Are we getting closer to having a real universal translator?
Nora Young, Spark from CBC Radio, 2015/01/19

Roland Kuhn is a constant source of delight in NRC staff meetings and you won't want to miss his interview with Spark, a radio show about science and technology. From the promo: "From Star Trek's universal translator to The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy's Babel Fish, sci-fi has long given us a glimpse into possible futures where everyone can understand each other with the help of technology. Now, both Skype and Google are each coming out with consumer products that promise simultaneous language translation. We ask Roland Kuhn, the Statistical Machine Translation lead at the National Research Council Canada, to weigh in on the future of machine translation and speech recognition."

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A 16-Year Old Programmer Just Made a Plugin That Shows Where Politicians Get Their Funding
Mbiyimoh Ghogomu, The Higher Learning, 2015/01/19

Campaign financing is a bit different in Canada and individual politicians don't really get direct support from funders (at least I think they don't). Still, we have to applaud the concept. And even more, take note, this incredibly useful application was created by a self-taught 16-year old. Original story on The Bulletin. "You can download the Greenhouse plugin for free here." Story and longer interview in Vice (probably the original source for the story).

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