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Google is building a new augmented reality device and operating system

arstechnica.com

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Re: Google is building a new augmented reality device and operating system

#191

Post by pjmlp »

jorl17 wrote: post #176
dougmwne wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Recently moved from more than a decade on Android to iPhone. Once the Stockholm syndrome wore off I realized how pathetically behind they are on mobile.

Hi! I'm a very happy iPhone user (and Mac + Apple Watch + AirPods, you name it...), but I'm surprised by your comment....could you elaborate? In what way do you think that google is pathetically behind? I've always seen it as just a different ecosystem with different ideas. I look forward to reading what you have to say!!

I own Android devices, but also deal with iOS at work.

Basically the way they screwed Java developers with their pseudo compatible implementation, an horrible NDK experience, even after 10 years the best you can do to interop between userspace and NDK is via JNI code that you have to write yourself.

Given that they created their own pseudo Java, they could have also created something else other than JNI for Dalvik/ART, but no they didn't.

While Apple provides a full stack development experience, on Android you usually have to go fetch Java, C and C++ libraries to gain productivity back on top of the bare bone APIs that Google provides.

The whole Jetpack libraries effort only started after several years of complaints, it took them until 2020 to finally release a game developers SDK (which is a joke versus something like Sprite/SceneKit).

If iOS and Android were Linux desktops, with iOS you get XFCE/GNOME/KDE dev experience, while Android you are looking forward to something like fvwm instead.

Re: Google is building a new augmented reality device and operating system

#192

Post by ca01an »

moritonal wrote: post #39
gonehome wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Google seems unfocused - AR is an example of this, their messaging platforms and failure to leverage Google voice for 10yrs after the acquisition are too. I’d bet on Apple, FB, or some new entry (harder without the underlying OS). DeepMind is the most interesting thing coming out of Google imo.

It hurts to see it the accidental implication that DeepMind came out of Google. DeepMind was one of the UK's greater recent creations and it got bought/absorbed for a pittance in exchange for custom TPUs. I'll agree though that DeepMind would not have been able to exist really without Google's ongoing funding and hardware, so maybe it is Google's creation at this point.

Did DeepMind have anything to do with the TPUs? I was under the impression another group in Google designed them

Re: Google is building a new augmented reality device and operating system

#193

Post by monkeynotes »

pjmlp wrote: post #186
rl3 wrote: post #183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Whilst I'm all for ragging on Facebook's missteps ... I prefer ragging on their very existence, but to each their own. :) Certainly not disputing they know how to make money. I'm sure they'll make a killing on AR/Metaverse bullshit.

Users of React, React Native, Folley, GHC, Flow,.... seem to appreciate their existence.

I think it's possible to respect the software their developers create and dislike the business goals and cynical approach to making money.

Facebook has made some wonderful software, and it has fundamentally degraded humanity.

Re: Google is building a new augmented reality device and operating system

#194

Post by pjmlp »

monkeynotes wrote: post #193
pjmlp wrote: post #186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Users of React, React Native, Folley, GHC, Flow,.... seem to appreciate their existence.

I think it's possible to respect the software their developers create and dislike the business goals and cynical approach to making money. Facebook has made some wonderful software, and it has fundamentally degraded humanity.

Not when that software is made with blood money, so to speak.

This is what I find so hypocritical on Facebook complaints, washing over how the meat for the sausage is paid for and the animal was slaughtered, only because it tastes good and the complainers want more of it on their plate.

If what Facebook does is so amoral then don't use software paid with selling their customers' data.

Re: Google is building a new augmented reality device and operating system

#195

Post by sombremesa »

comp_throw7 wrote: post #185
sombremesa wrote: post #174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> places like Google Which place aside from Google?

Facebook, Amazon (mostly cash bonus first two years, but still "vests" monthly with no cliff), Uber, Lyft (every 3 months), Snapchat, etc. It's not all of them but it's an increasing number. Also, even with a 1-year cliff, for most people it'll still basically be indistinguishable from cash? Leaving (or getting fired) before you hit the 1 year mark is pretty rare, and after the first cliff it usually transitions to s…

The cliff is irrelevant, if you leave before you fully vest your pay rate does not actually match what you claim.

The reason I brought up taxes (which might seem odd to people since compensation usually ignores them) is because they will significantly change the equation for various reasons. (AMT, RSUs taxed as short term gains and not long term, state tax affecting comp regardless of cost of living, etc.)

Ultimately, any compensation number that rolls all of this up into one number is mostly useless for actually knowing how much money you’ll have in N years, but it is useful for comparing offers, which is fine - but then these numbers shouldn’t appear without qualification in the type of discussion where personal finance is involved.

Not to mention that since this is a forum where many people are involved in startups, a 50k salary often (ok, maybe not often but I’m on 1/1) turns into several millions in a few years. Does that mean founders should claim they were making $2 mil per year? I don’t think so - but that’s the only comparison available if you use levels.fyi.

