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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

#51

Post by criddell »

RealityVoid wrote: post #47

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.

> it is not a given that Vision Pro will be a hit

I'd love to know internally what Apple and Meta would call a hit. Meta has shipped something like 25 million headsets now. That sounds like a hit to me. That's on the same scale as the Atari 2600.

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

#52

Post by sneed_chucker »

infecto wrote: post #35
jug wrote: post #6

> The metaverse division has now lost more than $42 billion since the end of 2020 I can't help but think of how this cash could have been spent on something that benefited everyone (in the dire covid/postcovid years no less) rather than the world's most expensive trial on whether people would rather meet in a MMO world than with their web cameras in a meeting app. Makes Star Citizen's $0.7B crowdfunding look cheap.

I really dislike this view of the world. Maybe VR is a folly but the innovation we have gotten in this world has come from “burning money”, sometimes it does not work out. I also how simple we like to make the argument. How we could have instead spent money that “benefited everyone”. Who decides that? I don’t think governments, nonprofits, or other gatherings of people do a better job and probably are actually much w…

Right. GPU tech came about because people wanted to render cool pictures on a computer screen or make 3D games playable on commodity hardware.

Now there are data centers full of them.

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

#53

Post by brucethemoose2 »

godelski wrote: post #50
brucethemoose2 wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 p…

> 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.

It will not be, as long as it is the internet gatekeepers' livlihood.

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

#54

Post by phatfish »

leetharris wrote: post #43
xaellison wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 glas…

Unfortunately change the world will likely mean zombifying most of the population with social media streams. At least with a phone even the most addicted have to put it down sometimes when they need to use both hands.

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

#55

Post by boristsr »

refulgentis wrote: post #44
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 consist…

I don't think that's a completely fair point. People don't read a news article to learn a single fact. They read a news article to put those facts in perspective and context.

The complaints of this thread is that there are very conflicting facts and they don't feel the article (and other articles) is giving a fair representation of the overall picture, and rather feels like it's pandering to people who want to hear it framed in a particular way.

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

#56

Post by refulgentis »

boristsr wrote: post #55
refulgentis wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 consist…

I don't think that's a completely fair point. People don't read a news article to learn a single fact. They read a news article to put those facts in perspective and context. The complaints of this thread is that there are very conflicting facts and they don't feel the article (and other articles) is giving a fair representation of the overall picture, and rather feels like it's pandering to people who want to hear i…

There's ~0 explication of why they feel this way after reading the text, other than musing about manipulation, and the text cited isn't editorialized. [^1]

I think it's charitable, but unwarranted, to claim they're implying they'd like more editorialization and a quick winner/losers narrative. They seem to indicate negative feelings towards that.

It does seem as simple as they see 2 headlines and 2 stock symbols in some kind of tension that implies editorialization and an unsustainable situation for everyone.

[^1] It's not FACEBOOK VR SHOCKER: LOSERS TAKE $5 BIL LOSS WHILE APPLE RELEASES VISION PRO TO UNIVERSAL ACCLAIM! (fb up 20% apple down 8%)

It's 4 separate things, without value judgements implied or attached. (literally 2 stock ticker symbols, and these 2 headlines detached from eachother: FB lost $5B in Mixed Reality division in last fiscal year, Apple Vision Pro released today).

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

#57

Post by boeingUH60 »

dpflan wrote: post #4
dpflan wrote: post #2

What is the breakdown for how this money is being used/spent? Understandably AR/VR is costly (hardware, software, etc), but I am wondering what percentage of this money is going to the AI research that can certainly help AR/VR but also be used in other contexts (as in the research allocated to AR/VR can be multi-purpose and not really a pure loss).

Actually, is Meta strategically using this for loss write-offs/tax evasion/tricky balance sheet mechanics/financial engineering? -- EDIT -- Thank you tomxor for entertaining a possible answer.

Spoken like the average armchair accountant.

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

#58

Post by boeingUH60 »

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

The US government already has enough money for these things. They refuse to do it because the citizenry isn’t in support..

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

#59

Post by geor9e »

They lost $42 billion on Oculus 3/Pro research. My brain cannot process these numbers. I do not see how it's possible. It's as if a football stadium of fans each had a suitcase of a million dollars and all threw it onto the field, then they torched it all with gasoline. They burned a million dollars, then burned another million dollars, then repeated that a thousand more times. Then this entire story repeated, 42 times. Nope, brain still isn't wrapping around it. I know how many useless product managers a big tech company can have wandering around making tiktoks, but that still doesn't explain the scale.

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

#60

Post by slimrec77 »

quest88 wrote: post #15
jug wrote: post #6

> The metaverse division has now lost more than $42 billion since the end of 2020 I can't help but think of how this cash could have been spent on something that benefited everyone (in the dire covid/postcovid years no less) rather than the world's most expensive trial on whether people would rather meet in a MMO world than with their web cameras in a meeting app. Makes Star Citizen's $0.7B crowdfunding look cheap.

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.

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