[HN Gopher] Mass layoffs and absentee bosses create a morale cri...
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Mass layoffs and absentee bosses create a morale crisis at Meta
Author : pretext
Score : 462 points
Date : 2023-04-12 11:12 UTC (11 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.nytimes.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.nytimes.com)
| ChrisMarshallNY wrote:
| _> Mr. Zuckerberg has made a big bet on the metaverse, an
| immersive online world._
|
| This is one of those "Were there any adults in the room when the
| decision was discussed?" instances that I see all over the place,
| these days.
|
| Like 3D televisions, immersive 3D avatar worlds have been tried
| -more than once.
|
| They work great for games, but not for real-life stuff. There are
| a few "corner cases," where it's being supported (I think
| there.com is still a thing), but otherwise, it only exists in the
| minds of SF writers.
| loeg wrote:
| Where were the adults in the room when Zuckerberg was given
| supervoting stock? He has the majority of voting shares in the
| company and can basically do whatever he wants.
| Balgair wrote:
| I think it would be great for pay-per-view events.
|
| Imagine being on the 50 yard line of the superbowl for $10.
|
| Imagine being in the stands of your kids volleyball game from
| your hotel room on a work trip.
|
| Live events, large or small, are the killer app, I think.
| [deleted]
| draw_down wrote:
| [dead]
| dumbotron wrote:
| This felt like the outcome of being surrounded by sycophants.
| What's funny is the reasoning about owning the platform and not
| being dependent on Apple and Google makes perfect sense. The
| outcome was just silly.
| aksss wrote:
| Most tech people have a vision of what VR "should be", but
| perhaps not as many fully appreciate that it's a very, very
| difficult problem that people have been chipping away at for
| decades with relatively modest gains. Oculus is exponentially
| better than the Nintendo Virtual Boy, but like Virtual Boy the
| current capabilities fall very short of the vision and
| ultimately disappoint after one is confronted with the
| limitations, nearer at hand than the marketing hype would have
| one believe. Given this, the Meta pivot seemed like the move of
| someone caught up in their own marketing/bullshit but unable to
| get their own bearings on the matter (which would have checked
| the hype cycle). To some extent Zuck's empire can shape the
| world at least temporarily, but nothing gets us past the fact
| that the tech just isn't able to meet expectations yet. So
| there's this vacuum or hole in Meta's strat that leaves them
| rapidly needing to move the tech forward at a miraculous pace
| (which I wouldn't bet on happening) or "re-pivoting" (de-
| pivoting?).
| kevinventullo wrote:
| Why do you think Sheryl left?
| nemo44x wrote:
| Everyone was getting so rich on their stock grants. Once in a
| lifetime opportunity perhaps. Why risk that when the only bad
| outcome for you is to be cut off at that moment? Regardless of
| if the Metaverse destroys the company, you'll have gotten rich
| in that time. The more enthusiastic you are the better.
|
| Misaligned incentives.
| okdood64 wrote:
| Were any adults in the room when most all of these FAANG+
| companies were gluttonously over-hiring during the pandemic?
| podgib wrote:
| > the cuts expected this month will be the first to affect tech
| departments, including engineers, which has surprised employees
|
| Huh? The earlier layoffs definitely affected tech. I know of a
| bunch of former colleagues in engineering roles that were laid
| off in the first round. Sure, recruiting was affected more, which
| makes sense when hiring was reduced to almost zero, but this is
| very much not the first time engineers will be included in
| layoffs.
| ozmodiar wrote:
| Back in a previous life in a chemical R&D lab the company did
| layoffs and claimed to the media that it was all to marketing
| and administration. In the lab we lost about 50% of our
| researchers but weren't allowed to talk to anyone about it. I'm
| guessing companies really want to make it look like layoffs
| aren't impacting the people responsible for the product, and
| feed questionable data to that effect.
| phyrex wrote:
| Yeah that's nonsense. Last round was about 50% engineering!
| tru3_power wrote:
| Seems like typical media bias against FB. Don't forget- FB
| was bullying media companies for a while. Now they are
| getting a chance to strike back.
| AlexandrB wrote:
| Huh? How is claiming that Meta hasn't cut any Engineering
| roles _yet_ bias _against_ Meta? If anything it 's painting
| Meta in a more positive light.
