William English, who helped build the computer mouse, dies at 91
The engineer and researcher who helped build the first computer mouse and, in 1968, orchestrated an elaborate demonstration of the technology that foretold the computers,...
Riding out the coronavirus quarantine with a chatbot friend: ‘I feel very connected’
When the coronavirus pandemic reached her neighborhood on the outskirts of Houston, infecting her garbage man and sending everyone else into quarantine, Libby Francola was...
This was supposed to be the year driverless cars went mainstream. Then the coronavirus happened.
SAN FRANCISCO — Tech companies once promised that fully functional, self-driving cars would be on the road by 2020 and on the path to remaking...
Pixar pioneers win $1 Million Turing Award — and one has Seattle ties
Patrick Hanrahan, co-founder and chief scientist at Seattle-based Tableau Software, and Ed Catmull, a computer graphics pioneer, received this year’s Turing Award for their work...
An algorithm that grants freedom, or takes it away
Across the United States and Europe, software is making probation decisions and predicting whether teens will commit crime. Opponents want more human oversight.
White House earmarks new money for AI and quantum computing
The technologies are expected to become an important part of national security, and some worry the United States is behind China in their development.
A warehouse robot learns to sort out the tricky stuff VIEW
As millions of products move through warehouses run by Amazon, Walmart and other retailers, low-wage workers must comb through bin after bin of random stuff....
Gary Starkweather, inventor of the laser printer, dies at 81
As he developed his printer, his new colleagues built a personal computer that could drive it: the Alto, a machine that eventually gave rise to...
Chuck Peddle dies at 82; His $25 chip helped start the PC Age
His invention brought digital technology to a new breed of consumer devices and powered early Apple and Commodore computers.
Tony Brooker, pioneer of computer programming, dies at 94
Brooker wrote a language he called Autocode, based on ordinary numbers and letters. It allowed anyone to program the machine — not just the limited...