Reddit refugee
This summary, well, isn't. It's just grabbing random paragraphs.
There's literally a summary section in the article itself it could have just used!
But the shocking thing is that Apple may have inadvertently revealed that some of these core ideas are actually dead ends — that they can’t ever be executed well enough to become mainstream.
Given Nilay has a good amount of experience with headsets, I'm surprised at how surprised they appear to be with this statement.
Back when I was in uni in the late 00s, AR and VR were a big thing, to the point that we had a module on it as part of our course. Even then it was clear that any hardware that physically closed you off (digital pass through is still a physical barrier) fundamentally stops the feeling of an argumented reality and puts you firmly in a disconnected (from physical reality) headspace. As in, you feel like you're in a virtual reality.
Google cardboard, which Nilay references:
Apple is also making immersive versions of some of its Apple TV Plus shows, which basically means a 180ish-degree 3D video that feels like the best Google Cardboard demo of all time
Came out 9 years ago, and proved the exact same thing for 1% of the cost of a Vision Pro.
As others have pointed out since the announcement, Glass also failed even without having that physical barrier between you and reality.
Lastly,
Do you want to use a computer that is always looking at your hands?
Nope!
"Not your keys, not your bitcoin" has been a saying for over a decade now and for good reason.
Do not leave crypto on exchanges.
People who are shocked about Coinbase saying this, honestly, shouldn't be fucking about with crypto in the first place as they clearly do not understand what they are doing.
The greens have 1 seat, and Lucas is standing down. It's highly likely they end up with none.
Corbyn lost twice because his support was too concentrated. He didn't build a wide enough support and so we're here.
Fallible humans are building them in the first place.
No LLM - masquerading as AI - is free of biases.
That's not to say that 'bad' people prompting biased LLMs is not an issue, it very much is, but even 'good' people are not going to get objective results.
It's a question of scale. A single child cannot replace literally all artists, for example.
You're conflating copyright and patents.
I never said it was going to be easy - and clearly that is why OpenAI didn't bother.
If they want to advocate for changes to copyright law then I'm all ears, but let's not pretend they actually have any interest in that.
I'm no fan of the current copyright law - the Statute of Anne was much better - but let's not kid ourselves that some of the richest companies in the world have any desire what so ever to change it.
OK, so pay for it.
Pretty simple really.
I'm gonna take some notes from you before I try to convince my boss of a really cool idea I have for my company
I say this to my junior Product Owners a lot, don't go in to that conversation with the view you are having to convince/pursaude them of anything. It sets it up as combative, has the implication that you are right and they are wrong, and that something in their plan needs to change. They will sense that, and will be much more defensive.
To be clear, I'm not talking about literal code changes here, but the current initiatives / projects / bets (whatever word you want to use) the company is planning on doing.
Instead you should demonstrate how your idea fits in with the current strategy of the business. Show them that you know where they are wanting to get to, and show how this idea gets them there. Go in to that conversation with a sincere intent of collaboration.
That way you don't need to convince anyone to change anything because they are still getting to the same destination, and you're showing them a quicker route through the bushes.
If they say no, ask them politely to explain their reasons so you can be on the same page. Do not argue, just listen to what they say. They will be telling you what is most important to them and the business in that reply. It literally doesn't matter if you agree with them or not, they are telling you the constraints you need to operate in.
After the meeting, use that knowledge to reassess your proposal, and think of ways you could modify the idea, or what information you presented alongside it, to get it accepted. If you still don't understand, then ask further questions about that bit.
Remember, it's about collaboration.
He's not trying to convince me that he's right because I asked him too, because when I did try that he'd refuse or just wouldn't, and I'd count that as a loss from his end. He can't always win for me but when he does, its a real good win. So I guess the word "convinced" might not be as accurate as saying "we walked through this conversation until I got to a place of understanding".
I'd argue the same applies in therapy too. It may be worth exploring why you seem to have a pretty darwinian view of thoughts / opinions being demonstrably right or wrong. In my experience the world is much greyer.
I am glad however that your therapist is doing something that has been requested, rather than anything else (even if it does seem to be rather atypical).
There's a lot here. Some I can comment on and some I can't. Some bits are simply how you are viewing the world, and differ to how others view it. There is no possibility for objectivity there, and are better suited to discussions with mental health professionals.
For my sins, I'm a Product Manager. While I have a background in engineering (having done a CS degree and taught myself to code in my teens), I have never held a job as a developer.
As such, I have conversations pretty much every day with developers, dev leads, people with "architect" in their title, CTOs, etc, all of whom are considerably more technically literate than I am, about what new technologies we can take advantage of. Some times it's me asking them, sometimes it's them asking me, but one thing is always constant. Time, risk, and cost of implementation is what matters most.
The majority of the time, when I am approached by Devs, the conversation goes along the lines of:
- Dev: "there is this awesome new thing we absolutely need to use now"
- Me: "OK, what are the benefits?"
- Dev: "it makes X, Y, and Z so much easier and save us time doing them"
- Me: "OK, how long do we spend doing those things currently?"
- Dev: "eh, well, I don't know exactly, but it's, er, it's loads and doing this will save us that time and it's great and we need to do it now"
- Me: "yeah, I get that, but how much time do we actually spend on it?"
- repeat forever
In short, the benefits have not been quantified, and the costs ignored.
Other times, the change that is being suggested doesn't align with the current business need. I've had to reject suggestions to refactor systems because we've literally been down to the last few pay cheques, and we need to focus on revenue generation. This massively undermines the person making the suggestion, because it shows they are not understanding the actual priority of the business.
