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Facebook Renames to Meta

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Re: Facebook Renames to Meta

#701

Post by twofornone »

brap wrote: post #125

The video they put out is extremely cringe. The whole “metaverse” thing is cringe. It makes me believe Zuckerberg is completely surrounded by yes-men who never challenge him and only tell him what he likes to hear. He is truly detached from us normal people and our human experience.

>He is truly detached from us normal people and our human experience.

From watching his mannerisms and facial expressions, I get the feeling that he is high functioning but very much on the autistic spectrum, and emulates many subtle movements/behaviors during communication that come naturally to "normies". That's why he comes off as a robot deep in the uncanny valley.

I like to think of it as partly emulating with software some of the communication hardware that neurotypical people have innately. Which is why social interactions can be taxing for those with Asperger's, the extra cycles are draining and distracting, in addition to the necessary self consciousness which also costs some amount of compute.

Re: Facebook Renames to Meta

#702

Post by rdrey »

dropnerd wrote: post #544
daviding wrote: post #36

If there is going to be a metaverse, I'm not sure I want Facebook to own it. It's like a bad sci-fi pulp story. Given their investment and research, I wonder if they should open it all up (even if contradictory to short-term gains in ad revenue) so it has a chance to grow? Federate it a bit more than they are comfortable with, to at least give it a chance. I could see this flubbing out hard otherwise. I'm personally…

every hn top thread about fb says "we don't want fb to do this" or "fb is evil" whether you agree or disagree, the more interesting question is the details behind what Meta could build the answer is not federation. federation doesn't scale.

Could you flesh out the "federation doesn't scale" argument a bit?

Re: Facebook Renames to Meta

#703

Post by joshmarlow »

api wrote: post #469
tsimionescu wrote: post #443

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are also leftist visions of a future world where we actually address the core problems plaguing our world and give workers democratic control over their own work, instead of leaving that up to wage slave owners who view all of us as human resources.

I didn't include that because I don't see a workable, viable proposal. My intention was to list futures that I can see actually happening. I'm not against what you describe nor do I think it's mutually exclusive with option (3), but so far IMHO leftists have offered no solution to some of the inherent problems of this vision. The biggest one is how to make democracy work. How do you do good work under a democratic mo…

> So far I don't think democracy has ever existed except at tribal scale (below Dunbar's Number). All former and current attempts are oligarchies with a degree of democratic veto power or a democratic facade.

I've not read the book, but according to this interview [0] something closer to half of all pre-modern societies had something resembling democracies (the rest being the autocrats we tend to expect from history).

Some were a bit different - for instance, in many cases elected representatives would have a fixed mandate on issues that they had the authority to make decisions on. Anything broader meant going back to the constituents to ask for an extension of power.

I'm hopeful that human society has already solved some of the problems of democracy - modern society has just glossed over those solutions with not-invented-here syndrome.

I'm also hopeful that technologies built top of cryptocurrencies (like smart contracts and DAOs) will enable new ways for humans to coordinate.

Mechanisms like quadratic voting and funding appear genuinely new to me - and particularly promising!

[0] - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cGkhWUureVg

Re: Facebook Renames to Meta

#704

Post by distrill »

RC_ITR wrote: post #335
ssully wrote: post #211

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think this downplays Oculus, but they also announced today that they are going to start scaling back Facebook integration with Oculus and start allowing other login methods besides Facebook. Unfortunately outside of Tweets, this is the best story I found on it at the moment: https://www.ign.com/articles/oculus-facebook-requirement-end...

Keep in mind he used very specific working "personal facebook account" and just announced a new company name 'Meta.' To me that points to a 'log in with Meta' option.

which is probably an improvement if they're kept totally separate from facebook

Re: Facebook Renames to Meta

#705

Post by swayvil »

When your reputation gets really bad, change your name. I guess that works well enough to make it worth doing.

I recall several scummy companies doing that over the recent decades.

Re: Facebook Renames to Meta

#706

Post by stephenhuey »

daviding wrote: post #36

If there is going to be a metaverse, I'm not sure I want Facebook to own it. It's like a bad sci-fi pulp story. Given their investment and research, I wonder if they should open it all up (even if contradictory to short-term gains in ad revenue) so it has a chance to grow? Federate it a bit more than they are comfortable with, to at least give it a chance. I could see this flubbing out hard otherwise. I'm personally…

75 minutes into his keynote, he said:

"…but connecting people was always much bigger…it was always clear that the dream was to feel present with the people we care about…here we are in 2021, and our devices are still designed around apps, not people. The experiences we’re allowed to build and use are more tightly controlled than ever, and high taxes on creative new ideas are stifling. This is not the way that we are meant to use technology. The Metaverse gives us an opportunity to change that, if we build it well. But it’s going to take all of us…Together, we can create a more open platform."

