It might just be my British accent, but I discovered by accident that if I say "my legs ache" fast as one word, it triggers Alexa every single time. Try it out... see if you can trigger her with "my legs ache" too!:)
First time it happened I was feeling bad, and was telling my wife a list of maladies: "my legs ache, I have a fever and my head hurts"... Alexa, unprompted said rather ominously... "Goodbye".
Looked back and saw in the logs the entry and was able to track "My Legs Ache" as what prompted her... can't remember what she was saying Goodbye to, what she thought I said.
Ever since that day, I only ever prompt Alexa by saying "My Legs Ache", I never say her name anymore.
Given that it's trivial for the average German to ensure not even another native speaker from another dialect group understands a single word they say, I highly doubt that Siri manages to speak all the hundreds of dialects available.
Try it. Learn German. Learn it really well. Then go into some small Bavarian town and ask some old person for directions. Then wonder whether you learned the right language or whether you're in the wrong country.
Yes... but they all understand high German and can speak in that dialect to you if they want to.
How about this: English is probably the most widely-spoken language among people who have flush toilets and electricity. People who don't have these things probably have limited use for a smart phone, so ensuring that Siri, Cortana and Clippy speak the language of people who squat by the roadside to pinch a loaf isn't much of a priority.
You might be surprised. Mobile phones are very popular in places where electricity is subject to frequent brown-outs, black-outs, etc. Some of the mobile smartphones biggest markets have been in countries where people never had computers or reliable electricity.
I'm assuming a useful gene transfer is very rare and harmful ones are more common. Bad assumption? In other words, I'm wondering in practice how larger species can benefit in a sustainable way from inter-species gene transfer.
The majority of mutations have no noticeable effect. Mutations ARE more likely to be deleterious than beneficial. We're well balanced and "engineered" meat-machines. If you randomly take out a part from your car in the driveway and put a new part in it's place... chances are you've damaged your car... same with us.
The worst mutations usually don't make it to birth, or even last long enough that the parents know they're pregnant. Every once in a while a Honda Fit gets retro-fitted with a Ferrari F1 engine though.
Actually, there is a lot of evidence that bacteria (especially gut bacteria) can influence WHAT we think. We're sentient beings, but we're also giant puppets controlled by bacteria too. Bacteria "care" what scientists think because they directly influence our hormones and send chemical signals to our brains to desire certain things.
Care might be the wrong word because it implies a degree of sapience or at least emotion, but some bacteria are all about influencing our thoughts,
As the human genome as embedded entire viruses and bacterial genes can be transported by virus-like creatures (Phages), I would think this was old news.
Indeed. I remember learning about this in University 20+ years ago now.
Look on the bright side, perhaps they'll be less scared of the left wing if they can finally confirm beyond any doubt that all that most of us are thinking about 99% of the time is boobies and weed,... except the women, they are mostly thinking about shoes.... and weed.
I never think about weed...except when spraying roundup. It's all boobies for me.
It would be embarrassing though...
We would like to ask you a few questions, ignore this mind reading device...
Now, Mr. McWeany, oh shit! they think my name is really McWeany, that's an alias, my real name is Dickbutt OK, Mr.Dickbutt... Why did my brain just say Dickbutt, that's not my name either... I'm so scatterbrained, I wonder if I left the oven on Where were you on the evening of the 17th? The female agent has nice lips, I wonder how they feel... The 17th This guy is an arsehole... how am I supposed to know what happened on the 17th... my dating anniversary with my ex was on the 17th... I wonder what she's doing now, she had nice lips too
On second thoughts- mind reading devices would be a waste of time on me.
I've had dogs all my life but recently I got cats. Never really been a fan of cats. However, my cats have the type of personality where they seek out affection and don't just hide under the couch all day.
That's actually how most cats are... most cats are affectionate... here's the thing though, you have to earn their affection. They won't give it up for strangers like dogs will.
People who think cats just hide all the time have never had a cat and only experienced how other people's cats act towards them.
Above people were comparing cats to wives... Your wife will probably have intimate times with you but not with strangers. You wouldn't expect your wife to go rubbing all over your buddies when they come in your house.
Is this new, I mean, it might be new for iRobot, but haven't lawn mower robots been a thing for a while now? iRobot entering the market place might be a big player coming, probably one that can be marketed towards "common man", but I swear we've had companies with robot lawnmowers for a decade or more now.
In rodents, animals seemingly lose their inhibitions, becoming more exploratory and losing their aversion to cat odours.
