Apple today updated MacBook with the latest Intel processors, improved graphics performance, faster flash storage and an additional hour of battery life, making the thinnest and lightest Mac better than ever. Featuring an all-metal unibody enclosure, MacBook is now available in four aluminum finishes — gold, silver, space gray, and for the first time on a Mac, a gorgeous rose gold. With a stunning 12-inch Retina display, highly responsive full-size keyboard, Force Touch trackpad, versatile USB-C port and all-day battery life in a design that is just 2 pounds and 13.1 mm thin, MacBook is the future of the notebook.
Unsurprising given that the Retina MacBook design was brand new just a year ago, Apple has kicked off its Mac updates in 2016 with a minor refresh to its flagship laptop. Better CPU, better graphics, longer battery life, Rose Gold. Somewhat disappointingly, the USB-C is not Thunderbolt 3.
The pricing didn’t change, so it still starts at $1299 for the base model. This means the MacBook Air continues to be sold for another generation. When the MacBook can get to three digit prices, I don’t see a reason for the Air to exist. The Air line is running out of breath (excuse the pun) and I think the upcoming new ultra-thin 13 inch laptops will be branded as Pro, not Air. (By the way, the new Pro models are probably going to replace all their ports with a few Thunderbolt 3 / USB-C sockets).
Interestingly, the 13 inch Air did get a spec-bump today on RAM (8 GB across the board) so it isn’t abandoned. I addressed this flippantly on Twitter but it disguised my actual point. What I was trying to convey was that the RAM improvement should not be seen as a sign that the Air branding is alive, more that it’s on life support receiving maintenance updates to sustain it. I do not believe the Air laptops will be sold in a year or two.
Scammers being scammers, they realized Amazon was lying very early on. Amazon couldn’t tell what pages were read. They only knew the last place you were at in the book. And that’s what they were paying authors, the last place that the reader synced in the book.
So, a KU borrow on a device that didn’t sync until after the book was read and the reader flipped back to the front to check out what else you’d written? Yeah, no pages read.
But likewise, a reader who clicked a link on Page 1 offering them the opportunity to win a Kindle Fire HDX 8.9 and a $100 Amazon Gift Card….which then sent them to the back of a 3000 page book? Yep, you guessed it. They got paid for 3000 unread pages. (And no, there was no winner for those contests that anyone knows off.)
Anything you make open to the public is open to abuse. The scam itself is self-explanatory and straightforward but fixing the loopholes is a lot harder than it sounds. It’s impractical for Amazon to proof-read every single page of every single book that gets submitted to the Kindle platform. What’s particularly frustrating for legitimate publishers in this case is that the payout pool is fixed, proportionate to the number of Kindle Unlimited subscribers. This means the bad actors are directly stealing revenue from the pot that could have been distributed to real writers. If less people were ‘reading’ 3000 pages of computer-generated rubbish, all authors would make more money.
Following Apple Music, I’ve heard some people say Apple should offer a subscription Video and Apps service, paying developers based on app usage metrics. For the former case, I fully expect that to happen: an Apple streaming video service is inevitable.
For the latter, I am doubtful we will ever see something like Kindle Unlimited for apps run by Apple. It would be a massive attack vector for people looking to make a quick buck by abusing the platform. There’s a lot of scammy stuff on the App Store today without developers having monetary incentives to keep readers tapping around in their app to clock up their usage quotas. With a few seconds thought I can imagine bad developers adding arbitrary wait times or additional steps into their UI, just to grab a few extra cents from each customer.
The reason Apple Music doesn’t have this problem is because the music submitted to the service is heavily vetted and getting content in the library is pretty arduous, requiring songwriters to publish through a record label of some kind. The same would be true for the hypothetical forthcoming Apple Video service. Nothing’s perfect of course — Spotify was famously abused by a band who asked fans to listen to hours of silent audio tracks on repeat to earn pay-per-play revenue.
Apple Inc. has constructed a secret team to explore changes to the App Store, including a new strategy for charging developers to have their apps more prominently displayed, according to people familiar with the plans.
Among the ideas being pursued, Apple is considering paid search, a Google-like model in which companies would pay to have their app shown at the top of search results based on what a customer is seeking. For instance, a game developer could pay to have its program shown when somebody looks for “football game,” “word puzzle” or “blackjack.”
Adding paid search to the App Store could be extremely damaging to the (already fragile) ecosystem. If you asked people to name the main problems with the App Store today, discoverability of good apps would rank near the top of the list.
