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Google I/O 2023

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Re: Google I/O 2023

#111

Post by revelio »

lordswork wrote: post #79
ugjka wrote: post #5

I stopped caring about I/O when it became just corporate talk

Which one of these talks from ML/AI at I/O 2022 would you describe as "just corporate talk"? https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLQY2H8rRoyvyY0AsvPIkb...

Maybe "A journey to protect the Great Barrier Reef using ML"?

The video is five minutes long, is basically a nature advert complete with stirring music, has a bizarre cartoon in the middle of it and is all about an attempt to control the reef's population of starfish. We're told that the starfish are doing great thanks to there being fewer predators and more nutrients in the water, but that this is bad because "it's quite a nasty animal" and it eats coral. The goal is to find starfish "outbreaks" using ML and enable teams of divers to kill the starfish as quickly as possible.

They appear to think this is a stirring example of protecting nature. There's even a diver at the end who breaks down in tears at the way the reef has degraded over his lifespan. Fortunately since the video was made it was discovered that the reefs are now at record-breaking coverage levels despite the starfish, so apparently they didn't need AI driven death-from-above. Also it's not really clear why Google wants to help implement mass animal culls in a place where people don't even go. Why are corals better than starfish? This seems like a very arbitrary judgement. Corals and crown-of-thorns starfish have been co-existing in nature for far longer than people have.

So:

1. Not for developers. They use batching and quantization, that's as deep as it goes technically.

2. Essentially a long ad for their cloud ML services.

3. Consists mostly of people talking about how meaningful, awesome and filled with hope they feel.

Re: Google I/O 2023

#112

Post by lordswork »

danielscrubs wrote: post #100
lordswork wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Which one of these talks from ML/AI at I/O 2022 would you describe as "just corporate talk"? https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLQY2H8rRoyvyY0AsvPIkb...

I understand him. Maybe Im cynical but everything I see on your link looks like something a technical sales person would come up with… How easy is it to onboard people? Easy! Are we helping save the world? Yes! Can we build it ethically? Yes! Are those questions really what’s on the mind of the developer? Where is the: we have a way to revolutionize the debugging experience when doing ML(for people with PhDs) talks?…

I think you are quick to judge the talks by their title. They are all technical from what I can tell, and many cover topics that are of interest to PhD researchers. For example, the distributed large model paper covers several papers' worth of research done at Google and how to utilize their implementation in JAX.

ML debugging is just one topic among many. I wouldn't dismiss the entire lineup because Google didn't have any big announcements in that space for that year.

Re: Google I/O 2023

#113

Post by lern_too_spel »

seanmcdirmid wrote: post #104
actuator wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

HN tends to bias towards pro Apple. You would see people doing mental gymnastics trying to defend their closed anti competitive practices, disregard for standards. I would cheer a Sennheiser/Bose more than any version of Airpods, I would rather not have a multi trillion dollar company gobble up other industries through unfair advantages. Seeing a hacker crowd do this is just beyond bizzare.

It seems quite the opposite: HN biases towards anti-Apple, often for bizarre reasons that require lots of mental gymnastics to justify. You don’t really have to buy AirPods, there are lots of products out in the market that compete in that space. Just because Apple provides a certain product doesn’t mean you are being forced to buy it.

Let me hit you with some anecdotes. I regularly disparage both Apple and Google in my comments, typically Apple for being user-hostile and lying in marketing and Google for being incompetent and user-hostile. My Apple comments get downvoted more than my Google comments (I'd guess due to fanaticism that I see with no other company), although the gap has been steadily closing.

Re: Google I/O 2023

#114

Post by lordswork »

revelio wrote: post #111
lordswork wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Which one of these talks from ML/AI at I/O 2022 would you describe as "just corporate talk"? https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLQY2H8rRoyvyY0AsvPIkb...

Maybe "A journey to protect the Great Barrier Reef using ML"? The video is five minutes long, is basically a nature advert complete with stirring music, has a bizarre cartoon in the middle of it and is all about an attempt to control the reef's population of starfish. We're told that the starfish are doing great thanks to there being fewer predators and more nutrients in the water, but that this is bad because "it's…

Agreed. That seems like the short high-level feel-good talk aimed at corporate folks, whereas the remaining 17 talks are technical and aimed at actual developers.

Re: Google I/O 2023

#115

Post by jansan »

tartuffe78 wrote: post #31

I remember going back in 2015. Biggest thing I remember were the "Smart" fabrics that would be integrated into your clothing for interacting with your devices. It was a cool demo but felt very silly and impractical. I enjoyed the silent disco and free concerts, but it felt very over the top and expensive, basically just a big ego display for Google. I can understand now why my company is less eager to send developers…

From what I see on the website I don't think you can attend in person. Those online events are always a bit sad if you ask me.

Re: Google I/O 2023

#117

Post by rrrrrrrrrrrryan »

jsheard wrote: post #73
edandersen wrote: post #53

Agressive pricing on the Pixel Fold is going to undercut Samsung's flagship most profitable phone. This will be interesting.

A reputable leaker said the Pixel Fold will be priced identically to the Samsung Fold 4: https://twitter.com/jon_prosser/status/1648009519878774799 Factoring in all the discounts and incentives that Samsung tends to do, the Pixel may be more expensive in practice. That's bold considering it has pretty middle-of-the-road specs, it's using the Tensor G2 SOC that launched last year and wasn't the best Android SOC even t…

They're speculating it's intentionally priced high so that the trade in deals look bigger.

Re: Google I/O 2023

#118

Post by DrScientist »

capableweb wrote: post #11
gumballindie wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Google is a factory and software is manufacturing. They want to sell their goods to managers not engineers. Makes sense if you think about it. Most of what google does is yesterday’s tech, the web isn’t new and they aren’t making bank by selling stuff to software devs. We want free stuff, preferably open source. There’s so much of it anyway that it has zero value. They might babble a bit about how ai can replace work…

All of that makes sense for Google in general, but Google I/O used to be explicitly a developer conference, with everything targeting developers, which no longer seems true.

Same sort of thing happened to WWDC.

I once worked somewhere where the only people who actually went to WWDC where the IT admins and Apple fans,rather than developers.

From a developer perspective - online if so good now, why do you need to travel? ( unless you really want 1:1 with Apple/Google Devs ).

So the only people who travel end up being the people their for the 'event' and the 'one more thing' excitement.

Re: Google I/O 2023

#120

Post by neodypsis »

latchkey wrote: post #102
steve1977 wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s still a startup if it’s not profitable yet ;)

I built a business that did $80m of (profitable) revenue, in the first year. We were profitable after 3 months. Is that not a startup?

Your company was new. But the situation you describe is not typical of a startup as commonly understood.
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