tech

There are 121 posts filed in tech (this is page 15 of 16).

Computer Wins Practice ‘Jeopardy!’ Round Against Humans; Skynet-Like Takeover Imminent

Deep Blue has begat Watson, a computer that is able to “understand” questions in Jeopardy! and provide answers in the form of a question (go here for an in-depth NYTimes feature on Watson). Watson’s almost ready for primetime, but before he takes the spotlight, IBM pitted him in a practice round against Ken Jennings and Brad Ruttner. The results:

Watson, which IBM claims as a profound advance in artificial intelligence, edged out game-show champions Ken Jennings and Brad Rutter on Thursday in its first public test, a short practice round ahead of a million-dollar tournament that will be televised next month.

Can Judgment Day be far behind?

Why You Should Save Important Topics For Your Blog, Not Twitter

Anil Dash says what I already tried to say, only much more articulately:

[S]ome ideas are just bigger than 140 characters. In fact, most good ideas are. More importantly, our ideas often need to gain traction and meaning over time. Blog posts often age into something more substantial than they are at their conception, through the weight of time and perspective and response.

And blogs afford that sort of maturation of an idea uniquely well amongst online media, due to their use of the permalink (permanent link), which gives each idea a place to live and thrive. While Facebook and Twitter nominally provide permalinks as well, the truth is that individual ideas in those flow-based media don’t have enough substance for a meaningful conversation to accrete around them.

Dash also points out the biggest problem with Twitter at this point: there are no publicly accessible archives. There’s no easy way to search your Twitter stream or the streams of others. This means you should fully expect anything you say on Twitter, no matter how important or profound, to be completely inaccessible and lost to the ages, unless you do something to preserve it. The fact that most people ignore these limitations makes it all the more tragic that great conversations and great ideas may never be read by people who just weren’t following their tweets at the time.

“The smartphone is the most lethal weapon you can get inside a prison.”

The NYTimes, on the prevalence of smartphones in prisons (which are technically not allowed):

A counterfeiter at a Georgia state prison ticks off the remaining days of his three-year sentence on his Facebook page. He has 91 digital “friends.” Like many of his fellow inmates, he plays the online games FarmVille and Street Wars. He does it all on a Samsung smartphone, which he says he bought from a guard. And he used the same phone to help organize a short strike among inmates at several Georgia prisons last month. Technology is changing life inside prisons across the country at the same rapid-fire pace it is changing life outside. A smartphone hidden under a mattress is the modern-day file inside a cake.

Top 10 (Groups of) People I’m Glad I Started Following on Twitter in 2010

Even though I’ve tried my best to move all my Twitter content to my blog, I’m still quite active on Twitter and enjoy scanning through my feed for the latest happenings in the worlds of media, politics, journalism, and film. Here are 10 (groups) of people I’m glad I started following on Twitter in 2010 [If I follow you and you’re not on this list, it doesn’t mean your tweets aren’t awesome and that they haven’t changed my life; just that I probably didn’t START following you this year. By the way, you can always follow me on Twitter, if you wish]:

Maria Popova – If there’s one person you follow as a result of reading this list, make it this one. An incredible writer, Maria is also a master curator of interesting, artistic works from all across the internet. Must-follow!

Give Me Something to Read, Longreads, and Instapaper – Because together, these services have changed my life.

DRUNK HULK – I didn’t get on the Drunk Hulk bandwagon until 2010, but I’m certainly glad I did. Every one of this guy’s tweets always manage to give me a smile or a chuckle. My only complaint? Sometimes he sounds less like “DRUNK HULK” and more like “WITTY AND ERUDITE HULK.” False advertising.

Dustin Rowles from Pajiba and Vince Mancini from Filmdrunk – I would argue that no two people in the film blogsphere are smarter or funnier than these two guys. They also are the only two people who seem to take film and entertainment journalism with the requisite grain of salt that it requires. Many laughs have resulted from their writings, Twitter and otherwise.

Scott Mendelson from Huffington Post, Linda Holmes from NPR, Steven Zeitchik from the LATimes – Zeitchik offers a healthy dose of insight from his post at the center of the entertainment industry. Holmes is probably the most fair-minded writer on pop-culture that I’ve ever read. And I’ve really become a huge fan of Scott’s writings this past year, which are always provocative and well-said. Of course, I don’t always agree, but if I did, life would be boring…

Rachel Sklar from Mediaite – Whip smart and very witty, Sklar’s writings for Mediaite (a site for which I hope to one day write) are always a must-read for me.

