On YouTube, there’s a long tail of content that pretty much guarantees the inclusion of every potential human interest. There are skate videos, makeup tutorials, and backyard surgical removals of blackheads. And yet the presentation of a lot of this content — especially when it’s trying to attract a…

Getty Images All of the troubles surrounding Facebook and Google can be traced back to a mistake, according to TED speaker and virtual reality visionary Jaron Lanier. At this point, Lanier said, we shouldn't call companies like Facebook social networks. "Call them behavior-modification empires."…

Log in | Register Cart Advanced search Journal Journal of Research on Technology in Education Volume 50, 2018 - Issue 1 Submit an article Journal homepage 743 Views 0 CrossRef citations to date Altmetric Listen Original Articles Pages 18-33 Published online: 22 Nov 2017 Download citation…

Every child, no matter what country they’re from or their social background, should have the chance to use and learn about technology. That’s the thinking behind a number of projects led by international organisations like UNESCO and UNICEF. They hope to bolster education and economic growth by…

This week, Saks Fifth Avenue, Saks Off 5th, and Lord & Taylor department stores—all owned by The Hudson’s Bay Company—acknowledged a data breach impacting more than five million credit and debit card numbers. The culprits? The same group that's spent the last few years pulling off data heists from…

A slice of the data that Facebook keeps on the author: ‘This information has millions of nefarious uses.’Photograph: Dylan Curran Want to freak yourself out? I’m going to show just how much of your information the likes of Facebook and Google store about you without you even realising it. Google…

Demystifying the luck skillset has been a personal project of Christine Carter, a sociologist and senior fellow at the Greater Good Science Center, at U.C. Berkeley. Photograph by Zoltán Vörös / Flickr L uck can seem synonymous with randomness. To call someone lucky is usually to deny the relevance…

Technical Debt is like taking a loan. Let's say you need an expensive car but can't afford it. One option is to take a loan and pay some interest over time. The tradeoff is that you'll pay more on the final price of the car. It's a compromise, but it can make sense if the loan is paid correctly to…

For investors, it appears doing your homework does trump dumb luck. Hedge funds that frequently accessed SEC filings such as annual reports posted better-than-average returns in the following month compared with non-users, according to a new academic study. The working paper from Rice University…

Users have been gaming YouTube by purchasing fake YouTube views practically since the platform began. Some claim they’re merely trying to jumpstart their own imminent viral success, others are less nuanced about their intentions, but the mere existence of fake views draws the authenticity of every…

Everyone knows how the story ends. In July 2016, 22 years after it began as a hobby for Stanford graduate students Jerry Yang and David Filo, Yahoo agreed to sell its core operating business to Verizon in what Forbes writer Brian Solomon called “ the saddest $5 billion deal in tech history .” But…

Staircase Model (France), mid–late 19th century; carved, joined, turned, bent, and planed oak; H x W x D: 52 x 71 x 44 cm (20 1/2 x 27 15/16 x 17 5/16 in.); Gift of Eugene V. and Clare E. Thaw; 2007-45-10 Courtesy Cooper Hewitt Museum Since the Middle Ages, France’s “compagnons” have lived…

“Can I try the Cole Haans in a size 8?” Later that night on Facebook: An advertisement for Cole Haan pumps. OK, maybe a coincidence. “What’s the best high-tech scale?” my wife asks aloud. Five minutes later on Instagram: An ad for scales. Wait,...

An elite Russian hacking team, a historic ransomware attack, an espionage group in the Middle East, and countless small time cryptojackers all have one thing in common. Though their methods and objectives vary, they all lean on leaked NSA hacking tool EternalBlue to infiltrate target computers and…

Philanthropist lives modestly in rented apartment after giving away $8bn fortune Sat, Mar 3, 2018, 06:00 In 2003, Chuck Feeney signed off on a decision to spend all of his fortune in his lifetime. “Giving while living,” he called it. Chuck Feeney today is a man of no property. He and his wife Helga…

In 2010, Google stunned the telecom sector by announcing the company would be jumping into the broadband business. Under the brand banner of Google Fiber, the search giant proclaimed it would be lighting a much-needed fire under the traditionally uncompetitive broadband industry, delivering…

Chapter 1 Gerald Selbee broke the code of the American breakfast cereal industry because he was bored at work one day, because it was a fun mental challenge, because most things at his job were not fun and because he could —because he happened to be the kind of person who saw puzzles all around him,…

