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Loon’s final flight

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Re: Loon’s final flight

#201

Post by jpm_sd »

hooande wrote: post #70
Mistri wrote: post #4

People often make fun of Google/Alphabet for their graveyard of failed initiatives/products. While some of it might be warranted, projects like this—that strive to solve a large, global issue through somewhat charitable actions—are generous and have only increased my respect for the Google/Alphabet/X team. I hope they don't get flamed for this, and hopefully some of their research and donation funds can live on and s…

While this could be considered a noble effort, I wish Alphabet would have tried harder. Google has enormous resources and talent. It seems like they dedicated relatively little to aggressively making Loon happen. When the US took a moon shot, we actually made it to the dann moon. It was very expensive and risky and lives were lost. But we committed ourselves and accomplished the goal no matter what it took. I hope th…

I worked on Loon for about 3 years. We had a team of over 200 people and launched thousands of balloons. Resource constraints were never the issue. In fact I think the lack of constraints contributed to some bad engineering decisions.

The technology worked. It was, in fact, totally possible to build solar-powered, balloon-borne LTE base stations that provided internet access directly to handheld phones.

But in the end, it was just a fundamentally flawed idea. Satellites don't pop and fall out of the sky. Balloons do, frequently.

Re: Loon’s final flight

#202

Post by calebkaiser »

ForHackernews wrote: post #163
antupis wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Brain is doing great and Waymo probably at least hits close.

Is Brain doing great? From a few things people have said, it sounded like Brain was struggling so Google bought Deep Mind instead. All of the really cutting edge AI stuff has come out of Deep Mind, not Brain.

Just to clarify here, Deep Mind in no way replaces Brain. The AI space, like any other space, isn't a single unified landscape. There are areas where Deep Mind is a true standard setter--particularly deep reinforcement learning (AlphaGo, for example)--and areas where Brain has been one of the standard setters--natural language processing springs to mind, where Brain has historically pushed the field forward with projects like word2vec, BERT, and the Transformer architecture generally.

Brain is also a much more general organization. They do things like develop Tensorflow, which is one of two most popular ML frameworks in the world (and until recently was far and away the most popular), and TPUs, which are ML-dedicated ASICs that have a huge impact on training and inference.

Both orgs are world class and historically important, and they certainly overlap, but they aren't replacements for one another.

Re: Loon’s final flight

#203

Post by meibo »

Dylan16807 wrote: post #174
valvar wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They also have maps, gmail, docs, drive, translate, calendar, photos, scholar, and lately Stadia.

Stadia's successful now? How many users do they have?

Cloud gaming is where we're headed, arguably Google might have been a little early - but they probably rather wanted to be too early than too late.

There's already a few players in this space that are well respected like Nvidia, growth is kinda unavoidable and arguably Stadia gives you the best experience since all games are optimized for it, with the trade-off of having to "rebuy" them outside of Steam.

Re: Loon’s final flight

#204

Post by runawaybottle »

DEADBEEFC0FFEE wrote: post #185
runawaybottle wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Google has absolutely no choice but to make Waymo succeed with Apple and Tesla taking the space seriously. It’s not a moonshot, it’s an absolute necessity.

Only if that the market you want to win in. Where's the synergy between Waymo and online ads?

What are you gonna stare at in during robotaxi ride? How about some ads?

Re: Loon’s final flight

#205

Post by Melkman »

shpx wrote: post #188
Tepix wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Pizza-box-sized" was a placeholder. The Starlink antenna ("Dishy") has a diameter of 59cm https://i.imgur.com/ULwOGxs.jpg

That's a 12 inch medium pizza, without the box. An antenna of that size can't be carried by normal people going about their daily lives. More people are willing to buy a phone and a phone plan (Facebook was even willing to subsidize the plan in India with Internet.org) than buying a phone, a phone plan, an antenna and a StarLink plan. That's even more true for people who aren't internet users yet.

Most people will already have a phone and a phone plan but missing coverage in many places. Starlink makes it pretty cheap and easy for network operators to place solar/wind powered cell towers without need to dig wired connections or make microwave chains. That can seriously speed up the rollout to improve coverage. And users don't have to do anything.

