A computer at the University of Texas at Austin recently claimed responsibility for a terrorist bombing. It had not, in fact, bombed anyone, which is reassuring; less reassuring is the fact that the computer made those claims because it is schizophrenic. Indeed: researchers at the fine institution had induced…
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…
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…
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…
It's no Watson, but playing against this Rock-Paper-Scissors computer is strangely addicting. Thanks for making me waste 5 minutes clicking a button over and over again, New York Times.
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.
Former president Bill Clinton only sent two emails during his presidency, he told a crowd in New York. Two! In commemoration of his true confession, we've collected the only eight photos we could find of Bill Clinton Using, Looking at, and/or Pointing at Computers. They are... marvelous!
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…
According to a pair of researchers, the total computing power of every general-purpose computer on earth only equals that of one human brain:
Black Eyed Peas frontman Will.i.am was named the "Director of Creative Innovation" at Intel. What will he do? Apparently, Intel doesn't even know. But it will be totally creative. And innovative. Creatively innovative. Directly creative. Creatively direct Boom boom pow!
This week's Oprah Winfrey Show is being broadcast from Sydney, Australia! On today's episode, Winfrey—and special guest Jay-Z—surprised an entire school of boys (and their female teacher) with a $1 million gift of new laptops. The video, inside.
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.
Leon Walker, a 33 year-old Michigan computer technician, has been charged with a felony (and faces up to five years in prison) for using his wife's password to read her email. Well, he had a damn good reason.
Whether you were 10 years old or 18, and whether it was porn or something else, there's a time in all of our lives when the Internet claims our innocence. Unfortunately for this kid, his rite of passage was videotaped.
A Latin Grammy-winning pianist and wealthy oil heir was scammed out of as much as $20 million by computer repairpersons who convinced him that Polish priests from Opus Dei were targeting him for assassination. Oldest scam in the book.
As you were type-type-typing a love sext to your beloved this morning, you likely wondered: "What does tabloid sexophobe Andrea Peyser think about this new sex-enabling communication technology?" Spoiler: Andrea prefers to talk about sex and dog poop in person.
