Slashdot reader DevNull127 writes: At a McDonald's restaurant in Georgia, an angry customer in the drive-through lane threw his drink at the pregnant fast-food worker who had served him. "She was crying and covered in ice and soda and syrup..." remembers another driver in the next car parked in the line. "[C]overed in syrup all over her shoes, pants, and shirt."

That driver created an online fundraiser for the fast-food worker, ultimately raising $1,700 within 24 hours which was later presented to the fast-food worker. "She gave me the envelope and I couldn't do nothing but cry," the worker told CNN later, "because I wasn't expecting that."

The driver also publicized a registry for baby supplies (along with the Cash App handle for future donations), but insisted to CNN that it wasn't doing anything special. "I just saw somebody being mistreated and I didn't like what I saw."

Sony is pulling Cyberpunk 2077 from the PlayStation Store and offering full refunds for anyone who bought the game from the digital storefront, the company said on Thursday. The Verge reports: If you want to start a refund, Sony says to visit this site and sign into your PlayStation account to submit a request. The game has already been removed from the PlayStation Store for a few Verge staffers on their PS5s, and the game doesn't come up in a search for "Cyberpunk 2077" on the web version of the store.

Players have found that Cyberpunk 2077, which has only been out for a week, has been riddled with bugs. The game looks good on PS5, but in my few hours with the game, I've run into a few complete crashes to the PS5's home screen and a number of distracting visual glitches. On PS4, the game fares a lot worse -- Eurogamer reported poor performance, low framerate, and texture pop-in. Further reading: 'Cyberpunk 2077' Players Are Fixing Parts of the Game Before CD Projekt

Six Scottish National Party (SNP) politicians have put forward a motion for consideration in the UK parliament to prohibit the resale of games consoles and PC components at prices "greatly above" MSRP, and the resale of goods purchased using automated bots to be made illegal in these fair isles. PC Gamer reports: A motion on the "Resale of gaming consoles and computer components purchases by automated bots" has been tabled with UK Parliament, and it aims to outlaw resellers' usage of automated bots and make it difficult to sell in-demand tech at prices far exceeding the manufacturer's recommend retail price. The motion has no set date for debate in the Commons, and is what is known as an 'Early Day Motion.' These don't often receive much love in Parliament, often due to the sheer number of Early Day Motions going at any one time, but they are used to highlight specific issues present in society. That's hardly indicative of sweeping change in the near-future, but it's better than nothing.

This week, Google acquired a company called Neverware that allows users to turn their old PCs and Macs into a Chromebook with its CloudReady software. Now, Google is planning to make CloudReady into an official Chrome OS release. Engadget reports: When that happens, Neverware says its existing users will be able to seamlessly upgrade to the updated software. Moreover, once that transition is complete, Google will support CloudReady in the same way that it currently does Chrome OS. In the immediate future, Neverware says it's business as usual. The Home Edition of CloudReady isn't changing, and the company says it's committed to supporting its existing education and enterprise customers. Moreover, there's no plan to change pricing at the moment, and Google will honor any current multi-year licenses.

Not only does this acquisition make a lot of sense from Google's perspective, but it's hard to see a downside for CloudReady users. The fact the operating system wasn't officially supported by Google was one of the few downsides to the software. It meant you couldn't install Android apps on CloudReady devices, even though it's based on Chromium OS. With this acquisition, support for Android apps becomes much more likely. Direct support from Google will also make the software more appealing to schools and businesses since they can get help directly from the company if they have any technical issues.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: The board of directors for British developer Codemasters has reached a purchase agreement with Electronic Arts which would sell the company to the mega-publisher for an estimated $1.2 billion (or just under $8 a share) in early 2021. The deal would put Codemasters' popular racing-game franchises -- including DiRT/DiRT Rally, Grid, F1, and Project CARS (which Codemasters acquired in 2019) -- under the same umbrella as EA's Need for Speed, Burnout, and mobile-focused Real Racing. That's not quite a monopoly in the genre -- thanks in large part to console exclusives like Microsoft's Forza Motorsport and Sony's Gran Turismo -- but it's as close as you're likely to find for any major genre in gaming.

