Guy Goma Became An Internet Expert By Accident On Live TV (Cool Weird Awesome 1004)

Today in 2006, IT job candidate Guy Goma rose to the occasion when a BBC TV producer mistakenly brought him onto a live show to talk about the internet, even though they were actually supposed to interview a different Guy on the air.

By |2023-05-08T07:53:54-04:00May 8, 2023|Categories: Cool Weird Awesome, Podcasts|Tags: , , , |

The Air Force Once Bombed Montana (Cool Weird Awesome 974)

Today in 1944, the U.S. Air Force carried out a bombing raid in Montana. Even stranger, they did so at the request of the governor. We'll explain.

By |2023-03-21T09:28:21-04:00March 21, 2023|Categories: Cool Weird Awesome, Podcasts|Tags: , , , , |

Clippy, The AI Paper Clip Chatbot That Really Wanted To Help You Write Letters (Cool Weird Awesome 959)

AI chatbots are big again, so let's hang out with the OG AI chatbot: Microsoft Word letter writing helper extraordinare, Clippy the paper clip.

These Smart Glasses Can Describe The World For Blind Wearers (Cool Weird Awesome 772)

A company called Envision has designed a set of glasses that uses artificial intelligence to help blind people with a wide range of activities. They can decode text, detect color and describe outdoor scenes to the wearer, among many other functions.

AI Can Detect Sarcasm Now, Isn’t That Just So Great (Cool Weird Awesome 546)

DARPA’s Information Innovation Office and researchers at the University of Central Florida taught a deep learning algorithm to spot sarcasm by feeding it back articles of The Onion and snarky threads from Twitter and Reddit. I'm so excited. Plus: it's National Road Trip Day, how about a visit to a town with a very road trip friendly name?

By |2021-05-28T10:01:37-04:00May 28, 2021|Categories: Cool Weird Awesome, Podcasts|Tags: , , , |

Self-Directed Robot Fish May Point The Way Toward Roads Full Of Self-Driving Cars (Cool Weird Awesome 494)

Blueswarm is a school of autonomous robot fish who scan their surroundings and calculate how they can swim together without colliding, like a school of actual fish. And the technology modeled on "implicit coordination" may be useful for lots of other high-tech devices in the future. Plus: GLYPHS is a project to develop new perfumes based on typology. No, there isn't a Comic Sans scent just yet.

By |2021-03-11T08:36:42-05:00March 11, 2021|Categories: Cool Weird Awesome, Podcasts|Tags: , , |

This Device Turns Your House Into A Mini Recycling Center (Cool Weird Awesome 483)

Lasso is a prototype for an in-home recycling system. Instead of dropping your recyclables on the curb, you'd put them in the machine, to be scanned, cleaned and broken down into the raw materials that companies buy to make new cans and bottles. Plus: meet AI Art House, a site selling wall art designed by software trying to emulate some of the all time great (human) painters.

By |2021-02-24T09:00:21-05:00February 24, 2021|Categories: Cool Weird Awesome, Podcasts|Tags: , , , , |

Can AI Bring Extinct Languages Back To Life? (Cool Weird Awesome 406)

A project out of MIT is using artificial intelligence to scan lost languages and find rules and conventions that may help us figure out what all those words from years ago might mean. Plus: historic signs in South Nyack, New York are using QR codes to tell us something timeless - a message that's never gonna give us up.

Predictive Text Is Changing, Not Just Predicting, What We Write (Cool Weird Awesome 298)

A new Harvard study finds those systems that suggest words to us when we type on our smartphones are actually shaping the way we write sentences and messages. The new app Drive + Listen can take you on the most realistic virtual road trip of our time.

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