On Lethal Autonomous Weapons

I suspect many computer scientists, like me, like to believe that, on the whole, computing benefits humanity. Thus, it is disturbing to realize computing is also making a major contribution to military technology. 

Moshe Y. Vardi

Advancing the ACM Agenda

Volunteers provide ACM with the intellectual and operational muscle power it needs to carry out myriad activities in support of computer science professionals and practitioners around the world.

Vinton G. Cerf

What About Statistical Relational Learning?

While Stuart Russell's review article "Unifying Logic and Probability" (July 2015) provided an excellent summary of a number of attempts to unify these two representations, it also gave an incomplete picture of the state of the …

CACM Staff

What Do We Do When the Jobs Are Gone, and Why We Must Embrace Active Learning

Moshe Y. Vardi ponders the outlook for people when all work is automated, while Mark Guzdial emphasizes the importance of Active Learning in teaching computer science.

Moshe Y. Vardi, Mark Guzdial

When Data Is Not Enough

Reproducibility of code is increasingly crucial to verifying scientific claims.

Don Monroe

The Hyper-Intelligent Bandage

Scientists are developing smart, sensor-packed dressings to help heal chronic wounds.

Gregory Mone

Technology Brings Online Education in Line with Campus Programs

Whether sitting in front of a screen or in a classroom, online and campus-based institutions want to verify students actually attend classes, take exams.

Keith Kirkpatrick

The Digital Dark Age

. . . and why it will have to wait.

David Anderson

Why Our Theories of Innovation Fail Us

Until we moderate our fascination with creating ideas, we will not achieve the rate of innovations we seek.

Peter J. Denning, Nicholas Dew

Coupled Ethical-Epistemic Analysis in Teaching Ethics

Critical reflection on value choices.

Nancy Tuana

Pickled Patches

On repositories of patches and tension between security professionals and in-house developers.

George V. Neville-Neil

Increasing the Participation of Individuals with Disabilities in Computing

Lessons learned from a decade of practice.

Richard E. Ladner, Sheryl Burgstahler

Creating a New Generation of Computational Thinkers

Experiences with a successful school program in Scotland.

Jeremy Scott, Alan Bundy

I Can't Let You Do That, Dave

Computers should not treat their owners as adversaries.

Cory Doctorow

The Case For Banning Killer Robots: Point

Ban the bots? Considering both sides of the argument for and against.

Stephen Goose

The Case For Banning Killer Robots: Counterpoint

Let me unequivocally state: The status quo with respect to innocent civilian casualties is utterly and wholly unacceptable.

Ronald Arkin

How to De-Identify Your Data

Balancing statistical accuracy and subject privacy in large social-science datasets.

Olivia Angiuli, Joe Blitzstein, Jim Waldo

Lean Software Development: Building and Shipping Two Versions

Catering to developers' strengths while still meeting team objectives.

Kate Matsudaira

Challenges of Memory Management on Modern N-UMA Systems

Optimizing NUMA systems applications with Carrefour.

Fabien Gaud, Baptiste Lepers, Justin Funston, Mohammad Dashti, Alexandra Fedorova, Vivien Quéma, Renaud Lachaize, Mark Roth

Personalizing Maps

Digital maps can be engineered to adapt to a person's unique interests and experience in geographic space.

Andrea Ballatore, Michela Bertolotto

Propositions as Types

Connecting mathematical logic and computation, it ensures that some aspects of programming are absolute.

Philip Wadler

Smart Data Pricing: Using Economics to Manage Network Congestion

Economic incentives that alleviate congestion for Internet customers can also improve business performance for network operators.

Soumya Sen, Carlee Joe-Wong, Sangtae Ha, Mung Chiang

Internet Use and Psychological Well-Being: Effects of Activity and Audience

The connection between online communication and psychological well-being depends on whom you are communicating with.

Robert Kraut, Moira Burke

Technical Perspective: Paris Beyond Frommer's

Can a computer automatically discover and tell us what makes Paris look so much like Paris? "What Makes Paris Look Like Paris?" offers a creative, inspiring new approach to discovering the visual style of a city like Paris.

Noah Snavely

What Makes Paris Look Like Paris?

Given a large repository of geo-tagged imagery, we seek to automatically find visual elements, for example windows, balconies, and street signs, that are most distinctive for a certain geo-spatial area, for example the city of …

Carl Doersch, Saurabh Singh, Abhinav Gupta, Josef Sivic, Alexei A. Efros

Technical Perspective: In-Situ Database Management

"NoDB: Efficient Query Execution on Raw Data Files" investigates extending a DBMS so it can use the file data in situ, without having to load it first.

David Maier

NoDB: Efficient Query Execution on Raw Data Files

We here present the design and roadmap of a new paradigm in database systems, called NoDB, which do not require data loading while still maintaining the whole feature set of a modern database system.

Ioannis Alagiannis, Renata Borovica-Gajic, Miguel Branco, Stratos Idreos, Anastasia Ailamaki

Q&A: Redefining Architectures

Mary Jane Irwin on building advanced circuits, special processors, and a hardware description language, while advocating for women in computer science.

Leah Hoffmann