More than that, the acquisition reflects a continuing trend toward consolidation among the game industry's biggest publishers. The acquisition would also likely make Codemaster's current and future titles part of the EA Play subscription service and, by extension, part of Microsoft's Xbox Game Pass Ultimate. Aside from its modern racing sims, Codemasters boasts a legacy catalog going back to the days of the ZX Spectrum and Commodore 64, with titles like Micro Machines and the Dizzy platform-adventure series that were especially popular in the UK. "The combination of Codemasters and Electronic Arts will enable the development and delivery of a market-leading portfolio of creative and exciting racing games and content to more platforms and more players around the world," the companies said in a joint statement.

"Electronic Arts and Codemasters have a shared ambition to lead the video game racing category," Codemasters Chairman Gerhard Florin added. "The Board of Codemasters firmly believes the company would benefit from EA's knowledge, resources and extensive global scale -- both overall and specifically within the racing sector. We feel this union would provide an exciting and prosperous future for Codemasters, allowing our teams to create, launch and service bigger and better games to an extremely passionate audience."

Nathan Myhrvold is a former CTO of Microsoft, co-founder of the equity company Intellectual Ventures, and the founder of "food innovation lab" Modernist Cuisine (which among other things resulted in book of remarkable food photography).

But he's now photographing the intricate designs of snowflakes, reports Fast Company: Over the span of 18 months, Myhrvold built a camera with a microscopic lens and then shot in the freezing locales of Fairbanks, Alaska, and Yellowknife, Northwest Territories, Canada. All to capture individual snowflakes — millimeters across — in sparkling, high-res detail.

Myhrvold captured his snowflake specimens by setting out black foam core when snow was falling. He then used a tiny watercolor brush to grab individual snowflakes and place them on a "cooling stage" under the camera. Cold is key — even the camera itself and the plate he places the snowflake on must be left outside and chilled in order to photograph the snowflake before it melts. But that's not the only element to keep those snowflakes cool: He also uses special, high-speed LED lights that don't generate as much heat. The cold is also important to a snowflake's shape, says Myhrvold, who shot his specimens at temperatures between -15 and -20 degrees F. You might call this the snowflake sweet spot: They form into the "best," most complex designs between these temperatures.

The results are simply dazzling... "Sometimes to see nature's beauty you have to travel to the Grand Canyon or get up late at night to see the stars," Myhrvold says. But with snow, all you have to do is pause and look down at your mitten. "It's a beautiful thing."

CNN reports: If it wasn't abundantly clear that content is king, especially in the Covid-19 era, Disney hammered that point home Thursday when it previewed dozens of new series and movies for its Disney+ streaming service. And investors are loving it. Shares of Disney jumped 13% Friday to a new all-time high. The stock is now up more than 20% this year, an impressive feat given that the pandemic has wreaked havoc on Disney's theme park business and forced its movie studios to delay big releases in theaters.

Investors are clearly betting that the streaming strength will offset any lingering weakness in other areas of the House of Mouse empire: Disney raised its forecast for subscriber growth and is upping prices for Disney+. Wall Street analysts rushed to upgrade Disney following Thursday's event. At least 13 analysts boosted their price targets on the stock Friday morning. While Disney initially predicted it would have 60-90 million subscribers by 2024, they're now predicting 230-260 million, CNN reported earlier this week. "The sheer scale of content announced on Thursday was a loud reminder to the rest of the streaming world that Disney+ had an amazing year, acting as a lifeboat to a company ravaged by coronavirus, and that Disney is fully committed to the future of streaming."

