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Each Sunday morning, the congregation of the International Deliverance Praying Ministry gathers in front of their church, ready to be let in. It’s a modest building in the southside of Nassau, the capital of the Bahamas, on an overgrown and potholed street that floods when it rains. While they wait, …

Joe Biden wants the US government to make wider use of artificial intelligence—and to keep commercial AI on a tighter leash. Those are two prominent themes of a sprawling executive order Biden will sign today, which issues dozens of directives for federal agencies to complete within the next year, on …

Whether it's deciding when to meet a friend for coffee or setting up a meeting for work, scheduling is annoying. The inevitable back-and-forth—“I'm free Monday, does that work?” “No, I'm busy then, what about Thursday”—is just plain tedious. Google Calendar can help with this. The application now offers a free …

Amber Pearson has had a severe form of obsessive compulsive disorder since she was in high school. She would wash her hands so much they became raw and bled. Her bedtime routine easily took 45 minutes because it involved checking that all the doors and windows were closed and the …

In the weeks since Hamas launched its October 7 surprise attack on Israel, the ensuing conflict has generated an unprecedented wave of disinformation, an “algorithmically driven fog of war” that has tripped up major new organizations and left social media companies floundering. Yet, amid all of the deceptive images and …

I swear I used to have more time than I do now. Sometimes I wonder how much of the reason why is my phone. It's so easy to lose a half hour here and there to mindless scrolling. Now, it's OK if you don't feel guilty about your phone usage—we …

On day one of shooting season five of Love Is Blind, a junior staffer walked into the control room and told executive producers Chris Coelen and Ally Simpson, who oversee every aspect of the popular Netflix dating series, that there was a problem. “There’s two people who know each other …

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 that for every problem that can be articulated in precise mathematical terms, there’s an algorithm that can solve it, at least …