[HN Gopher] I/O 2022
       ___________________________________________________________________
        
       I/O 2022
        
       Author : todsacerdoti
       Score  : 150 points
       Date   : 2022-05-11 17:53 UTC (5 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (blog.google)
 (TXT) w3m dump (blog.google)
        
       | adamredwoods wrote:
       | Flutter game kit! Pre-made game assets are great for people
       | learning to code.
       | 
       | https://github.com/flutter/pinball
       | 
       | https://docs.flutter.dev/resources/games-toolkit
        
       | valbaca wrote:
       | Multiple mentions of "skin tone" and AI.
       | 
       | Did they really mess up skin tone recognition that bad that they
       | needed three different solutions to it? (I feel like I missed
       | some major fuckup on their end)
       | 
       | https://blog.google/products/assistant/assistant-io-2022/
       | 
       | https://blog.google/products/search/monk-skin-tone-scale/
       | 
       | https://blog.google/technology/research/ai-monk-scale-skin-t...
        
         | 2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote:
         | Funny. I interviewed with them recently and was asked about how
         | to better represent minorities in photographs. I'm a white
         | male, interviewer was not.
        
         | samhw wrote:
         | > "In our research, we found that a lot of the time people feel
         | they're lumped into racial categories, but there's all this
         | heterogeneity with ethnic and racial categories," Dr. Monk
         | says.
         | 
         | "People think we're lumping them into racial categories. But
         | we're actually lumping them into _slightly narrower_ racial
         | categories! "
        
         | scardycat wrote:
         | The Pixel 6 Pro camera, which they showcase and market as
         | capable of representing true skin tone [1], has been a pain in
         | the neck for me. I am a brown skinned person with a balding
         | head and the camera preview and final product are completely
         | different. The final product adds random blotches of dark tones
         | on my face and head. None of the photos are usable. This is
         | 100% reproducible especially in bright day light. I filed a bug
         | report with offer to send in my pictures as samples, not a
         | single response, its been 4+ months.
         | 
         | 1. https://store.google.com/intl/en/discover/realtone/
        
           | uuyi wrote:
           | Similar weird problems in portrait mode on my iPhone 13 Pro.
           | My youngest daughter comes out looking like an unholy
           | tellytubby on crack for some reason.
           | 
           | Got fed up of trying to negotiate with the bastard thing and
           | bought a Nikon mirrorless instead. Absolutely no regrets.
        
           | The_Colonel wrote:
           | It's a catastrophe for white people as well. My wife has blue
           | eyes, and the camera pretty consistently makes them black.
           | Skin usually turns gray. The portrait looks fine in the
           | preview, but the algorithm messes it up.
        
         | jjcm wrote:
         | Random side note - I'm amazed they're using gifs here to show
         | off their subtle color updates to skin tone.
        
         | babyshake wrote:
         | Their super bowl ad was also focused on fixing AI racism. There
         | is surely a political and marketing aspect to this focus.
        
           | Daishiman wrote:
           | There is the objective fact that darker skin tones are harder
           | for some AI algos to process due to lower contrast. There's
           | also the fact that a lot of training data just didn't have
           | people of darker skin, and that a couple of news article
           | pointed out that some people were classified in object
           | detection systems in a rather... racist way.
        
           | faitswulff wrote:
           | Their emerging markets are all non-white.
        
         | joshuamorton wrote:
         | If by "they" you mean "the entire industry" then yes. Basically
         | all vision products are notoriously bad at dealing with darker
         | skin tones.
        
         | Workaccount2 wrote:
         | The google challenge: Find a picture of a lone white male in
         | any of their marketing or corporate material. I get they want
         | to be diverse, but it's just become comical at this point.
        
           | nostrademons wrote:
           | https://careers.google.com/, scroll down to "Spotlight",
           | scroll over to "Data center roles" or "Staff Software
           | Engineer", both pictures of white male talking to white
           | female.
           | 
           | Globally white people are about 10% of the population, so I'd
           | expect 1 in 10 people in a representative sample to be white,
           | which feels about right for much of Google's marketing
           | material.
        
             | fizwhiz wrote:
             | > both pictures of white male talking to white female.
             | 
             | white _passing_ *
        
             | usrn wrote:
             | Google is a US company though.
        
               | deadmutex wrote:
               | Google has a huge employee and user base across multiple
               | continents.
        
             | Workaccount2 wrote:
             | A lone white male. Sorry it wasn't totally clear.
             | 
             | For all intents and purposes, women count as minorities.
             | Google has plenty of pictures with white women, and white
             | men and women. But so far I have only found one picture
             | with a lone white male (on one of the chromecast pages, on
             | the TV was a show page, and the show page had a lone white
             | male). I guess they can get 1/2 credit for that. Oh and I
             | found a picture of a lone white guy, but he was disabled.
             | So I guess that technically counts, although he would still
             | fall into the "minority/disadvantaged" camp.
        
               | nostrademons wrote:
               | https://about.google/stories/making-conversation-more-
               | access...
               | 
               | Took about 2 minutes.
        
               | samhw wrote:
               | Nah, watch the video, he's Hispanic. (Of course racial
               | classifications have no _real_ meaning, but ime Hispanic
               | people are generally - bar some Spaniards -  'typed' as
               | non-white, comparable to Asians or Native Americans. And
               | certainly a minority in US terms.)
               | 
               | ETA: He's also deaf, fwiw, with regard to the minority
               | point.
               | 
               | ETA2: Hmm, I may be wrong about the exact details. It
               | looks like he's a research scientist at Google, and,
               | judging by the name, possibly Russian. But the same non-
               | Caucasian non-''white'' point applies. (The Spanish
               | voiceover and subtitles confused me - it's not his voice
               | at the start, whereas his own 'deaf voice' makes any
               | accent hard to identify.)
        
               | [deleted]
        
           | reaperducer wrote:
           | _The google challenge: Find a lone picture of a white male in
           | any of their marketing or corporate material._
           | 
           | Where's Waldo: 2022 Edition.
        
           | 015a wrote:
           | Easy; just look at their corporate leadership page. Plenty of
           | white men there!
        
           | burkaman wrote:
           | I guess this is intentional exaggeration to make some kind of
           | point, but I just checked a bunch of Google corporate pages
           | and every single one with pictures of people had a white guy
           | somewhere. The majority were not white men, but that's
           | because most people are not white men.
        
         | SemanticStrengh wrote:
         | So much hypocrisy going on. If fighting racism was the goal
         | Unicode should not have added skin colored emojis. This is the
         | dumbest move ever.
        
           | adamrezich wrote:
           | I will never understand why emoji, the whole point of which
           | is to convey universal emotions (and other icons), ever
           | needed skin tone modifiers at all. why do "thumbs up" and
           | "thumbs up, but i'm white btw" need to be encoded
           | differently? why is everyone OK with Native Americans and
           | other ethnicities with reddish skin tones being excluded?
           | just a complete mess top-to-bottom, and now we can basically
           | never undo it.
           | 
           | imagine trying to explain to aliens from another planet 500
           | years from now why 500 years ago we decided to a.) include
           | skin tone modifiers to begin with and b.) only allow for the
           | gradation of skin colors that we do. beyond ridiculous.
           | 
           | EDIT: I forgot to mention how insanely ridiculous it is that
           | we have these skin tone modifiers, but they don't even work
           | for all "people" emoji, because of the obvious issue of
           | rendering cartoon human faces in a way that isn't considered
           | a racist caricature for many races. this makes sense of
           | course, but I can't understand why, when this argument came
           | up, they didn't just choose to scrap the whole idea instead
           | of implementing it and restricting it to a subset of "people"
           | emoji.
        