I think this applies to humans as well. By infecting humans with this T. gondii parasite, humans have the ability to clean cat stinky waste products with no issues whatsoever, thus ensla^H^H^H^H^H employing them as their staff.
It makes sense though. It explains why people with one cat rarely stop at one cat and usually get a second... or a third... or more.
I don't get the "either/or" argument. Both cats and dogs make great pets- too many people seem to think that there needs to be a competition that you have to dislike one if you like the other.
They fill different voids. IN GENERAL: Dogs are more like kids, they are dependents and look for you for direction. Cats are more like fellow adults/buddies, they're more independent but still enjoy your company but they have a life outside of you.
Why not both: a dog to look after and take for walks, and a cat to curl up on your lap as you read a book at night?
The fundamental flaw in how Wikipedia works is that to add information, you're expected to provide links to other sites that already have that same information
Yes, but I understand why Wikipedia does that. They couldn't possibly offer to watch every video that someone might have. Whereas, it sounds like you had very legitimate information; some people could be playing them. It's certainly a flaw on their side but unfortunately maybe a necessary one.
Pakistan does/did. Was news back in early '00s. India doesn't have the information ON the passport but it is/was required in the forms when getting them.
I'm curious if it matters what you put on your passport as your religion; and I presume they have no verification. If I were Pakistani, I'd probably put Islam as my religion just to avoid potential persecution if the wrong people get in control. In India, I'd probably pick whatever was the dominant religion in the state I was in, not that India on a national level has religious issues, but certain areas occasionally get the wrong people in charge. Not that I think potential persecutors would ask to see my passport first.
Wikipedia's a joke, but they must be desperate for publicity. Donations are falling because their admin corps are a bunch of narcissistic psychos
Wikipedia is flush with cash, don't be fooled. Their donation drives may make it sound like they're a modern day PBS always struggling to stay alive; the truth is, they've got the funds to last them for decades already. Their goal with the donation drives though is to reach a high enough money flow that they can survive on interest on their current wealth and weather any financial down-turns etc. Essentially they want to become financially independent and be able to last forever as a free standing institution, eventually never having to ask for money again.
That's the goal at least. They're not going to collapse any time soon.
I hope he uses a database. Just for the irony of being the only one who doesn't try to use a spreadsheet as a database.
Argh! You bring back memories of a former job I had. The upper management at that place all wanted to do everything out of spreadsheets. I offered to write programs for them (these were clearly appable use-cases), but they liked spreadsheets, they had always used spreadsheets, they didn't want to know anything but spreadsheets.
I ended up writing all sorts of crazy complex add-ins for MS Excel that really should have been separate applications, because I couldn't convince the CEO, CIO, COO, or CMO to give up excel for things it wasn't designed to do. The 2nd tier of management was all for new apps to replace the spreadsheets but those at the top wanted everything built into Excel.
(naturally, I didn't store they actual data IN Excel- Excel loaded and saved data to a database).
The only reason Javascript has caught up is because the web, a mostly unrelated system, has grown up to be larger than all the enterprise software suites put together. (And of course the web is used to access the back-ends, so as it becomes more and more Javascript heavy, it'll increase use in the same places that are heavily Java based too.)
Yeah, and most web developers I know hate javascript and wish something else had become the clientside language of choice... but JavaScript does dominate on the web...... but, even more than javascript, far more people know "HTML" (if we're including scripting languages, can we also include markup languages)? Almost everyone who knows javascript will know HTML- and even many people who don't do any programming know some HTML.
For us outside USA (in EU) it makes no difference because both have limited and mediocre offer.
You whine, but a lot of the shows I WANT to watch on Netflix are only available on Netflix outside North America; or they come out in North America a year later than they do the rest of the world.
Basically, if the show was made by a major US network, chances are it won't be on Netflix in N.A.; or we get it a year after you do.
I have both Amazon Prime and Netflix. If I had to give one up, Netflix would get the boot. Netflix has much better video/image/compression quality but it also has far fewer new movies.
Netflix has the much better user interface though. Amazon's looks like it was written by college interns taking programming 101.
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It might just be my British accent, but I discovered by accident that if I say "my legs ache" fast as one word, it triggers Alexa every single time. Try it out... see if you can trigger her with "my legs ache" too! :)
First time it happened I was feeling bad, and was telling my wife a list of maladies: "my legs ache, I have a fever and my head hurts"... Alexa, unprompted said rather ominously... "Goodbye".
Looked back and saw in the logs the entry and was able to track "My Legs Ache" as what prompted her... can't remember what she was saying Goodbye to, what she thought I said.
