Society

Pat Gelsinger talked about why he’s optimistic about advancements in chip manufacturing during a visit to MIT.

In January 2020, two Detroit police officers greeted Robert Williams and promptly arrested him for robbery. The reason was because of an algorithm.

"Father of the Internet" Vint Cerf says he worries about AI's tendency toward misinformation, and about users' means of protecting themselves against it.

The former Fox News host didn’t just fuel far-right politics in the US. His rants have fed conspiracy theorists and extremists all over the world.

Meet the rednecks running a mutual aid auto repair shop in Alabama.

The history of the epithet, from its rise among leftists and jazz critics and folkies to its recent fall from favor.

A blog about making culture. Since 1999.

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"User-generated content" built a database big enough to teach ChatGPT and its ilk.

The year was 1764, and on some unrecorded day, a humble weaver named James Hargreaves changed the course of history when he invented the Spinning Jenny in his modest home in Lancashire, England. This innovative machine dramatically increased the speed at which cotton could be spun into yarn, transforming the textile industry and becoming a...

In a groundbreaking decision, the National Labor Relations Board (Board) ruled that a severance agreement with confidentiality and non-disparagement provisions was unlawful because it restricted the rights of employees to engage in protected concerted activity under Section 7 of the National Labor Relations Act (NLRA). Given how prevalent such provisions are in separation agreements, employers will have to consider very carefully what revisions they may need to make to these agreements when offering severance in exchange for a release.

Even as the United States continues to experience its longest economic expansion since World War II, concern is growing that soaring corporate debt will make the economy susceptible to a contraction that could get out of control. The root cause of this concern is the trillions of dollars that major U.S. corporations have spent on open-market repurchases (aka “stock buybacks”) since the financial crisis a decade ago. In 2018 alone, with corporate profits bolstered by the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017, companies in the S&P 500 Index did a combined $806 billion in buybacks, about $200 billion more than the previous record set in 2007. When companies do these buybacks, they deprive themselves of the liquidity that might help them cope when sales and profits decline in an economic downturn. Making matters worse, the proportion of buybacks funded by corporate bonds reached as high as 30% in both 2016 and 2017, according to JPMorgan Chase.

Caplan and Candor. Click to read Bet On It, by Bryan Caplan, a Substack publication with thousands of readers.

"But why are you still on Twitter?" Listen. I am an internet ancient. I stood amidst LiveJournal as it crumbled while I watched the fall of Flickr. I was there both times Tumblr burned down, toasting marshmallows over its smouldering ruin, laughing at the folly of Verizon. The death of Twitter was foretold by the dark prophecies of the forgotten internets. I am there to witness its passing as the old internet is dying and the new internet struggles to be born. Now is the time of monsters.

So, uh, what happened? The ACLU happened.

In the age of the megaproject, construction professionals must build increasingly complex structures. A suite of new digital tools help make that task possible.

Eye specialists say they are seeing excessive screen use driving up rates of myopia, dry eye and other vision problems — even in children. Some of the progressive conditions are irreversible and put people at higher risk for even more debilitating eye problems as they age.

Online platforms enable the sharing economy and create an entry point for developers.

Amazon took in more than $30 billion in ad revenue last year, money spent to elevate some products over others in the hierarchy of attention. It’s probably true that someone shopping on Amazo…

The invasion of Ukraine supercharged the decline of the country’s already struggling tech sector—and undercut its biggest success story, Yandex.

America’s regions are poles apart when it comes to gun deaths and the cultural and ideological forces that drive them.

Only a small percentage of Li-ion batteries are recycled and in several well documented cases, the cobalt needed to make them is mined using child labor.

Microbes maketh man, says Jonathan Kennedy

Screen presence is now a feature of the modern office

The world’s biggest economy is leaving its peers ever further in the dust