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CNET UK Podcast 227: Why can't robots just speak slower?

On the show this week, we talk about super-intelligent computers, look at the week's most interesting news and wonder what was on the 17,000 memory sticks left in laundrettes last year.

It's podcast time again -- this week we're asking about the future intelligence of computers, wondering how Kinect managed to be the fastest-selling gadget of all time and are relieved to learn that the adult-themed Wii game We Dare won't be sold in the UK.

News

Kinect is 'fastest-selling gadget of all time'
Wi-Fi slows down Internet access by 30 per cent
Dutch police seize thousands of PlayStation 3s
Spanking Wii game will not be sold in the UK after all

 

 

Crave

Google music sync
Nintendo 3DS
We7 free Internet radio

 

Feature

IBM's Watson supercomputer has just won a prize of $1m on US gameshow Jeopardy, beating the two highest-scoring human players in the show's history. What makes Watson remarkable is its ability to understand natural language questions.

So with Watson on the brain, we ask what will happen to computers in the future and we wonder if Ray Kurzweil is right in his hypothesis that one day, computers will be so clever, we'll need more patient computers to help us use them.

WTF

17,000 USB sticks were left at laundrettes and dry cleaners last year. This troubles us: what's on these sticks? Who's counting them? And most importantly, why are people leaving them in laundrettes? 

Podcast