Darkcoin, bitcoin's more anonymous cousin, is increasingly being used for online drug deals. Ironically, this could actually help take it mainstream.

Technology can't make us into better people.

Driverless cars, which take passengers from A to B with minimal human input, are already hitting American roads. A variety of automakers and technology firms are experimenting with driverless technology, ranging from entirely driver-free vehicles to driver-assist functions like automatic lane following. What makes much of this possible is an array of sensors and cameras, which absorb data about the environment around them.

Manufacturers have made it clear: The future of manufacturing will include more technology, greater automation and an increased use of collaborative robots. According to the Grand Rapids Business Journal, there are roughly 35,000 robots already being sold on an annual basis. Each year, robots become cheaper to buy and operate and their abilities to perform more detailed tasks grows exponentially with implementations including camera systems and cloud technology.

Some of the world’s most brilliant minds are working as data scientists at places like Google, Facebook, and Twitter—analyzing the enormous troves of online information generated by these tech giants—and for hacker and entrepreneur Jeremy Howard, that’s a bit depressing. Howard, a data scientist himself, spent a few years as the president of the Kaggle…

Most people think of bitcoin, if they think about it at all, as a currency—a means of digital exchange, or perhaps a speculative investment. But forget everything you know, because the technology underlying bitcoin has the potential to be a much greater disruptive force than the cryptocurrency itself. Investors and technologists think the technology could replace huge aspects of the financial and insurance industries, and eventually even corporate management teams...