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Meta's Reality Labs loses record $4.65B ahead of Apple's Vision Pro launch

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Re: Meta's Reality Labs loses record $4.65B ahead of Apple's Vision Pro launch

#41

Post by fhub »

Meta is a revenue generating machine. They keep beating quarterly estimates. I think they have every right to invest in R&D that isn't profitable yet (or ever). Their staff are well compensated already so what should the do with the money in ways that won't hurt their revenue? They already open sourcing a lot of things and have committed to reaching net zero emissions in 6 years and I'm sure other "good" stuff.

Note: I'm no fan of Meta's products and I've blocked FB/Meta domains for over a decade.

Re: Meta's Reality Labs loses record $4.65B ahead of Apple's Vision Pro launch

#42

Post by quest88 »

LesZedCB wrote: post #34
quest88 wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I share your sentiments, but realistically how would one implement that? The US (where meta is based) government (ie, the people) can't agree what benefits everyone. The positive side is all of the jobs it paid for.

not allow private companies to accumulate so much capital by breaking them up and taxing them fairly. then use the budget for things like single payer healthcare and affordable housing

Well, again, the US citizens can't agree to that. So then what?

Re: Meta's Reality Labs loses record $4.65B ahead of Apple's Vision Pro launch

#43

Post by leetharris »

xaellison wrote: post #33
leetharris wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is such an incredibly pessimistic and simplistic view. It is a private company funding research that will eventually lead to revolutionary devices. Imagine if people in the 1940s/50s said, "wow we could have spent all this money on something besides these giant vacuum tube machines that just add up a few numbers."

There's a difference between deep tech research (which truly can be revolutionary) and "revolutionary" consumer gizmos. I don't think the analogy holds.

Do you really think that AR and VR will only be "gizmos" forever?

I can think of dozens of real world applications off the top of my head. AR assistance for challenging professional situations (surgery, mechanical repairs, etc), PTSD treatment, AR warfare, gaming, and so much more. And this is with our limited viewpoint in the year 2024.

When headsets (or the evolution of them) are eventually the size of reading glasses and cost very little, this could change the world.

Re: Meta's Reality Labs loses record $4.65B ahead of Apple's Vision Pro launch

#44

Post by refulgentis »

godelski wrote: post #31

It's really weird to see this headline where underneath is a stock ticker showing "AAPL -0.41%" and "META +21.0%" and then another article on the side under Trending titled "Meta shares surge 20% on soaring profit, better-than-expected guidance and first-ever dividend". Nothing is a lie here, but clearly the headlines convey certain ideals to people and those might not really match reality. And it seems like they're…

People tend to project their feeling of being overwhelmed by information onto the media/MSM/journalism.

It's actually probably true that:

- Apple's stock is slightly down today.

- Facebook's stock is way up today.

- Facebook netted -4.65B on VR.

- Apple's Vision Pro launched today.

Maybe it's from growing up on the internet, but my confusion starts when people expect The Media to be a monolith and project one consistent emotional vibe, and when they don't, to add _more_ confusion and start claiming that the news is being selected to drive a particular sentiment...even though their initial observation was there is no one singular comfortable bite-sized truth that wraps up VRs long-term story, today.

Re: Meta's Reality Labs loses record $4.65B ahead of Apple's Vision Pro launch

#45

Post by brucethemoose2 »

godelski wrote: post #31

It's really weird to see this headline where underneath is a stock ticker showing "AAPL -0.41%" and "META +21.0%" and then another article on the side under Trending titled "Meta shares surge 20% on soaring profit, better-than-expected guidance and first-ever dividend". Nothing is a lie here, but clearly the headlines convey certain ideals to people and those might not really match reality. And it seems like they're…

> Why can I not just get one self contained coherent article

You just said it!

First of all, engagement optimization is as old as the printing press.

...But the difference now is thay is that news targets algorithms, not eyeballs and reputation.

