Book Excerpt

Imagine a tech company so visionary that it can take an idea public. A “concept IPO,” they called it.Picture the three founders, all former Apple employees, two of whom—software engineers Andy Hertzfeld and Bill Atkinson—were already…

The modern era of cheating in chess began on a Thursday in July 1993, when a man with shoulder-length dreadlocks walked into the World Open tournament in Philadelphia and registered as John von Neumann. Both the hair and the name were…

The Blake Lemoine incident is remembered today as a high‑water mark of AI hype. It thrust the whole idea of conscious AI into public awareness for a news cycle or two, but it also launched a conversation, among both computer scientists and…

At the start of 2024, Anthropic, Google, Meta, and OpenAI were united against military use of their AI tools. But over the next 12 months, something changed.In January, OpenAI quietly rescinded its ban on using AI for “military and warfare”…

In the history of gluteal enhancement, Mexico City stands out. It protrudes. It was here, in 1979, that a plastic surgeon, Mario González-Ulloa, first installed a pair of silicone implants designed specifically for the buttocks. The…

It might have escaped lay people at the time, but for some observers the ascension of Leo XIV as head of the Catholic Church this year was a reminder that the last time a Pope Leo sat in St. Peter’s Chair in the Vatican, from 1878 to 1903,…