Right now, it’s bitcoin. But in the past, we’ve had dot-com stocks, the 1929 crash, 19th century railways and the South Sea Bubble of 1720. All these were compared by contemporaries to “tulip mania”, the Dutch financial
Author: The Conversation
The war for the digital home is raging. Apple has finally followed Amazon, Google and Microsoft by launching a smart speaker with a voice-controlled artificial intelligence assistant. Yet even though the “HomePod” is another
Smartphones rule our lives. Having information at our fingertips is the height of convenience. They tell us all sorts of things, but the information we see and receive on our smartphones is just a fraction
Elon Musk’s SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket is scheduled for launch on 6 February, and the entire space industry is watching with anticipation. What is so special about this rocket? This vehicle will be the first of its kind, the world’s
It is easy to confuse the current geopolitical situation with that of the 1980s. The US and Russia each accuse the other of interfering in domestic affairs. Russia has annexed territory over US objections, raising concerns
As cloud storage becomes more common, data security is an increasing concern. Companies and schools have been increasing their use of services like Google Drive for some time, and lots of individual users also store
In the social and political saga surrounding the question of network neutrality, what is often overlooked is the data war going on behind the scenes. The real fuel behind the debate is the enormous volume of data we generate
Prime numbers are more than just numbers that can only be divided by themselves and one. They are a mathematical mystery, the secrets of which mathematicians have been trying to uncover ever since Euclid proved that
One of the world’s largest collaborative science projects is about to enter its most exciting year yet. This will see researchers in a remote stretch of South Africa’s Karoo testing Albert Einstein’s general theory of relativity
With the price of bitcoin reaching record highs of more than US$12 000, more and more ordinary people consider investing in the cryptocurrency. The recent price surge, however, comes with tremendous risks. Investors should be