             | ben_w wrote:
             | People like customising these things to be mini-avatars as
             | a form of self expression. I don't see a reason to get
             | upset about this option existing -- not even from the
             | perspective of "oh no strings are even weirder, I can't
             | safely treat them as a stream of bytes all the time", given
             | that combining characters are needed for other stuff
             | anyway.
             | 
             | (No idea why you think other skin tones can't be added
             | later).
        
               | adamrezich wrote:
               | >(No idea why you think other skin tones can't be added
               | later).
               | 
               | because why would we add _further_ bloat and
               | implementation complexity to something that is already
               | bloated and complex to implement?
        
               | ben_w wrote:
               | You believe that's a reason to think it _can't_ be done?
        
               | adamrezich wrote:
               | not at all, of course. realistically the biggest
               | impediment to adding more skin tones is that if the list
               | of additional skin tones wasn't completely exhaustive,
               | there would be public outcry. as it stands right now, the
               | simple gradient scale is "good enough," so there isn't
               | much impetus to add any more.
        
               | Lammy wrote:
               | > if the list of additional skin tones wasn't completely
               | exhaustive, there would be public outcry
               | 
               | This is kind of how I felt when looking at the scale just
               | now, because none of the 10 really look like me. Maybe
               | it's supposed to be a round-down/up sort of thing, or
               | maybe I should calibrate my display?
        
             | [deleted]
        
             | twelvechairs wrote:
             | The default was yellow which basically represents white
             | people.
        
               | reaperducer wrote:
               | _The default was yellow which basically represents white
               | people._
               | 
               | I guess you missed the day Yellow Peril was covered in
               | history class.
               | 
               | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yellow_Peril
        
               | [deleted]
        
               | stickfigure wrote:
               | Maybe in an advanced stage of liver failure. It's really
               | stretching to say yellow == white. The default color made
               | nobody happy, which is exactly why it was the right
               | solution to the problem.
        
               | SemanticStrengh wrote:
               | actually the excessive yellowness brillantly avoided the
               | uncanny valley of half-baked underspecified realism
        
               | AnimalMuppet wrote:
               | Really? The default was yellow because that's what
               | Franklin Loufrani used back in the 1970s in France, and
               | he's (probably) the one responsible for the smiley
               | becoming a global icon. Did he intend yellow to mean
               | white people? I'm highly skeptical, but I'd be open to
               | listening if you have some documentation...
        
               | adamrezich wrote:
               | this is the most insane recurring argument and I'll never
               | understand it. sure that's how The Simpsons works, but
               | that's not how LEGO works, so that argument gets canceled
               | out. then you look at the yellow smiley face iconography
               | that I'm sure has cultural roots somewhere but was
               | universally used to specifically express universality--
               | back when WAL*MART used it as their logo, were they
               | specifically trying to market to white people, at the
               | exclusion of all others??
               | 
               | then you take the history of emoji into account and you
               | see that that doesn't really work as an explanation at
               | all. it's like you (and everyone else who makes this
               | inane argument) are _trying_ to make something that 's
               | not white-people-centric, white-people-centric, just so
               | you can complain about it being white-people-centric.
        
               | three_seagrass wrote:
               | You're being downvoted but you're kinda right.
               | 
               | The longest running cartoon show in history ( _The
               | Simpsons_ ) uses yellow to represent white people, while
               | POC are brown and black.
        
               | SemanticStrengh wrote:
               | in racists terms, yellow has always denoted asian people
               | (which is weird btw), simpsons are a coincidence
        
               | disgruntledphd2 wrote:
               | I mean, sortof, I guess, maybe.
               | 
               | Given the history, one could make an argument that they
               | represent Asians rather than Caucasians (it's always
               | seemed odd to me that we ended up with this name for
               | white(r) people, but such is life).
        
               | SemanticStrengh wrote:
               | white skinned people should be called beige skinned
               | people. Only albinos could pretend to whitehish-ness and
               | still they are mostly not, because even if their skin
               | maximally reflect light, they are still made of blood.
               | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Albinism_in_humans BTW
               | humans can become easily become black in a continuous
               | like manner https://alchetron.com/cdn/melanotan-
               | ii-d26dbedd-94fb-434a-8d... extreme:
               | https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3198931/Reddit-
               | user...
               | 
               | It's a very nice technology and is an example of
               | permanent whole body genetic mutation via epigenetics.The
               | issue is that it is irreversible.. The converse, a
               | whitening substance does not exist yet but could exist in
               | theory, by antagonizing the melanin receptors.
        
             | sorenjan wrote:
             | Because people didn't understand that emoji was supposed to
             | represent concepts, and saw them as small illustrations
             | instead. That's also why Apple's version is basically the
             | de facto standard now, and Google and Microsoft has had to
             | adjust theirs to look more like Apple's to minimize
             | confusion when the small pictograms doesn't look the same
             | for sender and receiver.
        
             | SemanticStrengh wrote:
             | It can and should be undone. There is a difference between
             | the identifier and the representation, android should
             | render color skinned emojis in their yellow equivalent, as
             | simple as that.
        
           | three_seagrass wrote:
           | Excluding skin color and gender is being blind to prejudice,
           | not fighting it.
        
             | SemanticStrengh wrote:
             | _white colored downvote_
        
             | reaperducer wrote:
             | _Excluding skin color and gender is being blind to
             | prejudice, not fighting it._
             | 
             | It's largely a generational thing.
             | 
             | The new generations (Millennial, Z) were taught that
             | "celebrate diversity" is the goal. Which means to highlight
             | all the different races, creeds, colors, etc...
             | 
             | Previous generations (X, Boomers) were taught that being
             | "color blind" was the ideal. Which means to treat every
             | person the same, and disregard their race, creed, colors,
             | etc...
             | 
             | Both groups are using the same language for the goal: To
             | end racism. But the ways they were trained to do so are the
             | exact opposite of each other.
        
             | jl6 wrote:
             | It's interesting that the previous "neutral" yellow emojis
             | are widely viewed as white:
             | 
             | https://arxiv.org/pdf/2105.05887.pdf
             | 
             | My explanation is that The Simpsons trained us to view
             | yellow cartoon characters as white.
        
             | twofornone wrote:
             | This attitude promotes prejudice, merely redirecting it to
             | whatever demographic is convenient to paint as "dominant",
             | it will never solve the problem because it explicitly
             | prescribes different treatment based on ethnicity/gender.
             | 
             | Its an emotionally appealing but logically nonsensical
             | justification for bigotry. And particularly appealing to
             | people who are more interested in power than actual
             | equality.
        
