The original version of this story appeared in Quanta Magazine. Imagine a town with two widget merchants. Customers prefer cheaper widgets, so the merchants must compete to set the lowest price.

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 ...

An artificial-intelligence algorithm that discovers its own way to learn achieves state-of-the-art performance, including on some tasks it had never encountered before. Joel Lehman is at Lila Sciences ...

LinkedIn support accidentally revealed its algorithm: it tracks "viewer tolerance," reducing visibility for authors whose posts are consistently ignored. To succeed, diversify content types weekly, ...

The original version of this story appeared in Quanta Magazine. If you want to solve a tricky problem, it often helps to get organized. You might, for example, break the problem into pieces and tackle ...

More good reads and Python updates elsewhere Python’s cffi reaches version 2.0 One of the most convenient and popular libraries for calling into the world of C from Python just got a major ...

The White House has answered what had been one of the major outstanding questions regarding its pending deal to transfer TikTok’s US operations to a majority American ownership group: Under the ...

Algorithms will not simply contribute to science; they will reorganize it. We sketch how science will look in the near future. Notably, algorithms will formalize crucial parts of science that ...

A lightweight Python calculator that performs basic arithmetic operations (addition, subtraction, multiplication, division) with a user-friendly command-line interface. Ideal for beginners learning ...

You’re at the checkout screen after an online shopping spree, ready to enter your credit card number. You type it in and instantly see a red error message ...

Ever wondered how social media platforms decide how to fill our feeds? They use algorithms, of course, but how do these algorithms work? A series of corporate leaks over the past few years provides a ...