Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Neural Network-Generated Illustrations in Allo

research.googleblog.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

31–38 of 38 posts

Re: Neural Network-Generated Illustrations in Allo

#31

Post by derefr »

technofiend wrote: post #22
deong wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A consumer-focused messaging app. There's also Duo for video calls and "Messenger" for SMS (on Android). There's also the older thing called "Messenger" that's still running on all those devices that no one ever updated. On the desktop/browser, I guess there isn't a consumer-focused messaging app anymore. Unless I'm missing something obvious, Google apparently ceded that ground to others. I'm beginning to realize why…

App fatigue is real... when Captain Kirk flipped open his communicator he didn't select which app to use when requesting a transport. That Google has several apps which compete and conflict with each other is absurd. The fact they keep migrating functionality in and out of them is moreso. Just pick a winner and be done with it. There's not really a competitive advantage to splitting your ecosystem into 5 different co…

> when Captain Kirk flipped open his communicator he didn't select which app to use when requesting a transport

The original TOS communicator was just a dumb pipe into the ear of a switchboard operator (the naval rankings Uhura bosses around, presumably.)

In TNG and beyond, there doesn't seem to be "operators" per se, but the device still has a Conversational UX. Less like a phone, more like the Amazon Echo.

Presumably, in the future there will still be individually-packaged suites of software (and even such suites existing as rival products); but likely, in something like a space-navy, everyone has got the same software, and it's all been centrally requisitioned and integrated into monolithic monster workflows that show no hint of its origin. I imagine personal "communicators", despite the CUI, would resemble today's phones much more closely, as there'd have to be a way to install your own software packages and then manage the resultant overlapping suites of functionality, without requiring some full-time engineers to put it together into a streamlined system.

> That Google has several apps which compete and conflict with each other is absurd.

Google is a bunch of independent teams competing and conflicting with each-other (to launch products, mostly.)

The jockeying would be a lot clearer if each team had a distinct marque, beyond just "Google" or "Google Research" or "Android" or "Chromium Project."

Re: Neural Network-Generated Illustrations in Allo

#32

Post by visarga »

mifeng wrote: post #26
spiderfarmer wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have always trouble remembering where a message came in. I have SMS / iMessage, Messenger, Whatsapp, 5 e-mail accounts and a Forum Inbox to worry about. And since you can't exactly flag messages as 'to do' I have to answer immediately or risk forgetting to reply. I hate that.

Me too. On my Pixel, messages will randomly appear either in: * Allo * Hangouts * Messenger (Android) * Messenger (Facebook) * WhatsApp It's like SMS-Roulette.

A possible solution would be to run all third party apps in containers and use computer vision (deep learning) to collect messages and notifications from their screens into a single place, if they don't want to cooperate officially. I don't know the legal implications though.

Another app that should run into a container and be post-processed by computer vision is the web browser. We need to contain the browser itself (more privacy) and keep the pesky ads out of our eyes in a way that is impossible to hack by clever scripting or ad-block detection. On the next round, ad publishers would have to create adversarial ads that fool the classifier which would be a whole lot more difficult.

Re: Neural Network-Generated Illustrations in Allo

#33

Post by wcummings »

visarga wrote: post #32
mifeng wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Me too. On my Pixel, messages will randomly appear either in: * Allo * Hangouts * Messenger (Android) * Messenger (Facebook) * WhatsApp It's like SMS-Roulette.

A possible solution would be to run all third party apps in containers and use computer vision (deep learning) to collect messages and notifications from their screens into a single place, if they don't want to cooperate officially. I don't know the legal implications though. Another app that should run into a container and be post-processed by computer vision is the web browser. We need to contain the browser itself…

I just tell everyone to email me. I have one email address. Everyone uses email. Problem solved.

Re: Neural Network-Generated Illustrations in Allo

#34

Post by deong »

derefr wrote: post #31
technofiend wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

App fatigue is real... when Captain Kirk flipped open his communicator he didn't select which app to use when requesting a transport. That Google has several apps which compete and conflict with each other is absurd. The fact they keep migrating functionality in and out of them is moreso. Just pick a winner and be done with it. There's not really a competitive advantage to splitting your ecosystem into 5 different co…

> when Captain Kirk flipped open his communicator he didn't select which app to use when requesting a transport The original TOS communicator was just a dumb pipe into the ear of a switchboard operator (the naval rankings Uhura bosses around, presumably.) In TNG and beyond, there doesn't seem to be "operators" per se, but the device still has a Conversational UX. Less like a phone, more like the Amazon Echo. Presumab…

> Google is a bunch of independent teams competing and conflicting with each-other (to launch products, mostly.)