               | three_seagrass wrote:
               | Good thing then being inclusive involves all races and
               | genders then, including the dominant one.
               | 
               | It would be pretty terrible if a historically "dominant"
               | demographic felt persecuted because of equal options with
               | emoji colors.
        
               | twofornone wrote:
               | This common argument is disingenuous. You hide behind the
               | term "inclusive" as though everyone is treated equally
               | but simultaneously believe that
               | 
               | >Excluding skin color and gender is being blind to
               | prejudice, not fighting it.
               | 
               | Which implies that historic and current prejudice must be
               | corrected with more prejudice. Which is inconsistent with
               | inclusiveness and equality. And we've all seen how this
               | works in practice - certain races and one gender in
               | particular are expected to prejudge other participants
               | and cede their vaguely defined, unilaterally assigned and
               | _assumed_ privilege to create _concrete_ prejudiced
               | privilege for others in the  "inclusive" group. And given
               | that personal circumstances are irrelevant, this the
               | definition of prejudice. While you may refuse to
               | acknowledge this explicitly, logically your approach to
               | solving racism is more racism. Which leads me to conclude
               | that at least the loudest among the D&I camp are only
               | using claims of equality as a thin disguise for
               | powermongering.
               | 
               | >It would be pretty terrible if a historically "dominant"
               | demographic felt persecuted because of equal options with
               | emoji colors.
               | 
               | And here, ironically, you are proving my point. To
               | correct historic injustice we are obligated to
               | immediately dismiss any grievances from white people,
               | bonus for snark and sarcasm. When minorities complain,
               | all claims are immediately valid, but if whites (and
               | sometimes Asians, when politically expedient) raise
               | legitimate concerns, they're just being fragile. That's
               | prejudice, my friend. And the degree to which it has
               | become casually acceptable in increasingly larger circles
               | is concerning.
               | 
               | By the way, I don't think anyone is concerned over the
               | expanded color pallet itself, its the insistence that
               | injecting divisive racialism into a race agnostic
               | communication tool is the solution to prejudice. Even
               | assuming that minorities are offended by a single yellow
               | option is racist, much in the same way that latino people
               | don't actually care for the similarly misguided "latinx"
               | designation.
        
       | retskrad wrote:
       | Google is working on some interesting stuff but their live events
       | aren't doing them any favors. There's no hype leading up to them
       | and the events themselves are dull as hell. Google currently has
       | only 40k people watching the live event. Apple WWDC events
       | attract 10X as many concurrent viewers.
        
         | indy wrote:
         | There's no hype because they don't have anything to show that
         | deserves hype. It's all the same: AI to improve photos, AI to
         | improve translations and small iterative improvements to
         | Android that you swear were shown at a Google IO event years
         | ago
         | 
         | Edit: watching the livestream and they've just announced an
         | Android tablet! Honestly this deja vu is getting ridiculous
        
           | verdverm wrote:
           | The AR glasses bit was especially underwhelming. Basically
           | faked the entire video
        
           | Workaccount2 wrote:
           | When are they going to announce "Corporate restructuring with
           | a focus on product dedication"...
        
             | SemanticStrengh wrote:
             | It's so consensual it's screamingly obvious and yet Google
             | isn't aware.
        
           | dylan-m wrote:
           | Not to mention Google Wallet, an "amazing new" product by the
           | same name of an existing product they keep renaming and
           | haven't finished retiring yet. They could just say they were
           | updating Google Wallet or whatever it's called now, but I
           | guess you don't get promoted for that.
           | 
           | I laughed when the Pixel guy (before announcing the tablet)
           | said they don't usually announce products so far in advance.
           | Has he _seen_ Google I /O?
        
             | media-trivial wrote:
             | The "remove people and stuff" feature for Google Photos
             | that they just announced had already been announced 4-5
             | years ago. We are still waiting.
        
             | nerpderp82 wrote:
             | > said they don't usually announce products so far in
             | advance
             | 
             | gLighting
        
             | hbn wrote:
             | The tablet announcement is funny too. Another generation of
             | people who haven't been through multiple cycles of this by
             | now are gonna be run through the process of believing
             | Google when they say they're focusing on tablets for real
             | this time, until they launch their tablet and get bored of
             | it a year later and then you wait a few more years before
             | Google makes a totally real commitment to tablets.
        
           | andybak wrote:
           | Maybe they'll launch a new messaging service.
        
             | agumonkey wrote:
             | We're all getting very frustrated at that point.
        
         | mrwnmonm wrote:
         | Also, it was interesting how quickly Apple made very good
         | offline conferences after covid, as if they were developing it
         | for years.
        
           | uoaei wrote:
           | Define "after covid"
        
             | fullstop wrote:
             | Presumably OP meant "after covid was a thing" and not
             | "after covid was over" (which will never happen)
        
           | JonathonW wrote:
           | Apple's online WWDC content has very good production value,
           | but a bunch of well-produced videos dropped over the course
           | of a week don't really make it a "conference".
           | 
           | Microsoft, with their BUILD conference a couple years ago,
           | actually had the best implementation of a COVID-era virtual
           | "conference" that I've seen-- lots of actual live content
           | (and live chat interaction), and to some extent some of the
           | content was actually superior to a real-world conference
           | because the online format (taking questions via chat) makes
           | Q&A more feasible than it would be in person.
        
             | filmgirlcw wrote:
             | As someone who worked on the programming team for Build in
             | 2020 and 2021, thanks for saying that. In 2020, especially,
             | it was really difficult to pivot with as little time as we
             | had. We did most of our stuff in 2020 live, even though it
             | was remote (a few of us were in the studio but most people
             | were at home), because we didn't have the lead time to make
             | it a well-produced pre-recorded thing. We were "live"
             | across time zones (meaning people in the US (like myself),
             | were often working at 3am, in order to bring live content
             | to other parts of the world), for an ungodly amount of
             | time, and the fact that it didn't break was really great.
             | Even though we had more production time in 2021, we still
             | did a lot of live content (with on-demand, of course),
             | across time zones, and focused on more breakout sessions
             | too.
             | 
             | I'm not at Microsoft anymore (tho I might still do some
             | stuff for Build this year, since I'm at GitHub), but being
             | part of the team that got Build 2020 across the finish line
             | is one of the things I'm most proud of. Microsoft was the
             | first to do a tech conference in the pandemic (Google
             | canceled, Facebook might have too), so we really didn't
             | have anything to base it off of.
             | 
             | Apple, naturally, just knocked it out of the park with the
             | production values, but I'll always love the scrappy nature
             | of Build 2020.
        
         | sylens wrote:
         | > There's no hype leading up to them
         | 
         | I was not even aware Google I/O was today
        
         | sidibe wrote:
         | All of these events are dull. I don't see why WWDC get people
         | any more hyped except that they have a lot more fans.
        
           | enos_feedler wrote:
           | WWDC and other Apple events justify more hype because they
           | are market leaders in mobile. When you watch an Apple event
           | you are often seeing things for the first time. Google Pixel
           | is blatantly copying the Apple product portfolio, from custom
           | chip designs to now Airpod Pro clones. Where would Google be
           | with Pixel if Apple didn't exist? It is literally spun up
           | division to copy the most valuable company in the world. We
           | shame Huawei and these Chinese companies for copying, but
           | look in our own backyard.
        
