If you’re starting as an undergraduate at MIT this year, there’s $100 coming your way. The catch — if you consider it one — is that it will be paid in Bitcoins. It’s part of an experiment by two existing students, sophomore Jeremy Rubin and MBA candidate Dan Elitzer. They want to discover whether having […]
Google may be expanding its provision of public Wi-Fi according to planning documents for its high-speed broadband service. There’s even speculation it could get into cellphone services. The revelation comes in a planning document sent to officials in 34 cities which have shown an interest in getting Google Fiber. That’s a program in which Google […]
Google has developed an algorithm that can decipher house numbers from Street View images with impressive accuracy. The problem is that the algorithm can match or even outperform humans when confronted with Google’s own use of CAPTCHA tests. Because so much of the data collection for Google Maps is automated, the first drafts of the […]
Roberta Firstenberg was dying of cancer and only had a few months to live. Priscilla, her granddaughter, emailed the Oculus Rift team, and they donated one so her grandmother could “go outside” again, as her mobility was extremely limited. Despite being able to use virtual reality to “travel” outside and even to other countries, Roberta got the greatest […]
On Friday we looked back at psychics’ predictions made in the 1975 book The People’s Almanac, forecasting the rest of the 20th century. With New York still above water, cancer uncured, and solar energy pills yet to replace food, the results were somewhat off the mark. However, the authors of the book also asked scientists […]
You know how something is so outrageous, it’s just gotta be true? Well, this concept is so outrageous, it totally exists. From what I can tell, BLACKSOCKS uses a “sorter” and an app to determine a) which sock goes with which sock; b) how many times each sock has been washed; and c) how ‘black’ each […]
The Asimo’s latest edition, unveiled on April 16, can run briskly, climb stairs with ease, dance like Travolta, kick a ball and jump up in down in what can only be described as a robot tantrum. The 4 feet tall, 115-pound robot now features five dextrous fingers on each hand with force feedback sensors. As […]
During a recent trip to Hay-on-Wye — a magical small town with around 30 new and used bookshops — I picked up two 1970s books by David Wallechinsky and Irving Wallace, the kings of trivia lists. The two volumes of The People’s Alamanac are billed as “the first reference book ever prepared to be read for […]