Jay Rosen – No other Twitter account I’ve ever followed provides a more comprehensive look at the interesting questions going on today in the world of journalism. If I wasn’t already in a Masters program, I would totally apply to be in his program in NY (which is also being taught by the genius Clay Shirky).

Adrian Chen and Foster Kamer – Speaking of journalism, these guys hail from the Gawker media empire, and it shows: both provide insightful commentary on media and journalism, with a humorous, biting twist (Kamer has gone on to work at Esquire, which will undoubtedly yield interesting results).

Matthew Seitz from Salon and Sean M Burns – Matt Zoller Seitz has forgotten more about film than I will ever know. Also, he’s a damn good writer with an appreciation for what it takes to make a good slide show and/or video essay. Meanwhile, Sean Burns offers fantastic one-sentence reviews of films from the person I know whose movie tastes most resemble Jay Sherman from The Critic. But your Twitter account is locked, Sean, preventing others from getting a taste of your film knowledge glory. WTF, mate?

Tasha Robinson, Nathan Rabin, and Keith Phipps – I’ve been blessed to be able to interact with each of these humongously talented individuals on the /Filmcast this year (and hope to have them on again frequently in the future). There’s a reason why AV Club was singled out as the one publication that would bring about the pop-culture apocalypse…

Honorable mentions: Cole Abaius, The Playlist, Hannah, Jim Roberts, Ray Pride, AdFreak

The Last Processor of Kodachrome

A sad story from the NYTimes about the last processor of Kodachrome (the first successful color film):

At the peak, there were about 25 labs worldwide that processed Kodachrome, but the last Kodak-run facility in the United States closed several years ago, then the one in Japan and then the one in Switzerland. Since then, all that was left has been Dwayne’s Photo. Last year, Kodak stopped producing the chemicals needed to develop the film, providing the business with enough to continue processing through the end of 2010. And last week, right on schedule, the lab opened up the last canister of blue dye.

I still think back with nostalgia to my college days, when I spent countless hours in the darkroom, developing and printing film on real photo paper. And while I love the convenience of digital, I’m sad that this way of photography is slowly fading…

Gaming The New York Times

Thomas Weber has written an account of how he used the Mechanical Turk to game the New York Times’ “most e-mailed” list:

What could have propelled a stale, bone-dry story to the top of the Internet’s importance arbiter? I can tell you: It was me. More precisely, it was a group of people under my direction who all, at my request, emailed that particular story within a relatively short timeframe to learn exactly what it takes to make the most-emailed list. How we did it—and how many people it took—reinforces a lesson of our viral media age: Even at the biggest newspaper website in the world, the content that is spotlighted as most engaging reflects the judgment of a group far smaller than the overall audience, and can even be gamed by those motivated enough to do so.

Just as interesting as his methods is the fact that he chose to publish the article at all. By revealing his methodology, Weber makes it increasingly likely that the Times will take action to prevent this kind of gaming in the future, hence rendering the specifics of his article irrelevant. And while the idea of the few dictating the consumption of the many is fascinating, haven’t we always known about this? Still, you gotta admire the brazenness and the methodology on display here.

Your Apps Are Watching You

The WSJ devised a system to track the data the data that an iPhone was transmitting via apps. What they found was…troubling?

Few devices know more personal details about people than the smartphones in their pockets: phone numbers, current location, often the owner’s real name—even a unique ID number that can never be changed or turned off. These phones don’t keep secrets. They are sharing this personal data widely and regularly, a Wall Street Journal investigation has found. An examination of 101 popular smartphone “apps”—games and other software applications for iPhone and Android phones—showed that 56 transmitted the phone’s unique device ID to other companies without users’ awareness or consent. Forty-seven apps transmitted the phone’s location in some way. Five sent age, gender and other personal details to outsiders.

Meanwhile, Kim Mai-Cutler has a fantastic response to this that raises legitimate concerns about pieces like the WSJ’s:

On the whole, the “What They Know” series is great for mainstream consumer education. But its scare-mongering and sometimes simplistic descriptions of industry practices creates risk that uninformed policymakers will draft poorly targeted legislation. It could end up being unnecessarily destructive to consumer Internet businesses or be so cosmetic that it doesn’t really fix underlying problems.