Ever since that day, I only ever prompt Alexa by saying "My Legs Ache", I never say her name anymore.
Given that it's trivial for the average German to ensure not even another native speaker from another dialect group understands a single word they say, I highly doubt that Siri manages to speak all the hundreds of dialects available.
Try it. Learn German. Learn it really well. Then go into some small Bavarian town and ask some old person for directions. Then wonder whether you learned the right language or whether you're in the wrong country.
Yes... but they all understand high German and can speak in that dialect to you if they want to.
How about this: English is probably the most widely-spoken language among people who have flush toilets and electricity. People who don't have these things probably have limited use for a smart phone, so ensuring that Siri, Cortana and Clippy speak the language of people who squat by the roadside to pinch a loaf isn't much of a priority.
You might be surprised. Mobile phones are very popular in places where electricity is subject to frequent brown-outs, black-outs, etc. Some of the mobile smartphones biggest markets have been in countries where people never had computers or reliable electricity.
Oh, how the mighty have fallen.
I don't know... I get most of my tech news from websites built on the readership of angry vegan teenage lesbians.
I'm assuming a useful gene transfer is very rare and harmful ones are more common. Bad assumption?
In other words, I'm wondering in practice how larger species can benefit in a sustainable way from inter-species gene transfer.
The majority of mutations have no noticeable effect. Mutations ARE more likely to be deleterious than beneficial. We're well balanced and "engineered" meat-machines. If you randomly take out a part from your car in the driveway and put a new part in it's place... chances are you've damaged your car... same with us.
The worst mutations usually don't make it to birth, or even last long enough that the parents know they're pregnant. Every once in a while a Honda Fit gets retro-fitted with a Ferrari F1 engine though.
I'm pretty sure flesh eating lawyers are a real thing...
And when they themselves break the law... some lawyers become "single-celled too!"
Bacteria have never cared what scientists think
Actually, there is a lot of evidence that bacteria (especially gut bacteria) can influence WHAT we think. We're sentient beings, but we're also giant puppets controlled by bacteria too. Bacteria "care" what scientists think because they directly influence our hormones and send chemical signals to our brains to desire certain things.
Care might be the wrong word because it implies a degree of sapience or at least emotion, but some bacteria are all about influencing our thoughts,
As the human genome as embedded entire viruses and bacterial genes can be transported by virus-like creatures (Phages), I would think this was old news.
Indeed. I remember learning about this in University 20+ years ago now.
Look on the bright side, perhaps they'll be less scared of the left wing if they can finally confirm beyond any doubt that all that most of us are thinking about 99% of the time is boobies and weed, ... except the women, they are mostly thinking about shoes .... and weed.
I never think about weed...except when spraying roundup. It's all boobies for me.
It would be embarrassing though...
We would like to ask you a few questions, ignore this mind reading device...
Now, Mr. McWeany,
oh shit! they think my name is really McWeany, that's an alias, my real name is Dickbutt
OK, Mr.Dickbutt...
Why did my brain just say Dickbutt, that's not my name either... I'm so scatterbrained, I wonder if I left the oven on
Where were you on the evening of the 17th?
The female agent has nice lips, I wonder how they feel...
The 17th
This guy is an arsehole... how am I supposed to know what happened on the 17th... my dating anniversary with my ex was on the 17th... I wonder what she's doing now, she had nice lips too
On second thoughts- mind reading devices would be a waste of time on me.
I've had dogs all my life but recently I got cats. Never really been a fan of cats. However, my cats have the type of personality where they seek out affection and don't just hide under the couch all day.
That's actually how most cats are... most cats are affectionate... here's the thing though, you have to earn their affection. They won't give it up for strangers like dogs will.
People who think cats just hide all the time have never had a cat and only experienced how other people's cats act towards them.
Above people were comparing cats to wives... Your wife will probably have intimate times with you but not with strangers. You wouldn't expect your wife to go rubbing all over your buddies when they come in your house.
Que?
Quebec?
Sorry, I don't speak Canadian.
Is this new, I mean, it might be new for iRobot, but haven't lawn mower robots been a thing for a while now? iRobot entering the market place might be a big player coming, probably one that can be marketed towards "common man", but I swear we've had companies with robot lawnmowers for a decade or more now.
In rodents, animals seemingly lose their inhibitions, becoming more exploratory and losing their aversion to cat odours.
I think this applies to humans as well. By infecting humans with this T. gondii parasite, humans have the ability to clean cat stinky waste products with no issues whatsoever, thus ensla^H^H^H^H^H employing them as their staff.