Besides the two new Star Wars series announced this week, Disney also announced several new series based on Marvel comic book characters:

• "The Falcon and the Winter Soldier" and "WandaVision"

• Samuel L. Jackson (as Nick Fury) in "Secret Invasion"

• Don Cheadle as War Machine in "Armor Wars"

• More Marvel-based shows about Hawkeye, Moon Knight, "Ironheart" Riri Williams, She Hulk, and Ms. Marvel

• A series of shorts titled "I Am Groot" and a "Guardians of the Galaxy Holiday Special"

Other newly-announced Disney+ shows include:

• A live action Pinocchio starring Tom Hanks
• A reboot of "The Mighty Ducks" starring Emilio Estevez

Christopher Nolan isn't too happy with Warner Bros' decision to send all 17 of its films slated for release in 2021 to HBO Max on the same day they're released. Nolan, whose blockbuster movies for Warner Bros have made billions, called HBO Max "the worst streaming service," adding that this shift in Hollywood is "a sign of great danger for the people who work in the movie industry." NPR reports: Nolan was asked whether the move to streaming is really about the pandemic or something bigger — Netflix had more 2020 Oscar nominations than any other studio. "There is this idea that that's been sort of put forward a lot, that the pandemic is sort of accelerating a trend that was already happening," he said. "But 2019 was the biggest year ever for movies financially. That doesn't suit the narrative that the tech companies or the big corporations kind of want to put out there right now.

"But the reality is there was enormous success in 2019 and 2018 wasn't bad either. If you're asking where moviegoing is going, I think the long-term health of the movie business depends on people's desire to get together and experience a story together. And I don't see any signs that that's going anywhere anytime soon." Would you agree with Nolan, or do you applaud Warner Bros' embrace of streaming?

New submitter Arthur, KBE writes: Harrison Ford will be grabbing his whip and ramming on his hat for a fifth "Indiana Jones" movie, Disney has confirmed -- a mere 41 years after the first installment, "Raiders of the Lost Ark," was released. Disney said in a tweet on Friday that the movie would be produced by its production arm Lucasfilm and released in July 2022, and that "Indy himself, Harrison Ford, will be back to continue his iconic character's journey." The entertainment giant also confirmed the news in an investor presentation, saying the movie was currently in "pre-production." There had been mounting speculation that a new movie was in the works. In February, Ford told Ellen DeGeneres in an appearance on her talk show that production on a new Indiana Jones movie would begin this year. "It's going to be fun. I am excited," he said on the show. "They're great fun to make." The last film from the franchise was 2008's "Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull," which came almost 20 years after the third movie, "Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade," which was released in 1989.

What are some good movies and TV shows that you watched this year? You do not have to narrow down your selection to titles that came out this year, but feel free to give one a shotout.

Jerry Rivers shares a report from TechCrunch, adding: "...and it took the music service seven months to notice." From the report: In a data breach notification filed with the California attorney general's office, the music streaming giant said the data exposed "may have included email address, your preferred display name, password, gender, and date of birth only to certain business partners of Spotify." The company did not name the business partners, but added that Spotify "did not make this information publicly accessible." The company says the vulnerability existed as far back as April 9 but wasn't discovered until November 12. It didn't say what the vulnerability was or how user account data became exposed.

"We have conducted an internal investigation and have contacted all of our business partners that may have had access to your account information to ensure that any personal information that may have been inadvertently disclosed to them has been deleted," the letter read.

Ahsoka Tano, the popular character from The Mandalorian, Star Wars: The Clone Wars and Star Wars: Rebels, is finally getting her own series starring Rosario Dawson. It's set within the timeline for The Mandalorian and will debut on Disney Plus around Christmas of 2021. CNET reports: Disney revealed the news Thursday during an investor presentation, where the company also announced its plans for upcoming movie releases -- both theatrical and streaming on Disney Plus. Ahsoka made her live-action debut in The Mandalorian episode titled The Jedi. In the episode, Mando (Pedro Pascal) continues his quest to bring Baby Yoda (aka The Child) to former Jedi Ahsoka Tano in the years following Return of the Jedi. [...] Not much has been revealed as of yet about the new Ahsoka Tano live-action series for Disney Plus, but fingers crossed we get to see more characters from both Star Wars: The Clone Wars and Star Wars: Rebels pop up in the new adventures. UPDATE: In addition to Star Wars: Ahsoka, Lucasfilm also announced Star Wars: Rangers of the New Republic, a new Original Series set within the timeline of The Mandalorian.