| zuminator wrote:
| The misleading implication is that now suddenly Meta is
| in panic mode and making unprecedentedly drastic cuts, as
| opposed to just ratcheting its previous layoff policies.
| nonethewiser wrote:
| This is totally an aside, but Im not into crypto and have a
| fairly negative connotation with it but I don't necessarily think
| crypto is bullshit. I think the problem with crypto is that it
| misjudges the world, or is at least positioned for a very cynical
| version of the world that doesn't currently exist.
|
| Is crypto kept alive on evangelism? Yes.
|
| Not really that useful at the moment (and maybe never will be)?
| Yes.
|
| Has lots of pump and dump, scams, bad people doing bad stuff?
| People who have no clue what they're talking about spewing
| bullshit? Resounding yes.
|
| But I don't think it's bullshit because it does solve a real
| problem - verifying transactions independently. But of course
| there are trade offs with this, such as bitcoin's power
| consumption. The disconnect comes from crypto people misjudging
| the world. The current financial system simply isn't so bad to
| require all the weird trade offs of crypto.
| sethd wrote:
| It doesn't solve a real problem, it solves an academic problem.
|
| I believe this is why a lot of people fall for the blockchain
| trap, it's interesting on an academic level, so they come to
| the conclusion that there must be value in there in there
| somewhere.
| deweller wrote:
| It might not solve a real problem that you have, but it does
| solve the following real problem:
|
| How do you create a shared transaction ledger without a
| central point of failure and control?
| sethd wrote:
| > How do you create a shared transaction ledger without a
| central point of failure and control?
|
| How is this not exactly what I was referring to? (solving
| an academic problem rather than a real world problem)
| kelseyfrog wrote:
| I'm walking through my last 30 years on thus planet and
| that thought hasn't ever entered my mind. What were you
| doing in your life that prompted that desire to express
| itself?
| darkerside wrote:
| How many people thought a centralized VCS was just fine,
| and why would you even need distributed features?
| toast0 wrote:
| Very few people use the distributed features of git. It's
| almost always centralized at a corporate repository, a
| git forge, or there's not actually any collaboration.
|
| It's almost always pull from my branch on the centralized
| repo, not pull from my repo at this unrelated host.
| kelseyfrog wrote:
| That would be a good argument, except this is a thread
| about crypto and doing a Humpty Dumptyism that we're
| actually talking about VCS doesn't really make the point.
| I'm not getting baited into a discussion about how
| crypto-currencies and DVCS are abstractly the same thing
| and should be treated as such.
| fauxpause_ wrote:
| That is a question, not a problem.
| AlbertCory wrote:
| I don't think using a refrigerator to crush a fly is bullshit.
|
| Is it too difficult to do by yourself? Yes.
|
| Will it damage your floor? Yes.
|
| Will it damage the refrigerator? Yes.
|
| But I don't think it's bullshit because it does solve a real
| problem - killing the fly.
| glofish wrote:
| It is bullshit because it only works in theory, the big
| refrigerator will crush the tiny fly ... in reality the fly
| escapes with ease
|
| the bullshit part refers to just that, pretending that the
| refrigerator could be an appropriate good solution, when in
| fact can't actually even perform the task
| AlbertCory wrote:
| nitpicky. would you prefer an insect that can't fly away?
| rchaud wrote:
| > The disconnect comes from crypto people misjudging the world.
|
| The operative word here is "people". People are better judges
| of what other people _want_. And what people want is to make a
| quick profit in cryptobucks, and convert it into something they
| can buy real things with, preferably without a lot of
| transaction fees.
|
| Crypto does not understand this, because it is a rigid top-down
| system that only works on the assumption that there is no fiat
| off-ramp, and crypto is the only currency being used. But
| that's not reality; in reality, people would not care about
| crypto if they didn't think it would make them rich in 'real
| money' terms.
| ly3xqhl8g9 wrote:
| Crypto, at least as someone who once hoped at a cyberpunk
| future (for reasons), had one and only one thing to do: kill
| the middle-men: banks, payment processors, credit/debit card
| operators, SWIFT, and so forth.
|
| I want to send money to someone: I should be able to do so (i)
| instantly (message passing at light speed), (ii) at 0 cost
| (price of electricity), and (iii) without asking anyone for
| permission. Crypto failed miserably to achieve this.