I think any change to the App Store search algorithms that adds variables into the mix that can be distorted by third-party company marketing budgets is undesirable. By its very nature, paid search skews results towards those institutions with the biggest wallets. It does not seem like that it would improve discoverability for me, an indie developer who cannot afford to pay for these expenses.
Paid search has a spiralling factor too, reinforcing the position of the incumbents. The theory goes that those apps already top of the App Store grossing charts (think crappy virtual currency games) will have the most money to spend on paid App Store advertising, strengthening their dominance further. The small guys selling apps for a few dollars a piece don’t stand a chance — there’s no money available for more marketing.
Google is considered to be the best search engine in the world and their results are littered with paid ad placements, so commercialising search does not spell doom by default. I will wait to see Apple’s implementation before getting seriously upset. That being said, any store algorithm that values more highly apps that have paid the most money to be listed rather than factors around application quality does not excite me as a user or as a developer.
Perhaps, if paid search advertising budgets were somehow linked to the price of the app, it could be feasible. If Apple guaranteed to only charge developers if the advertising resulted in a sale, small apps could at least join in. Developers could simply apportion a fixed percentage of their app revenue towards the App Store marketing budget.
However, I don’t think much would change for the better if something like that was introduced. A new equilibrium would quickly arise where everyone would be forced to pay for Apple’s paid search listings to stay competitive with the wider market of apps, leaving the problem of ranking quality apps higher than the rest unchanged.
The same situation would arise where all developers are competing for the same eyeballs as before, except they would be paying a bit more for the privilege with Apple’s revenues receiving a tidy boost from developers being compelled to pay for premium placement in App Store search.
Let’s assume for now that we have system integrity (we don’t). How do we implement DRM? The truth is that DRM is impossible in theory. However, as engineers, we do not always have to follow theory. The secret of DRM is that, unlike other cryptosystems, you are not designing it to be secure forever. (Note for the pedantic: I know that no cryptosystem currently known would last forever, but if you can point out this fact, you also know what I mean.) Specifically, if your DRM can last 100 years, most people (on the engineering side) would be very happy. In fact, if you can provably do that, you would “solve” the problem of DRM. Most DRM schemes are designed with decades in mind (something that you might not admit to business people). That means we can commit some security faux pas that the textbooks would forbid. For example, security by obscurity is a tool here. If it takes the hacker 5 years to figure out your scheme, then by all means do it, because you just bought another 5 years. (But be warned that if you think it takes 5 years to crack the scheme, it likely will take 5 months.)
Standalone, this post is an interesting exploration into the 3DS’s security measures, the quest to prevent game piracy. As a provably-foolproof method for content protection has not been found, all DRM is about delaying people for as long as possible. At the end of the day, it’s just maths. This article is particularly relevant to my interests in light of recent happenings in technology. Hopefully, you can see the parallels between what Nintendo does and what Apple does with iOS devices.
When embroiled in debates over human liberties and public safety, there’s a tendency to pigeonhole the meaning of encryption as only the thing that protects personal data on your devices. In reality of course, encryption and hashing techniques are everywhere in technology. Assuming such a policy was enforceable, a ban encryption is not feasible. There are numerous, legitimate, reasons why a company wants to include encryption flows in a product.
Game DRM is just one case; Nintendo and others use cryptography to (attempt to) protect their games library from piracy. In the same way that the FBI is looking for compromises to gain access to the contents of an iPhone, hardware hackers meticulously reverse-engineer the workings of Nintendo’s consoles to break the software security policies. When successful hacks are found, Nintendo releases newer hardware with different security protocols and the hackers get to work gain. This is exactly what Apple does with its iPhones.
Researchers at Washington University in St. Louis in 2012 found that laptop note-takers tested immediately after a class could recall more of a lecture and performed slightly better than their pen-pushing classmates when tested on facts presented in class. They reported their experiments with 80 students in the Journal of Educational Psychology.
Any advantage, though, is temporary. After just 24 hours, the computer note takers typically forgot material they’ve transcribed, several studies said. Nor were their copious notes much help in refreshing their memory because they were so superficial.
I wouldn’t put too much faith in a study of just 80 students but it’s interesting enough to warrant a discussion nonetheless. The survey result mirrors my experience, at least. I memorised many pages of essays in a matter of hours, less than day of total work, for university exams. I did this by writing my notes out, over and over again. It’s boring and repetitive, but it definitely meant I could remember them. When it came to the actual exam, I could write out vast passages of things I had learnt by rote — word for word if I had to. A few of my friends had this exact same tactic and it seems to work for them as well.
