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.
Today's the birthday of Ada Lovelace, known as the first computer programmer. She also dreamed up the idea of generating music through a computer program, so if you've ever made music with a synthesizer, you're following in her footsteps. Plus: today's the anniversary of the day Wyoming passed its first-of-a-kind law guaranteeing women could vote and hold office.
On this day in 1947, a team working on a computer at Harvard University discovered the first computer bug: a moth that had gotten trapped in the electronics. Plus: today in 2005, a guy writes to Major League Baseball to get that expressed written consent they always talk about to rebroadcast or retransmit a game.
Today we download video games online all the time. Back in the 1980s, gamers without the Internet (such as it was) had to buy or borrow their games. But a few could download programs off the radio. Plus: there's a comet headed Earth's way, and it might make for some great viewing this month, or 6,000 years from now. Either one.
Disappearing People is a computer program that can make us invisible on our computer’s cameras! Plus: the story of something that cannot be unseen, the world record longest salami.
