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Another Round of Layoffs at Meta

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Re: Another Round of Layoffs at Meta

#221
post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> for example, sitting on the bus with it You'd use an $800 device (with limited awareness of your surroundings) on the bus?

People use their 1200 dollar / euro phones on the bus and in the street at night all the time. Not sure what you're suggesting specifically about public transport - but I would never wear a visually occluding headset on a bus in Ireland. But I would wear it on a coach here, or on a bus in Germany, which has a much safer public culture. Providing it had a small form factor, was relatively discrete etc.

a phone is small, can be easily put away, and can be used while doing other things with limited or no loss of basic spatial awareness; it's not hard to look up from a phone, or put it away.

and it's not just the crime angle, it's things like not missing your stop or being aware of the people moving around you so that you're not a nuisance.

Re: Another Round of Layoffs at Meta

#222

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe if Facebook was building their own Roblox or similar people might get behind that. It seems to be all in on VR though.

Facebook is incapable of building their own Roblox: even their ultra-sanitised always-smiling Horizon Worlds gets piled on by the media with dramatic accusations of VR bullying and VR harassment. Imagine the kind of pearl clutching you would find in The Guardian if Zuck built something closer to VR Chat or Roblox.

Club Penguin, but 3d

Re: Another Round of Layoffs at Meta

#223

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Meta is lame company that’s never had a good product or an original idea. The React framework is a pretty good product that originated from them.

Sure but react isn’t a monetizable product.

Perhaps then, their best product, and one that will survive their inevitable collapse

Re: Another Round of Layoffs at Meta

#224
post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People use their 1200 dollar / euro phones on the bus and in the street at night all the time. Not sure what you're suggesting specifically about public transport - but I would never wear a visually occluding headset on a bus in Ireland. But I would wear it on a coach here, or on a bus in Germany, which has a much safer public culture. Providing it had a small form factor, was relatively discrete etc.

a phone is small, can be easily put away, and can be used while doing other things with limited or no loss of basic spatial awareness; it's not hard to look up from a phone, or put it away. and it's not just the crime angle, it's things like not missing your stop or being aware of the people moving around you so that you're not a nuisance.

I agree with you based on current hardware, but past the tipping point literally everything you say works in favor of using VR with pass through (let's call it MR). These are all in fact the sorts of reasons why I see it as inevitable that this tech will become ubuiquitous, it's only a question of timing.

Re: Another Round of Layoffs at Meta

#225

Earlier quoted context omitted.

New grads have lost their minds. It is really sad to see the state of affairs. When we were coming out we used to shun large companies. Now they are joining large companies. Sad!

New grads joining large companies isn't anything new, nor is it "Sad!".

They are also using Electron apps. No wonder we are in a recession.

Re: Another Round of Layoffs at Meta

#226
post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the tipping point is closer than you may realise. There has been material progress in form factors in the last year or so and we are not nearly done with the improvements that are on the radar. Once we hit a certain point with the form factor, quite a wide range of use cases will become a no-brainer (for example, sitting on the bus with it).

> for example, sitting on the bus with it You'd use an $800 device (with limited awareness of your surroundings) on the bus?

I've used my new iPhone on a beaten down bus running between Mysuru and Bengaluru. I'll be fine.

Re: Another Round of Layoffs at Meta

#227
post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Building a widespread surveillance society and a centralized trove of user profile data, in a jurisdiction known for disregarding human rights to privacy (see FAA702 et c) and committing genocide when it suits their ends. Building such a machine (Instagram, FB, WhatsApp, etc) poses a grave danger to a free society if misused, but Meta will not be the ones directly harmed when the databases they built are misused in b…

I would add the greatly adverse effect on mental health, especially for young people. Here probably Instagram is the worst offender but they just ignore it even though there is concrete data proving the point.

No they don’t “just ignore it”. The studies that show this harm comes from Meta research themselves.

Re: Another Round of Layoffs at Meta

#228

I would not invest in Meta's metaverse future. It feels like Windows Mobile. Meta has the early start, money, captive audience and enthusiasm, but they don't have the hardware/software edge (that Apple coincidentally also has this time around) to really make the idea work. The headsets are not going to revolutionize much running Facebook games on budget Qualcomm SoCs, and Facebook cant buy an Unreal Engine or an M2 P…

The progress of AI/ML/ChatGPT will squash any notion of VR for Enterprise. If I was running a 500 person call center for a health insurance company, I'd be looking more into research around AI/ML/ChatGPT to reduce costs vs. VR/AR. Getting a private hosted ChatGPT instance/network, train it on medical claims/insurance use cases and facts, feed it statistics about cases and see if it can handle use cases for processing…

> train it on medical claims/insurance use cases and facts, feed it statistics about cases and see if it can handle use cases for processing simpler claims

Isn’t this how insurance companies have operated since the mainframe computer age? Why would an adjuster need to talk to this with chatgpt?

Re: Another Round of Layoffs at Meta

#229
post #5

One round of layoffs at every company is just coming off the hiring bender of the last few years. But a second... that portends a third... and a general collapse of tech a la the dotcom crash. I had't been too worried yet, despite feeling lucky to have dodged the customary 7% at my company, but this news is starting to make me worry. Hopefully it's just Meta being in a uniquely bad position.

It is the dotcom crash again. Everyone laying off is not normal. And everyone is laying off. Round 2 already for some. And this is just the beginning.

Re: Another Round of Layoffs at Meta

#230
post #3

Facebook is copying the blue check thing from Twitter. I wonder if Zuck will also copy firing 75% of the staff.. lol.

I mean, twitter.com seems to manage to continue running fine with only 25% of staff left. I'm sure others are looking at that and going "hmmm"

How is it running fine?

Did you think the servers would shut themselves off? Of course it's still running. But if you think twitter is running fine you're self selecting news and are ignoring reality.

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