Great photos.

Fortune:

Two years ago, Brown attempted to teach Watson the Urban Dictionary. The popular website contains definitions for terms ranging from Internet abbreviations like OMG, short for “Oh, my God,” to slang such as “hot mess.”

But Watson couldn’t distinguish between polite language and profanity — which the Urban Dictionary is full of. Watson picked up some bad habits from reading Wikipedia as well. In tests it even used the word “bullshit” in an answer to a researcher’s query.

Can you imagine how freaked out that guy was when Watson responded with that?

Many thanks to Bold Poker for sponsoring The Loop’s RSS feed this week.

Bold Poker replaces your deck of cards with iPhones and has been praised by The Loop, Daring Fireball, and Mashable.

Try out Bold Poker at your next poker game. They’ll buy you a Heineken (i.e. give you a full refund) if the app doesn’t change your Texas hold’em home game for the better.

In every product category from 3-D printers to biosensors, exuberant organic forms have been replaced with hard-edged alternatives.

While Apple doesn’t exhibit at CES, they appear to be responsible for this trend. Since the original iMac, they’ve slowly transitioned their products from approachable plastic to cool metal and glass, with each generation becoming less curvy and colorful.

Apple doesn’t need to be at CES to still exert a strong influence there.

Petitions.whitehouse.gov is an official way that anyone with a grievance can try to lobby public support for their cause directly with the White House, and if they garner enough signatures, the administration will find the right person to consider the question and answer it.

Most of the time it’s used for serious stuff – to improve medical device safety, or restore federal recognition of a native American tribe, for example.

Sometimes it’s used for funny stuff, like the time more than 34,000 people petitioned the White House to build a Death Star.

That number of signatures put that petition over the threshold that elicits serious consideration by the administration, so the White House recruited Paul Shawcross, Chief of the Science and Space Branch at the White House Office of Management and Budget, to draft a response. The response, entitled This Isn’t the Petition Response You’re Looking For, is nothing short of awesome. I’m not going to ruin it here – just check it out.

Hayley Tsukayama for the Washington Post:

So on Friday, the ESA, game developers, academics and retailers met with Vice President Biden to have a deeper conversation. And — perhaps sensing their apprehension — Biden told the attendees that he came in “with no judgment” about how their products fit into the conversation about gun violence and said he was“anxious” to see what input they could provide.

I’m surprised the gaming industry agreed to this.

Om Malik talks about why he likes some products over others.

Matthew Panzarino, The Next Web:

So, at this point it appears that the newspaper may have taken some liberties with its quotes of Schiller’s interview. A new quote from Schiller simply says “Apple has always focused on providing the best products for its consumers, we’ve never blindly chased market share.”

What an absolute clusterfuck.

Travis Bloom is Microsoft fan and even he sees the flaws.

Mike Abary, the head of Samsung’s PC and tablet business in the U.S., tells CNET that the company will not be releasing its Windows RT device in the U.S. because retail partners don’t see strong demand and because the value proposition for Windows RT isn’t clear to consumers.

Ouch.

Quvenzhané Wallis reads her acceptance speech from her iPhone.

Lee Hutchinson for Ars Technica:

The image displayed on the scope isn’t a direct visual, but rather a video image taken through the scope’s objective lens. The Linux-powered scope produces a display that looks something like the heads-up display you’d see sitting in the cockpit of a fighter jet, showing the weapon’s compass orientation, cant, and incline.

Linux in a high-powered hunting rifle. I’m pretty sure this is how every robot apocalypse movie ever made begins.

Don Melton:

Steve started the Safari presentation with, “So, buckle up.” […]

And for the entire six minutes and 32 seconds that Steve used Safari on stage, I don’t remember taking a single breath. I was thinking about that network failure during rehearsal and screaming inside my head, “Stay online, stay online!” We only had one chance to make a first impression.

What a great story.

Yesterday we posted a an article link entitled “CNet Bullshit” linking to CNET’s “Best of CES Finalists” awards page. More specifically, to a paragraph tacked to the bottom of the page that read:

The Dish Hopper with Sling was removed from consideration due to active litigation involving our parent company CBS Corp. We will no longer be reviewing products manufactured by companies with which we are in litigation with respect to such product.

