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Background Features in Google Meet, Powered by Web ML

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Re: Background Features in Google Meet, Powered by Web ML

#131

Post by josalhor »

nostromo wrote: post #54

I wish my coworkers would stop using background blur. It sucks and it’s distracting. Your hair and hands pop in and out of blur. Sometimes part of your face will blur. I don’t care if your workspace is messy or your kid walks in the room. I do care that we’re all being distracted by your weirdly blurred hair and hands.

I find background blur even more distracting than background replacement. It's like my mind tries to picture the person that I am seeing in a particular environment and blur makes that process messy.

But that's not always true tho, I have seen background replacement all over people's face (and yes, I seem to be the only one who thinks that's wrong).

Re: Background Features in Google Meet, Powered by Web ML

#132

Post by josalhor »

janekm wrote: post #128
nostromo wrote: post #54

I wish my coworkers would stop using background blur. It sucks and it’s distracting. Your hair and hands pop in and out of blur. Sometimes part of your face will blur. I don’t care if your workspace is messy or your kid walks in the room. I do care that we’re all being distracted by your weirdly blurred hair and hands.

Your co-workers have a reasonable expectation of privacy regarding their home life and family members. Given that many had to start WfH with short notice meaning they couldn't relocate to circumstances enabling a dedicated home office space blurry hair and hands are a very reasonable compromise.

> Your co-workers have a reasonable expectation of privacy regarding their home life and family members.

I think you are overthinking it. I've seen people use it when it provides no real material benefit other than the placebo effect on the user to believe that the blur makes other people focus on their face.

Re: Background Features in Google Meet, Powered by Web ML

#133

Post by amf12 »

mr_mitm wrote: post #98
izacus wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the main benefit is not having to install a desktop app of questionable quality just to make a call.

You can use Zoom in the browser. They "just" discourage it by using a dark pattern. The link for the web client is small and gray and the browser tries to open the desktop app automatically. You can also join by phone, at least in some circumstances.

> You can use Zoom in the browser.

You can't change the layout in browser though.

Re: Background Features in Google Meet, Powered by Web ML

#134

Post by adwww »

mhh__ wrote: post #122
adwww wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a developer I'm a huge fan of Google Cloud. But I'd actually think really hard about chosing them if I started by own business, as the customer service is both expensive and woeful.

That and it's google, will [insert service here] exist in 10 years time?

That's very true. Although so far no GCP services that I've come across have been deprecated.

Re: Background Features in Google Meet, Powered by Web ML

#135

Post by raverbashing »

helpfulgoogler wrote: post #43
neilpanchal wrote: post #32

Aside: Imagine you’re driving down the road and you need to make a right turn. Well, for some reason the steering wheel is stowed away and disappeared! You need to hover your hand around the center console in a specific area to be able to expose it. Out comes the steering wheel and now you can make a right turn. Google UX/UI team: Please fucking make the mute/unmute button visible at all times.

Not what you asked for, but you can mute/unmute quickly with the keyboard shortcut: ⌘/Ctrl + d

Zoom at least uses Cmd+Shift-A for Audio and V for Video

But as the recent Google Icon kerfuffle, UI/UX is not their strength (probably because of opinionated technical people that think you need to A/B shades of blue)

Re: Background Features in Google Meet, Powered by Web ML

#136

Post by amf12 »

neilpanchal wrote: post #32

Aside: Imagine you’re driving down the road and you need to make a right turn. Well, for some reason the steering wheel is stowed away and disappeared! You need to hover your hand around the center console in a specific area to be able to expose it. Out comes the steering wheel and now you can make a right turn. Google UX/UI team: Please fucking make the mute/unmute button visible at all times.

When did you recently use Meet? I just used it yesterday with a gaming session with friends and the console for the mute / unmute was visible at all times. I even just tried it right now.

Re: Background Features in Google Meet, Powered by Web ML

#137

Post by amf12 »

hota_mazi wrote: post #47

Google finally catching up to where Zoom was two years ago. Can we get a mute button visible at all times before 2024?

> Can we get a mute button visible at all times before 2024?

Is it just me or is the button visible at all times? I could see the button visible on the bottom of the screen at all times I used meet during a session with friends. I even tried it right now to make sure.

Re: Background Features in Google Meet, Powered by Web ML

#138

Post by hoseja »

systemvoltage wrote: post #44
neilpanchal wrote: post #32

Aside: Imagine you’re driving down the road and you need to make a right turn. Well, for some reason the steering wheel is stowed away and disappeared! You need to hover your hand around the center console in a specific area to be able to expose it. Out comes the steering wheel and now you can make a right turn. Google UX/UI team: Please fucking make the mute/unmute button visible at all times.

Isn't this sort of a Fizz Buzz for a UX/UI design professional? I don't mean to demean anyone, but I see this sort of a thing literally everywhere. Hiding important and absolutely crucial information (that can make or break your product) in the name of minimalism. Coming out of a company that has one of the highest hiring bars for software engineering, and yet, their products have such an awful UX/UI. This isn't an e…

It's the absolute disdain for the user, the aim for lowest possible common denominator.

Re: Background Features in Google Meet, Powered by Web ML

#139

Post by mcv »

systemvoltage wrote: post #44
neilpanchal wrote: post #32

Aside: Imagine you’re driving down the road and you need to make a right turn. Well, for some reason the steering wheel is stowed away and disappeared! You need to hover your hand around the center console in a specific area to be able to expose it. Out comes the steering wheel and now you can make a right turn. Google UX/UI team: Please fucking make the mute/unmute button visible at all times.

Isn't this sort of a Fizz Buzz for a UX/UI design professional? I don't mean to demean anyone, but I see this sort of a thing literally everywhere. Hiding important and absolutely crucial information (that can make or break your product) in the name of minimalism. Coming out of a company that has one of the highest hiring bars for software engineering, and yet, their products have such an awful UX/UI. This isn't an e…

Exactly. Everybody does this. In anything using video, UI elements apparently need to be hidden as much as possible. In virtual meetings, Youtube, and it's often an option in games.

And sometimes it's great, because you get to focus on the content, and sometimes it's not, because you lose control. It's something that should be optional or configurable. It's great to have shortcuts for the most common commands (like space for pause in youtube), and I guess it would make a lot of sense if video conferencing tools also had such a shortcut for mute/unmute.

But again, give people more control over their UI. There are too many applications that mess this up one way or another.

Re: Background Features in Google Meet, Powered by Web ML

#140

Post by virgilp »

sillysaurusx wrote: post #45
virgilp wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's never going to be a `ML.isCat(image)`, just like there isn't a `Math.solveProblem(hypothesis)`. Yes you do have `Math.abs` and you're going to have stuff `model.fit()` and `layers.dense()` - but something like `ML.isCat` is too specific to be used in a library

Disagree. In the future, that'll be `npm install ml-cat` followed by `MLCat = require('ml-cat'); MLCat.isCat(image)` It might not be npm, but something like that is probably inevitable. The reason it seems so unlikely is because the tooling isn't there yet. No one even agrees how ML code should look, let alone how libs should be distributed to end users. But I saw the transformation for JS in 2008.

the range of problems you can solve with ML/AI is simply too wide for there to be fully-canned solutions for everything. Sure, there will be canned solutions for _some_ things - maybe even for cat detection, because it's fun so why not.

But, a library that uses AI to optimize the production of your business' flux capacitors? Ain't gonna happen, you need to build that yourself. To have a library/product that solves problems using AI, you need a "language" to describe the problem (like you can e.g. use SQL to describe any data query you may have). But describing problems is notoriously hard - accurately & precisely describing the problem is very often just as hard as solving it.

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