Reddit Challenge #37

Reddit user BiffHardCheese submits: "Android Divorce Court." This is a second interpretation, in the form of a news brief.

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Have you been looking for a solution to your marital problems? Droid does!

Zyngaza Software has announced a brand new app for Android devices called the 'Divorce Court' app. This application has the full support of the popular Divorce Court TV show and was developed in tandem with several of the judges and executive producers (in the case of Judge Reinhold it was both) of Divorce Court, and will make use of the most advanced Android software. It is designed solely to run on quad-core processors, running Android 4.6 Mr. Goodbar.

The application is unique in that it claims to be able to help couples solve their marital issues without having to resort to such methods as arbitration, litigation or conversation. The app is remarkably simple to use and the download is pretty small, too. When you open the app, the first thing you see is a remarkably realistic digital version of Judge Judy's head.

When she first speaks it is with such authority that it is almost frightening. After asking your name, birth date, address and social security number, the app then requires you to agree to an incredibly long and complicated user agreement. Once you've signed away your life rights to a producer in Santa Monica, Judge Judy's head then begins to grill you about the status of your relationship.

"She" speaks to each party individually, registering responses though the front-facing camera of your Android device and using advanced super-computing code to think of Judge Judy's next overly-insulting question, aggressive retort or witty comeback on the fly. The technology was licensed from IBM, who had developed the technology for Watson, their Jeopardy-playing supercomputer.

After hearing and responding to both side's cases, the app processes the information and routes it through a complicated judging algorithm leaked to Zangaza by Edward Snowden. Zangaza claims Snowden told them the software was used to simulate rulings in secret government courts when no real judge would agree to such absurd constitutional violations. The algorithm claims to have a "good enough, okay" success rate.

Since its release this morning, marriages being solved with the app by the several. There was even talk among early beta testers that some of them would be willing to pay as much as $1 for the app if it went live. The app is currently free.

Technoying's rating: 
7.8/14.3

Reddit Challenge #36

Reddit user Smitty1288 submits: "A samurai's first narcotics anonymous meeting."

Hello, my name is Hiruki Namaguch and I am a Samurai. And a drug addict.

Getting the coke, this was the easy part. The very easy part.

With a single swing of my katana, any thug, drug dealer, friend or watermelon was sliced in half. Take a moment especially and imagine the watermelon, isn't it freaking sweet? Anyhow, the treasures they held, whether they be cocaine, more cocaine or watermelon were mine for the taking. And I took.


You usually do not hear of Samurai talking about drug usage. This is because drug usage among Samurai is ubiquitous. And because Samurai are legendarily secretive. Why am I here, you might ask? It is because I remembered the first day I became a Samurai.

My master was branding us all with the emblem of our clan. To calm our nerves, he offered all of us some cocaine. The rest is history.

I drove to Tokyo on a cocaine-induced rage and have been murdering addicts, drug dealers, friends and fruit in order to get cocaine, money for cocaine or more money for cocaine. I realized eventually, that my breaking point was near, when I looked at myself in the mirror of a Burger King bathroom.

I realized I had spent the entire day taking cocaine, killing for more cocaine, and being even more high on even more cocaine and yet- as I do at this very moment- I still had my katana over my shoulder, and a dazzling kimono. It was at that very moment that a miraculous idea struck within my mind.

Narcotics Anonymous meetings are the perfect place to find more cocaine!

Reddit Challenge #35

Reddit user wanttoknownowandhow submits: "failed ideas from the worlds greatest minds."

At any given moment, the world has only so much room for great ideas to thrive. Throughout history, one can only wonder what revolutionary insights have failed to see the light of day...

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On January 11th, 1944 Americans didn't have much to be happy about. War was still raging in Europe and and the outlook in the Pacific could not have been more grim. But in the midst of leading his nation though a war, President Theodore Roosevelt had the future on his mind. On January 11th, he brought a radical idea to the nation in what would be his penultimate State of the Union Address. That idea was a second Bill of Rights.

Of course, since it couldn't be that we all collectively missed that lesson in Elementary School, it should be mentioned that the second Bill of Rights never came to be. But what it could have been is worth thinking about, what it could have been is worth exploring even today.

Roosevelt saw that the nation he led- though politically free and protected- did not have adequate protections to ensure that all could engage in the pursuit of happiness. The Bill of Rights protected us politically, but not economically. These are the rights Roosevelt wanted to guarantee:

• Employment, with a living wage
• Freedom from unfair competition and monopolies
• Housing
• Social Security
• Education
• Medical Care

I put medical care last because we find ourselves in the midst of a national debate about this very subject. President Obama has found his party and his legacy in jeopardy for his attempt to follow-through on a vision proposed more than 60 years ago by the leader of a nation fighting two wars whose most minor skirmishes dwarf the size of both wars we're engaged in today. That is a sad state of affairs.

We can wonder and wonder why ideas fail, and there are certainly plenty of reasons why Roosevelt couldn't get his bill passed, but rather than toil on those reasons I think it is better to look forward. The right to health care seems to me to be the most basic right we should have as humans, and there is no reason we should not continue to fight for it.

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Ideas fail, but ideas never die: they live on in the minds of the people who share them...

Reddit Challenge #34

Reddit user BiffHardCheese submits: "Android Divorce Court"

I hadn't been behind the bench more than a few minutes that morning, but I knew it was going to be a long day. Some people would consider it an honor to adjudicate the first ever robot divorce, and on live TV for that matter. I however, had something few young people- or those in the media- seem to have: perspective.

My name is Maxine Fineberg, I've been a judge for more than thirty-five years and like everyone else, I've been around Androids for nearly my entire life. I was only twenty-two when the first ones started to trickle into the market and though the machines were amazing, the prices were outrageous. But just like civilian spaceflight dropped in price thanks to Virgin Galactic all those years back, eventually even someone earning a salary as modest as mine could afford an Android.

Of course, I could bore you with the long and complex story of how the Androids went- in just 50 years time- from being servants to humans to being equals... but I won't do that to you. I'll get back to the case.

This couple, they weren't the first Androids to get married (that honor belongs to President Sasha Obama's Android Steve, who got married to his heterobotic life-partner Adam) but sadly, they were among the first group of marriages in the United States after the law passed. I guess it just goes to show that love is never easy- even if your brain has the computing power of 60,000 human brains.

Her name was Shelly and his Andrew. They'd been married for nine months and had met working together at an advertising agency. The first things that Shelly said when she addressed the court are things I cannot repeat here- literally, it sounded similar to what I'm told ancient internet machines sounded like when they connected. But after that, her message was crystal clear: Andrew had cheated on her and she knew it for a fact.

Intrigued, I asked her how she knew it so certainly. Her answer was so simple and shocking that I was speechless. In all my years on the bench I'd never heard gasps from the gallery, but this was different. His memory was stored on the cloud... his personal files- meaning all his memories- were accessible to anyone with a log in to Yahooglesoft Docs.

I watched Shelly show the courtroom the footage on her chest-mounted LCD screen and when she turned in my direction I tried my best to be steel-faced as the sound of crunching metal filled my ears and the sight of Andrew mounting the advertising agency's copy machine filled my eyes.

I ruled in favor of the plaintiff. I guess it wasn't such a long day after all.