             | GeekyBear wrote:
             | > Google Pixel is blatantly copying the Apple product
             | portfolio, from custom chip designs to now Airpod Pro
             | clones.
             | 
             | Google relentlessly copies every other company in the
             | industry, and it's been going on for years now.
             | 
             | >You can look at Google's entire portfolio of launches over
             | the past decade, and trace nearly all of them to copying a
             | competitor: Google+ (Facebook), Google Cloud (AWS), Google
             | Home (Amazon Echo), Allo (WhatsApp), Android Instant Apps
             | (Facebook, WeChat), Google Assistant (Apple/Siri), and on
             | and on and on. They are stuck in me-too mode and have been
             | for years. They simply don't have innovation in their DNA
             | any more. And it's because their eyes are fixed on their
             | competitors, not their customers.
             | 
             | https://steve-yegge.medium.com/why-i-left-google-to-join-
             | gra...
        
               | cromwellian wrote:
               | You can do the same exercise for Apple and find loads of
               | copying, but Apple fans will say the Apple feature or
               | product somehow wasn't a copy. Even in your own list,
               | there are Apple copies, like HomePod and App Clips. Earin
               | preceeded Airpods (along with a long line of bluetooth
               | earpieces).
               | 
               | Apple has copied tons of features from Android, Chrome,
               | and Maps over the years, mostly ignored, but as soon as
               | Android gets a feature iOS had, Apple fanboys make a huge
               | deal over it. Apple's been playing this game for decades,
               | all the way back to the era of constantly accusing
               | Microsoft of copying "Redmond, start your copiers!"
               | 
               | Apple literally stole Spotify's entire business model for
               | Apple Music, and then turned around and used their
               | platform ownership to punish them. Apple Fitness copied
               | Fitbit and Peleton. Apple TV+ basically followed everyone
               | else getting into streaming. Hell, it appeared at one
               | point, they were even going to copy Tesla by making an
               | EV.
               | 
               | All major tech companies have a 'copy, acquire, kill'
               | strategy for competition. Apple is not different.
        
             | [deleted]
        
             | cute_boi wrote:
             | The funny thing is the best way to degoogle is to use
             | Hawaii phones.
        
             | croddin wrote:
             | "Picasso had a saying -- 'good artists copy; great artists
             | steal' -- and we have always been shameless about stealing
             | great ideas." -Steve Jobs
        
               | croddin wrote:
               | The question is: are these companies 'copying' or
               | 'stealing'? Hopefully they can improve on things rather
               | than just copying.
        
               | enos_feedler wrote:
               | I carefully chose the word "copy" because I know this
               | quote well. It's hard to define the difference between
               | copy and steal but it's easy to see by example. You just
               | feel it when you watch.
        
           | corrral wrote:
           | When I did a lot of dual-platform mobile dev, the teams would
           | always watch Google and Apple events.
           | 
           | The Apple ones were exciting, because they'd usually announce
           | a bunch of OS and development-related stuff we could start
           | using very soon.
           | 
           | The Google ones were kind of a bummer, because the
           | (appropriate and justified) mood in the room was "well, this
           | feature might be cool to use... in five years or so." The
           | only people who got excited about them were the hardcore
           | Android fans who weren't excited about dev-facing features,
           | but because they'd always buy whatever new Pixel or whatever
           | that was announced, ASAP.
        
             | hbn wrote:
             | > "well, this feature might be cool to use... in five years
             | or so."
             | 
             | At which point they'll deprecate it within a year or 2 in
             | favor of their flashy new thing that will replace it
        
         | Andrew_nenakhov wrote:
         | The only thing I care these days about Google's announcements
         | is "what did they break in Android this time?"
        
         | filmgirlcw wrote:
         | > Apple WWDC events attract 10X as many concurrent viewers
         | 
         | Apple does the best job of anyone in the industry (imho) of
         | building awareness and excitement over their events, developer
         | or otherwise, but I think it is important to note that the WWDC
         | keynotes (not the State of the Union), are also treated as
         | proper consumer-facing product events, not just a developer
         | keynote. As such, the audience is going to be much larger.
         | 
         | Back in the day, when Larry and Sergey were running things day
         | to day, I/O definitely had more of that energy (they year
         | Sergey jumped out of the plane and then walked on stage was
         | bananas) and could pull Apple-like numbers, but that's not what
         | I/O is anymore.
         | 
         | 40k concurrent for virtual conference that could be a series of
         | blog posts and pre-recorded talks is actually pretty strong,
         | IMHO.
        
           | elpakal wrote:
           | Good point about the keynote - I think that's why this year's
           | WWDC is basically just that for in person (++SOTU)
        
         | servercobra wrote:
         | I literally didn't know it was going on. I usually tune in for
         | at least a little bit each year, and went back when they
         | launched Android for tablets.
        
         | cromwellian wrote:
         | Honestly, I preferred the days when developer conferences were
         | for DEVELOPERS and not consumers. Announce APIs, DevTools, demo
         | new stuff developers can use. Back when I/O was "Google
         | Developer Day" and used to be mostly Web-tech, I found it way
         | more interesting, more of a hackers conference. The modern
         | conferences are more about commerce, even on the developer
         | side, and not simply about the Joy of Cool Stuff and Cool
         | Hacks.
         | 
         | These days Apple and Google use developer conferences as
         | pseudo-consumer product soft launches.
         | 
         | IMHO, consumer end user launches should do done at consumer
         | conferences.
         | 
         | Still, compared to Apple, Google's keynotes still contain more
         | stuff of interest to developers like PaLM, LaMDA models, and a
         | change to play with them. Apple's WWDC keynotes are usually so
         | dumbed down, their graphs don't even have numbers of axis
         | labels.
        
       | jabo wrote:
       | Almost all the comments so far are negative! So let me change
       | that: I'm excited that something I'm working on, Typesense, was
       | mentioned by name and logo during the developer key note!
       | 
       | [1]
       | https://twitter.com/jasonbosco/status/1524483471988727809?s=...
        
         | kdheepak wrote:
         | That's exciting stuff! Congrats!
        
           | jabo wrote:
           | Thank you!
        
       | rektide wrote:
       | So far it's been a lot of "look how smart we are: we make things
       | easy!"
       | 
       | It brings me to a pretty forlorn place, that there is such high &
       | mighty technology, but delivered in such preconcieved, packaged
       | products. Technological _goods_ have become much better
       | distributed, but the art of technology keeps evaporating upwards.
       | Subliming up into the cloud.
       | 
       | Part of the allure of the personal computing era (RIP) was that
       | it invited in the spirit of Man The Toolmaker. There was a
       | dignity to mastery & development that was visible, we could form
       | a close & knowing relationship with our systems. That spirit has
       | been returned to the gods, fire returned back to Hephaestus's
       | workshop. Which is now HQ'ed in Mountain View.
       | 
       | (I haven't always felt this way about Google. My perception is
       | there had been a bigger focus on helping advance the web & making
       | available APIs. That Google was creating new starting places.)
        
