Slashdot headlines written by neural network

The news site Slashdot (“news for nerds, stuff that matters”) is celebrating its 20 year anniversary this October. What could be geekier than celebrating with the help of an open-source neural network?

Neural networks are a type of machine learning program that learn by example, rather than by a human programmer feeding them rules. Whatever the headlines contain, whatever common words and rhythms, a neural network will do its best to imitate. I’ve trained an open-source neural network called char-rnn to imitate all kinds of human things, like paint colors, guinea pig names, and craft beer names.

Slashdot sent me a list of all the headlines they’ve ever run, over 162,000 in all, and asked me to train a neural network to try to generate more.

I used a neural network called char-rnn, an open-source neural network by Andrej Karpathy, and trained it separately on the first and second decades of Slashdot headlines. Let’s see what it learned!



Decade 1: 1998 – 2007

Alternuting Your Computer

The Internet Spectrum Violated

Microsoft To Develop Programming Law

Star Trek Creates Free Memory

Launching the Linux Group Socially

Microsoft Releases New Months

More Pong Users for Kernel Project

Nintendo Goes Canadian Edition to Customers

New State of Second Life

Sexual Security To Allow Australia

Programming Supercomputer Library In Star Wars

What are The Final Fantasy

Review of the Wireless Monster?

Portable Mail With Spidey Law

New 5400 GPL Formed into An Internet

Dvorak on Mario Games?

Half-Life 2X Speed Released

Ban Manhunt 2 Better than Linux?

Vista Releases Denial of the Mumble

New Company Revises Super-Things For Problems

The Dead of Managing Moneys?

Judge Releases Sony Practices in Death

Doom’s On Worldwire Networks

Sun Releases Enterprise in Smackware

I Wants To Control of the Net

Nintendo Can Start in the Wild Button?

Secondors Talk Open Source For Super-Bork?

AOL On Beam Doubt

Some familiar personalities of the tech industry make an appearance:

Microsoft Releases Bill Gates Service Start

Steve Jobs To Be Good

Shatner Awards Up Towards A Game Car Challenge

Cell phones appear to be have been weird in the early days:

Stem Cell Phone Standards in Space

Why Are Blow Systems Taking Your Phone?

New Unreal Tournament Phone Reviews Doubts

Forget To Support Flat Spam Phone

And you find companies doing rather unexpected things:

Microsoft Announces Mac OS X Released

Intel Releasing Linux In A Networks

Sun Upgrades Apple Devices

Corel Launches $100 Laptop

Microsoft Announces Firefox Portal

Mozilla’s Audio Caroffice

Apple Finally Launches Microsoft



I produced the above headlines by allowing the neural network a high creativity setting, so it could range over many different headline topics that it’s seen over and over. But it’s also fun to turn the creativity down near zero, so the neural network can try to generate the most quintessential headlines:

All The Company Programming Software Software?

Some Computer Computer Solution of the New Company Computer

More Anti-Spam For Software Computer

Mac OS X Interview with Linux Computer

Mac OS X Accused of the Business

Sony Plans To Start Patent System For All Time

Security Hole For Security Hole

Security Hole in the Star Trek

Computer Computer Computer Computer Software?

Decade 2: 2007 – 2017

The neural network had a tougher time with decade 2 – it seems the headlines became longer and more complex, as Slashdot experimented with new formats and new topics. The neural network struggled to create grammatical headlines as a result. But it still did its best to reflect the new topics of the last decade. Compared to the late 1990s and early 2000s, some companies and topics disappeared, while the coverage of Apple in particular exploded. Star Trek and Star Wars, however, remain perennial Slashdot favorites.

Here are some neural network-generated headlines for 2007-2017:

Twitter Discovered In the Pirate Bay

Google Bacon Medal To Contract Computational Lab

Scientists Discover Free Wi-Fi Store In the US

Steve Jobs Sues Death of the Future

Apple Seeks To Be Become Windows 10 Has Been Control the Desktops

Stanford Computer Scientists Develop Super Man Sales For Computer Science

Star Wars Hacked In Life On the iPhone

Computer Finds Court Broke Math For Secret Company

How Do You Design To Stay Them Bomb

Ask Slashdot: How Clinton Uses Display For Android Chips On Netflix Court From the Jobs

People ‘Fork" At a Flaw Refused

The Pirate Bay Tracking Storage Security For Windows 10

German Porn Update To Compete At CNSR Healthy Court Says

Supreme Court Can Be Lingeries

Apple Says the Moon Project To Pay $1.7 Billion For Free Software

Steve Jobs Allowed To Deal With Solar Power

Apple Sues Apple To Get Flash Mathematics

Microsoft Slashdot: How To Build a Bad Privacy For Windows 10

Twitter That We Use Facebook To Receive The Life

Linux Kernel 3.1.0 Launches In Late, Facebook To Sue Star Trek

The One-Department For Alleged For Connectivity: 3-D Printed Baby

Black Hole Proposed

My favorite part, though? The Slashdot headlines that appeared to come from an alternate, much more advanced, somewhat terrifying timeline:

Google Returns To the Space Station

Mac OS X Project Announces Space Station

Sony Announces Mars Rover Release

Google Patents Intelligent Space Telescope

Officials Release Android Apps For New Space Telescope

Star Trek Control of the Wild Start Up

Scientists Army Interviewed

Company Computer Releases Cloning Crime

Building A Nano-Tech Back

Full Life On The Linux

Chernobyl Announces Company And Educators

SGI Launches Space Station

FreeBSD Base Scientific Hits the Moon

Red Hat Releases Linux Games And Moon

Apple’s Moon Review

About New Moons of a Company

Looking For Mars Landers to Linux

Mars Rover Set for Alien China

Congress To Buy Mars Mister

Building a Top 100 Company For Mars

Apple Considering Debut in People Processors

Apple vs. Biology Details

An Android Bans Secret Project For Console Devices

Your Own Portals

U.S. Considering Death of the Solar System

Black Holes from Digital Dell

Black Hole Sension of the Linux

Microsoft’s Lab Changes “Space”

IBM Moves to The Matrix

Super Planet Wars Solved

The quintessential headline, though? When I trained the neural network with all 20 years of Slashdot headlines, then turned down the creativity level to near zero, I reveal the following essential Slashdot headlines, distilled from 20 years of technology news:

Sun Sues Open Source Project Content

Sun Sues Anti-Spam Computers

Sun Sues Security Flaw Contest

Sun Sues New Star Trek To Stop The Math

Sun Sues Anti-Spam Standards And The Star Wars To Stop Computers

Star Wars Companies Are Streaming the Star Wars

Star Wars To Support Linux Development

Apple Settles The Future of Star Wars

Apple Releases Secure State of the World

Apple Sues Apple To Start The Solar Power Project

Sony Sues Apple Server For Seconds Off From SpaceX Project

Ask Slashdot: Do We Want To Be the Computers?

The Desist of the Planet



Want 4 more pages of Slashdot headlines from the neural network? Sign up here and I’ll email you a pdf.

Also: POLL! I’m collecting names of Halloween costumes for training a future neural network. Enter as many as you like (no email address required).

