In 1945, as American physicists were preparing to test the atomic bomb, it occurred to someone to ask if such a test could set the atmosphere on fire. This was a legitimate concern. Nitrogen, which makes up most of the atmosphere, is not energetically stable.

I was going to start this column with some new productivity figures from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, but I realized that at least half of the readers would quit right there. Productivity is one of those subjects that fascinates economists and bores, or mystifies, almost everyone else.

Two years into his gig as chief scientist for Chinese internet giant Baidu Inc., Andrew Ng, the former Google executive who founded the company’s artificial-intelligence unit, is pushing Baidu to become a leader in artificial intelligence.

Five years ago, when Eric Ries was working on the book that would become his best-selling entrepreneurship manifesto "The Lean Startup," he floated a provocative idea in the epilogue: Someone should build a new, “long-term” stock exchange.

Earlier this week, security researchers at Checkpoint discovered a vulnerability that would have allowed attackers to change messages and links sent through Facebook messenger.

According to wikipedia, A poverty trap is "any self-reinforcing mechanism which causes poverty to persist." If it persists from generation to generation, the trap begins to reinforce itself if steps are not taken to break the cycle.

Technology has always triggered fears of mass unemployment. In 1811 it was the Luddites, who assumed they were done for. In the 1930s, it was vaunted economist John Maynard Keynes, who implicated technology as one reason for the unemployment of the Great Depression.

During 2007 and 2008, giant financial institutions were obliterated, the net worth of most Americans collapsed, and most of the world’s economies were brought to their knees. At the same time, this has been an era of radical economic inequality, at levels not seen since 1929.

Since 2011, while Google's revenues continued to grow, the average ad cost has declined. Larry Page described this while discussing the company’s Q4 2011 results as "a decline in ad quality" (Chart 1). More and more ads are being displayed, each one earning the company less and less.

Daniel Straub remembers the night he got hooked on basic income. He had invited Götz Werner, a billionaire owner of a German drugstore chain, to give an independent talk in Zurich, where Straub was working as a project manager for a think tank.

Why do people still go to grad school? Because our culture has very few visions of what it means to be a winner and a huge number of what it means to be a loser. Laura McKenna’s piece is part of a perennial microgenre in the world of #Content: the “What Are They Thinking?” piece.

One by one, they detailed a mass surveillance program in which the National Security Administration and others gathered information on citizens — via phone tracking and tapping undersea Internet cables.

I was talking to a former student when he brought up an article written by a well-seasoned programmer regretting his choice of career. This fellow had rejected the management path in order to stay in the coding trenches and as a result, ended up in some absolutely crummy situations.

Lately, everyone’s talking about “conversational UI.” It’s the next big thing. But the more articles I read on the topic, the more annoyed I get. It’s taken me so long to figure out why! Conversations, writes WIRED, can do things traditional GUIs can’t.

This widely-known adage dates to a philosopher and friar from the fourteenth century named William of Ockham. Occam's Razor is often stated as: It's no surprise that the whole reason we can recall an adage from 600+ years ago is that it works so well.

Despite its ability to generate prosperity, capitalism is under attack. By shaking up our long-held assumptions about how and why the system works, we can improve it. Capitalism is under attack.

Ada Lovelace was born 200 years ago today. To some she is a great hero in the history of computing; to others an overestimated minor figure. I’ve been curious for a long time what the real story is.

Gary Noesner is a former FBI hostage negotiator. For part of the 51-day standoff outside the Branch Davidian religious compound in Waco, Texas, in 1993, he was the strategic coordinator for negotiations with the compound’s leader, David Koresh.

Some four years ago, I started Bingo Card Creator, a business which sells software to teachers.  At the time, my big goal for the future was eventually making perhaps $200 a month, so that I could buy more video games without feeling guilty about it.