Re: Google is building a new augmented reality device and operating system

#196

Post by what_ever »

sombremesa wrote: post #195
comp_throw7 wrote: post #185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Facebook, Amazon (mostly cash bonus first two years, but still "vests" monthly with no cliff), Uber, Lyft (every 3 months), Snapchat, etc. It's not all of them but it's an increasing number. Also, even with a 1-year cliff, for most people it'll still basically be indistinguishable from cash? Leaving (or getting fired) before you hit the 1 year mark is pretty rare, and after the first cliff it usually transitions to s…

The cliff is irrelevant, if you leave before you fully vest your pay rate does not actually match what you claim. The reason I brought up taxes (which might seem odd to people since compensation usually ignores them) is because they will significantly change the equation for various reasons. (AMT, RSUs taxed as short term gains and not long term, state tax affecting comp regardless of cost of living, etc.) Ultimately…

> RSUs taxed as short term gains and not long term

That's not correct. RSUs get taxed as normal income. So whether you get $600k cash or $300k cash + $300k of RSUs, your tax bill is the same. The gain on the RSUs get taxed as short or long term capital gain. That comes into picture when you sell. If you auto-sell, there is no/very little gain, so no additional tax there and for intents and purpose, it's as if getting $600k in cash.

The numbers reported on levels.fyi are not useless. They give you a good idea of what one can get if they started working there at that moment. You can extrapolate more out of it by understanding the stock gain.

Re: Google is building a new augmented reality device and operating system

#197

Post by what_ever »

sombremesa wrote: post #195
comp_throw7 wrote: post #185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Facebook, Amazon (mostly cash bonus first two years, but still "vests" monthly with no cliff), Uber, Lyft (every 3 months), Snapchat, etc. It's not all of them but it's an increasing number. Also, even with a 1-year cliff, for most people it'll still basically be indistinguishable from cash? Leaving (or getting fired) before you hit the 1 year mark is pretty rare, and after the first cliff it usually transitions to s…

The cliff is irrelevant, if you leave before you fully vest your pay rate does not actually match what you claim. The reason I brought up taxes (which might seem odd to people since compensation usually ignores them) is because they will significantly change the equation for various reasons. (AMT, RSUs taxed as short term gains and not long term, state tax affecting comp regardless of cost of living, etc.) Ultimately…

> The cliff is irrelevant, if you leave before you fully vest your pay rate does not actually match what you claim.

This doesn't make sense as well. You don't need to work at Google for a year to get the first year's equity. So there is no one year cliff.

The frequency of how often you vest is also monthly. Specially at the L6+ levels. So you will lose at most of one month's equity (i.e. 1/48th of the grant) if you are bad at planning your last day. So to put actual numbers again, let's say your offer is 240k cash + 240k RSUs every year. So you vest 240k/12 = 20k in RSUs every month on say 20th of the month. If you leave on the 19th of your 12 month of the employment (i.e. before finishing one year), you don't lose on 240k of RSUs but just 20k of RSUs. So you will earn 220k of cash + 229k of RSUs before you leave.

Re: Google is building a new augmented reality device and operating system

#198

Post by sombremesa »

what_ever wrote: post #196
sombremesa wrote: post #195

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The cliff is irrelevant, if you leave before you fully vest your pay rate does not actually match what you claim. The reason I brought up taxes (which might seem odd to people since compensation usually ignores them) is because they will significantly change the equation for various reasons. (AMT, RSUs taxed as short term gains and not long term, state tax affecting comp regardless of cost of living, etc.) Ultimately…

> RSUs taxed as short term gains and not long term That's not correct. RSUs get taxed as normal income. So whether you get $600k cash or $300k cash + $300k of RSUs, your tax bill is the same. The gain on the RSUs get taxed as short or long term capital gain. That comes into picture when you sell. If you auto-sell, there is no/very little gain, so no additional tax there and for intents and purpose, it's as if getting…

How is it incorrect? Short term gains are taxed the same as income, which is exactly what both of us are saying.

This is setup to favor people who don’t understand taxes, so they don’t screw themselves over. It ends up screwing people who do understand taxes.

Re: Google is building a new augmented reality device and operating system

#199

Post by throw10920 »

Andrex wrote: post #14

Whenever I transpose my comments to HN, I usually do some light editing. The following comment is unedited because this headline kinda fired me up. Considering how Google’s treated AR and VR in the last 10 years, hyping people up then quietly pulling back support and finally cancellation after just 2-3 years, I don’t see this going well. They had a toehold 6-10 years ago which they could have easily kept iterating on…

> Considering how Google’s treated AR and VR in the last 10 years, hyping people up then quietly pulling back support and finally cancellation after just 2-3 years

s/AR and VR/half of the products that Google develops/

Google has some kind of inability to develop stable, boring, long-lasting products, instead prioritizing UX churn and new half-baked features over fixing old bugs or optimizing for performance.

There was a very insightful comment on the Teams 911 thread a few days ago[1] - the entire thing is worth reading, but the most important point is "Google is not setup in same way and internal incentives are not like that, judging by hoard of messaging apps. They are simply setup to make very short projects that do not require long-term commitment."

I do not trust Google to make stable (or privacy-preserving, which is especially relevant to AR...) products.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29496753

Re: Google is building a new augmented reality device and operating system

#200

Post by throw10920 »

azeirah wrote: post #139
ksec wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They wanted a letter starting with A to be the parent company of Google. It should have been ADHD and not Alphabet. /s

:( Adhd people can be very focused

Can be, on occasion, when focusing on something that's highly interesting to them.

Stable products and visions are definitely not interesting to Google.

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