Pinterest’s Founder: Algorithms Don’t Know What You Want
CEO Ben Silbermann says Pinterest is built on the idea that crowds of people are best at finding content that consumers care about.
Contributors
Tom Simonite
Follow @twitterapiIT Editor, Software & Hardware
I’m MIT Technology Review’s IT editor for hardware and software and enjoy a diverse diet of algorithms, Internet, and human-computer interaction with chips on the side. Working in our San Francisco office, I cover new ideas about what computers can do for us, whether they spring from tech giants, new startups, or academic labs.
My journey to the West Coast started in a small English town called Wantage and took in the University of Cambridge, Imperial College London, and five years writing and editing technology news coverage at New Scientist magazine.
Tom Simonite's Stories
Dropbox Offers a Way to Free Data from Mobile Apps
A new feature makes it easy for mobile apps to sync data—and poses direct competition to Apple’s iCloud.
How Nest’s Control Freaks Reinvented the Thermostat
Two men who created the iPod and iPhone founded Nest and injected new technology into the humble thermostat. Now they have their sights on the rest of your house.
Welcome to the Malware-Industrial Complex
The U.S. government is developing new computer weapons and driving a black market in “zero-day” bugs. The result could be a more dangerous Web for everyone.
PayPal, Lenovo Launch New Campaign to Kill the Password
A new standard that gives phones and PCs a bigger role in authentication could disarm attacks that rely on stealing passwords.
AT&T Brings Online Ad Targeting Tactics to TV Commercials
Experiments suggest that monitoring viewer behavior via set-top boxes could help make TV commercials much more effective.
Software Predicts Tomorrow’s News by Analyzing Today's and Yesterday’s
Prototype software can give early warnings of disease or violence outbreaks by spotting clues in news reports.
How Facebook Could Give Its New Search the Edge
The company’s search engine will become formidable when it includes the text of comments and the vast store of Open Graph data about things outside Facebook.
A Free Database of the Entire Web May Spawn the Next Google
Common Crawl supplies a database of over five billion Web pages in the hope that it will inspire new research or online services.
Intel Bets on Fabs, Again
The world’s largest chipmaker is counting on its U.S.-based manufacturing to earn it a toehold in the market for mobile processors.
