Gothenburg promised to optimise school admissions with a piece of code. The resulting chaos showed how unaccountable systems are ruining lives We like to imagine that injustice announces itself loudly ...

I remember when George McGovern, the Democratic presidential nominee in 1972, promised that if elected, he would send each citizen a check each year for $1,000. In today’s dollars, that would be ...

In an era dominated by social media, misinformation has become an all too familiar foe, infiltrating our feeds and sowing seeds of doubt and confusion. With more than half of social media users across ...

I have eight years of experience covering Android, with a focus on apps, features, and platform updates. I love looking at even the minute changes in apps and software updates that most people would ...

PCWorld reports that Spotify offers a hidden “Basic” tier launched in mid-2024 for $10.99/month, providing music-only streaming without audiobooks or lossless audio. This plan requires existing ...

It’s hard to ignore the seismic shifts brought about by algorithm-driven content. Every time you scroll through your social media feed or check your favorite news app, algorithms are diligently at ...

American Airlines will stopped awarding AAdvantage miles and Loyalty Points for basic economy tickets. This policy change aligns American with similar restrictions already in place at other carriers.

American Airlines quietly ended the ability for customers traveling on basic economy tickets to earn miles and status. Basic economy tickets are airlines' most restrictive and already do not allow for ...

When Edsger W. Dijkstra published his algorithm in 1959, computer networks were barely a thing. The algorithm in question found the shortest path between any two nodes on a graph, with a variant ...

Imagine a town with two widget merchants. Customers prefer cheaper widgets, so the merchants must compete to set the lowest price. Unhappy with their meager profits, they meet one night in a ...

The original version of this story appeared in Quanta Magazine. If you want to solve a tricky problem, it often helps to get organized. You might, for example, break the problem into pieces and tackle ...

Microsoft open-sourced the MS-BASIC language. Bill Gates would never have seen this coming back in the day. MS-BASIC 1.1 was many developers' first language. In 1976, they rebranded Altair BASIC to ...