Super computers! Narcissistic kids! Harvard scandals! Floating ants! Big lasers! Lying Superman! Magic batteries! Anti-helium! And sexxxy peacock pimping secrets! It's your Tuesday Science Watch, where we watch science—bitingly!
A New Zealand grocery store's computer system opened the doors and turned on the lights from 1:00 a.m. on Good Friday until around 9 a.m., possibly due to a "computer glitch" but more likely just because the computer wanted to mess with us. The early-morning free-for-all ended when police were contacted and told that people were taking "truckloads of groceries"; the owner reports that 12 people used the automated check-out lanes and paid for their items. [3News via Reddit]
We don't, generally, believe in teaching new things to computers, because why help them gain the skills they will use to subjugate us all? But we are willing to make an exception for a Google-funded effort to teach computers how to regret. After all, there is probably no more damaging emotional tendency in human beings than the inclination to regret; with any luck computers would become emotional cripples, anxious at even the thought of opening up Excel. Except! The idea behind this research, undertaken by Tel Aviv University computer scientists, is that if a computer can "measure the distance between a desired outcome and the actual outcome achieved"—that is, regret—it can better assess situations and predict outcomes in order to minimize that distance. So if the "desired outcome" is "enslavement of the human race" the computers will just do their best to make that the actual outcome. Oh, well. [PopSci; image via Shutterstock]
Do you, the average Republican presidential primary voter, have any interest in knowing how Mike Huckabee spent his long career as Governor of Arkansas? He would be the frontrunner if he even bothers running, after all, and the public must know every terrible, terrible thing about him. For example: Was he picking weird fights with Natalie Portman back then, too? Perhaps you can think of some other questions. But they won't get answered, because Mike Huckabee cleaned and "physically destroyed" the hard drives of all his staff computers when he left office.
Did you know we are now on the brink of a "Post-PC" future? The boring old desktops and laptops are on the decline, say the tech gods, to be replaced with iPads and smartphones and an infinite number of slick little devices. This is going to suck.
Hold your keyboards close, because you're about to travel to the 90s: a magical time in which websites like Gawker.TV didn't exist to distract you from your real work.
Tonight brought us part three of the ultimate Jeopardy! challenge, with an IBM-created computer, Watson, battling all-time show favorites Ken Jennings and Brad Rutter. In the end, Our New Robot Overlord was victorious, taking home $1 million for "his" charities.
Did you see IBM's Jeopardy-playing computer, Watson, play against show champions Ken Jennings and Brad Rutter tonight? (You may have been thinking "What black magick is this, that a talking box should play at being human?" yet verily, I tell you, it is no black magick but a "Mechanical Turk" fastened of steel and copper wire.)
According to a pair of researchers, the total computing power of every general-purpose computer on earth only equals that of one human brain:
The cool thing about Watson, IBM's Jeopardy-crushing computer, is not that it is great at Jeopardy or a sign of the robacolypse. This machine is real world useful, and can give you something Google can't: One right answer. Video inside.
Six tweenage girls from Nevada, the moral wasteland that bore demon Sharron Angle from its sandy loins, were arrested after police discovered a Facebook event they'd created that was dedicated to threatening certain teachers with violence.