| Furthermore, it has allied (or been rallied) with the "enemy";
| crypto enthusiasts regard it as "good for Bitcoin"(tm) when
| banks announce investment in the crypto space. It is now a
| project unable to dream a future for itself beyond "hodl".
| mrbombastic wrote:
| I am a crypto skeptic but some of the pegged cryptos have
| come close to solving that use case.* A lot of money changers
| in Argentina will accept USDT which you can send from
| anywhere in the world. Of course you can't get rich off
| speculatively trading a pegged currency so it largely goes
| unnoticed. Obvious caveats: sketchy backing of these
| currencies, legality of all that, but it is already being
| used for that purpose. A US government backed coin could
| effectively kill credit cards and money orders but they no
| doubt also want some form of KYC to make sure you aren't
| funding ISIS or whatever. Of course that is anathema to
| crypto bros who hold decentralization above all else.
| ly3xqhl8g9 wrote:
| Sure, at least one major benefit of KYC (which is also
| completely broken with crypto) is the "Undo button". Plenty
| of times you need to phone a bank and they will sometimes,
| begrudgingly, press the Undo button. What's Mr. Nakamoto's
| number if something goes wrong in a crypto transaction?
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| To give credit where it's due, crypto spurred the Fed to
| launch FedNOW.
| ly3xqhl8g9 wrote:
| Just by the look of it [1] and the menacing hero question
| "Is your organization ready?" I fear something similar to
| the IRS tax filing [2] will happen: instead of having an
| open API usable by any easily-authenticable entity, only a
| few backroom deals will grant access to it.
|
| [1] https://www.frbservices.org/financial-services/fednow
|
| [2] https://www.irs.gov/tax-professionals/choosing-a-tax-
| profess...
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _instead of having an open API usable by any easily-
| authenticable entity_
|
| It's intentionally mediated through banks. We don't want
| to create a money-laundering system--that is an explicit
| lesson learned from crypto. (We also want a layer that
| can absorb fraud. Another lesson from crypto.) But there
| are banks who will API it for KYC'd clients.
| DonHopkins wrote:
| > it does solve a real problem - verifying transactions
| independently
|
| Yeah, but who actually needs that "problem" solved? Money
| launderers? Drug dealers? Scam artists? Adolescent boys
| whacking off to Ayn Rand books in their mother's basement?
| hardtke wrote:
| A totally legitimate use case for crypto is moving money into
| countries that have bogus official exchange rates (e.g.
| Argentina). I've got multiple friends that hire developers in
| Argentina and pay them using crypto in order to avoid the 90%
| haircut.
| sowbug wrote:
| Who needs free speech except for assholes?
|
| Who needs freedom of association except for troublemakers?
|
| Who needs the fourth amendment except for criminals?
| rybosworld wrote:
| Never ceases to surprise me when folks align cryptocurrency
| with these things.
|
| Money laundering, drug dealing, scamming old people, these
| things have all existed well before cryptocurrency.
|
| Arguing that central banks and a few other non-elected
| decision makers should be able to influence our lives by
| devaluing our savings is... insane. It's Stockholm syndrome
| really.
|
| A few wealthy people decide your money should be worth less
| because a bunch of other wealthy people have made bad
| decisions for decades and now there's too much money floating
| around. Coincidentally, the interest rate adjustments won't
| tangibly affect the wealthy people! That's not something I
| want to continue to support.
| andsoitis wrote:
| > That's not something I want to continue to support.
|
| What's your solution?
| nightski wrote:
| Not the parent but buying assets and not holding more
| fiat than I need personally.
| Domenic_S wrote:
| > _Arguing that central banks and a few other non-elected
| decision makers should be able to influence our lives by
| devaluing our savings is... insane_
|
| Perhaps, but a currency that devalues based on news, scams,
| pump & dump schemes, and so forth isn't the solution.
| Crypto doesn't transfer the power of value to you, it
| transfers to people with a big enough following - or botnet
| - to amplify whatever news (false or not) that impacts
| their crypto the way they want it, up or down.
|
| Your premise is reasonable, but your conclusion doesn't
| logically follow from it.
| rybosworld wrote:
| > Perhaps, but a currency that devalues based on news,
| scams, pump & dump schemes, and so forth isn't the
| solution.
|
| This is an accurate characterization of the dollar as
| well.