Re: Meta's Reality Labs loses record $4.65B ahead of Apple's Vision Pro launch

#46

Post by RealityVoid »

wantsanagent wrote: post #38
tomxor wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah I'd like to know. The article keeps framing it as "The metaverse division" and "sink billions of dollars a quarter into developing the metaverse"... but Reality Labs (basically Oculus) doesn't just do stupid metaverse/horizon-blah, they make the actual Quest. So I expect a decent chunk of this was the cost of developing their two recent hardware upgrades. I believe they may be back to selling at or below cost ag…

Since we're talking about billions of dollars here, I'd like to know how far down the production stack they are investing. The displays, optics, and processors in headsets are hungry for technological advances. So is Meta custom building meta-material grown silicon lenses (or other crazy sci fi stuff), or are they just trying to commercialize other peoples breakthroughs at the lowest levels?

I suspect it's the latter, although I fail to even wrap my head around how the heck fundamental technological advances even happen. I mean you have people far removes from commercialization that pour a lot of time, money, knowledge and material into making this obscure little facet a tiiiny bit better. How do you even get to know what to improve, what needs improving, what _can_ be improved? How the heck do you even get funding for something so so very speculative?

Re: Meta's Reality Labs loses record $4.65B ahead of Apple's Vision Pro launch

#47

Post by RealityVoid »

When I read article headlines like this... It just makes me want to buy some Meta stock. It's not like Quest 3 is a dud, it's a great device. And it is not a given that Vision Pro will be a hit. So that makes me think someone wants to spin a narrative and is trying damn' hard to sell it.

Re: Meta's Reality Labs loses record $4.65B ahead of Apple's Vision Pro launch

#48

Post by LesZedCB »

quest88 wrote: post #42
LesZedCB wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

not allow private companies to accumulate so much capital by breaking them up and taxing them fairly. then use the budget for things like single payer healthcare and affordable housing

Well, again, the US citizens can't agree to that. So then what?

increasing wealth inequality and unaccountable mega corporations. more of the same, basically.

I don't "believe" there is a solution until enough people get really hungry.

Re: Meta's Reality Labs loses record $4.65B ahead of Apple's Vision Pro launch

#49

Post by sneed_chucker »

fhub wrote: post #41

Meta is a revenue generating machine. They keep beating quarterly estimates. I think they have every right to invest in R&D that isn't profitable yet (or ever). Their staff are well compensated already so what should the do with the money in ways that won't hurt their revenue? They already open sourcing a lot of things and have committed to reaching net zero emissions in 6 years and I'm sure other "good" stuff. Note:…

Yeah I agree.

If Meta was sticking to their core money generating businesses, then they'd be accused of stagnating and failing to innovate.

Re: Meta's Reality Labs loses record $4.65B ahead of Apple's Vision Pro launch

#50

Post by godelski »

brucethemoose2 wrote: post #45
godelski wrote: post #31

It's really weird to see this headline where underneath is a stock ticker showing "AAPL -0.41%" and "META +21.0%" and then another article on the side under Trending titled "Meta shares surge 20% on soaring profit, better-than-expected guidance and first-ever dividend". Nothing is a lie here, but clearly the headlines convey certain ideals to people and those might not really match reality. And it seems like they're…

> Why can I not just get one self contained coherent article You just said it! First of all, engagement optimization is as old as the printing press. ...But the difference now is thay is that news targets algorithms, not eyeballs and reputation.

My worry is about LLM driven news. You find a lot of free news sites are just summarized lazy versions of paid news like NYT or something else. But GPT can already do just as good summaries than those people (it really isn't hard) but certainly it is a lot cheaper than paying a person literally any rate by the hour. But how does the source material that is being leeched off of then survive when it costs less than a penny for what cost the source likely thousands. AI is pretty far away from performing its own investigative reporting where it knows who to reach out to, talk to, and perform all such actions coherently and consistently.

But it also makes it easy to spam shit like this where you just write 5 articles with different sentiment and send it out. It can even be an online system, optimizing headlines for higher "engagement". But engagement is a proxy and I think we need to start actively acknowledging that the metric has been long hacked and at this point abused.

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