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Metabook

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Re: Metabook

#81

Post by ethanbond »

arketyp wrote: post #41
ethanbond wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ah the ol’ network effects are a real high value target for businesses but have no real impact on consumers argument. Nice. “Pathological gregariousness…” with the scale and degree of consumption of social media, don’t you think there’s a possibility that actually there’s a universal human desire to connect with one another and it’s the tools themselves that are exploiting it to a pathological degree?

That's a good point which hard to address adequately in a few sentences. I think, perhaps naively, that corporations would like to make more profit out of people actually feeling good using their services. You could say that being aligned with people's well-being is the long-term better profit, compatible even with the most cynical renditions of capitalism.

We have little evidence that people even optimize for their own long term well-being

Re: Metabook

#82

Post by 2pEXgD0fZ5cF »

pron wrote: post #61
josephwegner wrote: post #45

Funny story about my Metaverse experience... I assume this will be an unusual opinion, but I'm actually very excited about Metaverse. I probably would not have chosen Facebook as the stewards of the first big VR-world, but I've been waiting a long time for some big co to make an investment in this direction. I think a (little m) metaverse is the obvious evolution for VR and could become ubiquitous. I left Facebook ab…

> I probably would not have chosen Facebook as the stewards of the first big VR-world You make it sound as if Facebook will actually be the stewards of the first big VR-world, but all they did was announce something to divert attention from a serious scandal. They might as well have announced that they'll work on colonising Mars, and you'd be sad for missing your opportunity to get prime real-estate on Amazonis Plani…

I am really puzzled by the amount of people that basically dream up their own story for Facebook and act as if this is coming for sure.

Facebook did announce something very vague, didn't show any tech or proof of concept and for the most part it was just "tech visionairy" babble with some buzzwords sprinkled on top. What makes anyone think Facebook has the ability to create even a decent basic game/3D experience? A very basic decent VR experience? Let alone some kind of VR world encompassing MMO?

Companies with the most experience and specialized talent in the world in those sectors fail very regularly at the attempts to just create basic decent 3D experiences that don't feel like complete jank. And we have also seen the silicon valley arrogance of non gaming companies with a "It's just how hard can it be?" attitude fall on their noses plenty of times.

The whole "metaverse" announcement gives me the vibes of a mix between Ouya (all the empty PR babble) and Star Citizen (overpromising way too much).

> all they did was announce something to divert from a serious scandal

This is what it boils down to.

Re: Metabook

#83

Post by arketyp »

NoGravitas wrote: post #75
arketyp wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not oblivious to the threat of lock-ins. But as far as remote tools go, my experience during the lockdown was that of competitive capitalism working at its best.

There are lots of viable competitors in the field of remote meeting and groupware tools, but most people aren't in a position to choose which ones to use and which ones to avoid — they're generally required to use a particular one by work or school.

Sure, and there can be conflicting preferences within a person's society of mind as well. Workplaces and schools sounds like a decent scale of granularity for free market effects though. I'm not saying network effects don't exist of course.

Re: Metabook

#84

Post by zdyn5 »

pron wrote: post #79
zdyn5 wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Love the HN swagger-talk even when it’s misinformed. Maybe they’ve accelerated the rebrand due to PR issues, but they’ve been heavily investing in AR/VR/metaverse for years, with Oculus back in 2014 and in the past few years poaching top silicon talent for low-power ASIC hardware. Their pseudo-AR RayBans commercially deployed few months ago. This has been a long time coming… FB has its issues to fix but no progress i…

They're not building a metaverse any more than anyone who's building VR apps or developing 3D games. It's possible that Zuckerberg wishes they were, and is trying to make himself believe that they are, but a company that is yet to master text communication has no idea how to build a metaverse. What they're doing is working on some VR meeting/chat apps.

Except they’re building the most popular consumer VR headsets by far? (Without going into any of the software/platform stuff that’s being developed). Also see ASIC part of comment for AR (they've been on a hiring spree for silicon)… The hardware is probably the most serious technical bottleneck because the sensory experience is kinda janky and isn't super-compelling, so that’s where innovation has to happen first.

Re: Metabook

#85

Post by arketyp »

ethanbond wrote: post #81
arketyp wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's a good point which hard to address adequately in a few sentences. I think, perhaps naively, that corporations would like to make more profit out of people actually feeling good using their services. You could say that being aligned with people's well-being is the long-term better profit, compatible even with the most cynical renditions of capitalism.

We have little evidence that people even optimize for their own long term well-being

That's true. But a different interpretation is that natural selection is an optimum in progress. It can all end abruptly, but there can be many branches too.

Re: Metabook

#86

Post by dafoex »

josephwegner wrote: post #45

Funny story about my Metaverse experience... I assume this will be an unusual opinion, but I'm actually very excited about Metaverse. I probably would not have chosen Facebook as the stewards of the first big VR-world, but I've been waiting a long time for some big co to make an investment in this direction. I think a (little m) metaverse is the obvious evolution for VR and could become ubiquitous. I left Facebook ab…

I would argue that Facebook are not the stewards of the first big VR world, Linden Labs are. Second Life has been a thing for a long time and, while not exactly the decentralised dream of an open metaverse we would want, its a hell of a lot more open and unregulated than whatever Zuckaberg's boffins could cook up in a month for the keynote scripted demo.

