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Big tech products are mostly useless

theguardian.com

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Re: Big tech products are mostly useless

#121

Post by ribchinski »

pavel_lishin wrote: post #105
ribchinski wrote: post #13

Well... I don't particularly agree with everything this guy is saying, but he is right about the internet of things. In my experience, it is quite useless, and it is a danger to privacy. One of the my friends constantly uses Amazon Alexa and Siri for even the most basic questions like, "What is x + y?" which could be easily done faster on a desk calculator. Either I am a person who likes to make things more inconveni…

> "What is x + y?" which could be easily done faster on a desk calculator. Yes, assuming you're already sitting at your desk, with your desk calculator in hand. Also, this might be a generational gap issue here, but desk calculator? Not smartphone? (And if I'm at my desk, my goto is usually "ipython x+y " anyway.)

Okay, sorry man. Due to me being a huge computer geek, I refer to most calculators as. "desk calculators," due to my experience with old technology and Unix software. Let's just say that I am part of the earliest Gen Z's. (I came from a second world country, so, maybe that's why I have more experience with older tech.)

Re: Big tech products are mostly useless

#122

Post by ribchinski »

IshKebab wrote: post #54
ribchinski wrote: post #13

Well... I don't particularly agree with everything this guy is saying, but he is right about the internet of things. In my experience, it is quite useless, and it is a danger to privacy. One of the my friends constantly uses Amazon Alexa and Siri for even the most basic questions like, "What is x + y?" which could be easily done faster on a desk calculator. Either I am a person who likes to make things more inconveni…

> "What is x + y?" which could be easily done faster on a desk calculator. I seriously doubt that even if we still lived in a world where normal people actually owned calculators. This is just "No wireless. Less space than a nomad." again.

You'd be surprised, people still own calculators! Also, please, don't call me a nomad. As a programmer, I always have a binary and scientific calculator at hand.

And just because I don't particularly enjoy IOT of Wireless Headphones, does not mean that I am a nomad, mate!

Re: Big tech products are mostly useless

#123

Post by pavel_lishin »

ribchinski wrote: post #121
pavel_lishin wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "What is x + y?" which could be easily done faster on a desk calculator. Yes, assuming you're already sitting at your desk, with your desk calculator in hand. Also, this might be a generational gap issue here, but desk calculator? Not smartphone? (And if I'm at my desk, my goto is usually "ipython x+y " anyway.)

Okay, sorry man. Due to me being a huge computer geek, I refer to most calculators as. "desk calculators," due to my experience with old technology and Unix software. Let's just say that I am part of the earliest Gen Z's. (I came from a second world country, so, maybe that's why I have more experience with older tech.)

Sorry, my point wasn't to call you out - but it's unequivocally faster to call out "Hey Dingbat, what's 7 + 17" than it is to pull out a device, unless that device is already unlocked and in your hand.

(Also, howdy fellow second-world country person! Pretty nice to meet someone who knows the term :P)

Re: Big tech products are mostly useless

#124

Post by kei929 »

philipodonnell wrote: post #11

The comments here seem to focus on the specific examples, but this misses the point of the article, which I take to be that _every_ new product or feature, no matter how minor or how incremental, is treated as the second coming of the 100x engineer and the cheering crowds hand-picked to promote whatever they see aren't helping by covering it rabidly. He's not wrong, but I've heard that complaint about the tech press…

Look at all the hours we get to spend on making voice apps that make phone calls when both sides having access to quickly update the ledger is already a thing: calendars

So instead of debating solutions to local needs with neighbors, we fetishize juicing Googles stock price and enabling them to build things that mathematicians already figured out the theory and limits to years ago

This is nonsense.

It’s one thing to theorize the Higgs and build an LHC

It’s another to build chat bots with our time so we can avoid menial scheduling.

Feed people misdirection about how the economy needs this cause we’re all too dumb to figure out our own lives (translation: elites lose power if we do that) and you keep getting these stupid generational pyramid schemes: we buy in now on some vague promise of a future payout we’ll not be around to collect on

Corporate is the church now. Love it or be ostricized.

Re: Big tech products are mostly useless

#125

Post by tim333 »

He cites social media as "These things have changed the world" and rubbishes Google Duplex. But back when they started Twitter and the like seemed a bit of a joke but increased in scope. And AI like Duplex will do so too. The fact that AI is a bit rubbish in some ways just now doesn't mean it won't change the world shortly.

Re: Big tech products are mostly useless

#126

Post by tim333 »

philipodonnell wrote: post #11

The comments here seem to focus on the specific examples, but this misses the point of the article, which I take to be that _every_ new product or feature, no matter how minor or how incremental, is treated as the second coming of the 100x engineer and the cheering crowds hand-picked to promote whatever they see aren't helping by covering it rabidly. He's not wrong, but I've heard that complaint about the tech press…

If his point is that "_every_ new product or feature, no matter how minor or how incremental, is treated as the second coming" then he's picked a bad example in Google Duplex in that it does seem noteable - the HN coverage was the second highest voted and most commented story this month (1875 points, 750 comments). It's not that booking hairdresser is a big deal - it's not. It's that it seems kind of half way between Siri and passing the Turing test which is a big deal.

Re: Big tech products are mostly useless

#127

Post by y_tho »

Balgair wrote: post #104
Zak wrote: post #47

Now, when was the last time you came to book a haircut or restaurant table and concluded that the task was so onerous that you would ideally delegate it to a machine? And even if you can easily think of a scenario, would there not be something ethically questionable about doing so, if the person at the other end had no idea who or what they were talking to? I hate talking on the phone. If I can't fill out a web form…

Hmm, different strokes - different folks. I actually like to talk to people on the phone. Maybe I need to get out more, but when you can get to a real human, the issues at hand tend to get easier to deal with. Phone trees are a nightmare for me, and I just spam 0 until I get someone (typically works alright, but not always). The trick, I have found, is to treat the other person on the line, as well, a real person. Wh…

Now the companies are gonna have to dial 0 for a human.

(Imagine a shopkeeper with a thick scottish accent). "We've got an opening for 4pm wednesday." "I'm sorry, I could not understand you. Please repeat that."

Re: Big tech products are mostly useless

#128

Post by Trundle »

philipodonnell wrote: post #11

The comments here seem to focus on the specific examples, but this misses the point of the article, which I take to be that _every_ new product or feature, no matter how minor or how incremental, is treated as the second coming of the 100x engineer and the cheering crowds hand-picked to promote whatever they see aren't helping by covering it rabidly. He's not wrong, but I've heard that complaint about the tech press…

Claques are nothing new. People have been rigging crowds for a very long time. It certainly doesn't seem newsworthy to me that tech is doing it.

Re: Big tech products are mostly useless

#130

Post by hawski »

acdha wrote: post #101
arca_vorago wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not surprised since the day I got into an argument with the guardians senior tech editor and he tried to argue Foss didn't matter and Linux was a fanboy fad... The senior editor...

If you're a software developer that's certainly a valid gripe but what if you're part of the 99.999% of people who use computers but don't run servers? Linux doesn't run your desktop or iOS devices and if Google swapped the kernel on Android the users wouldn't notice.

It might be true in case of the Linux kernel, but I think that most software that one is using is made of many many FOSS libraries. Imagine that all libraries and compilers are either from the OS vendor or proprietary. We would see much less software. People may not run servers, but they are surely using the software running on them - same thing applies. Android has much more FOSS than only kernel, and I'm not talking about AOSP.

Chrome, Safari, OS X, Firefox are standing upon millions of lines of open source code.

Now FOSS is at least a crankshaft of software world. Even if that would be all there is to it, you couldn't say that it doesn't matter.

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