Technology is helping us see what lies beneath the surface of works of art. Once upon a time an artist’s signature – down there, in the corner of the painting – was just about all the verification anyone needed to be sure an artwork was genuine. If you had the provenance as well – the documented history of the work’s sales and owners – no more proof was needed.

Social media firms are "shamefully far" from tackling illegal and dangerous content, says a parliamentary report. Hate speech, terror recruitment videos and sexual images of children all took too long to be removed, said the Home Affairs Select Committee report. The government should consider making the sites help pay to police content, it said. But a former Facebook executive told the BBC the report "bashes companies" but offers few real solutions.

The flexibility and usefulness of an API relate directly to its orthogonality. But what does “orthogonal” mean? It’s a term that’s tossed around a lot in programming, with v…