"The two series are just several of the new Star Wars shows coming to Disney Plus in the future, along with Star Wars: Andor, Obi-Wan Kenobi, Star Wars: Lando, The Acolyte, the animated Clone Wars spin-off The Bad Batch, and the anime anthology Star Wars: Visions," adds The Verge.

The former head of Israel's space program, Haim Eshed, says space aliens have reached an agreement with the U.S. government to stay mum on the experiments they conduct on Earth -- as well as their secret base on Mars -- until mankind is ready to accept them. The New York Post reports: "The aliens have asked not to announce that they are here [because] humanity is not ready yet," Eshed told Israeli paper Yedioth Aharonoth, according to the Jewish Press. The Jewish Press -- speculating that Eshed, 87, may have gone to insanity and beyond -- goes on to unspool his tangled web, which claims the involvement of President Trump and interplanetary diplomacy.

"Trump was on the verge of revealing [aliens existence], but the aliens in the Galactic Federation are saying, "Wait, let people calm down first,'" Eshed, who helmed Israel's space security program from 1981 to 2010, reportedly said. "They don't want to start mass hysteria. They want to first make us sane and understanding." Until that day, aliens have secured an agreement to keep their moves under wraps, said Eshed, noting that the extraterrestrials come in peace.

"There's an agreement between the U.S. government and the aliens. They signed a contract with us to do experiments here. They, too, are researching and trying to understand the whole fabric of the universe, and they want us as helpers." One of the hubs of the cooperation is a base on Mars -- where, by the way, Eshed claims American astronauts have already set foot. "There's an underground base in the depths of Mars, where their representatives are, and also our American astronauts," Eshed reportedly said. Eshed added: "If I had come up with what I'm saying today five years ago, I would have been hospitalized. Wherever I've gone with this in academia, they've said, 'The man has lost his mind,'" he reportedly said. "Today they're already talking differently. I have nothing to lose. I've received my degrees and awards, I am respected in universities abroad, where the trend is also changing."

At the end of a record-setting year of news consumption, Amazon Fire TV said local TV stations in 12 U.S. cities will be added to Amazon's news app, with another 90 on deck for 2021. From a report: The initial dozen stations are in New York, LA, Philadelphia, Chicago, Dallas, Atlanta, Houston, Miami, Tampa, Boston, San Francisco and Seattle. The roster includes CBSN Chicago, ABC7/WABC-TV New York, KIRO7 Seattle, and News 12 New York. In a year marked by Covid-19, a presidential election and racial unrest, overall news consumption has surged 48%, according to Nielsen. Amazon's news app offers free live and on-demand news from ABC News Live, CBS News, Reuters, Cheddar and other providers. The ad-supported app is built into Fire TV streaming media players and smart TVs in the U.S. Local broadcast stations have faced major challenges during the streaming boom, as the pay-TV bundle shrinks and viewership and ad revenues continue to decline. Due to a number of technological and industry-relations issues, most large station groups have not put station signals online in a coordinated fashion, though they stream select content on social media or their own websites.

The Verge writes: Maybe you're feeling nostalgic for a classic James Bond film following Sean Connery's death in late October. Or perhaps you're simply feeling a gap given that the next film, No Time to Die, got pushed back to April 2021 or beyond. Either way, you can now binge a sizable selection of the James Bond collection completely for free (with ads) from YouTube, Peacock (with its free subscription), and PlutoTV...

