› added 7 months ago

38

TIL about Mortimer Taube, a pioneer in information and library sciences, whose "Computers and Common Sense: The Myth of Thinking Machines" (1961) and its analysis/critique of "thinking machines" is still relevant to today's discussions involving artificial intelligence

Read more academia.edu

via reddit.com

neADB TIL: A Korean programmer made a ransomware program as a joke, requiring the victim to get a high score in the Japanese bullet hell shooter "Touhou Seirensen ~ Undefined Fantastic Object" on the highest difficulty to get their files back.
0bb1 TIL At the height of apartheid in South Africa the most popular television show among whites was The Cosby Show. During the apartheid government’s State of Emergency in the mid 1980s when it was illegal to publish photos of Mandela, Bill Cosby became the most recognizable black man in South Africa
69Y7J TIL Ugandan pygmies were evicted from Bwindi impenetrable rain forests so that mountain gorillas could stay there peacefully. People ate fruits and root food in the forests but now they are being enjoyed by mountain gorillas as the Batwa starve
Y5OA TIL a female doctor from brazil, after being fed up from burglars jumping over her fence and steal her belongings, tapped dozen of HIV-infected syringes atop her metal fence with a warning board saying, ”Wall with HIV positive blood. No trespassing.”
BrYWr TIL of Laura Secord, a Canadian woman who walked 30 km (about 19 miles) to warm British troops about a planned attacked by US troops on Beaver Dams during the War of 1812. There is now a chocolate company named after her.