|
| A common theme in all the cryptocurrency hate is that
| crypto enables scams, drug deals, etc. It's value
| fluctuates because of the decisions of a few bad actors.
| The dollar and every other central bank currency also
| have these issues.
|
| The dollar recently peaked around a 9% inflation rate.
|
| The euro peaked around 10%.
|
| I could also make an argument that these numbers are
| actually understated but that's not the point. These are
| supposedly stable currencies. A person who has saved up
| ~100K Euros by January 2022 now only has ~90k Euros in
| January 2023. That's some pretty significant volatility.
| Unfortunately, the central bank currency's never go back
| up in terms of purchasing power. They only go down.
| generic92034 wrote:
| > I could also make an argument that these numbers are
| actually understated but that's not the point. These are
| supposedly stable currencies. A person who has saved up
| ~100K Euros by January 2022 now only has ~90k Euros in
| January 2023. That's some pretty significant volatility.
|
| And? Is it even coming close to the volatility of the
| most popular coins?
|
| > Unfortunately, the central bank currency's never go
| back up in terms of purchasing power. They only go down.
|
| With good reason! Deflation is one of the greatest
| worries in any economy.
| [deleted]
| Domenic_S wrote:
| > _This is an accurate characterization of the dollar as
| well._
|
| Not in the way you're saying - it's a matter of degree.
| When Theranos scammed hundreds of millions, the dollar
| didn't drop in value, nor has that ever happened.
|
| You seem to have unconventional definitions of "stable"
| and "volatile". Calling a 10% devaluation in 1 year
| volatile is laughable compared to crypto. For example BTC
| -65% in 1 month (1/6/18 to 2/6/18) or how about TerraUSD,
| -80% in less than 1 _week_ , 5/9-5/14/22.
|
| Fiat and crypto aren't even in the same galaxy when it
| comes to volatility.
| jboy55 wrote:
| I think one of the best cases against crypto, is just how
| much the volatility in Crypto is a feature not a bug.
| Crypto is how people will make it rich, and rising 7% in
| a year doesn't enable that. Imagine a world where crypto
| routinely beat the major indexes by a point, so bitcoin
| being worth now around $1500, Eth $200. They would have
| been one of the most fantastic investments you could have
| made, and still a robust currency, but how much hype
| would they have made?
| eniotna wrote:
| Rome wasn't built in one day, as the total market cap
| grows, price fluctuation will become irrelevant.
| Spivak wrote:
| They'll be aligned with those things as long as crypto is
| the "other" network where people go to do things you can't
| do with existing payment processors. Without a killer app
| to drive "normal" people it will stay this way.
|
| It's the same reason why free-as-in-anarchy speech social
| networks become far right cesspools [1], you have little
| reason to switch unless you're someone who's been kicked
| off the major platforms.
|
| [1] I really don't mean to pick on the right wing nutjobs,
| it's just that the "far left" doesn't exist in the US so
| you don't find groups pushing for violent worker uprisings,
| seizing control of industry, and significant wealth
| redistribution, I'm sure they would split off the
| mainstream too.
| int_19h wrote:
| Drug dealers would be a good example, yes, especially in a
| society that bans so many things for such utterly stupid
| reasons.
|
| This applies to both kinds of drugs, by the way. Online black
| market shops selling generics from India also use crypto
| heavily.
| Idiot_in_Vain wrote:
| Who needs privacy? Drug dealers and scam artists...
|
| Crypto solves (to a degree) the problem of a huge amoount of
| power belonging to the few people who run the financial
| system. Huge consentration of power is not a good thing.
| Power corrupts and so on. Crypto puts everyone on equal
| footing - rather than say the people/companies who have a
| banking license enjoying an unfair advantage over everyone
| else (like the power to create money from thin air in the
| fractional reserve system).
|
| The credit card companies, PayPal and the like get to decide
| which companies are worthy to exist and which not. If they
| don't like a business, they can just cut them off from
| receiving money. E.g. VPN provides who don't keep logs are
| all banned from receiving credit/debit card payment, PayPal,
| etc. - they have to resort to receiving cash by post and
| crypto.
| dsr_ wrote:
| That's an awful lot of workaround to solve the social
| problem of "my regulatory agencies aren't regulating well
| enough" -- a problem which will still exist afterwards.
| sowbug wrote:
| It's not to solve that problem. It's to have the option
| to route around it.