Javier Zarracina/Vox Outside contributors' opinions and analysis of the most important issues in politics, science, and culture. As the 21st century was beginning, a South African psychiatrist named Derek Summerfield happened to be in Cambodia conducting some research on the psychological effects of…

Rising wage inequality has been a defining feature of the American economy for nearly four decades. In 2017, with an improving economy, all deciles in the overall wage distribution have improved, meaning most workers finally have higher hourly wages now than in 2007, the labor market peak before the…

On a Saturday evening in January, an estimated 110,000 people – more than a quarter of Malta’s population – funnelled into Valletta, its tiny gem of a capital, to celebrate the city’s inauguration as Europe’s Capital of Culture 2018. “National pride has reached historic levels,” proclaimed the prime…

Shutterstock The US electricity sector is in a period of unprecedented change and turmoil. Renewable energy prices are falling like crazy . Natural gas production continues its extraordinary surge . Coal, the golden child of the current administration, is headed down the tubes . In all that bedlam,…

Sentences that start with the phrase “A guru once told me…” are, more often than not, eye-roll-inducing. But recently, while resting in malasana , or a deep squat, in an East London yoga class, I was struck by the second half of the instructor’s sentence: “A guru once told me that the problem with…

Originally, only the wealthy could afford bed coverings. Maria Morri/ CC BY-SA 2.0 Late July. New York City. A bedroom on the top floor of a four-story building in which I installed an air conditioner with several thousand too few BTUs. I barely know what a BTU is. The temperature that day reached…

The proportion of the global population living on less than $1.90 per person per day has fallen—from 18 percent in 2008 to 11 percent in 2013, according to the World Bank. In the United States, however, the poverty rate has been more stubborn—41 million people lived below the country’s poverty line…

T he inside of every cell in our body is like a crowded city, filled with tracks, transports, libraries, factories, power plants, and garbage disposal units. The city’s workers are protein machines, which metabolize food, take out the garbage, or repair DNA. Cargo is moved from one place to another…

More below • The full list of properties investigated

A Stanford economist is using the company's vast store of personal data to study why so many in the U.S. are stuck in place economically. The new research is the latest sign of Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s effort to grapple with the aftershocks of the 2016 election | Nam Y. Huh/AP Photo Facebook…

Skip to contentSkip to site index Feature Critics say the search giant is squelching competition before it begins. Should the government step in? Credit S hivaun Moeran and Adam Raff met, married and started a company — thereby sparking a chain of events that might, ultimately, take down this age of…

Some futurists try to foresee the future. Others attempt to shape it. Yet prolific science-fiction author and biochemist Isaac Asimov did both. Asimov not only invented the word “robotics,” his “Three Laws of Robotics,” first written as part of a short story in 1942, have had a massive impact on…

The Tyranny of Convenience Leer en español Credit Hudson Christie Convenience is the most underestimated and least understood force in the world today. As a driver of human decisions, it may not offer the illicit thrill of Freud’s unconscious sexual desires or the mathematical elegance of the…

I'll start this post where I start many of my talks - what does a hacker look like? Or perhaps more specifically, what do people think a hacker looks like? It's probably a scary image, one that's a bit mysterious, a shady character lurking in the hidden depths of the internet. People have this image…

Moderated by Shayne Hodge on July 29, 2013, in Mountain View, California, X6887.2013 © Computer History Museum 3dfx was a pioneering consumer computer graphics company best known for its Voodoo Graphics accelerators for PCs. Their graphics products also found their way into popular arcade games such…

Image: David Nadlinger/EPSRC Zoom in close on the center of the picture above, and you can spot something you perhaps never thought you’d be able to see: a single atom. Here is a close-up if, you’re having trouble: Image: David Nadlinger/EPSRC This strontium atom is emitting light after being…

We took a hacker to a café and, in 20 minutes, he knew where everyone else was born, what schools they attended, and the last five things they googled. Maurits Martijn Oct 14, 2014 By Maurits Martijn , from De Correspondent Translated from Dutch by Jona Meijers Illustrations by Kristina Collantes In…

Back in 1973, Steve Miller Band’s “The Joker” was blaring from the PA in a California warehouse as two dozen women in flared jeans assembled Pong circuit boards. The smell of corned beef and marijuana wafted down the manufacturing line. Orders for Atari’s landmark table tennis video game were still…

This story is featured in BBC Future’s “Best of 2018” collection. Discover more of our picks . When trying to memorise new material, it’s easy to assume that the more work you put in, the better you will perform. Yet taking the occasional down time – to do literally nothing – may be exactly what you…