This study covers learning directly in lectures. I did use my laptop for several classes to make lecture notes. Indeed, I found that straight after I did forget what we had covered. It wasn’t a matter of missing stuff; my proficient computer ability and WPM rate meant I covered everything. However, the advantages and convenience of typing far outweighed the advantages of immediate recall. I settled on a strategy where I would use my laptop to write notes for lectures but when it came to test revision, I would use pen and paper.
I think what happens is your brain spends so much energy as a scribe such that you enter a mode where words come in one ear and out the other. It is robotic output — not really thinking about what the words mean. When you write stuff, you are physically moving your hands more and have to look at what’s being written. Abbreviating or paraphrasing passages also plays a role, where you are having to actively think about the concepts at hand compared to simply copying sentences.
It would be interesting to see a study of taking notes with people who aren’t fast typists, but instead have to look at the keys and tap out each word. I would guess this more closely replicates the mental experiences of writing.
Personally, I found writing out complete paragraphs into notebooks far more efficient than making actual notes. Writing full sentences helped me remember it better than shortened phrases or bulleted lists. It was slower to do (plus quickly makes your hand ache) but it was effective.
Being able to remember stuff at university is a hugely important skill but it isn’t everything of course. I found that as long as I understood something once initially, later it was far easier to write it out and get back up to speed. The ability to quickly conjure up introductions and conclusions also helps a lot, even if you don’t really believe what you are writing. I did well by basing my arguments more around what subset of information I could recall on the day, rather than walking in with a fixed opinion and flailing around in my head for evidence.
In many examinations, what I had remembered was very reusable as professors often set similar questions year-to-year. This helps with time constraints too, as it’s far quicker to scribble something word-for-word than construct arguments and explanations on the fly. In other instances, I had to engage the mind more to actually make an essay that fits the question set but writing still let me recall the facts.
Now for the super obvious part but some thoughts to follow: a smaller display means iOS must be a lot more compact. That part we all could have guessed, but I’ve also decided that the medium-sized 4.7-inch iPhone is the design target for iOS while the 4-inch and 5.5-inch iPhones adjust in either direction. Stretch out more than the default, or squeeze in more than the default. That being said, I do believe the 4.7-inch iPhone is likely the go-to model for most people, before you consider screen size preferences, price, and other specs.
It’s very trendy in the Apple blogger community to say that the 4-inch size is a better phone. This is justified because of the phone’s physical advantages, as in the iPhone 5 chassis fits more comfortably in pretty much everyone’s hands. No doubt, the phone is easier to hold. The iPhone 5 advert about thumb size, which Apple conveniently forgets now that its flagship devices are much bigger, is perfectly true.
However, the same people that argue for the smaller screen because of its physical usability disregard the important points of software usability, where the iOS user interface feels constrained and small. As Hall notes, there’s a strong feeling in how iOS is engineered that the target size for iOS design is the 4.7 inch display … with secondary adjustments for larger and smaller afterwards.
This is true in terms of system components (Springboard, Control Center, tab bars) and the third-party app ecosystem. Living day-to-day with a Twitter client where two tweets barely fit in a viewport is rough, especially when accounting for the fact a lot of social media posts feature tall attachments like photos and other embedded previews. There’s a natural tradeoff at play that will exist for many years, until technology develops things like stretchable, flexible, screens. If my only choices was a 4 inch phone or 5.5 inch phone, I would pick the big phone every time because of the larger canvas.
Thankfully, that choice of extremes is only a theoretical one: Apple sells a 4.7 inch iPhone. For me, this is the obvious choice between the 6 and 6 Plus options and continues to be the best compromise of usability in light of the iPhone SE. The additional diagonal dimension yields 40% more screen area. This makes a huge difference when using apps and when viewing media. Most people I know can also use the 4.7 inch chassis one-handed. I can reach all four screen corners with my thumb comfortably, lifting the phone gently to hit the top-right region. This is incredibly natural and beats the Plus phones all day long. Minor hand gymnastics bests two-handed operation.
Safari Technology Preview is a standalone application that can be used side-by-side with Safari or other web browsers, making it easy to compare behaviors between them. Besides having the latest web features and bug fixes from WebKit, Safari Technology Preview includes the latest improvements to Web Inspector, which you can use to develop and debug your websites. Updates for Safari Technology Preview will be available every two weeks through the Updates pane of the Mac App Store.