Well, Google needs very badly to stop that then. If you think internal competition somehow breeds better products, then by all means run the company that way. But pay one person to keep this fucking Thunderdome isolated from the public. Someone needs to declare a winner before you trot out 83 contestants, all of which suck because you couldn't make a damned decision.

Re: Neural Network-Generated Illustrations in Allo

#35

Post by derefr »

deong wrote: post #34
derefr wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> when Captain Kirk flipped open his communicator he didn't select which app to use when requesting a transport The original TOS communicator was just a dumb pipe into the ear of a switchboard operator (the naval rankings Uhura bosses around, presumably.) In TNG and beyond, there doesn't seem to be "operators" per se, but the device still has a Conversational UX. Less like a phone, more like the Amazon Echo. Presumab…

> Google is a bunch of independent teams competing and conflicting with each-other (to launch products, mostly.) Well, Google needs very badly to stop that then. If you think internal competition somehow breeds better products, then by all means run the company that way. But pay one person to keep this fucking Thunderdome isolated from the public. Someone needs to declare a winner before you trot out 83 contestants,…

Let me rephrase: there is no central part of Google that could "declare a winner." Google is a bunch of small companies that happen to share office space and a treasury, and are all called Google for some reason.

Re: Neural Network-Generated Illustrations in Allo

#36

Post by deong »

derefr wrote: post #35
deong wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Google is a bunch of independent teams competing and conflicting with each-other (to launch products, mostly.) Well, Google needs very badly to stop that then. If you think internal competition somehow breeds better products, then by all means run the company that way. But pay one person to keep this fucking Thunderdome isolated from the public. Someone needs to declare a winner before you trot out 83 contestants,…

Let me rephrase: there is no central part of Google that could "declare a winner." Google is a bunch of small companies that happen to share office space and a treasury, and are all called Google for some reason.

That's nonsense. You said it yourself -- they share a treasury, if nothing else. Google has a CEO (Pichai). Alphabet has a CEO (Page). There are dozens of executives who control the myriad different little fiefdoms, but all of those people report to someone.

I'm certain that four random engineers don't get to make a new thing, slap the Google brand on it, and prominently sell it on the front page of the Google store without someone approving it first.

And even if that were the case, it's a pathology to be solved, not a reasonable justification for them to continue to be catastrophically bad at making consumer-facing products. If there's no one entity called "Google" that can stop them from releasing absolute garbage that they then never once update, then I'll just rephrase my complaint to "Google needs to come up with a single entity that can stop them from releasing absolute garbage that they then never update."

Re: Neural Network-Generated Illustrations in Allo

#37

Post by vernie »

antirez wrote: post #21
joefkelley wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Strange, I don't see anything in that menu. Haven't been able to figure out how to do it, maybe there's some sort of rolling update happening?

I think it's rolling out slowly.

Oh, so they jumped the gun with this post? Got it.

Re: Neural Network-Generated Illustrations in Allo

#38

Post by derefr »

deong wrote: post #36
derefr wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Let me rephrase: there is no central part of Google that could "declare a winner." Google is a bunch of small companies that happen to share office space and a treasury, and are all called Google for some reason.

That's nonsense. You said it yourself -- they share a treasury, if nothing else. Google has a CEO (Pichai). Alphabet has a CEO (Page). There are dozens of executives who control the myriad different little fiefdoms, but all of those people report to someone . I'm certain that four random engineers don't get to make a new thing, slap the Google brand on it, and prominently sell it on the front page of the Google store…

It's a model that predicts their behavior well, is what I meant. It "makes sense of" their decisions. It doesn't justify those decisions; of course they're awful decisions.

I'm doing kremlinology here: attempting to model an opaque organizational structure so that you can change your behavior to avoid its inferred structural inadequacies. Because any organization in need of kremlinology ain't gonna be able to change in response to even a top-down order to do so.

Google can't stop being catastrophically Balkanized, any more than IBM can stop being catastrophically monolithic, or Facebook can stop being catastrophically lackadaisical toward code-base quality. It's in their DNA: in the kind of people they have hired, who now choose who they hire, and will continue to be biased however they're biased even if a top-down order tries to push against those biases.

Post reply on HN