You can also find most of the films on Hulu and Amazon Prime this month, though you'd have to pay for those subscriptions, and Netflix has Casino Royale, Quantum of Solace, and three Pierce Brosnan flicks including GoldenEye — newly relevant now that the famed Arecibo Observatory, which gets destroyed in the film, has also collapsed in real life.

"People taking a stroll on Sunday morning stumbled upon another mysterious monolith," reports Insider.com. "This one was found in a northern province of the Netherlands." The monolith was covered in ice and surrounded by a small pool of water, according to local reports. The hikers told the Dutch paper Algemeen Dagblad that they're not sure how the monolith got there. They said they found no footprints around it that would indicate someone placed it there intentionally.
And that monolith that disappeared in Atascadero, California has not-so-mysteriously re-appeared, as a group of three local artists takes credit for both creating the original and for successfully retrieving it to restore it to its former glory. "After learning of the second monolith, Travis Kenney had a thought," writes the relationship site Your Tango. "There were three monoliths in 2001: A Space Odyssey. Why not build the third themselves and make the triad complete...?"

"It was meant to be something fun, a change of pace from the kind of conversations 2020 has been plagued with — so much negativity and separation among the people in our country."
All the thanks these men really needed was delivered in the positive energy that quickly took hold of their home town. The presence of this now internationally followed mysterious object brought with it an uplifting local pride, as well as a sense of childlike wonder... The monolith's creators quietly made the hike back up to observe people's reactions throughout the day. When they arrived at the top each time, they found themselves soaking in the glow of the many smiles they encountered on faces of visitors. some of whom drove for hours to see the shining obelisk for themselves...

While you may think of these monoliths as another square on your 2020 bingo card, it's worth noting that the purpose of the monoliths in 2001: A Space Odyssey was to further the advancement of intelligent life. Cynics can say that sounds cheesy, but for the sake of full disclosure, I know McKenzie personally and can affirm without doubt or irony that they wanted nothing more than to offer their fellow humans some joyful light in these dark times.

"There was no esoteric agenda," said McKenzie.

"Our topline," added Jared Riddle, "Let's get outside and laugh."
70 miles away yet-another monolith "was discovered by campers on Saturday in San Luis Obispo County in Los Padres National Forest," reports a California newspaper. "We were super happy that someone/group went to all that work," Matt Carver wrote in a Facebook message to The Tribune. "It really did make our day to find it! I think we had huge smiles on our faces for the rest of the ride home."

The second monolith resembles the monolith in Atascadero, but the structure's top features "CAUTION" written in red and a picture of a UFO beaming in a human.
But wait! Insider.com reports that another mysterious monolith has appeared in Pittsburgh — "intentionally placed outside a candy shop by an owner who was trying to attract attention to his small business." Christopher Beers, owner of Grandpa Joe's Candy Shop, asked a friend to make the 10-foot-tall structure and placed it outside his store as a marketing ploy.

Grandpa Joe's Candy Shop shared the news using a 30-minute video on Facebook. In a Facebook post on Friday, the shop said: "Come see the Monolith before it mysteriously disappears!"
Within one day someone did in fact steal the monolith, reports the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review. But Grandpa Joe's owner Beers whipped up another one to replace it. "This one is much heavier and bolted into the ground. That's not a challenge. That's just a statement." Beers said he didn't report the theft to police because they have more important things to deal with... "That's not the story," Beers said of the theft. "The story is I built something fun and made people laugh and we put Pittsburgh on the map. I'm not worried about whoever took it."

Beers said the new monolith will stay up for a couple a days before "it'll mysteriously disappear just like all the others."
Business Insider reports that monolith jokes have now also appeared in tweets from a wide variety of brands, including Walmart, Southwest Airlines, Ocean Spray, McDonald's, Steak-umm, and MoonPie.