         | meragrin_ wrote:
         | Perhaps you are better off watching the developer keynote?
        
       | excerionsforte wrote:
       | Definitely happy they are figuring out the skin tone stuff for
       | search. Being able to search for skin conditions and hone in on
       | skin tone efficiently has been a pet peeve of mine. Psoriasis,
       | for instance, looks different on different skin tones.
        
         | media-trivial wrote:
         | "Users will have a new way to filter by relevant skin tones" is
         | my favorite quote from the keynote.
        
       | rpmisms wrote:
       | Pixel 6a dropped the headphone jack. Great. Gotta find another
       | brand now.
        
         | kevinqi wrote:
         | damn. I've been hanging on to my 3a, unfortunate to hear.
        
           | wildrhythms wrote:
           | Yup, my latest 'upgrade' was to the 5a for this reason... I
           | fear it may be the last Pixel with a headphone jack. When it
           | eventually eats shit I'm terrified of being relegated to the
           | sea of horrible OS bloatware Android devices.
        
         | sorenjan wrote:
         | Sony launched their Xperia 1 IV (yes, it's the fourth version
         | of the 1, ridiculous name) today. It's probably around twice as
         | expensive as the Pixel 6a since it's a flagship, but it still
         | has a 3.5 mm jack, and it introduces optical zoom.
         | 
         | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sony_Xperia_1_IV
         | 
         | Only two years software upgrades though.
        
         | onphonenow wrote:
         | It's been kind of funny to see folks criticize apple, then when
         | their product cycle catches up copy them :) This has been like
         | clockwork for a number of companies, starting with the move
         | from keyboards to glass etc.
         | 
         | For me the lighting jack on the iphones actually has fantastic
         | latency. Does anyone know how that works? Much better than
         | USB-C (ie, you can use as a monitor for a multi-track recoding
         | very comfortably)
        
           | rpmisms wrote:
           | Apple writes their own audio drivers for very specific
           | hardware is how it works. It's very annoying, because there's
           | so many amazing music apps that just couldn't work on
           | Android. I just want a headphone jack or a simple way to use
           | wired headphones.
        
           | SemanticStrengh wrote:
           | You make it sound it's true but it's misleading, the critics
           | was because apple users were the beta testers. Letting plenty
           | of time for the industry( headphones, etc) and users to adapt
           | for their Android phone
        
         | drusepth wrote:
         | Any recommendations? I've been holding off on upgrading my
         | shattered-screen 3a for almost 6 months assuming I'd get the 6a
         | when it released, so pretty much anything would be an upgrade
         | at this point.
         | 
         | I'm really just looking for a good camera, a headphone jack,
         | and a good battery.
        
           | staindk wrote:
           | Sony phones (at least the ones I looked at and then stopped
           | looking at once I saw their prices) seem to still have audio
           | jacks. And amazing cameras.
           | 
           | They seem to be great phones, the price tag is just crazy to
           | me (as with all other flagships tbf).
        
           | daptaq wrote:
           | I'm considering to buy a Pixel 5a, seems like the last good
           | phone. It seems there are good deals on Ebay.
        
           | dnissley wrote:
           | usb-c headphone jack dongle + cable tether to attach it to
           | your headphones
        
           | rpmisms wrote:
           | A friend of mine is in love with Samsung, and they seem to be
           | the last major OEM making phones with > 1 port.
        
       | wayeq wrote:
       | TL;DR "We've developed new and innovative products and features
       | that will help us profile you and sell you stuff you don't
       | actually want like never before"
        
       | SemanticStrengh wrote:
       | Any interesting info?
        
         | media-trivial wrote:
         | Nope
        
       | webmaven wrote:
       | This is getting into the weeds, but I'm keeping an eye out for
       | information on whether the 6a will have a subscription option
       | like the 5a (24 payments of $15 = $360 for a $450 phone).
       | 
       | Of course, my 5a will only be paid off in another 19 months, at
       | which point a hypothetical Pixel 7a will presumably be available
       | for upgrading, hopefully also with a similar subscription plan,
       | but meanwhile whether the 6a even has a subscription plan is an
       | indicator of what the offerings will be in another year and a
       | half.
       | 
       | I am glad that the 6a has a Tensor chip (that's the one
       | significant limitation of the 5a compared to the rest of the
       | current lineup), so whatever else, I can be reasonably certain
       | that the phone upgrade will have one too.
       | 
       | I find the urge to conduct kremlinological analysis somewhat
       | annoying, but given that my subscription agreement just says that
       | I will have an opportunity to upgrade at the end of the payment
       | plan, with no indication as to the price or value of that
       | upgrade, it is hard not to worry.
       | 
       | It is interesting though that the present value of a subscription
       | hardware purchase is now hinging in part on the future upgrade
       | opportunity (and in the sense of replacement with a new version
       | rather than expansion with add-on hardware) just like software.
       | 
       | That said, even if that future upgrade opportunity turns out to
       | be crap, I'll only be disappointed rather than feeling burned.
       | After all, a sizable discount and an interest-free payment plan
       | on a solid mid-level phone was a decent deal regardless.
        
         | curiousgal wrote:
         | If you want to upgrade your 5a go for the 5. The 6 is awful and
         | I doubt the 6a is any better. Apple perfecting their SoCs has
         | made it seem so easy, but as it turns out, it is extremely
         | hard.
        
         | wildrhythms wrote:
         | I opted for the 5a because it has a _slightly_ larger battery
         | than the 6, and a headphone jack :)
        
       | snvzz wrote:
       | Still no Fuchsia, surprisingly.
        
         | mupuff1234 wrote:
         | I think it's powering nest hub max, and perhaps other home
         | devices as well.
        
           | blibble wrote:
           | probably best it stays there
           | 
           | my nest hub reboots most times I go to try to use it
        
       | onphonenow wrote:
       | One question I did have on the monk skin tone scale. They note
       | that tone (normally a color measurement) is actually subjective
       | (not objective) and so participants in studies should be asked to
       | self identify their own skin tone and not let the computer
       | classify images based on the scale. To the degree self
       | identification is materially different than a technical measure
       | of skin tone, how does that work in a model (ie, someone who is
       | white self identifying as having a black skin tone). Secondarily,
       | are these tones intended to map in any way to any traditional
       | measures of ethnicity / race / national origin?
        
       | lkxijlewlf wrote:
       | I popped in for a few minutes to verify something. I'm ... over
       | this whole annual what's new presentation stuff. I just don't
       | care anymore. And honestly the three presenters I saw didn't even
       | seem like they rehearsed at all. They just read from the prompter
       | and tried to put excitement in their voice at the same time and
       | it just fell flat.
        
         | izzydata wrote:
         | I think Apple, Samsung and Google should give up on this whole
         | iPhone 13 and Pixel 6 naming and numbering scheme and stop
         | pretending like it is going to be an exciting brand new product
         | every single year.
         | 
         | They should name them more like cars where you can always
         | expect there to be the latest revision each year, but you never
         | expect it to be something completely new that you need to
         | upgrade to.
         | 
         | We need the iPhone (2023) and the Pixel (2023). You would just
         | say you have "an iPhone" and if for whatever reason it is
         | necessary you could say it is a 2023 model.
        