Safari Technology Preview takes a snapshot of the WebKit nightlies, about once a fortnight, and packages into a working web browser. Safari Technology Preview is not going to be as stable as a formal public release but the idea is that it is stable enough, such that web developers could use it as their primary browser.
By comparison, WebKit nightlies are often very buggy and using that as your daily browser is just unfeasible due to the high chance of it crashing. Safari Technology Preview also packages in iCloud support and automatic updates through the Mac App Store (even though you initially download the app from a website).
It’s a convenient way to stay closer to the bleeding edge of web technologies. If this sounds familiar, it’s almost identical to the strategy Google uses for Chrome, with Chrome Canary builds. Safari Technology Preview (with its annoyingly wordy name) also comes with a slick purple sundial its dock icon. So there’s that.
One notable inclusion in the first release of the developer browser is inclusion for JavaScript’s @document.execCommand()@ cut-copy-paste API. Until now, it was not possible for JavaScript to programatically trigger pasteboard actions. The common workaround was using an embedded Flash component to perform the copying, as Flash embeds do have native access to the pasteboard. By bringing this API to JS, it removes one of the last big barriers for websites to drop Flash completely.
Sony Corp. is planning to sell a more powerful version of its PlayStation 4 machine to handle higher-end game experiences, including virtual reality, people familiar with the matter said, while continuing production of its existing console that has so far sold more than 36 million units world-wide.
Sounds like an iPhone release cycle, an ‘S’ model. It’s not much of a surprise if you follow the industry, Microsoft has also announced plans to treat the Xbox more like a personal computer.
This would mean incremental upgrades to the hardware (internal components) periodically. This isn’t completely unprecedented — both Microsoft and Sony have released stop-gap ‘new’ hardware to spike sales in the console cycle, through ‘Slim’ redesigns. Those were more aesthetic upgrades than anything; the body became thinner and sleeker but the internal components remained the same as the 1.0 hardware.
The Wall Street Journal report says the new upgraded PlayStation 4 will have the same games catalogue as the PlayStation 4 but it isn’t clear how the games would benefit would from the additional GPU and CPU enhancements. Any change in internals will cause some frictions for developers, who will have to dedicate additional engineering resources to optimise for the improvements provided by the better components. It did indicate that the new strategy is partly to account for the upcoming virtual reality headsets, which demand more compute power by their nature.
I also think that the move to minor, iterative hardware updates is also a counter to the world of smart devices. The graphics chips inside iPhone, iPad and Apple TV (arguably the closest competitor to traditional games consoles) are catching up quickly. If games console makers continued their old-style plans of elongated seven-year cycles, they would likely be surpassed by smartphones, tablets and set-top boxes before the next-generation flagship consoles came around.
A state-of-the-art oxygen respirator, that allows you to breathe underwater up to 45 minutes and at a maximum depth of 15ft by utilizing our ‘artificial gills’ technology. Swim among tropical fish, marvel at exotic coral and experience the serene beauty of marine life − without having to come up for air. Welcome to Triton.
This cannot be anything but a scam. I refuse to believe it. They are saying they are filtering dissolved oxygen from the water. The problem is, there isn’t that much oxygen available in water and the human body needs a lot of it. Even assuming that water filtration at that size is feasible, you would have to pump hundreds of litres of water every minute to not drown. I’m sure there are a thousand other reasons why this proposition is ridiculous too. This Reddit thread has many more rebuttals to read at leisure.
It’s a farfetched claim and not backed up by any evidence. The campaign page includes some photos of the ‘prototype’ and a video. The video shows the product but offers no proof of any of their underwater breathing claims. The video footage never shows the product actually in use by a person for more than 30 seconds.
Most humans can stay underwater for 30 seconds without needing to breath; there is no attempt to show that the device is what is allowing the diver to stay submerged. When I used to swim competitively, I could stay swimming underwater for almost two minutes without breathing. Trained free divers can do many more minutes.
If I had really invented a product that let people breathe freely underwater for 45 minutes, I would prove it by recording a video of someone staying underwater for a prolonged period, at least longer than the world record set by un-aided humans. In some shots from Titron, the diver seems too buoyant — forcibly pushing himself to stay underwater. To me, that suggests the guy merely gulped a lot of air into his lungs moments before the camera started rolling.
