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.

In the recent past, you probably attended a virtual lunch-and-learn presentation, read an article, or had a discussion with a controls sales representative in which the topic was a chilled water plant ...

In case you had any doubt, Elon Musk’s X has an algorithm that favors conservative content posted by political activists over liberal content or posts by traditional news media accounts, according to ...