Astronomers have caught a supermassive black hole straying far from the centre of its galaxy using light from a star being ...

Back in 1996, a quantum physicist at Bell Labs in New Jersey published a new recipe for searching through a database of N entries. Computer scientists have long known that this process takes around N ...

As organizations increasingly replace human decision-making with algorithms, they may assume these computer programs lack our biases. But algorithms still reflect the real world, which means they can ...

Mashable’s series Algorithms explores the mysterious lines of code that increasingly control our lives — and our futures. “The Algorithm” is impenetrable. It’s mysterious, it’s all-knowing, it’s ...

The history of the social sciences has included a succession of advances in the ability to make observations and carefully test hypotheses. The compilation of massive data sets, for example, and the ...

As social media companies face scrutiny over addictive design features, mental health experts cite a stream of breakup content as an example of the failure to protect users.

The original version of this story appeared in Quanta Magazine. Algorithms have become ubiquitous. They optimize our commutes, process payments, and coordinate the flow of internet traffic. It seems ...

The reputation of UK government technology projects - and by extension that of the government itself - has been hard hit lately, not least due to last week's A-level exam results disaster. Firstly, ...

More than 20 years ago, executives at rival auction houses Sotheby’s and Christie’s were found guilty of coordinating a massive price-fixing scheme. Leaders from the companies held covert meetings in ...

Care for some of the sickest Americans is decided in part by algorithm. New research shows that software guiding care for tens of millions of people systematically privileges white patients over black ...