Also, note that Indiegogo has no verification process whatsoever for its campaigns. No crowdfunding site has a watertight approval process, but at least Kickstarter requires some basic accountability checks before the fundraising goes public. Reality check: this thing is on crowdfunding. A truly legitimate product of this nature would not need the Internet for investment. Any millionaire investor or private company, probably the Army, would fund a thing like this in seconds, if it was real.
I would actively bet $299 that this thing is fake. And yet, somehow, the Titron campaign has accrued $700,000 in pledges so far with a month still to go. It has already seen mass media recognition from over 30 well-known media outlets. Sigh, signed the internet.
With screen brightness set to maximum, the 29W adapter was able to charge the iPad Pro, albeit a bit slowly. Ultimately, it reached almost 15% in 20 minutes of charging.
With screen brightness set to maximum, the 12W adapter could basically only hold the current charge. When using the iPad Pro with screen brightness set to max, I’ve seen the iPad Pro actually lose charge, even when connected to the 12W power source.
As a 12.9 inch iPad Pro owner, I was naturally stung by the improvements that Apple managed to roll into the new 9.7 inch version (new screen technology, better cameras). At the end of the day, though, I can’t really be upset. I bought the product at the time with the features that it had. As an Apple commentator, I definitely wouldn’t want Apple to hold back on features for the new iPad Pro just to make the few million people who bought the bigger model not feel hard done by.
What I do think is unacceptable is the power adapter that Apple ships with the big iPad Pro. The wattage is simply not high enough; the 12.9 inch iPad battery takes forever to charge using the bundled adapter. It is bad. As part of the announcements on Monday, Apple has released a new USB-C to Lightning cable, meaning the iPad Pro can now connect to Apple’s more powerful 29 W USB-C charger (also used by the Retina MacBook).
This higher-wattage charger should come bundled in the box with all new 12.9 inch iPad Pros sold. I don’t care that it didn’t exist at first. The current charger Apple ships is mediocre, bordering on unacceptable. It barely does the job: you can’t use the iPad whilst charging and expect the battery percentage to go up. Apple should not punish new Pro customers with the 12 watt charger just because it shipped a 12 watt charger initially. Now that something better is available, include that in the box. Enough said.
Apple has been telling potential partners that its payment service, which lets shoppers complete a purchase on mobile apps with their fingerprint rather than by entering credit card details, is expanding to websites later this year, multiple sources told Re/code.
The service will be available to shoppers using the Safari browser on models of iPhones and iPads that possess Apple’s TouchID fingerprint technology, these people said. Apple has also considered making the service available on Apple laptops and desktops, too, though it’s not clear if the company will launch that capability.
I’m not surprised that it is looking to expand beyond NFC and in-app payments, especially given that rumours are circulating that Apple is already developing a person-to-person Apple Pay feature. Apple has clear incentives here: a strong payments ecosystem attracts developers and companies, Apple Pay improves the user experience for buying things on Apple devices, and the company earns money from every transaction.
The Re/code report floats the idea of Apple Pay checkout coming to Mac as well, for desktop websites. Apple Pay’s conveniences are lessened in the absence of a fingerprint reader for the authentication. Perhaps, this is the year MacBooks get embedded Touch ID sensors.
Yesterday’s Apple event was a strange affair. It was uncharacteristically short, just over an hour, despite featuring significant new announcements for its flagship product lines. If you take out Apple’s extended discussion of its environment and health efforts, the products themselves were on stage for under half an hour. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing, it’s just unusual.
A lot of this is because Apple’s new iPhone SE and 9.7 inch iPad Pro were self-explanatory. Smaller iPhone with near-identical design and latest internals, smaller iPad Pro with near-identical design latest (or better) internals. There just wasn’t much interesting stuff to explain or demo. That doesn’t mean these products suck or aren’t important. They are critical additions to the lineup which is why they get an event in the first place. I don’t think Apple could ever announce a new iPhone without a press conference of some ilk: it’s too mainstream.
One theme I saw very clearly was lower pricing. Apple dropped the entry price to so much stuff. I love it, it’s a very positive move. The Apple Watch is $50 cheaper. The iPad Air (2) is $100 cheaper. Moreover, the iPhone is now accessible at $399 off-contract.
