stephen.news

hypertext, words and more

Internet of things

  • Every Two Weeks, a Language Dies

    •

    2 min read

    •

    Nina Strochlic at National Geographic writes:

    Between 1950 and 2010, 230 languages went extinct, according to the UNESCO Atlas of the World’s Languages in Danger. Today, a third of the world’s languages have fewer than 1,000 speakers left. Every two weeks a language dies with its last speaker, 50 to 90 percent of them are predicted to disappear by the next century.

    In rare cases, political will and a thorough written record can resurrect a lost language. Hebrew was extinct from the fourth century BC to the 1800s, and Catalan only bloomed during a government transition in the 1970s. In 2001, more than 40 years after the last native speaker died, the language of Oklahoma’s Miami tribe started being learned by students at Miami University in Ohio. The internet has connected rare language speakers with each other and with researchers. Even texting has helped formalize languages that don’t have a set writing system.

    Other languages have not been so lucky in a post-internet world. Many, will never return from extinction. But it’s true that being more connected, we have more opportunities to connect and preserve our ancestral dialects and languages. In National Geographic’s article, they share a video of two surviving speakers of Gottscheerish:

    For more information, check out WikiTongues, the seed bank of the world’s languages.

  • Microsoft Hires Apple’s Former Siri Chief, Bill Stasior

    •

    2 min read

    •

    Stasior has an incredible resumé. A small selection of the giants he’s been stationed at include: Amazon, A9, Alta Vista, (and now Apple joins the A-list) Oracle and various positions at MIT before that.

    According to CNBC’s reporting, he led the growth of Apple’s machine learning initiative which wasn’t siloed to the Siri product alone:

    He said that he expanded the team from 70 engineers to more than 1,100 people and that he “played the leading role in bringing modern machine learning to Siri and Apple.” Apple said in 2018 that Siri was being actively used on more than 500 million devices, and earlier this year the company said that Siri would sound more natural in the forthcoming iOS 13 release. Apple previously made gains in this area through AI work.

    Microsoft has always been a company who grows throw acquisition, but recently they’ve been on a hiring spree. Which isn’t normally their modus operandi for acquiring talent. Something tells me they’re laying the pipework for an aggressive regime of ML and Voice growth in the coming years.

    I find this to be curious timing. Given Apple’s vestigial connection to its Jobsian past. Jony Ive has essentially severed that connection with his departure and newly launched design firm LoveFrom. Apple hasn’t engaged in this sort of assault from software and hardware competitors in decades.

  • Lyft Files for IPO

    •

    2 min read

    •

    From TechCrunch:

    In a confidential filing with the SEC, Lyft did not state the number of shares it expects to offer, nor the price range. But Lyft says it expects to make its initial public offering after the SEC finishes its review process.


    Lyft was last valued at about $15 billion, while competitor Uber is valued north of $100 billion.Uber, of course, is also expected to go public sometime next year. According to Reuters, Lyft’s IPO will happen during the first half of 2019 and be underwritten by JPMorgan Chase, Credit Suisse and Jeffries.

    This is pretty bold, for one. To seek an IPO during a pretty tumultuous and anxious bearish market. As of writing, 2018 was a pretty bullish year. By the time Lyft IPO’s there’s a chance that the market will not be too hot. 

    This is all purely speculation of course. I still maintain the belief that Lyft is a great buy. Uber is overvalued, and little has changed since leadership swapped hands. I am very pleased to see Lyft beating Uber to be the first ride-sharing network to IPO. Personally, I’m rooting for Lyft. Fiscally, we all should be honestly. Competition is good in the marketplace, and leaves everyone better off.

    Furthermore, and I can’t quite place it — but Lyft reminds of Apple’s early years in the 1980’s. Maybe I’m just hopeful. I’m not sure. But the fact that both companies believe that their core resources are people — is a big fucking deal. For example, Apple and Lyft care about diversity and inclusion.