Re: Loon’s final flight

#206

Post by cainxinth »

ridaj wrote: post #81

Loons are cute toys that got 100x the deserved media attention vs their actual impact. Actual remote internet connectivity is mostly being addressed through the grungy, mind-numbingly routine job of increasing the coverage of terrestrial networks. The folks doing that unrewarding work should get recognition for actually making a difference in people's lives over the long run.

> Loons are cute toys that got 100x the deserved media attention vs their actual impact.

Then they served their real function: marketing

Re: Loon’s final flight

#207

Post by ptero »

ogre_codes wrote: post #25
Mistri wrote: post #4

People often make fun of Google/Alphabet for their graveyard of failed initiatives/products. While some of it might be warranted, projects like this—that strive to solve a large, global issue through somewhat charitable actions—are generous and have only increased my respect for the Google/Alphabet/X team. I hope they don't get flamed for this, and hopefully some of their research and donation funds can live on and s…

I think the days of Google Moonshots are coming to a close. In general Google hasn't been very good at shooting for the moon. They've lost their leadership and vision and all that's left is a giant advertising behemoth. Did any of their moonshots really hit the mark or even come close?

I think the main problem is they lost the edge on execution. Traditional "vision" is not strictly needed for moonshot projects; the vision for moonshots is provided by a small team working on their idea. But should the technology start panning out, the company needs to focus aggressively on finding a commercial home for this technology.

And this is where I think google (and many big companies) fail. Technologically, Loons worked. I did not believe it when I read about those, but looking at the trajectories in public ADS-B data (those balloons self-advertise) it is clear that they move as designed, doing 2D positioning using only vertical control and can stay afloat for months. Wow! Mission accomplished. But commercially, nothing happened.

I do not know if it was because business types were not sold on it and did not build a commercial case; did the technical team simply live in their own bubble not talking to the outside; something else? But a 10-year "moonshot" project that pans out technologically and fails commercially indicates that the right hand ("internal VC") does not know or care what the left hand (techies) is doing, which is the problem at the company. My 2c.

Re: Loon’s final flight

#208

Post by rrmoelker »

gonehome wrote: post #125
jessriedel wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Loon can (could) handle normal LTE mobile phones. Starlink requires a phased array antenna the size of a pizza box which, to my understanding, cannot be fully miniaturized. That's not to say they aren't somewhat competing against each other, but Starlink doesn't strictly dominate as you imply.

I honestly think SpaceX could give those away in developing areas if they had to. But yes, you’re right that being able to use LTE and existing phone radios was a point in loon’s favor.

Let's hope so. Though the price might be a hurdle.

The price per base station is quite high right now. Estimates range from $500 - $2500 (based on teardown)[1].

1 https://www.reddit.com/r/spacex/comments/kwkep4/tsp_181_star...

Re: Loon’s final flight

#209

Post by mFixman »

Dylan16807 wrote: post #159
sgt101 wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We don't have the technology to get a person to Mars or to land them when they get there. We probably have the technology to build a spaceship that they could die in on the way there - but that's the closest that we realistically have.

Surviving on the way to Mars isn't a huge leap in difficulty over a space station, and we have those on lock.

It's much harder if you include the return trip.

Re: Loon’s final flight

#210

Post by bergstromm466 »

ogre_codes wrote: post #25
Mistri wrote: post #4

People often make fun of Google/Alphabet for their graveyard of failed initiatives/products. While some of it might be warranted, projects like this—that strive to solve a large, global issue through somewhat charitable actions—are generous and have only increased my respect for the Google/Alphabet/X team. I hope they don't get flamed for this, and hopefully some of their research and donation funds can live on and s…

I think the days of Google Moonshots are coming to a close. In general Google hasn't been very good at shooting for the moon. They've lost their leadership and vision and all that's left is a giant advertising behemoth. Did any of their moonshots really hit the mark or even come close?

> all that's left is a giant advertising behemoth

Was there really ever anything more?

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