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I/O 2022

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171–180 of 237 posts

Re: I/O 2022

#171

I popped in for a few minutes to verify something. I'm ... over this whole annual what's new presentation stuff. I just don't care anymore. And honestly the three presenters I saw didn't even seem like they rehearsed at all. They just read from the prompter and tried to put excitement in their voice at the same time and it just fell flat.

I used to be a professional speaker (Amazon, VMware, etc), and presented at more than 600 events. They said I was pretty good. Point is, after years of perfecting my craft, I can instantly spot the difference between a good presenter and a "fake" / bad one. Most people are bad. Really. Sorry to be blunt, but it is what it is. A bit of training and a bit of rehearsal would go a long way. I am shocked that big events l…

The audience is also able to detect professional speakers like yourself, with calculated hand movements and inauthentic voice pitch calibration and is equally turned off -- its just that professional speakers so rarely admit that since they make money off saying otherwise. The problem here is just that the topics aren't compelling enough. And you rarely get a good speaker who also knows the topic well so as to be perceived as authentic.

Look at Elon's keynotes, they are TERRIBLE from a public speaking perspective, but excellent content that generally is interesting. Also no one perceives them as inauthentic, just off-hand-ish. It works.

Re: I/O 2022

#172
post #19

Multiple mentions of "skin tone" and AI. Did they really mess up skin tone recognition that bad that they needed three different solutions to it? (I feel like I missed some major fuckup on their end) https://blog.google/products/assistant/assistant-io-2022/ https://blog.google/products/search/monk-skin-tone-scale/ https://blog.google/technology/research/ai-monk-scale-skin-t...

Funny. I interviewed with them recently and was asked about how to better represent minorities in photographs. I'm a white male, interviewer was not.

Re: I/O 2022

#173
post #117
post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> iPhone 13 and Pixel 6 I think the fact that they are in those high numbers already shows that they "stopped pretending like it is going to be an exciting brand new product every single year". The numbering there is pretty straightforward compared to e.g. the Macbook namings, or the convoluted naming of other brands with stacked variation signifiers, like the "Xiaomi 11 lite 5G NE".

> The numbering there is pretty straightforward compared to e.g. the Macbook namings I'm confused, while Apple has silly naming conventions for their operating system, the Macbook line doesn't have that at all. It's just the Macbook (and the Macbook Pro and the Macbook Air), Apple doesn't even give them different names or years. Am I missing something that isn't incredibly straightforward about the Macbook naming?

> It's just the Macbook (and the Macbook Pro and the Macbook Air)

Just that it isn't. The "(new) MacBook" (without any addition) most recently existed 2015-2019, and I personally found it very confusing, as it was thinner than a MacBook Air and with that breaking the previous expectations that were set up by the product line naming.

Placing all the blame on the naming of the MacBooks is probably overblown, but I feel like the individual lines of MacBooks have had a expectation/consistency problem for 10+ years now and throwing in the "new MacBook" into the mix for some time didn't help it.

Re: I/O 2022

#174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A lone white male. Sorry it wasn't totally clear. For all intents and purposes, women count as minorities. Google has plenty of pictures with white women, and white men and women. But so far I have only found one picture with a lone white male (on one of the chromecast pages, on the TV was a show page, and the show page had a lone white male). I guess they can get 1/2 credit for that. Oh and I found a picture of a lo…

https://about.google/stories/making-conversation-more-access... Took about 2 minutes.

Nah, watch the video, he's Hispanic. (Of course racial classifications have no real meaning, but ime Hispanic people are generally - bar some Spaniards - 'typed' as non-white, comparable to Asians or Native Americans. And certainly a minority in US terms.)

ETA: He's also deaf, fwiw, with regard to the minority point.

ETA2: Hmm, I may be wrong about the exact details. It looks like he's a research scientist at Google, and, judging by the name, possibly Russian. But the same non-Caucasian non-''white'' point applies. (The Spanish voiceover and subtitles confused me - it's not his voice at the start, whereas his own 'deaf voice' makes any accent hard to identify.)

Re: I/O 2022

#175
post #9
post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's no hype because they don't have anything to show that deserves hype. It's all the same: AI to improve photos, AI to improve translations and small iterative improvements to Android that you swear were shown at a Google IO event years ago Edit: watching the livestream and they've just announced an Android tablet! Honestly this déjà vu is getting ridiculous

Not to mention Google Wallet, an "amazing new" product by the same name of an existing product they keep renaming and haven't finished retiring yet. They could just say they were updating Google Wallet or whatever it's called now, but I guess you don't get promoted for that. I laughed when the Pixel guy (before announcing the tablet) said they don't usually announce products so far in advance. Has he seen Google I/O?

The "remove people and stuff" feature for Google Photos that they just announced had already been announced 4-5 years ago. We are still waiting.

Re: I/O 2022

#176

Definitely happy they are figuring out the skin tone stuff for search. Being able to search for skin conditions and hone in on skin tone efficiently has been a pet peeve of mine. Psoriasis, for instance, looks different on different skin tones.

"Users will have a new way to filter by relevant skin tones" is my favorite quote from the keynote.

Re: I/O 2022

#177

This is getting into the weeds, but I'm keeping an eye out for information on whether the 6a will have a subscription option like the 5a (24 payments of $15 = $360 for a $450 phone). Of course, my 5a will only be paid off in another 19 months, at which point a hypothetical Pixel 7a will presumably be available for upgrading, hopefully also with a similar subscription plan, but meanwhile whether the 6a even has a subs…

I opted for the 5a because it has a slightly larger battery than the 6, and a headphone jack :)

Re: I/O 2022

#178

New languages added to Google translate. It honestly has to be one of the most amazing inventions of the last 10 years if not the last 100 years.

They added more languages during this keynote than Apple Translate supports in total.

Re: I/O 2022

#179
post #72
post #50

Pixel 6a dropped the headphone jack. Great. Gotta find another brand now.

damn. I've been hanging on to my 3a, unfortunate to hear.

Yup, my latest 'upgrade' was to the 5a for this reason... I fear it may be the last Pixel with a headphone jack. When it eventually eats shit I'm terrified of being relegated to the sea of horrible OS bloatware Android devices.
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