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Google I/O 2023

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291–300 of 443 posts

Re: Google I/O 2023

#291

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Spotify doesn't get to offer you that when you are setting up your new phone. You have to know about the company and go and install it. It is good that you are using Spotify and supporting an independent company, but as I was saying defaults and ease of access matters. Spotify is not playing in a level field and regulators have failed to ensure that they are able to.

There are plenty of non-apple speakers that come with Spotify trials. I get that trials are hard to back out of, and I've never activated my Apple Music trial. > Spotify is not playing in a level field and regulators have failed to ensure that they are able to. Spotify is still dominating music streaming, more so than Apple Music or Amazon Prime Music (which we used to use since it came free with prime).

> There are plenty of non-apple speakers that come with Spotify trials.

Spotify has to pay for these and has to compete for this with other music streaming companies.

Also, comparison with smart speakers is disingenuous. There are a billion iPhone users itself. No non big tech company smart speaker comes even close.

> Spotify is still dominating music streaming

Because of nailing the product early on and being world class in playlists and music recommendations. Even if Apple music comes 80% close, just by holding distribution advantage, they will capture that market.

Re: Google I/O 2023

#292

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.

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Re: Google I/O 2023

#293
post #64

I find it interesting the sentiment in the comments... Yesterday we had an Apple post where everyone was losing their minds all day about Final Cut Pro on iPad (which in my opinion as a Software Engineer is the most boring thing I’ve had to read all week). Today we have probably a massive lineup of a bunch of new AI features to be announced for products most of us use on the regular, or could use as devs, and 90% of…

I am slowly feeling like I should move on from HN. I used to find comments much more mature in the past and learned a lot. Lately I predict the general trend I'll see in the comments before even opening the page.

I feel the same. Comments used to be more thoughtful and nuanced, and I often found comments that changed my perspective on things. Now so many comments are massively negative and sweepingly generalize in uninteresting ways, eg just to pick a random example from replies to this current post:

"Every offering they have is worse today than it was a year ago."

HN should be better than this.

Re: Google I/O 2023

#294
post #210

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is why I stopped calling HN, HN. It's YCombinator news. It's not news for hackers - maybe at one point, but not anymore and not for awhile. It may even be seen as looked down on because you're posting on a site run by venture capitalists.

I think it's a lot less confusing when you understand that "hacker" doesn't describe a kind of politics, but rather connotes an interest in technology.

Depending on who you talk to, hacking doesn't even mean technology. It's more of an artful blend of craftsmanship and trickery in whatever problem domain you face.

But I think the confusing aspect of HN and the VC influence is the number of folks here who happily conflate technology, business, entrepreneurship, and capitalism. If you see these as separable topics, you find that a lot of the confused threads here are different cohorts in the audience who focus on one of these topics and treat the others as ancillary.

Re: Google I/O 2023

#295

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Metaverse is DoA. Public perception is that it is either too complicated/expensive to use or that it is essentially a worse VRChat. More technically inclined circles see it as a data harvester and crypto-scam breeding ground. Facebook itself does not use it for its supposed intended purpose of virtual conferencing, instead mandating that all employees return to the physical office to work. It has next to no adoption…

The Public's lack of imagination / vision is the worst indicator of anything. There is a reason there are only a handful of Jobs, Zuck, Elon, Bezos, Gates, Buffett in the world but 15 Million people on Wallstreetbets.

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Re: Google I/O 2023

#296
post #217

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have you tried prompting it for "Dunning-Kruger effect"?

yes, most HNers are affected by it. That's why you see a massive anti-corp, anti-tech, anti-capitalist despite data screaming at them the massive benefits of tech, capitalism and corporation.

I believe one of it's defining features is that if you are experiencing the effect, only the people around you know it.

Re: Google I/O 2023

#297

: create a Google I/O keynote on this and that project. Mention AI at every turn. All subtly cringe, unexciting. Presenting million ways AI takes a whole lot of the real creation & soul out of every human-technology interaction. Plus feeling society not ready to handle this.

I'm beginning to wonder if soulless, boring, corpspeak AI-generated text is going to turn out to be a huge competitive disadvantage for those who become reliant on it.

If someone sends me an email or a message that sounds AI-generated, it's easy to tell that it's not meaningful. So I end up ignoring it entirely.

I'm also concerned about folks who actually try to use "AI" like Bard to assist with life decisions like they showed in the college-search presentation. Maybe that works OK right now -- though I suspect AI has serious blind spots. But what happens when Google wants to milk advertisers a bit more, and starts pushing more Wendy's (TM) and for-profit universities and whatever else into your chats?

The "what bike should I buy for a 5 mile hilly commute" query had hilarious results, too -- literally all sponsored content from no-name (but expensive) bike brands. No real understanding of what makes a decent, maintainable commuter bike. Just Bard spitting out whichever bike manufacturers pay Google the most.

Anyone who actually relies on this garbage for decisionmaking is going to wind up making some very poor decisions once Google allows advertisers to hook into these AI features... which is already happening in Search.

Re: Google I/O 2023

#298
post #284

Am I the only one excited for this conference? My Pixel 4A can't hold a charge any more and I've been holding out for the 7A.

The 4a battery is relatively easy to replace due to the pull tabs, was a fun little project: https://www.ifixit.com/products/google-pixel-4a-battery-genu... I’m holding on to my Pixel 4a until they make one that’s smaller & lighter. Not liking the trend of bigger and bigger phones.

It also has a headphone jack, which is getting harder and harder to find these days.

Even if you usually use bluetooth headphones... it's still nice to have a backup. There's lots of situations where headphone jack input is simpler, easier, faster, and more reliable than messing with bluetooth.

Re: Google I/O 2023

#299

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

The AirPods are capitalizing on lock-in. iPhones have always had Bluetooth, but almost nobody used BT headphones cause they suck. Then Apple released AirPods with first-party integrations to make it usable, and to make sure people would buy them, they also took out the jack. I care what my options are in the end, a lot more than ideology or something, and Apple worsened my options compared to before. The end result i…

Weird, I think you left out the part where they did include the dongle for the 3.5mm jack for at least 2 generations after they removed it and still offer one. But to each his/her own.

Re: Google I/O 2023

#300
post #64

I find it interesting the sentiment in the comments... Yesterday we had an Apple post where everyone was losing their minds all day about Final Cut Pro on iPad (which in my opinion as a Software Engineer is the most boring thing I’ve had to read all week). Today we have probably a massive lineup of a bunch of new AI features to be announced for products most of us use on the regular, or could use as devs, and 90% of…

HN crowd and devs should know better than most that you can’t depend on anything from Google. Kind of surprised this conference is still being held given where they are at right now.

This guy used reader.
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