           | hobofan wrote:
           | > iPhone 13 and Pixel 6
           | 
           | I think the fact that they are in those high numbers already
           | shows that they "stopped pretending like it is going to be an
           | exciting brand new product every single year". The numbering
           | there is pretty straightforward compared to e.g. the Macbook
           | namings, or the convoluted naming of other brands with
           | stacked variation signifiers, like the "Xiaomi 11 lite 5G
           | NE".
        
             | Hasu wrote:
             | > The numbering there is pretty straightforward compared to
             | e.g. the Macbook namings
             | 
             | I'm confused, while Apple has silly naming conventions for
             | their operating system, the Macbook line doesn't have that
             | at all. It's just the Macbook (and the Macbook Pro and the
             | Macbook Air), Apple doesn't even give them different names
             | or years.
             | 
             | Am I missing something that isn't incredibly
             | straightforward about the Macbook naming?
        
               | hobofan wrote:
               | > It's just the Macbook (and the Macbook Pro and the
               | Macbook Air)
               | 
               | Just that it isn't. The "(new) MacBook" (without any
               | addition) most recently existed 2015-2019, and I
               | personally found it very confusing, as it was thinner
               | than a MacBook Air and with that breaking the previous
               | expectations that were set up by the product line naming.
               | 
               | Placing all the blame on the naming of the MacBooks is
               | probably overblown, but I feel like the individual lines
               | of MacBooks have had a expectation/consistency problem
               | for 10+ years now and throwing in the "new MacBook" into
               | the mix for some time didn't help it.
        
               | i2shar wrote:
               | Yes, you are missing the sillier "Late 2014", "Early
               | 2019" naming of MacBook Pros and others :)
        
           | jl6 wrote:
           | Is there a whole lot of difference between "iPhone 15" and
           | "iPhone (2023)"? Aside from the fact that relegating the
           | version number to parentheses makes it more likely to be
           | omitted and thus more likely to cause confusion for users
           | trying to troubleshoot.
           | 
           | I like the version number being explicit and visible. You
           | know what you're getting. Pretending versions don't exist
           | just reminds me of OEMs swapping out components but keeping
           | the same model number, making it impossible to know whether
           | you are buying one built to the original design or to a
           | cheaper design.
        
           | whywhywhywhy wrote:
           | >You would just say you have "an iPhone"
           | 
           | They tried this with the iPad 3 IIRC. Was just "The New iPad"
           | but they then reverted back the next year.
        
             | wlesieutre wrote:
             | They didn't really go back though, it's iPad (9th
             | generation) instead of iPad 9. Not quite versionless naming
             | like they use for Macs, but it's less versioned than the
             | iPhone naming.
        
             | saghm wrote:
             | The problem with calling something "The New X" is that you
             | basically can't come out with _another_ model after without
             | making it confusing to differentiate between the "new" one
             | and the "New" one. I think the main reason they felt they
             | could try that is that they new they were not going to come
             | out with any more "generic" iPads and instead have the Pro
             | and Air models like they have for Macbooks.
        
           | bsimpson wrote:
           | I work at Google and I don't always know which phone is
           | which.
           | 
           | It's a phone. It does phone things.
        
             | AnimalMuppet wrote:
             | And, really, how many _more_ phone things do you need it to
             | do? Will doing more phone things make it noticeably better?
        
             | The_Colonel wrote:
             | I wish. Pixel 6 (Pro) often has trouble doing "phone
             | things", like making calls or transmitting data.
        
           | anon23anon wrote:
           | Yea cars have this notion of model years. Everyone knows
           | nothing really changes between model years except the trim.
           | It's the vehicle generation you care about. I think the focus
           | should be on holding press conferences when you genuinely
           | have something new to show off otherwise it's just fluff.
        
             | rrrrrrrrrrrryan wrote:
             | Car companies' annual events where they unveil all their
             | new models are huge. They've been happening every year
             | since forever.
             | 
             | It's likely the tech industry copied them.
        
             | magicalist wrote:
             | Car companies do have press events every year for their
             | yearly product updates, it's just that everyone who doesn't
             | care just doesn't pay attention.
        
           | MarkSweep wrote:
           | I believe Samsung has started to do this with their Galaxy S
           | series of phones, starting with the S20 in 2020. This years
           | phone is the S22 for 2022.
        
         | cogman10 wrote:
         | They've become really disappointing.
         | 
         | When Google IO started it was a nice fun tech presentation with
         | a lot of side classes showing devs how to work with these new
         | google technologies.
         | 
         | Now, it's mostly just google introducing new products to the
         | press.
        
           | oofbey wrote:
           | When they introduce new products, do they say "and really we
           | won't abandon this in 2 years" and keep a straight face, or
           | do they just not even bother?
        
             | oofbey wrote:
             | LOL the downvotes! The google faithful are not amused.
             | 
             | Don't stop believing, y'all! Some day your prince will
             | come.
        
             | pjmlp wrote:
             | They push as if they firmly believe in it and then let it
             | drop, see Project Tango, Sceneform, NDK packages,...
        
           | akira_f wrote:
           | For that dev part they have the developer keynote. Google
           | just gave away many online training classes for free, which
           | includes many many hands on coding labs.
        
           | akomtu wrote:
           | I doubt it's press who is the audience. People behind these
           | projects want to be seen by SVPs and above, so they get those
           | 5 minutes of attention, get their promos and immediately
           | switch teams to chase the next promo.
        
         | CydeWeys wrote:
         | Fwiw, I gave a much less important I/O presentation than this
         | four years ago and I had to go through endless hours of
         | prep/review/practice. I can't imagine they didn't rehearse it.
         | Maybe they're just not great speakers? I doubt I am either.
        
         | jonas21 wrote:
         | Yeah, 90% of it was boring, but the Immersive View in Google
         | Maps looks pretty cool:
         | 
         | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3qfp8TAg9tg
        
         | systemvoltage wrote:
         | I miss Steve Jobs era of keynotes. All keynotes are just so
         | dull today.
         | 
         | What went wrong?
        
           | izzydata wrote:
           | Technology was advancing more rapidly so there were actually
           | new and exciting things to show you. We seem to be hitting
           | diminishing returns and most of the low hanging fruit and
           | almost all the high hanging fruit problems that we have in
           | our day to day lives have been solved that can be solved with
           | a computer.
           | 
           | Now since they have run out of problems to solve they are
           | inventing problems so they can solve them.
        
             | fumar wrote:
             | Should we look to biotech and robotics? I would love to
             | live a life where my genetics don't hinder everyday living
             | or outsource labor like laundry to machines.
        
             | akomtu wrote:
             | Robotics is the obvious high hanging fruit: autonomous lawn
             | movers and such. But nothing is going to happen when the
             | best minds work on reshuffling some UI that's better be
             | left alone.
        
