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... »
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... »
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. ... »
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... »
