RIP: Abe Vigoda and Marvin Minsky

I read about Abe last night, he made it to 94. He is best known for two roles: he appeared in The Godfather, but in my opinion, more importantly as Detective Fish on Barney Miller. There was a running joke: in 1982, People Magazine accidentally published that he had died, so he started appearing on talk shows to show that he was still alive. Later, someone bought the web domain AbeVigoda.com, that basically had a photo of Abe and said 'he's not dead yet'.

Sadly, now he is. He was always fun to watch on talk shows.

http://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2016/01/26/464459276/character-actor-abe-vigoda-dies-at-94


Marvin Minsky was a VERY important person in the field of computer science, he was a pioneer in the field of artificial intelligence research. If I have the story right, he was working with a group of students and assigned them to develop a program that could identify objects in a photograph, thinking it would be easy. They gave up after six months or so.

http://www.npr.org/2016/01/26/464469794/marvin-minsky-who-pioneered-artificial-intelligence-research-dies-at-88


In other news, but in the field of artificial intelligence, a Google program beat a master at the game of Go! They've challenged the current world champion, we'll find out soon if he accepts.

http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2016/01/googles-ai-beats-go-champion-will-now-take-on-best-player-in-the-world/