             | reaperducer wrote:
             | _most of the low hanging fruit and almost all the high
             | hanging fruit problems that we have in our day to day lives
             | have been solved that can be solved with a computer._
             | 
             | I don't watch the Google presentations, but I'm an avid
             | consumer of Apple's.
             | 
             | That said, even I'm disappointed with the state of
             | technology today. There's still plenty of fruit to be
             | harvested at all levels.
             | 
             | But all I ever see from Apple and Google is variations on
             | "How do I get together with a bunch of people I already
             | know for Thai food in an area that I can walk to?" Or "How
             | do I get through my morning, which is completely
             | predictable and never varies in even the slightest way from
             | one day to the next?"
             | 
             | Here's a softball for both of them:
             | 
             | Using their maps app, allow me to choose a starting point,
             | a destination, and a departure time. Then show me all of
             | the coffee shops within x distance of that route that will
             | still be open for one hour when I pass that location.
        
           | vincentmarle wrote:
           | Surely you've missed out on the "biggest change to Airbnb in
           | a decade":
           | https://twitter.com/bchesky/status/1524372742048718848
           | 
           | (Spoiler alert: it's not)
        
           | kadoban wrote:
           | They're a bit low on charismatic bullshitters right now, and
           | the tech got better enough that gains are small.
        
           | sidibe wrote:
           | If you like to gush over exciting announcements there's still
           | Musk. Unfortunately it's been many years since his company
           | actually built anything he announces
        
             | systemvoltage wrote:
             | I don't like to gush over any leader and stop stuffing
             | words in my mouth. I'm stating the "era" (2000-2010)
             | keynotes were super fun, original and exciting. What's with
             | so much hostility? (You've edited your comment, thanks).
        
               | staunch wrote:
               | > _What's with so much hostility?_
               | 
               | There's a popular and cynical meme that people like Steve
               | Jobs and Elon Musk are just marketing bullshitters that
               | don't actually do anything useful. It's laughably false
               | and easily disproved. And yet it seems to comfort
               | cynical/pessimistic/unhappy/ignorant people, of which
               | many exist, and so it prevails.
        
               | systemvoltage wrote:
               | Hmm, weird, I find Steve Jobs and Musk truly inspiring.
        
               | SemanticStrengh wrote:
               | OK I challenge you to try to engage and bring
               | constructive evidence then. Give a summary of what steve
               | jobs and musk have done to improve the human
               | condition/world.
               | 
               | While Apple has achieved some moderately useful advances
               | you have to divide the amount of progress given by the
               | amount of money captured. Apple has an almost negligible
               | ratio in that regard. Musk has achieved even less.
        
               | staunch wrote:
               | > _OK I challenge you to try to engage and bring
               | constructive evidence then_
               | 
               | What kind of evidence would convince you? Wikipedia has
               | summaries. Of course, they necessarily lack the context
               | required to deeply understand the topic.
               | 
               | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steve_Jobs#Innovations_and_
               | des...
               | 
               | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elon_Musk#Business_career
               | 
               | > _Apple has an almost negligible ratio in that regard.
               | Musk has achieved even less._
               | 
               | I challenge you to give evidence for these assertions. I
               | would be convinced if you explained how you came to this
               | conclusion and explained how you calculated the terms of
               | this ratio.
        
               | SemanticStrengh wrote:
               | Thanks for engaging, I will try to write an answer when I
               | get the motivation
        
               | Hasu wrote:
               | "There's a popular and cynical meme" is another way of
               | phrasing, "There are people who evaluate these people's
               | contributions differently than I do"
               | 
               | > It's laughably false and easily disproved.
               | 
               | Then disprove it, instead of relying on an ad hominem
               | assumption of what's going on inside someone else's
               | brain. As it stands all you've done is claim that a
               | criticism exists and that the people who state that
               | criticism have moral failings, which does not make them
               | wrong.
        
               | staunch wrote:
               | > _" There are people who evaluate these people's
               | contributions differently than I do"_
               | 
               | That would presume we're talking about people with
               | approximately equivalent knowledge that simply come to
               | different, but reasonable, conclusions.
               | 
               | But this is not the case. What I see in this meme is
               | people betraying their ignorance and motivated reasoning
               | at every turn. There's nothing knowledgeable or
               | reasonable about their assertions. It's always highly
               | vitriolic and dismissive toxicity. It's not that they're
               | simply mistaken about certain facts, and can be
               | corrected, it's that they're _transparently_ ignorant and
               | /or acting in bad faith.
               | 
               | For example, it's extremely uncommon, maybe even unheard
               | of, for someone with a deep knowledge of technology
               | history to agree with these kinds of dismissals of Steve
               | Jobs or Elon Musk. I've never seen someone able to
               | discuss the topic at a high level that won't readily
               | acknowledge their contributions, even if they can be very
               | critical of them in certain ways. As one example among
               | many: historian and professor Walter Isaacson wrote well
               | respected books about Benjamin Franklin, Albert Einstein,
               | and Steve Jobs. He is currently writing one about Elon
               | Musk.
        
             | staunch wrote:
             | It's not merely "gushing" to be excited about new
             | technology breakthroughs. And Musk, through his companies,
             | is actively delivering today on Starlink, Tesla, Dragon,
             | and Starship to name a few big ones. This meme that he's
             | "all talk" is easily disproved for any honest observer.
        
               | ben_w wrote:
               | Yes, although: while the Starship project is incredibly
               | impressive, it can't really be said to have delivered
               | until it's actually reached orbit.
               | 
               | Until then, it's like the stuff Boeing, Lockheed, ULA
               | etc. have spent even longer developing and have also not
               | reached orbit with.
        
               | staunch wrote:
               | The claim was that Musk's companies haven't "built"
               | anything. Versions of Starship have clearly been built
               | and launched, even if the project is still in
               | development. It's a very real project and anyone can
               | watch its developmental progress live:
               | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mhJRzQsLZGg
               | 
               | I doubt you or anyone else would bet significant money
               | that Starship _won 't_ reach orbit. If so, I'd be happy
               | to accept.
               | 
               | For the record, I don't think you can point to any
               | project even remotely equivalent in terms of capability
               | or progress from Boeing, Lockheed, or ULA. I'd be happy
               | if they were doing nearly as well as SpaceX.
               | 
               | My other examples: Starlink, Tesla, and Dragon have
               | clearly been "built" and shipped. Starlink is the hands
               | of consumers, is actively helping Ukraine for military
               | and humanitarian purposes, Tesla has shipped millions of
               | vehicles, and Dragon Crew had another successful
               | rendezvous with ISS days ago.
               | 
               | I could spend a lot more time providing examples but
               | consider these to be more than sufficient to disprove the
               | claim that Elon Musk's companies haven't "actually built
               | anything he announces" in "years".
        
