michaeljordan
Latest
Netflix and ESPN are working on a Michael Jordan documentary series
Netflix used to be a solid option for watching ESPN's 30 for 30 series. Then parent company Disney decided to launch its own sports streaming service and the documentaries disappeared from Netflix. Well, today's news should help: The pair are officially working together on a series chronicling Michael Jordan's career. Specifically, The Last Dance will cover Jordan's ascent to the throne in the '90s and his time with the Chicago Bulls during their final championship in the 1997-98 season, according to The Hollywood Reporter.
Snapchat is selling more than just crappy merch (updated)
Weeks ago, Snap opened up an in-app Snapchat store to sell merch, which appeared to be an attempt to open up a new revenue stream. But it looks like it will offer more than just dancing hot dogs. During yesterday's NBA All-Star game in Los Angeles, the Jordan brand held a community concert that doubled as a sneaker drop for yet-unreleased shoes, which attendees could buy by scanning a custom code using the Snapchat app.
New MIT software learns an entire dead language in just a few hours
Whenever we boot up our time machines, cruise back to 1200 B.C., and try to pick up chicks at our favorite wine bar in Western Syria, our rudimentary knowledge of Ugaritic is usually more embarrassing than helpful. The good folks at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology have us stoked on some new software we hope to have in pocket form soon. It analyzes an unknown language by comparing letter and word patterns to another known language (in Ugaritic's case, its close cousin is Hebrew) and spits out a translation quickly, using precious little computing power. To give some perspective, it took archaeologists four years to do the same thing back in 1928. It's not quite Berlitz yet, but this proof of concept is kind of like the Michael Jordan of computational linguists -- it's probably the first time that machine translations of dead scripts has been proven effective. If we plug some hopeful numbers into our TI-83, we calculate that we'll be inserting our own genes into the ancient Syrian pool in a matter of months. Thanks, MIT! [Photo courtesy of Wikipedia Commons]
