After a week’s hiatus, it’s back with four stories and unfortunately no interviews. But next week’s show will have at least one interview, maybe two if I can corner someone at E3.

Show notes
-The Science Behind Generosity: We are more inclined to give when giving depends on us, and yet we’re very bad at figuring out where to best put our money and time to help others.
-New Technique’s Gonna Find out Who’s Spammy or Nice: Bad title, interesting story about how to determine who’s behind the keyboard when an email is sent or a web page is browsed.
-Infinite Summer: a challenge to read David Foster Wallace’s masterpiece in 93 days this summer.
-Wolfram Alpha, a “computational knowledge engine” by Wolfram Research (no relation, but they did make Mathematica) that takes a big step towards semantic computing. Note: I talk a lot about the semantic web, which (for some) actually has more to do with editing web pages to make machines understand the meaning (inserting certain code into your webpage, so that machines can “see” the meaning that’s there). But the idea of computers grasping meaning is tied up in there — Wolfram Alpha may not be the actual semantic web, but it’s a good example of how computers can be taught to deliver information that applies to the meaning of what you search rather than just the absolutes.

As always, you can listen to the show below, and feel free to email me if you have any input at all. Thanks for listening!

 

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