NotebookLM: An AI Notebook • Hacker News Board

Re: NotebookLM: An AI Notebook

#131

Post by vogon_laureate » Thu, Jul 13, 2023, 2:42 PM UTC

tylerhou wrote: post #112

vogon_laureate wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How is it irrelevant? If a new project/product is being hyped by a company with a well documented history of hyping then abandoning projects and products, it's objectively a relevant comment. For example, if there's a post about the new Threads app, and someone comments about Meta's record on, say... security, data privacy, moderation or support of Instagram, WhatsApp, and Facebook, or something about their failed pr…

It's not irrelevant, it's just incredibly tiring reading the same comment over and over again on every thread that remotely mentions Google launching a new product. > For example, if there's a post about the new Threads app, and someone comments about Meta's record on, say... security, data privacy OK, let's look at the Threads launch post. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36580192 . - Ctrl+F "security". Exactly…

I meant the Threads point as a hypothetical example not a literal one. I see annoying and repetitive comments on HN all the time. I don't have to upvote them or engage with them at all. I can merrily skip on by. Unless they're being abusive or threatening, I don't see what the problem is?

Clearly enough people think Google's record of hypeware-to-abandonware cycle is worth raising again and again because it's a frustrating aspect of the company's 'innovation' process and HN is a fairly influential place to keep that issue alive in the hopes that it might lead to some change or at the very least inform people who are considering investing a lot of time, energy, and capital into depending on such projects. It's also not exclusive to Google[1], though perhaps the one most notorious for it.

I've also found those "Python slow, Rust fast" threads genuinely useful because they prompt people to report on progress in Python on that front, or indeed even how the two languages can work together to play to each other's strengths.[2]

  [1]: https://killedby.tech/ 
  [2]: https://pythonspeed.com/articles/easiest-rust-python/

Re: NotebookLM: An AI Notebook

#132

Post by phillipcarter » Thu, Jul 13, 2023, 2:59 PM UTC

amf12 wrote: post #92

phillipcarter wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Woof. Talk about a bad reputation exemplified. I can't imagine what it's like working on stuff like this at Google, earnestly just trying to make a great product people will want to use, only to have to fight decades of user-hostile product destruction that the company has done.

Take a look at Instagram's Threads. They had 100M users in a few days. Do you think people around the world really care about data being used? On a related note, I am sad about the state of HN comments, which resembles Reddit more and more. The blog post specifically mentions the data is private and won't be used to train models, which can't be said about the ChatGPT based tools which do this, but yet, here we have p…

I don't think the audience here cares as much about the data. I think people here (myself included) are mostly just deeply cynical about how Google will handle this product long-term. Why invest time into using it when it's going to just get yoinked in a year or two?

Re: NotebookLM: An AI Notebook

#133

Post by vogon_laureate » Thu, Jul 13, 2023, 2:59 PM UTC

jsnell wrote: post #110

vogon_laureate wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The HN Guidelines[1] also say that commenters should: "Respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of what someone says, not a weaker one that's easier to criticize. Assume good faith ." Just because people have posted similar comments about Google's penchant for killing projects, doesn't mean that they are "spamming". Consider, instead, that it may just reflect a groundswell of opinion borne out of bitter expe…

Sure, let's take it as a given that everyone who posts wholly original messages about "lol this product will be canceled" are doing so purely because of the harm they have personally suffered due to a product cancellation, and they just missed the previous messages on that subject. So what? It's still turned this thread into a wasteland and prevented any productive discussion. Posting in good faith isn't a free pass…

> So what? It's still turned this thread into a wasteland and prevented any productive discussion.

How exactly has it "prevented any productive discussion"? I've seen plenty of comments about the merits and limitations of its Bard foundation, the design choices, the potential business model, etc.

The example you give of political opinions doesn't feel like a fair comparison. We're talking about the company's record on supporting its projects in the context of a new project announcement not a divisive socio-political controversy.

A better example might be: If Red Hat announced a new open source initiative, would it not be relevant to bring up concerns about its commitment to the new FOSS project in light of the impacts its recent announcement about CentOS is having on other companies and projects that depended on it?

Re: NotebookLM: An AI Notebook

#134

Post by kweingar » Thu, Jul 13, 2023, 3:32 PM UTC

jsnell wrote: post #101

888666 wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To warn users so they're aware that the lifespan of the product they're using may be very short, and therefore they may lose something they put a lot of investment in. It's empathy.

Nobody reading HN needs to be made aware of it, and those are the only people you'll be able to reach with a HN comment. The thing is, these repetitive comments get spammed dozens of times on every Google-related post. They could be posted without reading the submission. Many of them probably are in fact probably posted just based on the title (seeing how many people posted basically exactly the same comments into a…

My favorite were comments on a post about Google Zanzibar, which is an internal Google infrastructure thing that they published a research paper about. Other companies started adopting that method, and there were HN comments warning about Google killing products. I don't think Google is going to cancel a research paper!

