Interesting Links for 11-02-2016

[andrewducker]

• Microsoft's Cortana has no time for sexist bullshit
  • Microsoft sexism ai
• Someone has proposed a Monument Valley Lego set
  • games Lego
• Twitter puts video ads at top of users' timeline feeds
  • Twitter video advertising
• Common gene variant may lead girls to make healthy or unhealthy food choices -- depending on their early socioeconomic environment

Comments

[kalimac]

1) I'd be more comfortable about the prospect of Scotland leaving the UK if the number supporting it was a lot higher than 54

[gonzo21]

1) yes. It will be a catastrophe for Scotland if having been quite soundly defeated 'for a generation', a second referendum is held that scrapes a win.

[kalimac]

So if a referendum gets a 55.3% vote against it, it's "quite soundly defeated," but a 54% victory would be "scrap[ing] a win"? That's a mightily specific threshold for what counts as a mandate, or is legitimacy only conveyed by a result that you want?

[gonzo21]

Hey, that's unfair. I didn't specify any number on what I thought constituted 'scraping' a win.

But for the record I think a greater number in favour than 50.00001% is necessary to provide a strong enough mandate for such a radical life altering change to an entire nation. And that if any independence motion wants to succeed well, it needs to carry significantly more than half a country with it to maintain unity in the face of difficulties and hardships that will result.

In the end this most recent vote in Scotland, only 4 out of 32 regions returned a 'yes' vote. I would call that very soundly defeated.

[nancylebov]

“If you say things that are particularly assholeish to Cortana, she will get mad. That’s not the kind of interaction we want to encourage.”

Actually, the examples aren't extraordinarily assholish, and her replies are what I'd call in the blunt-to-wiseass range, not angry.

[andrewducker]

You'd be utterly unsurprised by what people interpret as "getting mad" when a woman says them...

[toothycat]

"Account of a Russian Cosmonaut's death rife with errors", claim people not trying to sell a book.

The audio clip on the original page is the smoking gun here - you can just about convince yourself the rest was written in good faith at the time, but no, someone deliberately cynically cut this thing together fully expecting that no Russian speakers would ever comment on it anyplace where anyone cared.

IMO the real history of space travel is already plenty miserable enough; it is really a pity that some feel the need to embellish this way.