August 2023

IBM taps AI to translate COBOL code to Java

August 22, 2023
COBOL, or Common Business Oriented Language, is one of the oldest programming languages in use, dating back to around 1959. It’s had surprising staying power; according to a 2022 survey, there’s over 800 billion lines of COBOL in use on production systems, up from an estimated 220 billion in 2017. But COBOL has a reputation […]

Listen to Lupe

August 22, 2023
Wasalu Jaco, a.k.a. Lupe Fiasco, gave a lecture called “Rap Theory and Practice: An Introduction” at MIT in 2022—and it quickly racked up over a million views when MIT Comparative Media Studies/Writing posted it online. The talk offered a preview of his spring semester class. “Kick, Push” was the lead single on Lupe Fiasco’s debut…

Microsoft can’t stop discontinuing Kinect

August 22, 2023
Kinect occupies a strange place in the tech world. It’s a nearly universally beloved piece of technology that was both ahead of its time and very much of its time, all at once. It felt — for a moment — like it was going to revolutionize gaming, but much like the Wii, proved to be […]

They made a scary matcha Pokémon

August 22, 2023
A new Pokémon just dropped, and it’s literally a chipped teapot of matcha. It is called Poltchageist, and yes, that’s a portmanteau of poltergeist and matcha. It’s ghost tea. Yes, Pokémon has already made this joke before, when they introduced Polteageist in the Pokémon Sword and Shield games, which take place in the Britain-inspired Galar […]