Intel's Lidar, face recognition, and tracking cameras will be discontinued • Hacker News Board

Re: Intel's Lidar, face recognition, and tracking cameras will be discontinued

#21

Post by MiddleEndian » Tue, Aug 31, 2021, 5:58 PM UTC

cwizou wrote: post #20

One thing that "old Intel" used to do a lot was trying to find use cases for more performance. This used to be a strong fear internally, that at some point silicon would get "good enough" and you wouldn't need to buy better silicon. Gelsinger was very much part of that a decade or two ago, but I guess he's getting more rational and accepted that yes, to run Office pretty much anything will do. At the same time, the n…

>This used to be a strong fear internally, that at some point silicon would get "good enough" and you wouldn't need to but better silicon.

Little did they know the software community would do this work for them by making slower and slower software.

Re: Intel's Lidar, face recognition, and tracking cameras will be discontinued

#22

Post by Waterluvian » Tue, Aug 31, 2021, 6:03 PM UTC

The announcemen leaked weeks ago was such a disaster given it was wrong. We heard that they were cancelling RealSense and that created a real supply chain problem for about 24 hours.

It was an educational moment for me on the importance of owning the story, lest you have to spend weeks digging out of a wrongly dug hole.

Re: Intel's Lidar, face recognition, and tracking cameras will be discontinued

#23

Post by cwizou » Tue, Aug 31, 2021, 6:03 PM UTC

MiddleEndian wrote: post #21

cwizou wrote: post #20

One thing that "old Intel" used to do a lot was trying to find use cases for more performance. This used to be a strong fear internally, that at some point silicon would get "good enough" and you wouldn't need to buy better silicon. Gelsinger was very much part of that a decade or two ago, but I guess he's getting more rational and accepted that yes, to run Office pretty much anything will do. At the same time, the n…

>This used to be a strong fear internally, that at some point silicon would get "good enough" and you wouldn't need to but better silicon. Little did they know the software community would do this work for them by making slower and slower software.

I'd love to hear in a few years that Intel, under the table, funded Electron.

Because it was everything they could have hoped for.

Re: Intel's Lidar, face recognition, and tracking cameras will be discontinued

#24

Post by eitland » Tue, Aug 31, 2021, 6:03 PM UTC

silvestrov wrote: post #14

lokimedes wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s hard being the new product in the BCG matrix. Incumbents seldom remember how meager the traction looked in the beginnings of the lifecycle of their current cash cows.

even more so when it takes some years before the product gets traction. Twitter was not an overnight success. The first few years it was ridiculed as a big "completely useless" failure by journalists: the same people which now cannot live without it.

> Twitter was not an overnight success. The first few years it was ridiculed as a big "completely useless" failure by journalists: the same people which now cannot live without it.

My opinion:

In fact Twitter is still amazingly useless and is a prime example of a product succeeding despite its flaws instead of because something.

And no, I'm not this negative towards everything simple. Snapchat for example has a point, I can see the point of it even if I use it even less than Twitter.

Twitter succeed because Google botched Google+ after first using all the oxygen in the market together with Facebook.

Re: Intel's Lidar, face recognition, and tracking cameras will be discontinued

#25

Post by ethbr0 » Tue, Aug 31, 2021, 6:04 PM UTC

jpm_sd wrote: post #3

junon wrote: post #2

I remember looking into this a while back. They made the whole line super hard to get your hands on. Really curious on the decision making process throughout the line's lifetime.

I interviewed a candidate a couple of years ago who was, at the time, working on Intel's internal self-driving car team. It sounded like a totally directionless, amateurish also-ran catastrophe. Years behind the competition. I wonder if this product line was in a similar situation.

The problem with most of these "pet VP" projects is that there's never any clear link to the external market.

Who are they benchmarking against? What are their performance targets?

As a result, you get a team who's only deliverable is "PowerPoints that go up and to the right, compared to last week."

And the project soldiers on, because to can it and admit failure would embarrass someone. If it's the CEO, even worse.

Which is maybe explainable for a brand new technology (say, Palm with handwriting recognition), but less so when there are serious competitors out there with known performance levels.

Re: Intel's Lidar, face recognition, and tracking cameras will be discontinued

#26

Post by BeetleB » Tue, Aug 31, 2021, 6:07 PM UTC

908B64B197 wrote: post #11

Why is Intel nowhere near Apple in terms of compensation? Both are working on custom silicon and cutting edge hardware.

Apple does not have a fab, correct?

Re: Intel's Lidar, face recognition, and tracking cameras will be discontinued

#27

Post by octopaulus » Tue, Aug 31, 2021, 6:09 PM UTC

mips_avatar wrote: post #9

These cameras had some frustrating faults. My friend's master's project relied on their facial recognition cameras. Unfortunately my friend was black and they didn't work at all on his face. He needed his white/asian friends to help him test his application.

Why didn't he just put makeup ?

Re: Intel's Lidar, face recognition, and tracking cameras will be discontinued

#28

Post by pjmorris » Tue, Aug 31, 2021, 6:12 PM UTC

mips_avatar wrote: post #9

These cameras had some frustrating faults. My friend's master's project relied on their facial recognition cameras. Unfortunately my friend was black and they didn't work at all on his face. He needed his white/asian friends to help him test his application.

The documentary 'Coded Bias' goes in to some depth on this problem in facial recognition and on the wider problems of the social impact of biased algorithms.

Re: Intel's Lidar, face recognition, and tracking cameras will be discontinued

#29

Post by nurspouse » Tue, Aug 31, 2021, 6:12 PM UTC

jpm_sd wrote: post #3

junon wrote: post #2

I remember looking into this a while back. They made the whole line super hard to get your hands on. Really curious on the decision making process throughout the line's lifetime.

I interviewed a candidate a couple of years ago who was, at the time, working on Intel's internal self-driving car team. It sounded like a totally directionless, amateurish also-ran catastrophe. Years behind the competition. I wonder if this product line was in a similar situation.

I was involved in the self-driving efforts at Intel. Can confirm the incompetence.

Re: Intel's Lidar, face recognition, and tracking cameras will be discontinued

#30

Post by astrea » Tue, Aug 31, 2021, 6:13 PM UTC

octopaulus wrote: post #27

mips_avatar wrote: post #9

These cameras had some frustrating faults. My friend's master's project relied on their facial recognition cameras. Unfortunately my friend was black and they didn't work at all on his face. He needed his white/asian friends to help him test his application.

Why didn't he just put makeup ?

Ah you're the guy that submits PRs that just changes a failing test instead of the code it's testing