               | webmaven wrote:
               | _> Yes, although: while the Starship project is
               | incredibly impressive, it can't really be said to have
               | delivered until it's actually reached orbit._
               | 
               | True, but it isn't as if SpaceX doesn't have a track
               | record for hiring some pretty ambitious targets with
               | their progression of Falcon 1 -Falcon 9 -Falcon Heavy.
               | Admittedly, Starship's planned use of the new Raptor
               | engines seems risky, but the DOD did fund a prototype-
               | and-test contract that _presumably_ concluded
               | successfully a few years ago. While the results of those
               | tests aren 't public, there have been no leaks to the
               | contrary, at any rate, and no changes in the planned use
               | of Raptor have been announced (and SpaceX hasn't
               | generally been at all shy about announcing changes to
               | their plans).
               | 
               | I think it's a pretty safe bet right now that Starship
               | will launch and that they will get it working reliably,
               | and that they will have to blow up a few along the way to
               | make those things happen.
        
           | CydeWeys wrote:
           | This is a mature industry; each company simply doesn't have a
           | lot of new groundbreaking stuff to announce every year. It's
           | iterative.
           | 
           | And a lot of the seemingly groundbreaking announcements then
           | don't go on to pan out either (I'm thinking of Magic Leap
           | here). If you don't care about realism/follow-through, then
           | you have very exciting announcements; just don't expect
           | anything announced to ever pan out.
        
         | natly wrote:
         | I think tech in general is kinda stagnating at this point.
         | We've plucked all the low hanging fruit, to get new
         | revolutionary things will be much more slow going from here.
        
         | hintymad wrote:
         | It's probably because the new products are really incremental
         | improvements over some niche. There's nothing wrong with that
         | either. I don't expect that a company would churn out
         | groundbreaking products year over year -- I certainly wish so,
         | though, as it means new problems to tackle, more meaningful
         | projects to work on, and more demand of engineers in the
         | industry.
        
         | pjmlp wrote:
         | Same here, I used to care, but since Google has never seriously
         | pushed for updates (Treble doesn't require OEMs to actually
         | care to update), gave up on keeping Java support up to date, I
         | lost interest.
         | 
         | As long as Chrome and the NDK stay around, I am good and don't
         | care anymore whatever version I can only use 5 years from now
         | with already deprecated APIs.
        
         | simonebrunozzi wrote:
         | I used to be a professional speaker (Amazon, VMware, etc), and
         | presented at more than 600 events. They said I was pretty good.
         | Point is, after years of perfecting my craft, I can instantly
         | spot the difference between a good presenter and a "fake" / bad
         | one.
         | 
         | Most people are bad. Really. Sorry to be blunt, but it is what
         | it is. A bit of training and a bit of rehearsal would go a long
         | way. I am shocked that big events like this one do not try to
         | invest more in preparing the speakers. It wouldn't take much.
        
           | tsunamifury wrote:
           | The audience is also able to detect professional speakers
           | like yourself, with calculated hand movements and inauthentic
           | voice pitch calibration and is equally turned off -- its just
           | that professional speakers so rarely admit that since they
           | make money off saying otherwise. The problem here is just
           | that the topics aren't compelling enough. And you rarely get
           | a good speaker who also knows the topic well so as to be
           | perceived as authentic.
           | 
           | Look at Elon's keynotes, they are TERRIBLE from a public
           | speaking perspective, but excellent content that generally is
           | interesting. Also no one perceives them as inauthentic, just
           | off-hand-ish. It works.
        
         | azangru wrote:
         | > And honestly the three presenters I saw didn't even seem like
         | they rehearsed at all. They just read from the prompter and
         | tried to put excitement in their voice at the same time and it
         | just fell flat.
         | 
         | Yes. I haven't yet watched talks from this IO, but it was
         | exactly my impression from last year's IO and Chrome Dev
         | Summit. There are some speakers, mostly dev rels, who clearly
         | love speaking and are great at it; but most of the speakers
         | were just woodenly reading from the screen. As if they are
         | unaware that written language is different from spoken
         | language, and it takes rare skills to write a speech and then
         | read it back to the audience in such a way that would sound
         | natural and engaging.
        
         | dudus wrote:
         | Yo me it just seems like everyone is following a playbook for
         | presentations based on some bullshit science and pairing that
         | with the best Steve Jobs impersonation you can.
        
         | rvz wrote:
         | Yes. It is always about what they don't tell you in these
         | keynotes that is more interesting rather than what they are
         | already announcing on stage.
         | 
         | The only exception is the last announcement which is them
         | trying to re-enter the race for AR/XR glasses which again some
         | thought they gave up.
         | 
         | This acquisition is the reason why they are trying again: [0]
         | 
         | [0] https://www.cnbc.com/2020/06/30/google-acquires-north-
         | augmen...
        
           | reaperducer wrote:
           | _AR /XR glasses_
           | 
           | Is "XR" a typo for VR, or is there another new R that I
           | should learn about?
        
             | easrng wrote:
             | XR = catchall for VR and AR
        
       | whywhywhywhy wrote:
       | It's kinda crazy how little there is to show from a year of
       | effort for 139,995 employees.
        
         | wildrhythms wrote:
         | I think maybe these tech companies need more MBAs and middle
         | managers whose only existence is to 'trim the budget' and
         | isolate their team's work under their own little banner so they
         | can use it as a parachute to glide to the next company. That
         | will surely get the creative juices flowing at any organization
         | I think.
        
         | akomtu wrote:
         | Quite the opposite. They could showcase an impressive list of
         | competitors that haven't been launched, thanks to all their
         | would-be employees working for FANG.
        
       | rvz wrote:
       | The North Glasses with AR in that Google acquisition was a long
       | time coming to be shown off and was as expected [0] but I'm very
       | surprised that this acquisition of North was overlooked [1] by
       | many.
       | 
       | Importantly, this is where the race for AR/XR glasses starts and
       | begins to be interesting. They needed to show off something
       | tangible in the end to still show that they are still in the
       | race.
       | 
       | Maybe Apple already started years ago and are waiting for others
       | to do it wrong (again) and will _try_ to time it again.
       | 
       | We'll see.
       | 
       | [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29568018
       | 
       | [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29567471
        
       | siruncledrew wrote:
       | New google glass is coming
        
       | frizlab wrote:
       | pass. nothing of interest honestly.
        
       | cercatrova wrote:
       | The immersive view in Maps looks quite impressive, it reminds me
       | of Microsoft Flight Simulator and how Microsoft used its Bing
       | Maps scans to render the world in very high detail. But now you
       | can do this on your phone.
       | 
       | https://blog.google/products/maps/three-maps-updates-io-2022...
        
         | wildrhythms wrote:
         | I showed my older parents the 3D view that exists in Maps and
         | Google Earth today and they were blown away (and also thought
         | they were being spied on). The technology is incredible. A few
         | years ago I got to try the Google Earth VR on an Oculus Rift
         | and being able to stand in my hometown in VR with the weirdly
         | chunky approximated renderings was a surreal experience.
        
       | bobsmooth wrote:
       | New languages added to Google translate. It honestly has to be
       | one of the most amazing inventions of the last 10 years if not
       | the last 100 years.
        
         | media-trivial wrote:
         | They added more languages during this keynote than Apple
         | Translate supports in total.
        
       | whatever1 wrote:
       | No messaging apps announced?
        
         | sphars wrote:
         | Wouldn't be surprised if the new Google Wallet has some sort of
         | messaging built in
        
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       (page generated 2022-05-11 23:01 UTC)