I wonder how the mechanism would work if the city, school, and university received a larger portion of centrally distributed targeted funds from the government, if their graduates received some sort of public recognition from which the state benefits overall (achievements in sports, science, technology, creation of a large number of jobs or revenue additions to the budget)?
November 06 2020, 15:20
Well then, first place at the internal hackathon “Voice for Commerce” – DONE. The full cycle of product selection-cart-checkout – without touching the keyboard or mouse.
At the same time, I’m somewhat skeptical about voice interfaces in e-commerce. To be precise, I believe that certain segments like purchasing music and movies, confirming regular payments, and subscriptions will work wonderfully. Why? I think the future belongs to interfaces with a higher density than visual ones, and audio has significantly less information density. Context is crucial here, which is quite difficult to translate into a computational brain lacking the same social experience as my surroundings and myself. I believe that the voice channel should and will complement the others, but only be noticeable in certain areas, albeit gradually expanding. We won’t be buying sofas over the phone until “Just Sofa” becomes a trend.
And today, I genuinely regretted for the first time that YouTube still can’t handle all this. I bought food at the supermarket enough for 15 bags, and before the mad rush home, I turned on the second episode about Gagarin to occupy my ears, while my phone ended up at the bottom of one of the bags. And almost immediately, YouTube plays two ads in a row: one from Amplitude lasting over 20 minutes and another short one right after. And for all those twenty-plus minutes, I had to listen to Amplitude until I got home with the bags. And damn it, you’ll be waiting forever for Google to make “Skip ad” a voice command…
I’ll show the video if EPAM approves the publication of the clip. Overall, I don’t even know why I had to ask about such things, but I decided to ask anyway. After all, they did give us first place 🙂
November 05 2020, 19:27
Whatever you think up online — it’s already been done. I’m working on my pronunciation, and I need to hear what I say through my own headphones. Pressing record and play a hundred times will drive you insane. I found a website that returns what you say immediately as soon as you stop. It learns the rhythm, and if the phrases are roughly equally short, it works great.
Then you open something like https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rui0QywfrdY (randomly picked on YouTube just for this post) and repeat after the speaker, creating this cycle “reference -> pronounce – listen to the result -> reference”. It’s ideal to sit in good isolated headphones with noise cancellation, so that nothing but your voice gets picked up by the microphone.
November 05 2020, 18:31
Our management company has decided to host a gathering for the first time since the pandemic started, and they sent out an invitation: SHRED DAY. Bring your paper—we’ll feed the shredder together. FOR FREE! Do not bring binders, metal, trash, or compact discs. That’s it! Shall we go?
November 04 2020, 14:53
So, it turns out:
• aircraft, hovercraft, spacecraft, and other “-craft” vehicles: «There are two aircraft prepared for landing»
• bison: «The bison were grazing in the distance.»
• cod: «The cod are known to migrate in large numbers»
• deer: «Deer are easy prey for wolves.»
• fish: «Three fish swim in the fish tank.»
• moose: «Moose actually belong to the deer family.»
• offspring: «The fox gave birth to five offspring.»
• pike: «The pike are big freshwater predatory fish.»
• salmon: «Salmon are often seen jumping over dangerous waterfalls.»
• sheep: «One sheep, two sheep, three sheep…»
• shrimp: «Shrimp are among the most commonly eaten animals.»
• swine: «Swine are reared extensively in Europe.»
• trout: «The trout are fish related to the salmon.»
Criteria is a plural noun. The standard singular form is a criterion.
Media is a plural noun. The standard singular form is a medium.
Bacteria is a plural noun. The standard singular form is a bacterium.
US: a ton = 2000 pounds = 907 kg
UK: a ton = 2240 pounds = 1016 kg but not officially used since 1985
so our tonne is “a tonne” = 1000 kg
keep this in mind when you threaten to dump a tonne of crap on the developers
#English
November 04 2020, 10:35
November 03 2020, 16:45
All of Washington is packed with plywood. Almost all glass display windows, almost without exception. Waiting
I wonder, did they expect a surge in plywood sales in November?
Interestingly, isn’t this some kind of provocation? Like, come over, we’ve set up some drawing boards for you?
November 02 2020, 21:18
Doing homework with Masha. A question on French – what do you call a daughter’s husband? The correct answer is beau-fils – mari de la fille, that is, the daughter’s husband. Everything’s fine.
But if you translate the other options, it starts to get confusing.
If you use the French-Russian dictionary from Yandex, the first option is correct. Translation into Russian: шурин, зять. Зять fits, but шурин – isn’t that the wife’s brother? Why are they grouped together?
Translating into English – frère de l’épouse ou de l’époux – the spouse’s brother or the spouse’s brother, translation into English — brother-in-law. Also: brother-in-law: the husband of one’s sister or the brother of one’s husband or wife. https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/french-english/beau-frere
Merriam-Webster provides options for brother-in-law: 1) the brother of one’s spouse 2) the husband of one’s sibling 3) the husband of one’s spouse’s sibling
https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/brother-in-law
The French interpret beau-frere strictly as 1) Frère du conjoint – spouse’s brother 2) Mari d’une soeur ou d’une belle-soeur – husband of a sister or sister of a spouse.
https://www.linternaute.fr/dictionnaire/fr/definition/beau-frere/
https://www.cnrtl.fr/definition/beau-frere
What a mess?
November 01 2020, 12:22
Interesting work from MIT. They claim that it’s highly possible to determine COVID/non-COVID by the sound of a cough. They write that the accuracy of detection is 98.5%, and it’s 100% among the sample of asymptomatic (but positive) individuals. They trained an AI with several thousand recordings; you can submit your own cough through their little form. The diagnostic service or app is not yet available for phones. An interesting topic, might significantly change the global statistics and early diagnosis scene.
https://news.mit.edu/2020/covid-19-cough-cellphone-detection-1029
November 01 2020, 11:57
Almost everything in physics is based on the speed of light, as a fundamental constant, on the fact that it is the same in all directions. However, in reality, this is not known, it is an assumption (which seems impossible to either confirm or refute). This assumption might imply that the stars we see in the sky (which, upon beautiful reflection, may actually no longer exist) could be burning right at this moment.
It is useful to reassess that although it’s relatively simple to know the rules, it is much more difficult and “expensive” to understand the exceptions, priorities, and boundaries of the applicability of these rules.
Here is a link to the translation into Russian, the original is here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pTn6Ewhb27k
