The original version of this story appeared in Quanta Magazine. Computer scientists often deal with abstract problems that are hard to comprehend, but an exciting new algorithm matters to anyone who ...

Adam Aleksic has somehow managed to make linguistics cool. His rapid-fire videos have attracted an audience of millions across the social media universe. A Harvard graduate with a linguistics degree, ...

We’re suckers for the kind of “life hacks” that tell you that you’ve been doing some relatively mundane task all wrong, and that there’s a super-easy alternative which can massively speed up your ...

An exclusive excerpt from Every Screen On The Planet reveals how the social media app’s powerful recommendation engine was shaped by a bunch of ordinary, twentysomething curators—including a guy named ...

Franz Kafka wrote in Prague in the 1920s. His work was based on the existential philosophy, and thinkers like Kierkegaard and Nietzsche greatly influenced him. In Kafka’s worldview, the individual ...

Facebook’s algorithm 1 is its superpower — and its kryptonite. Yes, it leads to higher engagement that earns the company billions of dollars, but it’s also tied to some of the company’s biggest ...

It’s the multimillion pound question that publishers and writers have been pondering for decades: what makes a bestseller? Attempting to write one could certainly pay off – the highest-paid author in ...

The way that books are selected for publication has remained basically the same for years: editors read over a manuscript and decide if they think it has potential and is a good fit. But that could be ...

The trajectory of books about new technologies follows a similar pattern: first, hype; then, backlash; then, finally, a more considered view of what it might actually be good for. The first hype books ...

The question of how much power algorithms have over our lives has a topical edge. Already there are lines of code that tell us what to watch, whom to date, and even whom to send to jail. In Hello ...

John Rasmussen of Lakewood browses the stacks at the Denver Central Library on Thursday, May 25, 2017. Algorithms determine so much of our life. The movies we watch. The social media posts we see. The ...