A recent article reports that an Oracle patent on a fast sorting method has expired, allowing open source databases to use it freely. Mark Callaghan, the inventor behind the sorting algorithm, shows ...

Users can note which content they would like to view more frequently. Instagram is handing users some control in deciding what content they see. The social media giant is allowing users to have a say ...

Personalized algorithms may quietly sabotage how people learn, nudging them into narrow tunnels of information even when they start with zero prior knowledge. In the study, participants using ...

In previous episodes of this long-running series looking at the world of high-quality audio, at every point we’ve stayed in the real world of physical audio hardware. From the human ear to the ...

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 ...

Children as young as 4 years old are capable of finding efficient solutions to complex problems, such as independently inventing sorting algorithms developed by computer scientists. The scientists ...

On a scorching July afternoon in Shanghai, dozens of Chinese students hunch over tablet screens, engrossed in English, math and physics lessons. Algorithms track every keystroke, and the seconds spent ...

Every time a new slang word gets coined on the Internet, linguist Adam Aleksic is thrilled. “It’s definitely good for me in that I stay in business,” says Aleksic, who studies the origins of words and ...

Do you remember the early days of social media? The promise of connection, of democratic empowerment, of barriers crumbling and gates opening? In those heady days, the co-founder of Twitter said that ...

The original version of this story appeared in Quanta Magazine. One July afternoon in 2024, Ryan Williams set out to prove himself wrong. Two months had passed since he’d hit upon a startling ...

ROCHESTER — At Mayo Clinic's annual AI Summit in downtown Rochester, a group of physicians and scientists discussed how generative artificial intelligence is being used at Mayo Clinic — and how it's ...

Offline, in real-world Los Angeles, most Angelenos are having a perfectly normal day. But online, the fires and riots are still raging. The powerful algorithms that fuel social media platforms are ...