Archive for November 12th, 2005

Amazon Mechanical Turk

Saturday, November 12th, 2005 | 06:58

Amazon has taken the brilliantly evil “using porn to defeat captcha” idea and put it to good use in their experimental Amazon Mechanical Turk. (The name comes from 18th Century chess automaton hoax, where the chess-playing “robot” actually consisted of a chess master dwarf moving the levers, as this page explains).
The Amazon system [...]

Apple Crisp

Saturday, November 12th, 2005 | 06:36

Here’s the apple crisp recipe we’re using right now. The apples are given a little bit of “pie filling” treatment:
1/2 stick butter
1/2 cup white sugar
1 cup all-purpose flour
3/4 cup rolled oats
1 cup brown sugar
1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract
5 apples, peeled and cubed
1 lemon, juiced
1 tablespoon cornstarch
1/2 cup water

Pre-heat oven to 375F.
Cream butter [...]