And meanwhile, the headline at one Denver news site reports that "Monolith mania comes to Colorado as local businesses report structures 'appearing' outside shops," citing the arrival of a monolith outside McDevitt Taco Supply and on the patio of Morrison Holiday Bar.

Long-time Slashdot reader destinyland writes: Advent of Code isn't the only geeky tradition that's continuing in 2020. "This is going to be the first full year with Raku being called Raku," notes the site raku-advent.blog. "However, it's going to be the 12th year (after this first article) in a row with a Perl 6 or Raku calendar, previously published in the Perl 6 Advent Calendar blog." The tradition continues, with a new article about the Raku programming language every day until Christmas.

And meanwhile over at perladvent.org, the Perl Advent Calendar is also continuing its own article-a-day tradition (starting with a holiday tale about how Perl's TidyAll library "makes it trivial for the elves to keep their code formatting consistent and clean.")

But they're not the only ones. "Pandemic or not, Christmas time is a time for wonder, joy and sharing," writes Kristofer Giltvedt Selbekk from Oslo-based Bekk Consulting (merging technology with user experience, product innovation and strategy). So this year they're "continuing our great tradition of sharing some of the stuff we know every December" with 11 different advent calendar sites sharing articles (or, on one site, podcast episodes), on topics including JavaScript, Kotlin, React, Elm, functional programming, and cloud computing.

And if you're more interested in outer space, this also marks the 13th year for the official Hubble Space Telescope Advent Calendar. "Every day until Friday, December 25, this page will present one new incredible image of our universe from NASA's Hubble telescope," explains its page at the Atlantic.
There's also a series of daily coding challenges called "24 days of JavaScriptmas" at the tutorial site Scrimba, which has turned the event into a marketing opportunity by promising a $1,000 prize on Christmas Eve to one lucky participant chosen from the ones who publicized their solutions on Twitter.

Ben Bova "was the author of more than 120 works of science fact and fiction," according to Wikipedia, and was also a six-time winner of the Hugo Award. "He was also president of both the National Space Society and the Science Fiction Writers of America."

Tor.com reports Bova has passed "due to complications from COVID-19 and a stroke..." Born in 1932, Bova brought experience to the science fiction genre that few authors could match: he worked as a technical editor for the U.S.'s Project Vanguard, the first effort on the part of the country to launch a satellite into space in 1958. Bova went on to work as a science writer for Avco Everett Research Laboratory, which built the heat shields for the Apollo 11 module, putting man on the Moon and ensuring that science fiction would continue to increasingly define the future.

It was around that time that Bova began writing and publishing science fiction. He published his first novel, The Star Conquerors, in 1959, and followed up with dozens of others in the following years, as well as numerous short stories that appeared in publications such as Amazing Stories, Analog Science Fact and Fiction, Galaxy Magazine, The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, and others. In 1971, he took over the helm of Analog following the death of its long-running editor, John W. Campbell Jr. — a huge task, given Campbell's influence on the genre to that point... From there, he became the first editor of Omni Magazine until 1982, and consulted on television shows such as The Starlost and Land of the Lost.

While Bova wrote an episode of The Land of the Lost, his best-known works "involved plausible sciences about humanity's expansion into the universe, looking at how we might adapt to live in space..." notes Tor.

The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction argues that "the straightforwardness of Bova's agenda for humanity may mark him as a figure from an earlier era; but the arguments he laces into sometimes overloaded storylines are arguments it is important, perhaps absolutely vital, to make."

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Motherboard: Two months ago, esports pro Seth "Scump" Abner logged into the Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War multiplayer alpha and found himself struggling. Not because of any major gameplay changes developer Treyarch had made, Cold War plays like any other Call of Duty from the past decade, but rather because of the players Abner was being put up against: They were all good. This, Abner felt, wasn't normal. He should know: he's a world champion, he spends dozens of hours every week playing against the best in the world, and dozens more streaming his "casual" play on Twitch. Why was he having to suddenly work so hard to win games? A few hours into the alpha test weekend, Abner came up with an answer: it was the skill-based matchmaking (SBMM).

