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This Tech Would Have Spotted the Secret Chinese Chip in Seconds
From ACM Opinion

This Tech Would Have Spotted the Secret Chinese Chip in Seconds

According to Bloomberg Businessweek, spies in China managed to insert chips into computer systems that would allow external control of those systems.

Behind the Scenes of Japan's Daring Asteroid Mission
From ACM Opinion

Behind the Scenes of Japan's Daring Asteroid Mission

As Japan lands a third probe on Ryugu asteroid, Nature looks at the Hayabusa2 mission in more detail.

Clicks, Lies and Videotape
From ACM Opinion

Clicks, Lies and Videotape

This past April a new video of Barack Obama surfaced on the Internet. Against a backdrop that included both the American and presidential flags, it looked like...

50 Years Old, '2001: A Space Odyssey' Still Offers Insight about the Future
From ACM Opinion

50 Years Old, '2001: A Space Odyssey' Still Offers Insight about the Future

Watching a 50th anniversary screening of "2001: A Space Odyssey," I found myself, a mathematician and computer scientist whose research includes work related to...

Will L.A.'s Anti-Terrorist Subway Scanners Be Adopted Everywhere?
From ACM Opinion

Will L.A.'s Anti-Terrorist Subway Scanners Be Adopted Everywhere?

In mid-August the Los Angeles County Metropolitan Transportation Authority and the Transportation Security Administration announced Metro has paid $100,000 each...

Why Alibaba Is Betting Big on AI Chips and Quantum Computing
From ACM Opinion

Why Alibaba Is Betting Big on AI Chips and Quantum Computing

During the opening ceremony of Alibaba's 2018 computing conference last week, Simon Hu, president of Alibaba Cloud, invited the MC to taste some tea on the stage—but...

The Obscene Coupling Known as Spaghetti Code
From Communications of the ACM

The Obscene Coupling Known as Spaghetti Code

Teach your junior programmers how to read code.

Paper-Based Electronics Could Fold, Biodegrade and Be the Basis for the Next Generation of Devices
From ACM Opinion

Paper-Based Electronics Could Fold, Biodegrade and Be the Basis for the Next Generation of Devices

It seems like every few months there's a new cellphone, laptop or tablet that is so exciting people line up around the block to get their hands on it.

How America Could Lose the Quantum-Computing Race
From ACM Opinion

How America Could Lose the Quantum-Computing Race

There's an arms race underway to develop the next generation of computers—known as "quantum" computers—and there's no guarantee that the United States is going...

David Patterson Says It's Time for New Computer Architectures and Software Languages
From ACM Opinion

David Patterson Says It's Time for New Computer Architectures and Software Languages

David Patterson—University of California professor, Google engineer, and RISC pioneer—says there's no better time than now to be a computer architect.

How Bots Ruined Clicktivism
From ACM Opinion

How Bots Ruined Clicktivism

I recently came across two tweets—or rather, thousands of tweets sharing the same two ideas over and over again.

Safe Artificial Intelligence Requires Cultural Intelligence
From ACM Opinion

Safe Artificial Intelligence Requires Cultural Intelligence

Knowledge, to paraphrase British journalist Miles Kington, is knowing a tomato is a fruit; wisdom is knowing there's a norm against putting it in a fruit salad....

Ten Years of Large Hadron Collider Discoveries Are Just the Start of Decoding the ­niverse
From ACM Opinion

Ten Years of Large Hadron Collider Discoveries Are Just the Start of Decoding the ­niverse

Ten years! Ten years since the start of operations for the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), one of the most complex machines ever created.

How Will Google's Innovation Continue Beyond Its 20th Year?
From ACM Opinion

How Will Google's Innovation Continue Beyond Its 20th Year?

As millions of people came online in the late 1990s they needed help figuring out what each webpage was about, and how to find what they were looking for.

Google Chrome's Biggest Challenge at Age 10 Might Just Be Its Own Success
From ACM Opinion

Google Chrome's Biggest Challenge at Age 10 Might Just Be Its Own Success

Exactly 10 years ago Tuesday, a newly promoted vice president named Sundar Pichai stood before a group of tech reporters in a conference room at Google's Mountain...

Are We Ready for the Future of Warfare?
From ACM Opinion

Are We Ready for the Future of Warfare?

Warfare has always been about exerting political will.

Why the Future of Data Storage is (Still) Magnetic Tape
From ACM Opinion

Why the Future of Data Storage is (Still) Magnetic Tape

It should come as no surprise that recent advances in big-data analytics and artificial intelligence have created strong incentives for enterprises to amass information...

How D-Wave's Quantum Machine Could Help Exotic Physics
From ACM Opinion

How D-Wave's Quantum Machine Could Help Exotic Physics

Picture a computer. Now I'm going to go out on a limb and say that you were probably thinking of your laptop, or maybe even your smartphone if you're being smart...

Overtrust in the Robotic Age
From Communications of the ACM

Overtrust in the Robotic Age

A contemporary ethical challenge.

When Machine Learning is Facially Invalid
From Communications of the ACM

When Machine Learning is Facially Invalid

Observations on the use of machine learning and facial inferences to classify people using inexplicable data.
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