House numbers on Google Street View can turn up as blobby, blurry things, so its engineers built a pretty crazy neural network to decipher them. Except this algorithm also turns out to be very very good at deciphering other blobby, blurry texts—like CAPTCHAs, which it cracks with 99 percent accuracy. Take that, human.
The first story published about L.A.’s Monday earthquake had an interesting line appended to its end: "This information comes from the USGS Earthquake Notification Service and this post was created by an algorithm written by the author."
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It’s tough for humans to predict how well a book will sell until after it’s published—it’s something of a gamble. But now, a new algorithm can tell if a book will be a commercial success or not long before it hits the shelves—with a staggering 84 percent accuracy.
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We all know somebody with one of those faces. You know, the friend who always gets mistaken for someone else. They say, "I know I remember you from somewhere!" But they don’t. Turns out there’s a science to this sort of thing—and it could make your face more memorable.
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Perhaps the future of newspapers is all about local distribution—very local distribution, as in a whole newspaper printed for just one coffeeshop in London. The Newspaper Club has teamed up with the Guardian to launch what they call an "algorithmic newspaper," published only for one location, its content mathematically harvested according to level of interest from the Guardian‘s weekly coverage. How does that work, exactly?
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Watercolors are a compelling medium because their aesthetic is the product of multiple variables. The pigment, the surface and, of course, water play into every unique stroke. But design engineer Kenichi Yoneda is using openFrameworks to create digital watercolors. And they look organically beautiful.
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Ah, Netflix—a haven for antisocial escapists and the blight of anything even mildly productive. No matter who you are, there’s a good chance that at some point in your life, Netflix has suggested a movie that brought you hours of entertainment and seemed to come straight from the very darkest shadows of obscurity. So how does Netflix find these meticulously tailored gems? Wired decided to find out.
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Are you a lazy texter? Do you have fat fingers? Did you sleep through all of your English classes? Well, none of that matters any more with the imminent release of new software that not only autocorrects your misspelled words but also fixes your grammar mistakes.
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If you’re under the impression that something as simple as sorting numbers is dull, think again. This visualization lets you see and hear fifteen different algorithms sift their way through a jumbled mess of data—and it’s truly mesmerizing.
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If you thought the sprawl of 16 numbers across the front of your credit was randomly generated, think again: like any good string of numbers, an algorithm was involved in its creation.
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This is site is run by Sascha Endlicher, M.A., during ungodly late night hours. Wanna know more about him? Connect via Social Media by jumping to about.me/sascha.endlicher.
