Month: January 2017

An exercise from my daughter’s Japanese class passed through Google Translate.

An exercise from my daughter’s Japanese class passed through Google Translate.

Professor Yamada: Today. You are Mr. Susan. Are you kinky?

Susan: Yes. My heart is pounding. Thank you for your consideration.

My daughter’s translation:

Professor Yamada: Good afternoon. You’re Susan, right? Are you well?

Susan: Yes, I’m really nervous. Thank you for your consideration.

Despite Google making a big fuss about their machine learning breakthroughs in translation it seems clear that they are still making pretty laughable translations. My daughter points out that translating konnichiwa as “today” is a noob level mistake (in fact most English speakers already know this word).

Sounds like Google needs to start employing some actual language experts because their approach up to now has been to ignore domain specific knowledge and to try to crack this nut in a completely context free manner. That might work well for European to European languages but doesn’t work well at all for more distant ones.

Unlike most other languages, JavaScript’s object system is based on prototypes, not classes.

Unlike most other languages, JavaScript’s object system is based on prototypes, not classes. Unfortunately, most JavaScript developers don’t understand JavaScript’s object system, or how to put it to best use. Others do understand it, but want it to behave more like class based systems. The result is that JavaScript’s object system has a confusing split personality, which means that JavaScript developers need to know a bit about both prototypes and classes.

https://medium.com/javascript-scene/master-the-javascript-interview-what-s-the-difference-between-class-prototypal-inheritance-e4cd0a7562e9#.pxfvhxm94

I’ve been using this editor for the past few weeks.

I’ve been using this editor for the past few weeks. I like it. It’s good. Built on top of Chrome so it’s available on Linux, Windows and Mac.

The only thing I didn’t like was its name but really it has nothing much to do with Microsoft’s more traditional programming tools. This is more like Atom or Sublime Edit and it’s free.

https://webdesign.tutsplus.com/tutorials/visual-studio-code-my-new-favorite-code-editor–cms-28012

Now that we have the prospect of robots routinely utilising the airspace directly overhead, expect all kinds of new…

Now that we have the prospect of robots routinely utilising the airspace directly overhead, expect all kinds of new and surprising implications. Our cities have been designed pretty much on the basis that the third dimension was mostly unavailable. Opening up this degree of freedom will be a boon for many applications. It will remain however a finite resource with all kinds of constraints on it which will by necessity need to be strictly regulated. Naturally some places will manage this easily while others will become a hellscape of delivery, advertising and surveillance drones.

Originally shared by Vlad Markov

This is really cool! I can actually recieve packages in my back yard in France, and it is very safe! More over, most the people in the small town where I live capable to drone drops.

http://motherboard.vice.com/read/-france-becomes-first-federal-postal-service-to-use-drones-to-deliver-mail?trk_source=recommended