As you might be able to tell from the title of our coverage, Jim wasn’t very pleased with what happened. Some of you may be scratching your head about it, though. And for you, John Herman at Buzzfeed has a good breakdown of what happened and why. Click the link to read more.

Nathan Olivarez-Giles for Wired:

As a gamer, I can’t help but be wowed by Nvidia’s Project Shield. But after getting to use the Android-powered portable gaming console/controller/mini-tablet hybrid device here at CES, I see some potential pitfalls.

The new Project Shield device currently in development from Nvidia. Announced earlier this week, Project Shield combines game controller, screen and Android operating system in one. It also interfaces with certain Nvidia cards in PCs to stream graphics to its built in screen, so you can play PC games on your device. Neat idea, but how well does it work in practice? Click the link for details.

Eight Wirecutter writers and I convened at the Consumer Electronics show this week. You know, CES–The big gadget trade thing that serves as a sneak peek into the future of hardware. Instead of soaking your news feed with hundreds of posts, we spent most of our time filtering 99.99% of the stuff out. This is what’s left.

Thanks Brian and crew for filtering it down for us.

The Dish Hopper with Sling was removed from consideration due to active litigation involving our parent company CBS Corp. We will no longer be reviewing products manufactured by companies with which we are in litigation with respect to such product.

CNET is supposed to be a news organization. News should be free from such bullshit.

[Via Tim Stevens]

Classic.

[Via Coudal]

Still, AutoRip is painfully close to something I’ve found myself pining for since starting to use a Kindle e-reader: free Kindle copies of purchased physical books.

A lot of people would love that.

The challenge for Qualcomm was to find a way to showcase their technology and keep the keynote about them and not the products of the companies that use their technology. Not only did they pull it off, they did it in style.

Everyone in the tech industry looked at the Qualcomm keynote and said WTF? Except the Ottawa Citizen. Now you know which Canadian site to never read.

Empty states are places in apps that have no content or data. They are empty. A blank page. Traditionally empty states are overlooked as most designers focus on how best to display lots of content or data.

Great article. When I see an app where the empty pages have seen some attention, I’m confident that the designer has thought about the details of the app. Strangely, it’s these pages that often make you feel like the designer missed something.

While Apple released one new iPhone last year, Samsung let loose a whopping 37 different phone variations. (For those keeping score, HTC released 18, Nokia introduced nine, and LG launched 24.) Certainly good hardware design played a role in Samsung’s healthy sales. But it also didn’t hurt that the company flooded the market.

Apple puts all of its efforts into making one great product for users. Clearly everyone else is just throwing as much at the market as they can.

Scarbee Rickenbacker Bass captures the unmistakable sound of a Rickenbacker 4003 for the first time in software. Delivering meaty, low end thunder and the crisp, defined midrange that has shaped rock and pop history, Rickenbacker BASS is the first software instrument to be officially approved by Rickenbacker.

Sounds good.

Matthew Panzarino for The Next Web:

Apple SVP of Worldwide marketing Phil Schiller gave an interesting interview to Chinese newspaper Shanghai Evening News yesterday. In the interview, he directly addresses the rumors surrounding a potential cheaper iPhone, saying that this will ‘never be the future of Apple products’.

This doesn’t entirely discount the possibility that Apple is looking to move into emerging markets, but Schiller’s comments reinforce Apple’s image as an innovator rather than a mass-market supplier.

Rebecca J. Rosen’s well-intended editorial in The Atlantic suggests that the right course of action to promote gender diversity at tech conferences is to simply boycott the ones that feature all-male speaker lists. The editorial has been bouncing around the blogosphere since it was posted last week, and Rosen’s comments are a response to a larger debate about gender diversity that’s been bouncing around the tech industry for some time.

Brittany Tarvin, in an editorial on her own Tumblr blog, thinks this is the wrong approach and offers more constructive suggestions, like mentoring a minority in your own personal network to speak on topics they’re knowledgeable and passionate about, and advocate for them to be part of the speaker list at conferences you attend or are interesting in.

Tarvin’s point, if I’ve interpreted it correctly, is that in order to affect change, sometimes it’s more important to act positively than it is to just say no.

If the topic interests you, make sure to read both posts and feel free to share your thoughts with us.