And other times still, it can be simply a pipedream. I once had a dev lead stand up and scream at me across a desk because I didn't agree with him that we immediately rewrite our entire app in Swift, on literally the day Apple released the beta back in 2014, and I had had the gaul to suggest that he needs to come up with a plan to iteratively develop some new, low risk, functionality in the language first, before saying he wants to spend "at least a year" doing a complete overhaul, and nothing else.
This is not to say that developers are idiots or anything. The vast majority of the discussions I have had with all my collegues across my career have been good, thought provoking, and helpful. But that doesn't mean they always get what they want, and nor does it mean I get what I want. I have definitely rejected work where that was the wrong decision, and I've suffered the consequences of it. I've also definitely accepted work that ended up being a complete waste of time.
None of us are perfect.
If you are finding that your boss is always rejecting your suggestions, I would suggest you need to consider these things:
- have you quantified the benefits and costs?
- are there competitors who are already doing this thing? If so, who?
- does the suggestion align with the strategy / focus of the business?
- have you identified a small increment / proof of concept / mvp, that takes a few hours, or days, or a sprint, to demonstrate potential value?
If you can explain the potential value, how it helps the business get to where it wants to be faster, and how you can identify unknown unknowns through low cost and quick to develop POCs, then you may be able to get buy in.
If you can't, or don't know how, then there are plenty of resources available. A good starting point would be to read The Lean Startup.
It is considerably more likely that the problem is with your skills of persuasion, and writing business cases, rather than all of technology being worthless.
Lastly, regarding discussions with professionals, one bit that did concern me is this
In my therapist's opinion he thinks we as a soceity are not taking 100% advantage of technology we have. I can't go into too many details bc our conversations are private but at the end I agreed with him. I'm seeing it now in my working day but he convinced me that it's everywhere.
My experience with therapists, and in discussions with friends who are qualified pshrinks, is that a therapist should never try and convince you of anything. Their job is to structure conversations you are in essence having with yourself. They may repeat your previous statements back to you, in a way that requires you to reconcile potentially conflicting views or opinions. They may even challenge your assertions and get you to explain more thoroughly your views. These processes may well cause you to change your views on things.
But if your therapist is actually trying to convince you of their world view, you need to get a new therapist.
But it still ultimately requires you in that chair to correct issues.
I don't doubt for a second that time is saved, especially in the boilerplate parts of writing code, but it's not going to remove you from that chair.
From my experience, Copilot is helpful, but we're talking a few steps above templates, Clippy 3.0, if you will. The bit that blew my mind a bit was realising just how much code I write is the essentially the same. "Automating" that has been a great help, but - like with the marketing stuff - it's not at a point where it can do it alone.
It's the same with driving, etc.
I'd describe those products as being in the "heh, that's neat" phase. At least, the good ones anyway. After a few hours you start the see the issues - like images with very weird fingers - and then you the illusion is broken.
For example, in work I've been playing around a lot with various LLMs to generate marketing copy for physical products. I'm being vague here for reasons I'm sure are obvious.
Across the first few hours it felt very impressive, it would pretty much instantly churn out descriptions in a variety of styles, even when the product information we provided was low quality.
The problem though, was that the copy it wrote was actually - if you sat down and read it - shit.
Now, the vast majority of marketing copy is also shit. The good stuff is excellent, rare as hens teeth, and incredibly expensive, but your generic boilerplate crap you see all over the Internet, that stuff, it could replicate perfectly. Even the lies.
If you want sales speak waffle, it's 11/10 every time.
So we're currently in a bit of a bind. Do we release a tool that creates boilerplate shit more easily, and will turn even the most inconsistent (and straight up conflicting or impossible) data in to fancy sounding text, and jump on the AI-powered bandwagon, or do we not, because what it creates isn't actually any good?
Imo spitting out crap in a second or two isn't a valuable improvement on where we were a few years ago, even if it is pretty neet.
I'm not sure why I feel the need to preface this comment, but, I work in software, I get how hard a problem autonomous driving is, how genuine safety improvements over human drivers are highly valuable, and how perfect need not be the enemy of good.
However, the level of sheer blind optimism from the AV crowd is the same as the AI "leaders" and the crypto bros before them. How their statements are not straight up fraud is beyond me.
The reality of them needing to have a remote team of drivers intervening every 2 to 5 miles of driving, within an urban setting very much designed for cars, is so far away from the picture they paint.
No wonder the tech industry has a dog shit reputation.
I don't want to be all old man yells at cloud, but back in my day popular games were played a lot because they were primarily enjoyable for the story, the achievement of completing a particular level or boss, playing against friends, etc. And sure, you'd have the odd bad parent trying to claim their kid was addicted to Counterstrike 1.6, but it was broadly speaking nonsense. The vast majority of games were offline, or had very limited online modes built around direct competition with other players (FPS, sports games, etc), and publishers would get all their money from the initial sale, with only a few games having expansion packs, most notable The Sims.
But in the early 2010s a few things changed:
- broadband internet became ubiquitous in markets with high levels of existing gamers
- distribution of games swapped from physical media to downloads
- 'everyone' had a pretty powerful computer in their pocket making it much more accessible
- a bunch of people in the industry started reading about positive psychology - the idea that you can create habits through rewards - and apply them to video games to increase playtime
- those mechanics turned out to be very powerful in driving particular user behaviours, and started to be targeted at monetisation models - and so we got loot boxes, etc
So we went from a situation where video games were fun for the same reasons traditional games, or sports, are fun, to one where many video games include a lot of gambling mechanics in their core gameplay loops - loot boxes being the obvious one, but any lottery-based mechanic where you spend real money counts - in an industry with no relevant regulation, nor age limitation.
It is definitely possible for people to get addicted to these mechanics, the same way people can get addicted to casino games, or betting on horse racing, especially when for some games that is literally what the developer wants.
I understand that.
My point is that that had already been demonstrated.