Skill-based matchmaking, as you can guess, is a type of multiplayer matchmaking system in which players' are pitted against other players of similar skill level. In other words, the Black Ops Cold War alpha was purposefully matching Abner up against players with players who were just as good as him. This, he felt, was not good. "[Skill-based matchmaking] does not belong in Call of Duty. There should be a ranked playlist for people to sweat in," he tweeted as the alpha weekend was coming to a close. "I'm not trying to play Scuf wielding game fuel chugging demons with szn in their psn on Miami TDM." Abner wasn't the only esports pro to take issue with this system. With the release of Cold War last week, a number of notable streamers have echoed Abner's criticisms. Skill-based matchmaking, they argue, takes their agency away, forcing them into a purgatory of having to play their "best" every single game.

These critics point to a number of games like Call of Duty: Black Ops 2 and Halo 3 as examples games who have gotten multiplayer "right" by letting players choose between a "ranked" playlist and "unranked" playlist -- offering the freedom to decide when they want to sweat and when they want to kick back and own some noobs. Modern multiplayer developers have made a serious misstep in implementing skill-based matchmaking across the board, they argue, and they should go back to the way things used to be. This all sounds reasonable, were it not for the fact that skill-based matchmaking has been in every major multiplayer shooter since Halo 2. [...] The issue today is not that skill-based matchmaking exists, but that players are now aware of just how prevalent it is. Up until recently, one could assume that joining an "unranked" playlist meant they were being dropped into matches with the entire playerbase, and thus who they played against was purely random. Under this false assumption, it's easy to wave away bad games as flukes, while conveniently believing that any good games were the result of skill. Now that most know that they're being matched with people with similar skill levels all the time, they can't help but perceive their opponent as equals. In closing, Steve Rousseau writes via Motherboard: "The unavoidable truth about multiplayer matchmaking is that there will always be winners and losers. Someone's success always comes at the expense of someone else's failure. When players ask to be put into matches in which they can reliably chill and get 20 kills while only dying 10 times, this inevitably requires someone else to die 20 times. What they're asking for is special treatment. And that's just not fair."

What if your digital assistant could battle rap? That may sound far-fetched, but Gil Weinberg, a music technologist at the Georgia Institute of Technology, has adapted a musical robot called Shimon to compose lyrics and perform in real time. From a report: That means it can engage in rap "conversations" with humans, and maybe even help them compose their own lyrics. Shimon, which was intentionally designed to sound machinelike (listen here), is meant to be a one-of-a-kind musical collaborator -- or an inhuman rap-battle opponent. Computer-generated music dates back to the 1950s, when early computers used algorithms to compose melodies. Modern robots can use machine learning to ad-lib on instruments including the flute and drums. One such machine was an earlier version of Shimon, which could play the marimba and sing. The recently updated robot looks the same; it still consists of a ball-shaped "head," with saucy movable eyebrows above visor-covered eyes, perched at the end of a mechanical arm. But now Weinberg claims Shimon is the first improvising robot to foray into rap, with its distinct stylistic features that pose unique programming challenges.

The crowning glory of rap lies in the lyrics. On top of semantic content, the words need to adhere to an aesthetically pleasing beat and rhythm, all while delivering multiple layers of poetic complexity. In a recent paper, published in the proceedings of the 11th International Conference on Computational Creativity 2020, Weinberg's research team outlines the technical advances that brought a rapping Shimon to life. When Shimon battle raps, software converts its human opponent's spoken lyrics into text. The robot's system identifies keywords from this, and generates new lyrics based on several custom data sets of words that Shimon has been trained on (using deep-learning models). These data sets can come from any text: the work of Lil Wayne, JAY-Z or other rappers; lyrics from other genres; or even nonmusical literary works. Imagine how Shakespeare or Jane Austen might sound if they rapped; Shimon could simulate that for you.