Software

Markus "Notch" Persson at GDC 2011

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After many rumors in recent weeks, the official announcement came that Microsoft acquired Mojang, an independent video game developer, known in particular for the famous Minecraft. The terms of the agreement exceed even those already very high from the rumors because Microsoft provides the figure of $2.5 billion. The owner of the majority of the Mojang shares, Markus “Notch” Persson, decided to leave its creature along with co-founders Carl Manneh and Jakob Porsér.

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IBM and Mayo Clinic have announced a project to use the Watson cognitive computing system in medical research in order to find more quickly the most appropriate clinical trials, especially for cancer patients. Those tests that provide patients suffering from various forms of cancer access to new types of treatments. The use of Watson is also expected to be extended to clinical trials concerning other types of diseases.

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IBM announced Watson Discovery Advisor, a cloud service that uses the technology of the Watson artificial intelligence system devoted to research. The purpose is to assist researchers in testing their hypotheses and draw conclusions to accelerate their work. Watson’s ability to analyze massive amounts of data will find patterns and connections very quickly.

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Google has published a paper about Mesa, its new data warehousing system, used specifically to handle its online advertising business data. It’s a system used to create reports and analyzes for the company mangers. Due to the enormous amounts of data managed globally by Google, it’s a very complex system, requiring something more than other systems created by Google over the years.

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In a test performed on Saturday, June 7, 2014 at the Royal Society in London, a software called Eugene Goostman passed the Turing test. Chatting with a number of judges, 33% of them have mistaken the program for a human being, specifically a 13 year old Ukrainian boy. Its creators gave him a fictitious past to be able to answer personal questions in a consistent manner.