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dateMore Than a Year Ago
subjectPerformance And Reliability
authorThe New Yorker
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Google's New Autoreply Sounds Great!!!!
From ACM Opinion

Google's New Autoreply Sounds Great!!!!

On April 1, 2009, Google unveiled Gmail Autopilot, a plug-in that promised to read and generate contextually relevant replies to the messages piling up in users'...

Tangled Up in Entanglement
From ACM Opinion

Tangled Up in Entanglement

No area of physics causes more confusion, not just among the general public but also among physicists, than quantum mechanics.

Why Companies Won't Learn From the T-Mobile/experian Hack
From ACM Opinion

Why Companies Won't Learn From the T-Mobile/experian Hack

Last Thursday, John Legere, the C.E.O. of T-Mobile, joined the ranks of the dozens of chief executives who, in the past few years, have had to inform their customers...

Two Paths Toward Our Robot Future
From ACM Opinion

Two Paths Toward Our Robot Future

In 1970, Life magazine published an article about a Stanford University research project that had resulted in the construction of what it called the first-ever...

Passing Pluto
From ACM Opinion

Passing Pluto

Soon after the New Horizons spacecraft made its closest approach to Pluto, at 7:49 A.M. on Tuesday—seventy-two seconds ahead of schedule, after a nine-and-a-half...

Project Exodus
From ACM Opinion

Project Exodus

On March 27th, an American astronaut named Scott Kelly blasted off from Earth and, six hours later, clambered onto the International Space Station.

New Ways to Crash the Market
From ACM Opinion

New Ways to Crash the Market

Five years ago, on the afternoon of May 6, 2010, the Dow and the S. & P. fell more than six per cent in a matter of minutes, losing a trillion dollars in value.

Sight ­nseen (the Hows and Whys of Invisibility)
From ACM Opinion

Sight ­nseen (the Hows and Whys of Invisibility)

It is possible, according to many sources, to become invisible, but you must be patient, methodical, and willing to eat almost anything.

Germanwings Flight 9525, Technology, and the Question of Trust
From ACM Opinion

Germanwings Flight 9525, Technology, and the Question of Trust

Shortly before the dreadful crash of Germanwings Flight 9525, I happened to be reading part of "The Second Machine Age," a book by two academics at M.I.T., Erik...

Teaching Robots to Be Moral
From ACM Opinion

Teaching Robots to Be Moral

"Chappie," the highest-grossing movie in America last weekend, is, to put it mildly, not a great film; the critics have given it a twenty-nine on Rotten Tomatoes...

Why Everyone Was Wrong About Net Neutrality
From ACM Opinion

Why Everyone Was Wrong About Net Neutrality

Today, the Federal Communications Commission, by a vote of three to two, enacted its strongest-ever rules on net neutrality, preserving an open Internet by prohibiting...

Net Neutrality: How the Government Finally Got It Right
From ACM Opinion

Net Neutrality: How the Government Finally Got It Right

For years, the federal government supported the principle of net neutrality: the idea that broadband providers should treat all Internet traffic the same.

Netflix's Secret Special Algorithm Is a Human
From ACM Opinion

Netflix's Secret Special Algorithm Is a Human

On the opening night of this year's Sundance Film Festival, two films, as usual, had their premières, gaining maximum exposure to reporters and critics.

The World Cracks Down on the Internet
From ACM Opinion

The World Cracks Down on the Internet

In September of last year, Chinese authorities announced an unorthodox standard to help them decide whether to punish people for posting online comments that are...

The Hazards of Going on Autopilot
From ACM Opinion

The Hazards of Going on Autopilot

At 9:18 P.M. on February 12, 2009, Continental Connection Flight 3407, operated by Colgan Air, took off from Newark International Airport.

What Comes After the Turing Test?
From ACM Opinion

What Comes After the Turing Test?

Over the weekend, the news broke that a "supercomputer" program called "Eugene Goostman"—an impersonation of a wisecracking, thirteen-year-old Ukranian boy—had...

Can an Algorithm Solve Twitter's Credibility Problem?
From ACM Opinion

Can an Algorithm Solve Twitter's Credibility Problem?

On October 29, 2012, when Hurricane Sandy made landfall, I was in my Brooklyn apartment, refreshing Twitter.

Goodbye, Net Neutrality; Hello, Net Discrimination
From ACM Opinion

Goodbye, Net Neutrality; Hello, Net Discrimination

In 2007, at a public forum at Coe College, in Iowa, Presidential candidate Barack Obama was asked about net neutrality.

The Internet's Telltale Heartbleed
From ACM Opinion

The Internet's Telltale Heartbleed

The cryptography expert Bruce Schneier, who has been writing about computer security for more than fifteen years, is not given to panic or hyperbole.

One-Hit Wonders
From ACM Opinion

One-Hit Wonders

For more than a year now, tens of millions of Americans have found time each day to devote themselves to an essential task: swiping at their phones and tablets...
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