Why Cortana is so biased ;-)

[Pawelk198604]

 

[SR]

Really? I've tried it and I get Yuri Gagarin as the first person in space.

[DDE]

So that's why Cortana is unavailable in Russia!

[worir4]

Seriously, you are the first person that i have ever seen actually use Cortana.. 

[YNM]

I never use them - in fact, I have slightly less usage on search engines. Too often I'd look up wiki and follow their links.

[StarStreak2109]

Mine says it correctly: Uncle Yuri!

[Streetwind]

Oh my sweet summer child...

All search engines filter their results according to what automated algorithms think you should see. Yes, ALL of them. Cortana and other voice assistants are not an exception, but rather a leader in that questionable field (as are Google and social media in general). The same query will yield different results for different people - all the way down to not a single result on the first three pages being shared if the people searching come from countries different enough and the algorithm has had time to track enough of their personal information.

It is entirely expected that a US-based algorithm used by a US-based person would interpretate a query with an US bias, because it is a reasonable (if patronizing) assumption that US citizens are interested first and foremost in US matters.

Now, if you're not a resident of the United States, and you still get that result, then well... you must spend an awful lot of time on US-hosted websites

 

Edited January 9, 2017 by Streetwind

[magnemoe]

2 hours ago, Streetwind said:

Oh my sweet summer child...

All search engines filter their results according to what automated algorithms think you should see. Yes, ALL of them. Cortana and other voice assistants are not an exception, but rather a leader in that questionable field (as are Google and social media in general). The same query will yield different results for different people - all the way down to not a single result on the first three pages being shared if the people searching come from countries different enough and the algorithm has had time to track enough of their personal information.

It is entirely expected that a US-based algorithm used by a US-based person would interpretate a query with an US bias, because it is a reasonable (if patronizing) assumption that US citizens are interested first and foremost in US matters.

Now, if you're not a resident of the United States, and you still get that result, then well... you must spend an awful lot of time on US-hosted websites

 

Note that Gagarin also has an weakness in being better known. He and Armstrong is the two most famous astronauts.
I did not knew that Sheppard was the first US astronaut but believed it was Glen who was first to orbit before reading about the new sheppard rocket. 
 

[kerbiloid]

Both Google and Bing recognize Gagarin if write this question. Doesn't Cortana use the "native" MS Bing search engine?

[StupidAndy]

I have Cortana on my personal laptop (THIS ONE) and every single search just brings me to bing, utterly useless to me...siri is better

[GDJ]

On 2017-01-07 at 2:19 AM, SR said:

Really? I've tried it and I get Yuri Gagarin as the first person in space.

Yep.

On 2017-01-07 at 5:15 AM, DDE said:

So that's why Cortana is unavailable in Russia!

From what I've seen you're not missing anything.

Edited January 10, 2017 by GDJ
Mix up between Gagarin and Komarov.

[John22]

Both Siri and Google are more consistent and slick experiences than Cortana, which is clearly the youngest of the three. Along with Google Now, however, its preemptive approach is pleasingly progressive, and it has bags of potential as both a desktop and mobile assistant - particularly when it comes to organizing your daily schedule.
 

[KerikBalm]

On 1/7/2017 at 1:26 PM, worir4 said:

Seriously, you are the first person that i have ever seen actually use Cortana.. 

AHHAHAHAHAH...... actually, thats true for me too.

This is the first instance I have seen of anyone using Cortana.

At least the text that came up had the appropriate qualifier "from US" - but the speech response lacked that qualifier.

Side note, Alan shepard just went suborbital, Yuri Gagarin went on an Orbital flight... so Yuri beat him to that record hands down: If Yuri had only gone sub-orbital, and Shepard followed with an orbital flight, I could see how one would consider giving the record to Shepard... but nope, Yuri wins that record, no contest, no asterisks, no question.

However... unrelated to the record issue, Shepard later went to the Moon (Apollo 14), whereas Yuri didn't get to fly much after that, because it would look pretty bad to have one of their heroes die if there was an accident.

Edited January 13, 2017 by KerikBalm

[StupidAndy]

well, technically there is some fine print that makes it that Shepard was the first one to do a spaceflight, apparently, accordind to the FAA or international FAA, a spaceflight is "when a manned craft goes into space, an comes down with the capsule" of course, Yuri Gagarin ejected from the capsule before he landed, so it didn't count as a spaceflight, so due to that technicality, the US got the first manned spaceflight

I need citation on this, not really sure, I got it from an outdated book on the Apollo 1 and Challenger disasters, it was published before 2003 so it didn't have Columbia...

EDIT: I just tried it and got Gagarin

Edited January 12, 2017 by StupidAndy

[KerikBalm]

I'm going to need to see the citation on that, because I think its entirely bogus.

Also, there is no international FAA. There is a FAI. The FAA is a US body that governs air travel within the US. The second is an international organization that promotes airsports and keeps records. They are very different. Also, I'm nearly certain that they recognize spaceplane records in which no capsule is used, such as the X-15, and Rutan's Space Ship 1 and derivatives.

They'd certainly count the space shuttle.