Re: NotebookLM: An AI Notebook

#135

Post by mattzito » Thu, Jul 13, 2023, 4:38 PM UTC

dr_kiszonka wrote: post #126

mattzito wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For whatever its worth, I worked near docs during that time, and that support note elides a lot of the launches that happened. The big focus during that time was on Office compatibility, and so there were a lot of investment in things that were not end-user visible, but allowed for better coexistence in mixed environments. A massive launch in terms of impact and usage was the ability to directly edit word documents i…

The article mentions Google Labs. Do you know if this is an actual team or just an umbrella term for public beta products made by different teams?

Both - there is a labs team, and then it gets used as an umbrella term.

Re: NotebookLM: An AI Notebook

#136

Post by tohmasch » Thu, Jul 13, 2023, 4:40 PM UTC

nl wrote: post #106

I love this as a product idea. I can't sign up (because I'm outside the US). I think I could build a local-only version with a local LLM possibly local datasources that would do a pretty good job. Local LLMs are sufficiently powerful for query expansion techniques so the capability gap there to GPT4/Bard isn't a problem. They are definitely behind on generative capabilities, but since I'm unable to use the product it…

Not to plug too hard, but I am building a version of this to be local and friendly for your workflows.

The aim is to help people organize, discovery, and pull insights out of their knowledge bases using LLM's as cognitive functions for Q/A as well as pre-thought generated points and summarizes.

Would love to ask for you feedback. https://www.knowd.ai/

Re: NotebookLM: An AI Notebook

#137

Post by fumar » Thu, Jul 13, 2023, 5:56 PM UTC

phito wrote: post #129

patates wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd normally feel the same as you about the "one-line jabs" but in this case, IMHO they help to underline the fact that Google really did screw a lot of people over.

To me, it underlines that it became a meme more than a fact.

How is it not a fact?

Re: NotebookLM: An AI Notebook

#138

Post by throwaway675309 » Thu, Jul 13, 2023, 6:28 PM UTC

endisneigh wrote: post #96

vogon_laureate wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People are wary about Google product launches because of a well documented[1] pattern of corporate behaviour[2] when it comes to either the project's planning and execution, resourcing, or long-term support. You don't have to agree with those comments, but they are legitimate concerns being expressed by people who have been burned enough times by the company that it has developed a degree[3] of notoriety[4] for it as…

Like I mentioned, don’t use google products then. What’s the value of spamming this all of the time? The validity of the concern isn’t the problem, it’s the fact that it’s irrelevant to the content being posted.

The value is that it provides context around googles substantial issues with long-term support for their products. So anybody who's new to hacker news or even new to the tech world can see that this is still an ongoing issue, and can avoid getting burned like so many of us before.

And given the forum, I like to think that there's probably a fair number of Googlers who see these comments, so it's always on the forefront of their minds when they may bring it up to their managers and their managers managers.

Re: NotebookLM: An AI Notebook

#139

Post by throwaway675309 » Thu, Jul 13, 2023, 6:31 PM UTC

endisneigh wrote: post #98

888666 wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To warn users so they're aware that the lifespan of the product they're using may be very short, and therefore they may lose something they put a lot of investment in. It's empathy.

Shall every post for every company be spammed with irrelevant content about questionable actions conducted by said companies? Why not just submit a post about that directly and let that be the topic of discussion? Do you see how this entire thread is irrelevant to the submitted post? Do you see the problem?

If that's true, then you're only exacerbating it by attacking "said thread".

Furthermore, threads raising the issue of googles seemingly erratic depredation of their products and threads discussing the product itself aren't mutually exclusive. You can do this neat thing called scroll down, and not read these threads if they bother you so much.

Re: NotebookLM: An AI Notebook

#140

Post by pphysch » Thu, Jul 13, 2023, 7:07 PM UTC

Angostura wrote: post #127

pphysch wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The idea of "stanning/hating" a megacorporation, one of the most powerful entities on the planet, is a priori absurd in the vein of Bryan Cantrill's "don't anthropomorphize Oracle". Apple spends billions of dollars promoting its global brand as a culture and way of life; this does not mean we need to apply this framework to other brands. Spewing negativity (or positivity) about Google in this context is a self-own, b…

Why are you replying to a comment about the lack of recent innovation at Google and product positioning missteps with a comment talking about 'stanning/hating. That's not what the commmenter is doing.

Reread the first sentence of that comment.

Besides, this discussion isn't about "innovation", it's about Google killing products. Google is possibly the most innovative tech megacorporation precisely because of their experimental approach to product releases.