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Siri Hates Her, and Other News

By

On the Shelf

hal-2001

HAL 9000—still the standard-bearer for baneful artificial intelligences.

  • Eschewing received wisdom and millions of high school syllabi, one writer dares to contend that Charlotte Brontë’s Villette trumps Jane Eyre.
  • Spike Jonze wrote the screenplay for Her, which features a honey-tongued operating system named Samantha, well before Siri came into this world—but surely you can see the connection. Siri can’t. Ask her about Her and you’ll get some guff: “I think she gives artificial intelligence a bad name.”
  • As the New York Times prepares to debut its new home page, this helpful gif shows how the site has evolved since 2001. (“The New York Times on the Web,” it said then—as if to congratulate itself for having arrived.)
  • Fan art for The Catcher in the Rye. Highest honors go to that left-handed fielder’s mitt.
  • Antoine de Saint-Exupéry’s The Little Prince becomes an art exhibit.
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