Anyway, having eaten 100 million news bulletins (and not immediately killing itself, like a human would), Nautilus successfully predicted the Arab Spring and the rough whereabouts of Osama bin Laden. Wondering why you didn't hear more about this at the time? So was I. Turns out Nautilus only made these predictions retrospectively, ie some time after the fact. The scientists in charge of him checked over his output and decided various peaks and troughs had represented clear signs of coming trouble. Predicting the future after it's happened isn't much use. That's David Starkey's job. Well, that and spluttering.