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It's Cold in the Information Age

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Re: It's Cold in the Information Age

#101

Post by povertyworld »

AstralStorm wrote: post #95
povertyworld wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When Apple announced ARKit, this culturally geeky (not a tech) coworker of mine scoffed, saying Nintendo had something like that for the DS ages ago. That's exactly how geeks responded to the iPod with the infamous CmdrTaco post ("Lame") as a prime example.

And mobile phones ate the dedicated players. Thus, lame. It was a product of is time with one hit feature of huge space and decent battery life for that. At a significant markup. Does ARKit have a killer feature at all? Even one, compared to competition?

But this is my point. Geeky people have a strong opinion about how much this or that implementation sucks or doesn't suck. No one has a strong opinion about VR platforms, or quantum computing, or drones, or any other next big thing, so that makes AR look like it has half a chance to me.

Re: It's Cold in the Information Age

#102

Post by ajmurmann »

Causality1 wrote: post #18
ajmurmann wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And you haven't even talked about the cable yet...

It does seem inordinately prone to getting filled up with dust or mysteriously smooshed flat when you weren't looking.

My reference was really to the fact that it has the same hidden properties as the port. What days throughout does it support? What charging capabilities does it have? Can't tell by looking at it.

Re: It's Cold in the Information Age

#103

Post by ok_coo »

bni wrote: post #52

"VR is struggling" - linking to Linus Tech Tips video from January nonetheless. Right... Meanwhile Oculus Quest came out, and PCVR has or is about to enter the second gen.

Exactly. I work in web/tech at a museum and I see AR/VR as the next big thing to hit the horizon. The potential is very big, and very cool.

It's not quite there yet, but it's coming soon and once it gets going, it will be as big as the iPhone hitting or greater. It just needs to hit that sweet spot of price, esthetic and functionality.

Re: It's Cold in the Information Age

#104

Post by buboard »

Nasrudith wrote: post #98
buboard wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> the same services and assurances that banks Cryptocurrency is meant to replace currencies and central banks, not banks (retail). Banks are institutions built on top of currencies (there are a lot of companies doing that with cryptos btw).

I'll bite - how the hell could cryptocurrency replace central banks? To me it seems like the same logical flaw of any the Unabomber thinking sending mail bombs could shut down all industrial civilization. It not only doesn't make sense but it has no logical connection. It is less logical than thinking one could conquer the US with an army of bowmen on horseback - it makes no sense given the massive disadvantages but…

https://www.investopedia.com/articles/investing/050715/can-b...

Re: It's Cold in the Information Age

#105

Post by buboard »

DebtDeflation wrote: post #99
buboard wrote: post #51

I love myself some pessimism but tech is not slowing, instead its HN being obsessed with things that don't matter. - VR was a niche from the start, a lot of people were doubtful, and the people that weren't know that it 's not going to work and are already moving on. - javascript frontends are great for programmer fights, but thankfully most of the public-facing web doesnt use them, they 're irrelevant to tech's prog…

>AI hasn't even started AI/ML is actually everywhere already. To the point where most people don't even recognize it as AL/ML. The problem is that it's not the image of AI that has been sold to the public and even the tech generalist community by books like The Singularity and Superintelligence.

we are only seeing some first applications that are market-ready. Most of the research in AI is in things that are not ready to market but they mostly look promising, like AI diagnosis, image / video / sound /animation generation, signal analysis, various unsupervised learning methods etc.

Re: It's Cold in the Information Age

#106

Post by buboard »

luckylion wrote: post #58
buboard wrote: post #51

I love myself some pessimism but tech is not slowing, instead its HN being obsessed with things that don't matter. - VR was a niche from the start, a lot of people were doubtful, and the people that weren't know that it 's not going to work and are already moving on. - javascript frontends are great for programmer fights, but thankfully most of the public-facing web doesnt use them, they 're irrelevant to tech's prog…

I still believe in VR, but driven by porn, not games or productivity. That niche seems to be doing very well and has been a technological driver more than once. Basically everybody that I've talked to that was skeptical and tried it was a believer after they've tried it. When that goes mainstream, you've got a very solid market with lots of consumers. It won't be the $1500 + a high end PC version of VR though.

thats not real VR though, and a high tech headset sounds like an overkill for that. You can place 4 screens around your head for similar and more cofortable effect :)

Re: It's Cold in the Information Age

#107

Post by luckylion »

buboard wrote: post #106
luckylion wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I still believe in VR, but driven by porn, not games or productivity. That niche seems to be doing very well and has been a technological driver more than once. Basically everybody that I've talked to that was skeptical and tried it was a believer after they've tried it. When that goes mainstream, you've got a very solid market with lots of consumers. It won't be the $1500 + a high end PC version of VR though.

thats not real VR though, and a high tech headset sounds like an overkill for that. You can place 4 screens around your head for similar and more cofortable effect :)

Not really, no. Stereo vision is the magic, not just being able to see what's to your left or right.

Re: It's Cold in the Information Age

#108

Post by HeadsUpHigh »

AstralStorm wrote: post #96
oblio wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm pretty sure India also has a positive outlook. And if we remove those countries we're removing half the world's population...

The point is that developed world has stalled. Which is probably true on some measures but we do not know why. There should be slower but incremental improvement as there is room for that still. A plenty of room in fact. Life expectancy is still gaining though and flattening. That is the main variable encompassing almost everything. Including normalized per income is flattening. Income per capita has flattened somewh…

>Life expectancy is still gaining though and flattening. That is the main variable encompassing almost everything.

There are big breakthroughs coming on this front. Look up the work of David Sinclair, aging is a tough nut to crack but not impossible.

Re: It's Cold in the Information Age

#109

Post by zasz »

oblio wrote: post #76
FranzFerdiNaN wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Remove China from the numbers and Pinker and Goslings points pretty much disappear. Both aren’t a secret, they are well known and criticized a lot for their use and abuse of numbers.

I'm pretty sure India also has a positive outlook. And if we remove those countries we're removing half the world's population...

Child malnutrition rates in India are worse than in some parts of sub-Saharan Africa, actually: https://www.deccanherald.com/state/top-karnataka-stories/mal...

Impressive GDP growth aside, persistent malnutrition suggests that for huge chunks of the Indian population (a shocking _seventy_ percent of women are anemic), something's not working. Who cares what GDP growth is? What's it really measuring if people still aren't getting enough to eat?

Re: It's Cold in the Information Age

#110

Post by madhadron »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #80
zerogvt wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"So, why are we doing this?" I think there are a lot of reasons. Market share, control of technology, not invented here syndrome, ego issues, fads, shifting focus on specific set of problems. I personally think that OO proliferation (C++) and Java and enterprise mindset was the point of no return. The mental point where the majority left simplicity and maintainability out of its scope. There was (and still is) an era…

Tangential, but it's interesting how we can't seem to agree who the mythical 10x devs are. > There was (and still is) an era where complexity (and the ability to comprehend it) is a synonym of mental machismo. Simple was left as something that lesser minds/developers had to worry about whilst the 10x devs (another great proliferated myth) which everyone worth his salt should strive to be (so the myth went on), must n…

As far as I know, the 10x developer comes from a throwaway comment in a small sample paper on comparing people's implementation of toy problem. There ends its actual basis in reality.
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