Viv is being presented as a platform for other developers to build on top of, and these 3rd party developers will be the ones responsible for fleshing out the specifics of how the queries will work given the domain they are implementing for. They will be the ones who will need to anticipate all of the different ways a user can request for something in particular and include all of the edge-cases that might trip-up the API.
In the end I think queries for certain types of well-established services like asking about the weather are probably going to yield better results than more obscure/complex things like placing an order for building custom furniture from a small workshop.
I'm aware of that, but will people realize that? They will just say Viv sucks despite the Netflix app was sloppy.
It's also not clear that what went wrong in certain cases. In one request part of the parameters can be handled by Viv core, part by Netflix and part by another app.
I think 80% of commands will be handled by Viv's core app, then the third party apps take control seamlessly. It will also learn that you always prefer AirBnb over Hotels.com.
Whatever the default search target for travel stay is, if there is one, will probably determine a large percent of what users will simply stick to using without bothering to change it to another preference, since they may not know better. This default does leave an opportunity for some companies to have an edge over others, and potentially pay to make it so.
The problem with third party integration is that you're going to end up getting a bunch of duplicate "skills", to use Alexa terminology, of varying quality and capability. It's the App Store problem, and bot store problem all over again.
I too was left disappointed and wondering the same thing when I came to the end of an otherwise great article.
My best guess is that anyone can do purposeful practicing simply by changing things up and staying out of one's "comfort zone", whereas deliberate practice is more or less the same thing, with the difference being that you have an experienced mentor guiding you through the process in a more structured manner with a tight feedback loop.
In other articles I've read about deliberate practice, the other elements include:
1. Maintaining a difficulty level that is just barely out of your comfort zone: not so hard that you flail wildly, but not so easy that it's trivial. This is touched upon in the article, but presumably "deliberate" practice also deliberately adjusts the difficulty level in response to performance.
2. Mindfulness while you're practicing. The description of "purposeful" practice in the article mentions seeking out errors and correcting them after the fact. The descriptions of "deliberate" practice I've heard mentioned paying careful attention to your performance while you're practicing, so you can instantly correct or rehearse trouble spots. (And this requires a corresponding attention to the difficulty level so that you can spare this attention to avoiding & fixing mistakes.)
Even if it's easier to obfusfate WebAssembly, does that matter? If you run the 2MB+ JS libraries in se today through uglify.js it becomes almost impossible to understand the macrostructure just by reading the code.
It's only through dynamic tools that we can even begin to understand minified JS today. Those are actually quite excellent: just try by starting the react or relay tools on facebook.
That ecosystem is hopefully not changing, so what remains is simply that the format is now binary. I agree that that makes me somewhat uncomfortable but realistically it doesn't really change anything.
In many cases, side projects have absolutely nothing to do with one's mainstream work, so trying to have them gain traction at a company is moot. For instance, if I work for the government doing IT services, why should they sponsor my idea of creating a mobile game app?
According to the article, supernovas occur more frequently in younger galaxies, and we know these can blow a star's heliosphere away temporarily exposing all its planets to deadly radiation (which it seems has happened to Earth before).
The GitLab logo is actually of a Tanuki (Japanese Raccoon Dog), but still kind of like a fox, as in, it definitely has that scrappy, playful, spirit. Certainly equally as cool as an Octocat.
Decent point, but most people familiar with metric would work with smaller units than metres and for those unfamiliar with metric, describing it as a billionth of a yard would still sound like a pretty peculiar.
I think describing it as a minute fraction of an inch or centimetre would still be pretty accessible without having to get people to visualize a nanometre.
I'm still not sure why one would want to place the data center at the bottom of the ocean. I would think that the disadvantage of not being able to perform maintenance for 5 years would be more significant -- can't they just create the data center near a water source and pump the water through pipes that run across a heat exchange on the backside of the servers?
Your idea is what's being done at the largest computing center in Switzerland, the CSCS. They pump water from the relatively deep Lake Lugano [1]. Europe's currently fastest supercomputer (world No. 7) is hosted there.
Environmentally pumping heat into a river would not be though acceptable I would think, so the water source probably is the ocean, running pipe across beach front property might not be as doable.
> perform maintenance for 5 years would be more significant
They would be built like Google, you don't waste money doing maintenance.
I think the main issue is it's unusual and as such costs of complexity and legal come in.
I assume it is for space reasons. You could put down a data center in a harbor, for example. The amount of metal that would be required to scale this model to that size, however, seems excessive.
This doesn't seem to be a question of pragmatism -- they're going for a world record, not trying to solve a practical problem. I'm no expert on this, but it seems to me like the criteria for obtaining a world record title would include not modifying the object used. To me this is like trying to beat the record for furthest soccer ball kick by modifying the materials used in the soccer ball.
According to the Guinness World Record's article[1] the
cube has to follow the World Cube Association's
regulations[2] on competition legal cubes. The WCA allows
modified/custom made cubes as long as they meet a list of
guidelines, which this modified cube does.
http://www.aclweb.org/anthology/P15-1150