U.S. retailer Target said Thursday it is buying the store leases of Canadian discount retail chain Zellers from the U.S. investor who owns the Hudson’s Bay Co. assets for $1.8 billion.
Why you should never, ever use two spaces after a period.
Last month, Gawker published a series of messages that WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange had once written to a 19-year-old girl he’d become infatuated with. Gawker called the e-mails “creepy,” “lovesick,” and “stalkery”; I’d add overwrought, self-important, and dorky. (“Our intimacy seems like the memory of a strange dream to me,” went a typical line.) Still, given all we’ve heard about Assange’s puffed-up personality, the substance of his e-mail was pretty unsurprising. What really surprised me was his typography.
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Alternative Flash Auto-Updater Updates Flash in the Background, No Adobe Download Manager Required [Downloads]
Windows: Like many programs, Flash updates itself fairly often with new security patches, but updating is kind of a pain. Alternative Flash Player Auto-Updater does it all in the background, without your involvement, so Flash actually stays up to date and secure. More »
Why did your zodiac sign change? We asked the astronomer who started it all [Mad Astronomy]
The internet is burning up with the news that the zodiac has been rearranged. There’s a 13th sign, Ophiuchus, and people who think they’re Virgos are actually Leos. What happened here? We talked to the astronomer who caused the fuss. More »
Top tasks for Google Tasks
Posted by David Tattersall, Associate Product Manager
A few months ago, we asked for your help to make Tasks better by voting on your top feature requests. We were blown away by the number of responses we received, with over 17,000 people participating and an overwhelming 185,000 votes.
Now, we’re preparing to tackle some of your top requests. In no specific order, here are the top five feature requests that emerged from the Tasks product ideas page:
- Ability to create repeating tasks
- Reminders and notifications
- Sharable task lists
- Tasks API and synchronization
- Visual distinction for overdue tasks
So thanks for all the feedback and stay tuned for changes to Tasks throughout the year. In the meantime, we wish you a productive (and Tasks-filled) 2011!
IBM’s Watson supercomputer destroys all humans in Jeopardy practice round (video!)
So, in February IBM’s Watson will be in an official Jeopardy tournament-style competition with titans of trivia Ken Jennings and Brad Rutter. That competition will be taped starting tomorrow, but hopefully we’ll get to know if a computer really can take down the greatest Jeopardy players of all time in “real time” as the show airs. It will be a historic event on par with Deep Blue vs. Garry Kasparov, and we’ll absolutely be glued to our seats. Today IBM and Jeopardy offered a quick teaser of that match, with the three contestants knocking out three categories at lightning speed. Not a single question was answered wrongly, and at the end of the match Watson, who answers questions with a cold computer voice, telegraphing his certainty with simple color changes on his “avatar,” was ahead with $4,400, Ken had $3,400, and Brad had $1,200.
Alright, a “win” for silicon for now, but without any Double Jeopardy or Final Jeopardy it’s hard to tell how well Watson will do in a real match. What’s clear is that he isn’t dumb, and it seems like the best chance the humans will have will be buzzing in before Watson can run through his roughly three second decision process and activate his buzzer mechanically. An extra plus for the audience is a graphic that shows the three answers Watson has rated as most likely to be correct, and how certain he is of the answer he selects — we don’t know if that will make it into the actual TV version, but we certainly hope so. It’s always nice to know the thought processes of your destroyer. Stand by for video of the match, along with an interview with David Gondek, an engineer on the project.
Update: Video of the match is up, check it out after the break!
Update 2: And we have the interview as well, along with a bit more on how Watson actually works.
Continue reading IBM’s Watson supercomputer destroys all humans in Jeopardy practice round (video!)
IBM’s Watson supercomputer destroys all humans in Jeopardy practice round (video!) originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 13 Jan 2011 16:43:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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First Look at Andrew Garfield in his Spider-Man Suit [Spider-man]
Here it is — the first ever picture of Andrew Garfield in his Spider-Man costume, looking as though he's feeling the Great Responsibility. What do you think? More »
quote-book: Sitting next to you doing absolutely nothing, means…
Djtxt Lets Your Party Guests Fix Your Boring Playlist via SMS [Video]
Every party playlist starts with great intentions. But an hour in, your guests just aren’t feeling Super Sounds of the Seventies. Open Grooveshark in your browser, post up the code for “djtxt,” and let your guests cue their own tunes. More »
Heaviest Black Hole Yet Could Swallow Our Entire Solar System [Space]
The black hole in the nearby galaxy M87 weighs in at 6.6 billion suns, making it the local universe’s heavyweight champ. It’s big enough to swallow our solar system in one gulp. More »
Gmail Adds Spell Checker to Its Search Box [Gmail]
Wondering why nobody’s ever written to you about a comunique? Pondering why there’s no mention of dispinsation in your inbox? Gmail now suggests correct spelling searches, kind of like its bigger search brother. In fact, Gmail has a little ways to go in catching up to Google in search capability, as Google Operating System points out—just an option for relevancy sorting would be nice. What search powers do you wish you had in Gmail that you're currently making due without? [Google Operating System] More »
Use Free Software to Clean Up Noisy Audio Files [Audio]
FireWire ships its two billionth port, still not as fast as USB 3.0
The 1394 Trade Association has announced that over two billion FireWire ports have shipped worldwide, which is most impressive for a largely forgotten interface. Going forward, the Association expects to see “steady, stable growth” in 2011 as more products with FireWire S1600 go to market, though a dearth of such devices at CES makes us think you can add the word ‘slow’ to that projection. Given that the standard’s promised 1.6 Gb/s bandwidth is less than a third of the 5 Gb/s offered by USB 3.0 (even with USB’s larger overhead, 3.0 still provides a bigger pipe), and the fact that Intel may finally get on board with Superspeed, it may be awhile before FireWire celebrates another such milestone.
[Image source: ScratchWorx]
Continue reading FireWire ships its two billionth port, still not as fast as USB 3.0
FireWire ships its two billionth port, still not as fast as USB 3.0 originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 13 Jan 2011 02:31:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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Flaming C action figure
Paul Pape created a custom action figure and packaging for the Conan O’Brien DC super hero The Flaming C (created by Bruce Timm). You can buy your own custom toy by Paul here.
*Buy Justice League Unlimited toys at eBay.
Loonie will stay at par with U.S. dollar: Flaherty
The Canadian loonie will hover at parity with the U.S. dollar for some time to come, thanks to Canada’s economic strength, Finance Minister Jim Flaherty said Wednesday.
Pilot Stops Plane for Family of Murdered Child [Heroes]
What’s this? News from an airport that doesn’t make you want to vomit blood in outrage? Finally. A man stuck in airport security gridlock could say goodbye to his dead grandson when his flight’s pilot refused to depart without him. More »
Lawsuit claims $2.7B over Indian status
Saskatchewan lawyer Tony Merchant is leading a class action lawsuit over $2.7 billion worth of benefits allegedly denied to thousands of First Nations people.
Domino’s Employee Warning Record
If this personnel write-up is to be believed, the Domino’s in question had been employing a pretty subpar assistant manager. I mean, come on, this guy could only recite pi to 46 places. [via BuzzFeed]
Windows 7 Service Pack 1 close to release
An update to Windows 7 released yesterday has given a strong clue that a final release of the first service pack for the operating system isn’t too far away.
According to a Microsoft support page, the imaginatively-named KB976902 (Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2 installation software feature update) makes changes…
Your nose reveals when you’re going to die [Mad Science]
Have you stopped being able to identify familiar smells? Then you may be about to die, according to a new study. More »