Archive for 2011

Humanity Lost on Jeopardy!

Wednesday, February 16th, 2011
Humanity Lost on Jeopardy!

BREAKING: IBM’s question answering computer, Watson, defeats Jeopardy champions Ken Jennings and Brad Rutter! Not to detract from IBM’s achievement but I’m disappointed by the buzzer aspect of this. Background: Watson gets the question (or “clue” or “answer” as they call it on Jeopardy) as plain text at the same moment that the humans see... »

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Sounds of Silence

Tuesday, February 1st, 2011
Sounds of Silence

When I was a kid we had a small black & white television that never quite worked right. If you positioned the rabbit ears just so---and no one turned on the kitchen blender---the signal to snow ratio would be just barely high enough to make it through an episode of "The Cosby Show." Humans are... »

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Meta Matters

Saturday, January 15th, 2011
Meta Matters

Today Messy Matters celebrates its 25th anniversary, in internet time. Here are three meta topics to mark the occasion: Typo Bounties, Meta Poll, and a Bonus Puzzle. ... »

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Posted in Uncategorized | 32 Comments »

Search in the City

Saturday, January 1st, 2011
Search in the City

To ring in the new year, let me entertain you with some visually appealing but ultimately content-deficient graphs (i.e., infoporn). Hopefully the eye-candy will knock you into a sugar coma deep enough to prevent you from questioning the point of these plots and let you simply enjoy the moment. The topic: top... »

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