今日BBC

1、course 11：The bucket list
The present perfect with ‘ever’ and ‘never’session 3
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2、今日科技新闻

Can Viv help where Siri flounders?
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I’ll be upfront: I’ve got a pretty low opinion of Siri, Apple’s virtual assistant.
It may be that it doesn’t quite make out my accent - which is a mixture of Cambridgeshire and Londoner - while Google’s software manages just fine.
It may be that asking it “What is the Cambridge United score?” resulted in search results for the University of Cambridge’s Wikipedia page.
Or it may just be that in the five years since it was built into Apple’s mobile devices, it hasn’t really got close to being a key part of how we work.
Some will disagree - but I ask you, if Siri was suddenly removed, would you really miss it?*
Turns out the very people who originally created Siri aren’t too enamoured with its progress, either.
When Apple took over the company, Siri’s creators Dag Kittlaus and Adam Cheyer soon became unhappy.
In a revealing Washington Post piece last week, they said their vision didn’t “align” with that of Steve Jobs - and there was only ever going to be one winner in that situation.
So they left, leaving behind Siri, but taking with them a hope to build on what they knew and create something new. Something better.
That product, unveiled today in New York, is Viv. That’s pronounced Viv, like Viv Richards, not Veeve or Vive.
The company has dubbed it “The Global Brain”, and its secret sauce is tight partnerships with popular services, and a unique way of understanding human queries.
The app will start a “rolling launch” towards the end of this year.
On stage at TechCrunch Disrupt, Mr Kittlaus showed how he could say “send Adam 20 bucks for the drinks last night”, and Viv would integrate with payments app Venmo to send the money quickly.
He also showed off complex sentences, such as asking if it was raining in Seattle three weeks ago on Thursday.
There were integrations with flower sellers, and Uber, and various other services we’ve seen linked up before through apps, most recently Facebook’s Messenger.
Mr Kittlaus described Viv as “software that’s writing itself”.
The big question from here is whether the team’s approach will be enough to make up for Viv’s potentially fatal flaw: it knows next-to-nothing about its users. Both Google and Facebook, and to a lesser extent Microsoft and Apple, can draw on terabyte after terabyte of data about its users, helping to make their AI more intelligent. Well, in theory.
The Viv team hopes its distinctive “V” logo is going to become as recognisable as the wi-fi or Bluetooth symbols we see everyday.
But in order for that to happen, the 26-strong team at Viv needs to win a fight it has picked with the biggest technology companies in the world.

Uber and Lyft halt Austin ride-sharing service
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Ride-sharing firms Uber and Lyft have stopped operating in Austin, Texas after proposals to let them self-regulate their drivers were rejected.
The companies had sought to overturn city council regulations which meant drivers had to pass fingerprint-based background checks before they could operate.
However, when put to a public vote, the regulations, introduced in December 2015, were upheld.
Both firms expressed regret.
The rules were part of a package of regulations which put Lyft and Uber in line with traditional taxi operators.
According to US broadcaster NPR, Uber spent a reported $8m (￡5.5m) on a campaign proposing self-regulation instead - known as Proposal One.
However 55% of the 87,212 votes received were against it.
“Disappointment does not begin to describe how we feel about shutting down operations in Austin,” said Chris Nakutis, General Manager of Uber Austin.