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Project Tango

google.com

271–280 of 353 posts

Re: Project Tango

#271
post #165
post #53

"Imagine measuring your room by just walking around in it." Yes, and imagine transmitting each of those footsteps in real time back to Google, so they can have a map of your room, too, in case they, or other parties, ever need it. I was just having a discussion yesterday with a friend who works at Google about what data they store when you query their search engine. Every single keystroke, including backspaces, is st…

Good god I am so sick of reading comments like this. This view of the world is just lazy . Almost as lazy as "remember, if you're using a service for free, you're not the customer, YOU'RE THE PRODUCT!", which seems to get parroted every single time there is any discussion related to google, facebook, microsoft, instagram, twitter, or any other web company that uses ads as a revenue model. Yes, google can know what yo…

> This view of the world is just lazy.

I wouldn't even say laziness as much as simple-mindedness. Apparently there are a decent amt of people (at least on HN) that actually read stuff like this and the word Google/Facebook/Yahoo/what-have-you is the only thing their brain apparently pulls out of the content. It's staggering in its vacuousness, but I wouldn't go so far as to blame them for being lazy.

Re: Project Tango

#273
post #53

"Imagine measuring your room by just walking around in it." Yes, and imagine transmitting each of those footsteps in real time back to Google, so they can have a map of your room, too, in case they, or other parties, ever need it. I was just having a discussion yesterday with a friend who works at Google about what data they store when you query their search engine. Every single keystroke, including backspaces, is st…

So it sounds like Google will soon be able to pop up a warning saying I should go for a medical checkup because they've detected an increase in left-hand errors that often occurs prior to a stroke. And this is without Tango - that will yield far more data about our physical well-being. Every advance humanity makes can be used for good or evil. On the whole, we tend to find more good than evil in most of them, and may…

Like this: https://www.aclu.org/technology-and-liberty/ordering-pizza-2...

Re: Project Tango

#274

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wow, this is an amazing application. I love olympic weightlifting, and seeing somebody build a training aide using computer vision in an app makes me feel like living in the future. What a nice contribution to this beautiful sport.

This may be nice for certain niche users. But the trend I see is companies telling us to regularly buy stuff we really don't need (and obviously throw away our "old" solutions). The world has way more pressing issues than yet-another-gadget. And the planet's resources are not unlimited.

You're right that the science and practice of morality hasn't moved that much over the past 50 years while the science of technology has jumped by orders of magnitude, and that this is a problem that needs addressing. That doesn't mean we should stop evolving the state of the art in technology though. This is not an either/or situation. Ethical science relies on the advancement of technology, and vice versa.

Re: Project Tango

#275

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There isn't any coercion going on with any of the things we're talking about. Every technology product has at least the choice to not use it. But that's exactly the problem: many of the modern technologies that pose potential risks to privacy don't in practice provide an opt-out for the people whose privacy they might infringe. Sometimes, you do have a choice. However, if you don't know about it or understand the imp…

> despite a seemingly endless stream of failures resulting in serious adverse consequences for individuals whose privacy wasn't adequately protected. Such as? Typically it seems that things become a scandal based on hypothetical harm rather than actual harm.

Please reread my penultimate paragraph. That is nothing hypothetical about any of those scenarios, and they have resulted in widespread complaints when discovered.

Re: Project Tango

#276
post #270

Earlier quoted context omitted.

that's silly, people at Google don't have access to your data, and even if they did, they would not have your name attached on

Just in case you're not joking: Yes, of course they have access to my data, and unless I delete all Google cookies, sign out from all Google services (gmail, youtube, etc.) and possibly reboot my browser before making a Google query, they add every keystroke of that query to everything they've read in my email, every youtube video I've watched, my contacts and my contacts' contacts (pointing back at me), driving endp…

I think you're misunderstanding what he means. He's saying that Google employees don't have access to that kind of information (due to access controls, logging of access, etc), likely in response to your "would you be uncomfortable with your friends collecting arbitrary amounts of data from you" question.

I'm not saying that his comment was a sound rebuttal to yours or anything; just noting that he was talking in the context of "your friends, neighbors and former coworkers" accessing your data and you're talking about "Google" accessing your data, and those are potentially very different things.

Re: Project Tango

#277
post #237

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This has applications even for, uh, "normal" people. For example, online real estate portals. People who are house-hunting would probably appreciate floorplans or a 3D tour. Agents, landlords or property developers would be able to easily create those with their mobile device.

>Agents, landlords or property developers would be able to easily create those with their mobile device But they won't! It is very difficult to get those people to post more than a low res picture of one room online when they can very easily walk through the house with a video camera, for example. Even large apartment complexes have 1-2 pictures on their website and call it a day.

I used to work for one of the largest real estate portals in Europe, and people seldom watched the video of a property (if available). We also added floorplans from floorplanner.com and that converted way better. Now 25% of the listed properties has one.

Re: Project Tango

#278
post #184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't understand the application beyond gaming. The other applications discussed are basically shopping. Essentially this would make it much easier to represent the physical world digitally. But what use cases does a consumer or the average phone user have for digital representations of the physical space around them, particularly given that the user is already aware of the the physical space around them? How can t…

Any mechanical engineer who's had to take a 3D object and model it in CAD will love this. I've been toying with the idea of such software in a phone for a while but never bothered exploring it because I lack the technical chops. There's a piece of software I've previously used called PhotoModeller [1] that allows you to calibrate a standard digital P&S camera then use a bunch of shots of the scene from various angles…

Try this: http://seene.co/

It does just that and even let's you post the scenes.

Re: Project Tango

#279

I wish I could go back to the time when I thought this kind of thing was awesome. Nowadays, it's just one more aspect of our private lives that'll be stored on Google's (or whomever) servers, sold to advertisers, harvested by the NSA, and abused by law enforcement. Add some object recognition to the 3D scanning, and you can start getting marketing messages about how much better [Featured Brand]'s refrigerator would s…

I think this probably speaks to some paranoid tendencies more than it does to the environment that Tango exists in.

Re: Project Tango

#280
post #53

"Imagine measuring your room by just walking around in it." Yes, and imagine transmitting each of those footsteps in real time back to Google, so they can have a map of your room, too, in case they, or other parties, ever need it. I was just having a discussion yesterday with a friend who works at Google about what data they store when you query their search engine. Every single keystroke, including backspaces, is st…

We should stop using Google products that case.
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