Now, I could sing the praises of Second Life (and parallel efforts like Open Simulation) for a long time, but it would be unfair of me not to mention that it is not officially a VR experience. All VR access to "The Grid", as they call it, is done through third party "Viewers" (effectively a web browser for the metaverse) based on the now open source code for the official Linden Viewer. That said, there has been serious efforts made into making a VR Viewer for The Grid, and I expect such efforts will only be enboldened by the new direction Facebook/Meta is taking.

Re: Metabook

#87

Post by josephwegner »

dafoex wrote: post #86
josephwegner wrote: post #45

Funny story about my Metaverse experience... I assume this will be an unusual opinion, but I'm actually very excited about Metaverse. I probably would not have chosen Facebook as the stewards of the first big VR-world, but I've been waiting a long time for some big co to make an investment in this direction. I think a (little m) metaverse is the obvious evolution for VR and could become ubiquitous. I left Facebook ab…

I would argue that Facebook are not the stewards of the first big VR world, Linden Labs are. Second Life has been a thing for a long time and, while not exactly the decentralised dream of an open metaverse we would want, its a hell of a lot more open and unregulated than whatever Zuckaberg's boffins could cook up in a month for the keynote scripted demo. Now, I could sing the praises of Second Life (and parallel effo…

Full agree here. Even before VR, Second Life is/was the biggest example of a metaverse. But, that's not a high bar - I don't know a single person that is active in Second Life. The small group of people I know that have even heard of Second Life at best gave it a try for a couple weeks. Second Life just never got momentum.

The thing Facebook brings, regardless of what you think of their technical prowess, is a network. I don't know yet how they'll get devices on people's faces, but if Facebook has anything it's access to a massive userbase. That's arguably more important than any tech.

Re: Metabook

#88

Post by jarcane »

the_other wrote: post #49
Cthulhu_ wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I should be able to click an app on my computer and have my own web page running in seconds, that anyone can find and follow. There's literally thousands if not tens of thousands of hosting providers and software packages that offer just that. I can get some hosting with DirectAdmin to install e.g. Wordpress on it within minutes. Following is through RSS feeds. Finding is down to Google, which in turn is down to yo…

> There's literally thousands if not tens of thousands of hosting providers and software packages that offer just that. But most of them are incredibly confusing and off-putting to the majority of people FB attracts. Most contemporary net citizens don't have a functional mental client-server model such that they would even know they need a thing called hosting, let alone choose a service. And there's no tools that in…

Not to mention that going with a third-party host is still relying on someone else's computer being trusted with your data. It's like saying we don't need physical drives anymore because Dropbox and Google Drive exist. And yet that's basically the environment we've constructed for the web.

Beyond the barrier of technical knowledge, there's also a barrier of access: many people simply do not have internet access that allows true static hosting. Even setting aside the historical issue of IPv4 address limitations, there's things like ISP port blocking, packet filtering and snooping, rate-limiting of upload, etc., that exist specifically to prop up rent-seeking hosting companies and "business plans" that charge ten times the money for the same exact advertised service just with the blocks turned off.

My theoretical app basically can't exist anymore without a lot of awkward hacks. Windows actually still has web hosting features built-in, but I can't use them outside the local network because my ISP blocks the port for HTTP (as well as a ton of other protocols), and dynamic IP means I can't link it to a domain anyway without third-party tools like DynDNS. Instead I'd have to rely on tunneling services like localhost.run, or peer-to-peer protocols that piggy-back in clever ways on existing open ports, or else pony up for a business account and pay more money for, often, less bandwidth than I have now.

Re: Metabook

#89

Post by dafoex »

MikusR wrote: post #55
nabla9 wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

First is example of buying innovation from outside. Fb acquisition did not add innovation to Oculus. It was just throwing money to get into business. Second is not their business innovation. It's open source. They do also good research.

Oculus was making a dumb tethered headset. Go and Quest was after Facebook.

Go was based entirely on Google's Daydream efforts. Hell, the Quest 2 still throws very Android ANR errors when a game crashes. Oculus's innovation into cordless and standalone is copied at best and outright plagiarism at worst. On top of this, the hardware itself it heavy on the head because they try to put it all in the visette. Sure, it might be aesthetically pleasing to just have one pair of goggles, but as a user I would much rather have a compute pack on my belt with a beefy heatsink to cool better hardware. If they did this they might even have the option of cordless body tracking in standalone VR before anyone else, but they won't because evidently Oculus still think they are making cardboard boxes.

Re: Metabook

#90

Post by brodokk »

Funny that in the alternative section they dont talk about VR alternatives, who is what facebook (or meta if you prefer) is going for...

About metaverse i often see people here talk about vrc (vrchat) here but there also some open-source like the fork of High Fidelity (Vircadia) that who are more near of what facebook is doing. But there is not much community on it last time i checked, i need to check it again tho. Today iv stop and move around NeosVR who is already proposing many thing that facebook whant to do and yes i know its not open source.

Also i didnt do much research on open-source VR alternative so if you know some more i will happy to know them.

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