Reports that prominent American national security officials used^[1] a freely available encrypted messaging app, coupled with the rise of authoritarian policies around the world, have led to a surge in interest in encrypted apps^[2] like Signal and WhatsApp. These apps prevent anyone, including the government and the app companies themselves, from...

Wet and shivering, I rose from the outrigger of a Polynesian voyaging canoe. We’d been at sea all afternoon and most of the night. I’d hoped to get a little rest, but rain, wind and an absence of flat space made sleep impossible. My companions didn’t even try.

It was May 1972, and I was three months into doctoral research on one...

High-performance computing, or HPC for short, might sound like something only scientists use in secret labs, but it’s actually one of the most important technologies in the world today. From predicting the weather^[1] to finding new medicines^[2] and even training artificial intelligence^[3], high-performance computing systems help solve problems...