This was certainly the last thing we expected to see today. [ShaunF] has created a Greasemonkey script to bypass the captcha on filehosting site Megaupload. It uses a neural network in JavaScript to do all of the OCR work. It will auto submit and start downloading too. It’s quite a clever hack and is certainly helped by the simple 3 character captcha the site employs. Attempting to do the same thing with ReCAPTCHA has proven much more difficult.

UPDATE: [John Resig] explained of how it works.

[via Waxy]

[Ron Alsing] wanted to try out some genetic programming, so he created a simple test problem: Could you render the Mona Lisa using just 50 semitransparent polygons? The program starts with a random DNA sequence. It then mutates and compares itself to the original image. If the mutation is closer, it becomes the new sequence. The final image he shows looks pretty good after 904,314 iterations.

[prunesquallor] pointed out a genetic algorithm project of his own. It’s a flash program to evolve a car. The car tries to get as far as possible on a set terrain without the passenger circles hitting the ground. The wheel size and positions can change along with the spring length, constant, and damping. A graph tracks the best performance along with the mean. He’s planning on building a version that lets you change the parameters.

[via Waxy]