches ­S About Innovation

Tuesday's announcement that Facebook is buying the virtual-reality start-up Oculus for $2 billion no doubt left many people scratching their heads.

Will We Ever Travel in Wormholes?
From ACM News

Will We Ever Travel in Wormholes?

The universe is huge.

Who's Afraid of Nate Silver?
From ACM Opinion

Who's Afraid of Nate Silver?

Nate Silver doesn't look very threatening.

This Is the Foo Field
From Communications of the ACM

This Is the Foo Field

The meaning of bits and avoiding upgrade bogdowns.

Is Multicore Hardware For General-Purpose Parallel Processing Broken?
From Communications of the ACM

Is Multicore Hardware For General-Purpose Parallel Processing Broken?

The current generation of general-purpose multicore hardware must be fixed to support more application domains and to allow cost-effective parallel programming.

Building Bicep2: A Conversation with Jamie Bock
From ACM Opinion

Building Bicep2: A Conversation with Jamie Bock

Caltech Professor of Physics Jamie Bock and his collaborators announced on March 17, 2014 that they have successfully measured a B-mode polarization signal in the...

Roomba Creator: Robot Doubles Need More Charisma
From ACM Opinion

Roomba Creator: Robot Doubles Need More Charisma

Colin Angle is co-founder and CEO of iRobot in Bedford, Massachusetts.

Three Questions For Leslie Lamport, Winner of Computing's Top Prize
From ACM Opinion

Three Questions For Leslie Lamport, Winner of Computing's Top Prize

This year's winner of the Turing Award—often referred to as the Nobel Prize of computing—was announced yesterday as Leslie Lamport, a computer scientist whose research...

From ACM Opinion

Why Google Doesn't Have a Research Lab

Research vice presidents at some computing giants, such as Microsoft and IBM, rule over divisions housed in dedicated facilities carefully insulated from the rat...

The Future of Brain Implants
From ACM News

The Future of Brain Implants

What would you give for a retinal chip that let you see in the dark or for a next-generation cochlear implant that let you hear any conversation in a noisy restaurant...

The Search For Life Across the ­niverse
From ACM Opinion

The Search For Life Across the ­niverse

When Jeremy Drake was beginning his career in the late 1980s, the question of whether or not we are alone in the universe still seemed beyond the realm of scienc...

The True Meaning of Pi Day
From ACM Opinion

The True Meaning of Pi Day

There are holidays like Mother's Day, Earth Day, Thanksgiving Day. Even a Talk-Like-Shakespeare Day. But Friday is Pi Day.

Bill Gates: The Rolling Stone Interview
From ACM Opinion

Bill Gates: The Rolling Stone Interview

At 58, Bill Gates is not only the richest man in the world, with a fortune that now exceeds $76 billion, but he may also be the most optimistic.

The Search For Aliens Is Just Getting Started
From ACM Opinion

The Search For Aliens Is Just Getting Started

Over the past 50 years, several SETI projects have scoured the cosmos but have yet to turn up anything conclusive. What do you make of this cosmic radio-silence...

Why You Should Embrace Surveillance, Not Fight It
From ACM Opinion

Why You Should Embrace Surveillance, Not Fight It

I once worked with Steven Spielberg on the development of Minority Report, derived from the short story by Philip K. Dick featuring a future society that uses surveillance...

At Sxsw, the Next Big Thing May Be No Thing at All
From ACM Opinion

At Sxsw, the Next Big Thing May Be No Thing at All

Every year, just before South by Southwest Interactive starts, the froth starts churning. Everybody begins wondering what this year’s breakout hit app will be.

From ACM Opinion

Why Robots Will Not Be Smarter Than Humans By 2029

In the last few days we've seen a spate of headlines like 2029: the year when robots will have the power to outsmart their makers, all occasioned by an Observer...

Language Barriers
From ACM Opinion

Language Barriers

The British scientist and polymath Stephen Wolfram has always had big ambitions.

Why Copyrighted Coffee May Cripple the Internet of Things
From ACM Opinion

Why Copyrighted Coffee May Cripple the Internet of Things

With its single-serving coffee pods, Green Mountain Coffee has transformed the business of brew.

Social Physics
From ACM Opinion

Social Physics

Since 2001, the Human Dynamics Laboratory at the MIT Media Lab has used digital technologies—from home-brewed portable sensors to cellphone call records—to try...
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