It makes sense though. It explains why people with one cat rarely stop at one cat and usually get a second... or a third... or more.
....to own a dog instead of a cat.
I don't get the "either/or" argument. Both cats and dogs make great pets- too many people seem to think that there needs to be a competition that you have to dislike one if you like the other.
They fill different voids. IN GENERAL: Dogs are more like kids, they are dependents and look for you for direction. Cats are more like fellow adults/buddies, they're more independent but still enjoy your company but they have a life outside of you.
Why not both: a dog to look after and take for walks, and a cat to curl up on your lap as you read a book at night?
The fundamental flaw in how Wikipedia works is that to add information, you're expected to provide links to other sites that already have that same information
Yes, but I understand why Wikipedia does that. They couldn't possibly offer to watch every video that someone might have. Whereas, it sounds like you had very legitimate information; some people could be playing them. It's certainly a flaw on their side but unfortunately maybe a necessary one.
Good to know, I know some ME nations ask for it on forms too, Israel has it on some ID systems. But I'd wager the vast majority of nations don't...
Yeah, asking for religion only seems like a pertinent question if you're looking to persecute/put-down a group of people.
Pakistan does/did. Was news back in early '00s.
India doesn't have the information ON the passport but it is/was required in the forms when getting them.
I'm curious if it matters what you put on your passport as your religion; and I presume they have no verification. If I were Pakistani, I'd probably put Islam as my religion just to avoid potential persecution if the wrong people get in control. In India, I'd probably pick whatever was the dominant religion in the state I was in, not that India on a national level has religious issues, but certain areas occasionally get the wrong people in charge. Not that I think potential persecutors would ask to see my passport first.
Wikipedia's a joke, but they must be desperate for publicity. Donations are falling because their admin corps are a bunch of narcissistic psychos
Wikipedia is flush with cash, don't be fooled. Their donation drives may make it sound like they're a modern day PBS always struggling to stay alive; the truth is, they've got the funds to last them for decades already. Their goal with the donation drives though is to reach a high enough money flow that they can survive on interest on their current wealth and weather any financial down-turns etc. Essentially they want to become financially independent and be able to last forever as a free standing institution, eventually never having to ask for money again.
That's the goal at least. They're not going to collapse any time soon.
I hope he uses a database. Just for the irony of being the only one who doesn't try to use a spreadsheet as a database.
Argh! You bring back memories of a former job I had. The upper management at that place all wanted to do everything out of spreadsheets. I offered to write programs for them (these were clearly appable use-cases), but they liked spreadsheets, they had always used spreadsheets, they didn't want to know anything but spreadsheets.
I ended up writing all sorts of crazy complex add-ins for MS Excel that really should have been separate applications, because I couldn't convince the CEO, CIO, COO, or CMO to give up excel for things it wasn't designed to do. The 2nd tier of management was all for new apps to replace the spreadsheets but those at the top wanted everything built into Excel.
(naturally, I didn't store they actual data IN Excel- Excel loaded and saved data to a database).
Clearly he does it to impress the ladies
The sad thing is, some of them probably get excited when he offers to pivot for them.
The only reason Javascript has caught up is because the web, a mostly unrelated system, has grown up to be larger than all the enterprise software suites put together. (And of course the web is used to access the back-ends, so as it becomes more and more Javascript heavy, it'll increase use in the same places that are heavily Java based too.)
Yeah, and most web developers I know hate javascript and wish something else had become the clientside language of choice... but JavaScript does dominate on the web... ... but, even more than javascript, far more people know "HTML" (if we're including scripting languages, can we also include markup languages)? Almost everyone who knows javascript will know HTML- and even many people who don't do any programming know some HTML.
Apparently JavaScript is the new Java.
It's almost as if it's following a script.
For us outside USA (in EU) it makes no difference because both have limited and mediocre offer.
You whine, but a lot of the shows I WANT to watch on Netflix are only available on Netflix outside North America; or they come out in North America a year later than they do the rest of the world.
Basically, if the show was made by a major US network, chances are it won't be on Netflix in N.A.; or we get it a year after you do.
I have both Amazon Prime and Netflix. If I had to give one up, Netflix would get the boot. Netflix has much better video/image/compression quality but it also has far fewer new movies.
Netflix has the much better user interface though. Amazon's looks like it was written by college interns taking programming 101.
So if this was a comparison of clubs, Amazon is the club full of pimply-faced, fat chicks and Netflix is the one full of fit 8s, 9s and 10s?
By your comparison, the bouncer wouldn't let you in to the Netflix club... and maybe not the Amazon club either.