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The futures of Facebook and Google are embedded in these two images

robinsloan.com

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Re: The futures of Facebook and Google are embedded in these two images

#201

Post by clarky07 »

vibrunazo wrote: post #93
robinsloan wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Author here: I'm with you. The steady success of the self-driving cars has made me take some of these other projects much, much more seriously. Maybe it's simply the Thrun factor?

> Maybe it's simply the Thrun factor? That man's track record of amazing projects is really jaw dropping. Self driving cars, udacity and glass? I want a planet with more people like that in it.

We have one. Sadly half of them are working at Facebook trying to figure out how to make people click on more ads. The other half are working in the non research part of google trying to figure out how to make people click on more ads.

Re: The futures of Facebook and Google are embedded in these two images

#202

Post by jrockway »

pstuart wrote: post #200
jrockway wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Indeed. The iPod was just a worse Nomad. (I already posted CmdrTaco's iconic summary in another comment in this article, so I will avoid it here.) But nobody bought Nomad, and everyone bought an iPod. Why? Because Apple told people to buy an iPod, and people tend to do what they're told.

Ah, so the reason the ipod is successful is: "Because Apple told people to buy an iPod, and people tend to do what they're told".

Yes, you've restated my comment successfully.

Re: The futures of Facebook and Google are embedded in these two images

#203

Post by eru »

clarky07 wrote: post #201
vibrunazo wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Maybe it's simply the Thrun factor? That man's track record of amazing projects is really jaw dropping. Self driving cars, udacity and glass? I want a planet with more people like that in it.

We have one. Sadly half of them are working at Facebook trying to figure out how to make people click on more ads. The other half are working in the non research part of google trying to figure out how to make people click on more ads.

You forgot Goldman Sachs.

Re: The futures of Facebook and Google are embedded in these two images

#204

Post by eru »

jerf wrote: post #175
grandalf wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A camera that takes images comparable to a picture taken on a current iPhone? For every frame (such as in a video) the amount of work involved to reduce boredom increases. Raw video of people's lives is utterly, unimaginably boring, even if the person is a celebrity. Still photos work b/c they capture a whole moment, with just enough detail to inspire the imagination and to ground the imaginings in reality. My person…

"A camera that takes images comparable to a picture taken on a current iPhone?" I will be intrigued to see what pops out when this really becomes a priority. You may not be able to stick a single small camera in a glasses frame and get anywhere, but what about having 4 or 8 relatively cheap cameras and some image processing? With the cameras tuned to the needs of the image processing. Perhaps not even 4 or 8 identica…

You might be interested in compressive sensing.

Re: The futures of Facebook and Google are embedded in these two images

#205

Post by h84ru3a »

Google is really good at seamlessly integrating the companies they acquire to give the appearance to users that Google develops much more than they actually do. The Google brand becomes synonymous with development that they actually did not themselves do.

Re: The futures of Facebook and Google are embedded in these two images

#206

Post by AJ007 »

ajross wrote: post #42
51Cards wrote: post #33

"Google is getting good, really good, at building things that see the world around them and actually understand what they’re seeing." That statement spells it for me. With Google I see research, I see pushing tech boundaries and hardware experiments, I see new ways to interpret the world. With Facebook I see a huge lump of data but nothing really too groundbreaking. I don't deny Facebook's momentum... it's huge and i…

There's a lot of truth to this (though I'm generally a big skeptic when people talk about "research" in the abstract; and I remain genunienly "WTF are they thinking!?" about Glass). Google tries stuff, fails a lot, and stumbles on as many successes as they engineer. Facebook has executed really well on their core stuff, but... what else? I mean, they've been on a huge hiring binge now for four years. What do they hav…

For a long time we heard the same thing about Google - they have a search engine that makes a lot of money with PPC ads, but what else?

Facebook's time will come. The IPO money could make that happen sooner rather than later (if they don't blow it buying mobile apps.)

Re: The futures of Facebook and Google are embedded in these two images

#208

Post by aptwebapps »

zitterbewegung wrote: post #193
StavrosK wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Google isn't a search company, it's an AI/ML company.

Google is currently an Ad company that drives you to those ads using AI/ML.

And someday soon they may literally drive you to their advertisers using AI/ML ...

Re: The futures of Facebook and Google are embedded in these two images

#209

Post by gcb »

dandelany wrote: post #91
gcb wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

1. i don't believe in paying third party charity 2. you think all that for the same reason I also think all that: Wishful thinking... but deep inside i can see the truth. we are the hippies-yuppies who will buy it :) put yourself on the shoes of people hearing about the newton back then: handwriting recognition!! how wouldn't want that instead of a 3x4 phone keyboard? Turned out 99.9% prefered T9. it's all the same.…

So wait, you're morally against giving money to a charity but you're perfectly okay with betting his charity against your free money? Honestly curious. Also - implementation and day-to-day use don't have to be perfect for it to be a game-changer/overnight success/cultural icon. As evidenced by... Well, pretty much every piece of successful consumer electronics ever made that has gone through multiple generations/revi…

yes, I AM against. but if he wins the bet, my money goes to it since for me to lose means he won. as it seems to be what he's into.

and yes. they work like that. the discussion is if it will happen in 1 year as he says or in 10-15 years as history says.

see what i did there? i put my words as valid as "history". hah. clever.

Re: The futures of Facebook and Google are embedded in these two images

#210

Post by jrockway »

jes5199 wrote: post #104
toemetoch wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Odd that you'd state that. My flickr-feed is dwindling because photographers are moving to Google+ for picasa's quality service.

really? I post photographs on G+ entirely out of network effects - that's the site that my friends check reliably. Flickr is like a black hole, now, socially. But the Flickr user experience is still nice compared to G+'s clunky too-much-javascript.

The only complaint I have about G+ photos is that it emphasizes albums instead of individual photos. If I want to share a single image, I have to create an album for it, and then have that album-containing-a-single-picture hanging around forever. I find it much easier to "scp photo.png jrock.us:/var/www/jrock.us" and host it myself.
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