When he says this, I hear between the lines that the platform will be open to all contributors as long as the "open platform" belongs to Meta. How does he not realize that by seeking to dominate and own this "open platform" instead of working outside of his company to build a truly open platform with others is actually open?

Does he not read enough sci fi or literature in general to know that by having so much power and not seeking to let go a bit more, he opens himself up to the same risks and temptations faced by myriad dystopian villains?

Re: Facebook Renames to Meta

#707

Post by Apocryphon »

FormerBandmate wrote: post #687
mandevil wrote: post #537

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Counterpoint: the HTC First (aka the Facebook Phone) was >$1 USD less than a month after it debuted, and still was a gigantic flop. Facebook Portal has sold ~1 million units. Oculus has sold ~8 million units or so (all numbers based on quick googling, might be wrong). So people reject Facebook hardware all the time, and they don't actually have that much in the way of hits in the HW space.

It was $1 on a two-year contract. It was also a bad phone. That really doesn’t say much

It says that they’re lacking in the hardware department.

Re: Facebook Renames to Meta

#708

Post by mrkramer »

filoleg wrote: post #352
brap wrote: post #125

The video they put out is extremely cringe. The whole “metaverse” thing is cringe. It makes me believe Zuckerberg is completely surrounded by yes-men who never challenge him and only tell him what he likes to hear. He is truly detached from us normal people and our human experience.

To be fair, that’s the exact same sentiment I remember reading about Zuck on HN around the time Instagram and WhatsApp acquisitions happened. People were saying it was one of the dumbest business decisions, that Zuck is just desperate and without any brain trying to spend his FB money on acquisitions before FB inevitably dies of irrelevancy, etc. Look at today, and I think most people would agree that acquiring whats…

>To be fair, that’s the exact same sentiment I remember reading about Zuck on HN around the time Instagram and WhatsApp acquisitions happened. People were saying it was one of the dumbest business decisions, that Zuck is just desperate and without any brain trying to spend his FB money on acquisitions before FB inevitably dies of irrelevancy, etc. Look at today, and I think most people would agree that acquiring whatsapp and instagram back then was a great business decision on his end.

>And, in my eyes, the whole Meta thing makes way more sense to begin with than those acquisitions did.

That's a fallacy. It doesn't matter if Zuck had 2 consecutive successful predictions because his 3rd can be unsuccessful. Each event(situation) is specific and different.

Re: Facebook Renames to Meta

#709

Post by rblatz »

koonsolo wrote: post #453
filoleg wrote: post #352

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To be fair, that’s the exact same sentiment I remember reading about Zuck on HN around the time Instagram and WhatsApp acquisitions happened. People were saying it was one of the dumbest business decisions, that Zuck is just desperate and without any brain trying to spend his FB money on acquisitions before FB inevitably dies of irrelevancy, etc. Look at today, and I think most people would agree that acquiring whats…

I agree that Facebook and Zuch can't be that stupid. But for me, I can't see this working. There is no VR game that really killed it. I also don't see which generation would actually be into this. So it's not a "idiots!", but more of a "what am I missing here?". Will be interesting to see this play out

I've got a group of 6 of us that play Echo Arena on the Quest 2 about 3 hours every week. Beat saber is also a fun game, but does get a bit stale for most people after a couple weeks.

None of these are VR's Halo, but it seems that VR is getting out of the tech demo/hobbyist space and into a broader market appeal. If facebook keeps iterating and pushing out quality improvements at the current price point it's just a matter of time.

Re: Facebook Renames to Meta

#710

Post by marknutter »

Dumblydorr wrote: post #411

Can anyone here convince me AR/VR isn't a fad? If FB is headed towards a metaverse where our insane uncles can embed themselves further in a false reality, how is it that the rest of us sane individuals want to join their conspiratorial matrix? Even taking out the crazy uncles, VR makes me insanely nauseous. What's more, it's very expensive to get solid VR that doesn't, nevermind it still looks terrible even if you h…

Why would anyone want to be totally immersed in a realistic virtual world? It boggles the mind.
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