The City of Zion is excited to announce our first software bounty program. Through this program, we aim to encourage the targeted development of open source software that will benefit our community and ecosystem. The first bounty we are announcing is a $50,000 reward for consensus improvements. …

Token sales allow developers to raise capital without the friction associated with traditional venture capital investment. As a force for good, these sales open and democratize a fund-raising process typically limited to insiders. …

Science fiction has long imagined a future in which humans converse with machines. But what are the limits of conversational interfaces? Agents like Siri or Cortana can help us with simple things such as getting directions or scheduling an appointment, but is it possible to apply these agents to more…

Artificial intelligence has a long history of boom and bust cycles. During A.I. booms, money flows through universities and industry labs, fueling promised advances that often sound like magic, if not panacea. Extreme optimism was particularly common in the field’s early years. In 1960, for example, A.I. …

Last year we published Empath, a tool for text analysis, which was fortunate enough to win a Best Paper award at CHI. …

I read fewer books in 2016 than I have in the past (30 or so novels, which is half what I used to consume during high school or college). Despite this, I still encountered a lot of amazing work. …

First impressions matter. Whether you are reading this paragraph, or the first page of a novel, or the introduction of an academic paper, the way something begins can influence your behavior. Do you decide to buy the novel? Yes. You’ve fallen in love with the narrative voice. Do you read…

When I was a new PhD student, program committee (PC) meetings were colored by a sense of power and mystery. Expert judgements, backroom conversations, and high academic stakes all seemed to come together in a process that would determine the fate of months (or even years) of work. …