[kerbiloid]

11 hours ago, StupidAndy said:

well, technically there is some fine print that makes it that Shepard was the first one to do a spaceflight, apparently, accordind to the FAA or international FAA, a spaceflight is "when a manned craft goes into space, an comes down with the capsule" of course, Yuri Gagarin ejected from the capsule before he landed, so it didn't count as a spaceflight, so due to that technicality, the US got the first manned spaceflight

I need citation on this, not really sure, I got it from an outdated book on the Apollo 1 and Challenger disasters, it was published before 2003 so it didn't have Columbia...

Also have read about this, but

Quote

he Mercury space capsule represented an entirely new class of vehicle. Just large enough for a single astronaut, the joke about the cramped capsule was that it was "worn, not ridden"

, so it's okay: Mercury is in fact a big spacesuit, suborbital launch of Mercury is an ejection test,

Edited January 13, 2017 by kerbiloid

[magnemoe]

21 hours ago, KerikBalm said:

I'm going to need to see the citation on that, because I think its entirely bogus.

Also, there is no international FAA. There is a FAI. The FAA is a US body that governs air travel within the US. The second is an international organization that promotes airsports and keeps records. They are very different. Also, I'm nearly certain that they recognize spaceplane records in which no capsule is used, such as the X-15, and Rutan's Space Ship 1 and derivatives.

They'd certainly count the space shuttle.

Since FAI started with plane records they might require that the plane lands for the record to count. 
This does not apply to rocket flights where all parts fall down different places and yes FAI recognize Gagarin as the first man in space.

[DDE]

10 hours ago, magnemoe said:

This does not apply to rocket flights where all parts fall down different places and yes FAI recognize Gagarin as the first man in space.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_wk-jT9rn-8

Quote

The FAI rules in 1961 required that a pilot must land with the spacecraft to be considered an official spaceflight for the FAI record books.^[7]:283 Although some contemporary Soviet sources stated that Gagarin had parachuted separately to the ground,^[41] the Soviet Union officially insisted that he had landed with the Vostok; the government forced the cosmonaut to lie in press conferences, and the FAI certified the flight. The Soviet Union did not admit until 1971 that Gagarin had ejected and landed separately from the Vostok descent module.^[7]:283

When Soviet officials filled out the FAI papers to register the flight of Vostok 1, they stated that the launch site was Baykonur at

 WikiMiniAtlas

47°22′00″N 65°29′00″E / 47.36667°N 65.48333°E / 47.36667; 65.48333. In reality, the launch site was near Tyuratam at

45°55′12.72″N 63°20′32.32″E / 45.9202000°N 63.3423111°E / 45.9202000; 63.3423111, 250 km (160 mi) to the south west of "Baykonur". They did this to try to keep the location of the Space Center a secret.^[7]:284 In 1995, Russian and Kazakh officials renamed Tyuratam Baikonur.

 

[KerikBalm]

anyway, one can't really use FAI regulations to say "technically" he was/was not, becausethe FAI doesn't really have any authority to be the arbiter of what the definitions are.

It is certainly a large and well known body, but their definitions are not universally accepted. The X-15 program is one such example... the USAF/NASA gave 8 pilots astronaut wings, but according to FAI definitions, only one of them actually got to space. (and based upon the above post, they changed their definition since then?)

100 Km as the Karman line is a bit arbitrary. The number was picked because it was close to what they calculated, and its a nice round number. Of course, the calculated number also depends upon the L/D of the aircraft in question.

"a vehicle at this altitude would have to travel faster than orbital velocity to derive sufficient aerodynamic lift to support itself." - which is a bit meaningless, as many spaceplane fans on this forum know. If your plane is going 3/4 of orbital velocity, and it still relies on lift to "support itself" it can fly in air that is too thin to "support itself if the world wasn't round. Likewise, as a plane gets faster and faster, the required lift gets lower and lower. In fact, you could (in theory) still be relying on aerodynamic lift to maintain altitude at 110 km, if your spacecraft is travelling at just under orbital velocity. They say it has to go faster than "orbital velocity to support itself", but as far as I can tell "support itself" means produce enough lift to counter 1 G of acceleration- but it doesn't need to counter 1 G, it needs to make up the difference between the "centrifugal" acceleration, and 1 G.

Meanwhile, other good candidates for "space" are the base of the thermosphere (85km), or the base of the exosphere (690km) where the mean free path of a gas molecule is greater than the scale height, and thus gas molecules on average don't collide/interact/ the gas stops behaving as a gas and starts behaving as just dispersed particles.

I think these definitions are far too arbitrary to be used for "technicalities" in a science/engineering setting. "Orbit" is clear and non-arbitrary... but orbit and space - are they really the same? We've had low flying satelites that either used constant propulsion to counter atmospheric drag, or had their orbits decay fast. The soviets made a sat that orbited right above (and then right below, and then not at all) the Karman line, would we really say it wasn't in space even if it was still in orbit (not for very long though)?

By  the time we get to the base of the exosphere, I think everyone will agree that its space, but that shouldn't be our technical definition, otherwise the apollo 8-17 astronauts were the only people to ever go to space.

[kerbiloid]

They would just attach a compass from cabin to the parachute belts, so it's the last (and the main) part of the ship and ok with rules, that metal sphere was just an envelope.

(Or what is usually treated as a "ship soul" in naval traditions, I'm not sure.)

Edited January 19, 2017 by kerbiloid

[NSEP]

Cortana = Stupid Bonzi Buddy.

Kill it with fire!