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Google and Ambient Computing

stratechery.com

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81–90 of 106 posts

Re: Google and Ambient Computing

#81

Post by phkahler »

VikingCoder wrote: post #58
jlarocco wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Splitting a NURBS surface "in half" is an insanely complicated operation, and the way you do it almost certainly depends on your intended use case. It's actually not "insanely complicated", and there are resources around, like https://pages.mtu.edu/~shene/COURSES/cs3621/NOTES/spline/NUR... and https://www.amazon.com/NURBS-Book-Monographs-Visual-Communic... > It's not like you used to be able to see a menu of rich c…

> It's actually not "insanely complicated" Hi, your first link talks about NURBS curves, not NURBS surfaces. Cutting a surface in half is significantly more complicated than cutting a curve in half. And your second link is to a commercial result, an entire book. Presumably because the topic is complicated enough that people are willing to pay $69 to $78 to understand the challenge well enough. If your DDG search for…

>> Cutting a surface in half is significantly more complicated than cutting a curve in half.

No, it's actually the Exact same thing. Just applied independently to each of the curves in one direction.

But none of that is really important. 15 years ago it would be trivial to learn how to do it with a Google search. Today not so.

Also, a book result is still better for me than the commercial tool links which contain no math or theory what so ever.

Re: Google and Ambient Computing

#82

Post by phkahler »

gowld wrote: post #40
phkahler wrote: post #9

Google is failing to organize the world's information in a way that is useful to me. I wanted to look up how to split a NURBS surface in half. You know, the math behind computing the new point and weights. All I got was a bunch of stuff from CAD vendors talking about how to manipulate NURBS in their own tools. Since then, I've seen more of this trend. It's hard to find information about how anything works now because…

Was this not a front-page result, as it was for me? https://computergraphics.stackexchange.com/questions/340/spl...

That turned up at some point. But note that 1 it doesnt give an actual answer. And 2 I didnt need to read about knot vectors at all, so it wasnt the correct solution for me.

Re: Google and Ambient Computing

#84

Post by [deleted] »

petra wrote: post #57
amelius wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn't it time that Google grows up and becomes a true tech company? I consider products containing adware to be "half-broken" and I don't understand how Google engineers can feel proud of their work. As an engineer I want my work to be paid for because my users like my products, and I certainly wouldn't want any of my work to be used to serve anyone other than my users.

Adware based products win in the marketplace. Google can't change that. At least the money from those adware products goes toward deep tech r&d. It could be worse.

[deleted]

Re: Google and Ambient Computing

#85

Post by pas »

basch wrote: post #80
mark_l_watson wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Perhaps that is true with Google’s products. As some else here said, they should grow up and figure out a business model that does not requires collecting so much data. I would prefer to pay them in cash than with my information. For ambient computing, my favorite things are my Apple Watch and iPods. True enough, using Siri and these devices is using black box devices, but for now I am OK with them. I trust Apple, fo…

You think they could save some money offering people a yearly "no ads" plan, across all google properties and any site with doubleclick and ads words. Very strange that they only offer paid plans for office productivity, youtube, and backups. It would be even cooler if a certain percentage of the rate was a "designate your target" that allowed you to directly fund things like google reader etc. It's also kind of craz…

The minute they put prices on their products managers, engineers, users and everyone will go crazy to game the system.

I'm not saying it cannot be done well, but there's certainly an overhead if you have to be explicit about what costs how much to whom.

Re: Google and Ambient Computing

#86

Post by VRay »

magashna wrote: post #15
mey wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

https://killedbygoogle.com/ I am rather curious about Stradia's longevity.

I'm still very pessimistic about the network resources that they expect the average user to have. The recent hubbub was about places that have data caps. I'm still not convinced that the latency is there for an enjoyable experience. I'll be incredibly surprised if it isn't a complete flop.

The latency is interesting, most people can't see it or feel it if it's under 100ms or so. There's already a button press -> screen change latency of ~100 ms in most AAA games except for twitchy shooters

If you're more of a hardcore player, you may feel the extra latency as all your reflexes being off. It's harder to make jumps, perform combos, line up shots, etc.

In my case, I absolutely can't stand network streaming latency. Even 50ms is completely unacceptable to me outside of turn-based games, and I go out of my way to look into the input lag for any new monitor or TV I buy. BUT you might be different, you should give it a shot.

Re: Google and Ambient Computing

#87

Post by simonebrunozzi »

gambler wrote: post #14

A handful of oligopolies coercing me to use overcomplicated always-connected gadgets that are orchestrated by "AI" that I don't control, can't train, and whose main objective is to manipulate my behavior and siphon as much of my private info to its corporate master as possible. All of this to solve "problems" that I never had, while a choir of corporate shills drones on and on that problems I actually have are not re…

Can't give you enough upvotes, but at least I gave you all I have.

Re: Google and Ambient Computing

#88

Post by jeiro0 »

Stratechery is a rag.

What’s striking about the list of 7 announced shipments, they write, is 2 of them won’t ship until next year! Oh man terrible numbers.

Further complaining about boredom with Google.

Shock and awe we’re a bit meh at splashy tech events, that’s been the sentiment going around for a while.

Above all, the article lauds their vision even though they’re annoyed at 2 releases being off in the future and how meh the actual outcomes are.

So which is it, Stratechery? Are they nailing it with vision and failing with execution?

Confused by this entire write up except as blog spam.

Re: Google and Ambient Computing

#90

Post by v7p1Qbt1im »

amelius wrote: post #79
petra wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Adware based products win in the marketplace. Google can't change that. At least the money from those adware products goes toward deep tech r&d. It could be worse.

Unless one day they take it a step too far, and the entire tracking-based monetization scheme is banned by the government or the EU. I hope they have a backup plan other than lobbying in the opposite direction.

Why do you think they are pumping dozens of billions into cloud and especially AI? At its heart, according to the founders, Google is not a search company, and not an ad company. Their primary long term goal is the creation of real artificial intelligence. The ad business provides the money. The money buys the best people and all the infrastructure. The user-facing business provides the data. By all accounts you need a trillion dollar setup, as much talent as you can , and pretty much all the data in the world to get started.
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