Side-stepping the 16 GB plague, price-conscious customers have great options now. Leading up to the event, I was skeptical about the usefulness of an iPhone SE to Apple. Frankly, I wasn’t expecting them to sell it that cheaply. $499 for a 64 GB iPhone SE is under my prediction for what the 16 GB model would cost. $499 is marginally more expensive than what the 16 GB iPhone 5s sold for just 24 hours ago … crucially the SE also features the latest components: top-of-the-range CPU and GPU, fantastic camera and such.
Even the Apple Watch’s $50 drop makes it exponentially more appealing: recommending someone pick up a Sport feels like a lot less of a burden and the pricing is way closer to the Android smartwatch competition. Whatever you can say about the Apple Watch’s flaws, I strongly believe it’s better than what Samsung currently offers (assuming you use an iPhone). And now it’s even cheaper. I hope Apple can sustain the lower starting price when Apple Watch 2 hits later in the year.
Miitomo, a free messaging-based application, reached No. 1 among social-networking apps in Japan on Apple Inc.’s iOS devices on the day of its release, market researcher App Annie said on Friday. Line, the country’s most popular instant messenger, fell to second place.
Nintendo is seeking to bring back players who migrated away from games on company’s dedicated hardware, such as the Wii and handheld DS devices.
I really couldn’t care less about Nintendo’s social networking app but I hope its success in the App Store means the company will dedicate more resources to mobile going forward. Quality games with top-tier IP (Mario, Pokemon) and Nintendo would easily become one of the biggest game publishers for iOS. I also have little resignation in believing that Apple would willingly help Nintendo establish itself as an iPhone and iPad game maker.
For all the talk about the App Store being unsustainable, the iOS games industry is big, big, business. Nintendo expects profits to top $300 million for the year. A handful of top iOS games make that same money in one month. Nintendo could do well with any pricing model. If it decides to employ a freemium model on these titles to maximise income, then so be it. I’d rather the company follow a somewhat-slimy business path than experience a principled demise. I think Pokemon is the obvious choice to translate to a freemium monetisation scheme. There are so many elements of a Pokemon game that could include real-money purchases (even if it would upset purist gamers, myself included). That becomes the company’s new cash cow.
In regards to their console efforts, I would drop the handheld line. The dedicated TV games console market is still penetrable. Nintendo can keep making hardware there, if you want, for a few years at least. Cede the mobile hardware to smartphones and tablets.
Nearly three years since they officially blessed it with “partner” access (and after 14 billion emoji tweets tracked), Twitter has decided to shut Emojitracker down.
To be more accurate, they are removing its elevated access to the Streaming API that Emojitracker depends on in order to operate at its high volume:
I understand why Emojitracker is getting its privileged access revoked; a firehose stream is precious scarce resource and expensive to maintain for free. Twitter wants to be able to sell the elevated stream to people, so giving it away to fun apps like Emojitracker undermines the value of it.
In this particular instance, Twitter’s actions are probably reasonable and fair. However, it did twig my mind about something. I am yet to see any positive change in Twitter developer policy following Dorsey’s apology and promise to make things better. Maybe good stuff is in the pipeline and it hasn’t surfaced yet to the world. I hope so. Ironically, Jack Dorsey publicised Emojitracker just two months ago. Now, his company is shutting it down.
Interesting interview with Zane Lowe: the similarities between Lowe talking about music and Ive talking about Apple’s latest hardware in a white room are striking. They even look similar physically. I think Apple Music is in good hands with talent like this onboard.
On multiple occasions, Lowe mentions that it has no constraints on what artists can broadcast. I find that slightly amusing given Beats 1’s strict censorship of profanity across all of their shows. Even funnier is that Lowe himself naturally swears multiple times in the interview, suggesting that he doesn’t exactly portray the brutal honesty he preaches when on air either.
Inside the towering Four Seasons hotel in downtown Seoul, the game was approaching the end of its first hour when AlphaGo instructed its human assistant to place a black stone in a largely open area on the right-hand side of the 19-by-19 grid that defines this ancient game. And just about everyone was shocked.
“That’s a very strange move,” said one of the match’s English language commentators, who is himself a very talented Go player. Then the other chuckled and said: “I thought it was a mistake.” But perhaps no one was more surprised than Lee Sedol, who stood up and left the match room.
It’s great that computer AI has done something previously thought impossible, if not extremely far into the future. What’s more interesting to me, is that it is playing moves that surprise (and flummox) humans. It plays moves that the top ranking players would never consider. The fact that new strategies are still being discovered in a game that is both thousands of years old and ‘relatively’ simple, using just two types of pieces and a 19x19 finite grid, is amazing.