| dsr_ wrote:
| It certainly can't route around it.
|
| US: https://www.sec.gov/spotlight/cybersecurity-
| enforcement-acti...
|
| CA: https://www.osfi-bsif.gc.ca/Eng/osfi-
| bsif/med/Pages/20221116...
|
| EU: https://www.bafin.de/EN/Aufsicht/FinTech/Geschaeftsmo
| delle/D...
|
| and so on.
| sowbug wrote:
| Fraud existed long before digital currencies, and nobody
| is seriously advocating to legitimize it.
|
| I hope that even if you love the current financial
| system, you'd still be in favor of giving its competitors
| a chance to exist.
| nonethewiser wrote:
| Well that's useful for everyone, just not useful ENOUGH.
| Everyone needs to know the system they are using has
| integrity. Let me be clear, this does not mean the regular
| financial system doesn't have integrity.
|
| As I said the current system is better so I don't see your
| point as some sort of counterpoint to my observation that
| crypto has utility, it's just relatively low or tuned to less
| in demand needs.
| dimva wrote:
| Yea, all of the above. And that's a pretty big market, enough
| to support its current price (around $30k I believe)
| DonHopkins wrote:
| Put down the Atlas Shrugged and step away from the
| computer.
| benburleson wrote:
| I think the main demographic supporting the current price
| is people who bought it as a speculative investment.
| incrudible wrote:
| Soon enough, governments will attempt to eliminate cash
| transactions, control every financial transaction, and limit
| the ways money can be spent on undesirable products, i.e. put
| quotas on fossil fuel or meat.
|
| Whether crypto can actually mitigate that is an open
| question. Arguably, a society that accepts strict financial
| controls would also prosecute crypto users.
| sowbug wrote:
| Fortunately, the US Supreme Court has already decided that
| money is speech deserving of 1A protection:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Citizens_United_v._FEC
|
| I don't believe for a minute that today's Court would
| expand that reasoning to digital currencies, but it is a
| foot in the door.
| lezojeda wrote:
| [dead]
| realce wrote:
| The problem is central banks devaluing currency. It's an
| esoteric topic to many people, so crypto turned into a
| blinking pinball machine of tech, but the problem was always
| the devaluing of currency by the Fed.
| red-iron-pine wrote:
| The point of central banks is to control their monetary
| policy. Like, that's why they exist.
|
| Plus while a bank may devalue its currency, the point of it
| is to keep it stable -- something we haven't seen from
| crypto in any meaningful sense. Even the so-called "stable
| coins" are anything but.
| rybosworld wrote:
| > The point of central banks is to control their monetary
| policy.
|
| This is exactly the issue that a lot of people have with
| them. Not to mention that the people in charge of
| adjusting the value of your life savings aren't even
| voted in...
|
| Cryptocurrency aims to give you complete autonomy over
| your money. Something 99.99% of people don't currently
| have.
| andsoitis wrote:
| > Cryptocurrency aims to give you complete autonomy over
| your money.
|
| That sounds nice, but it doesn't come for free. Price
| volatility, trust issues, etc. to name a few.
|
| I think a key issue is that credit, money, wealth,
| currency, while related, are really different things but
| for many people all of it is "money".
| rybosworld wrote:
| > Price volatility, trust issues, etc. to name a few.
|
| These are not specific to cryptocurrency. The trust
| issues are primarily a result of crypto scams and not
| innate to crypto. Just as scams involving dollars, euros
| etc., have nothing to do with the currency itself.
|
| Where crypto shines on the trust aspect is that you don't
| have some guy in an ivory tower deciding to devalue your
| crypto by 5%/year. You can choose to buy into
| inflationary cryptos (doge coin for instance), or you can
| choose to buy into crypto's with fixed supply. No one can
| take your share of the supply away from you or change the
| rules on a whim. That's absolutely huge.
|
| "Compound interest is the most powerful force in the
| universe" - Albert Einstein, supposedly. Central banks
| use that force against citizens and everyone just accepts
| it because it's been that way for so long.
| ako wrote:
| Maybe you should be happy they're not voted in, voting is
| a popularity contest that completely ignores
| capabilities. I want the people in charge to know what
| they're doing.
| realce wrote:
| > The point of central banks is to control their monetary
| policy.
|
| There's plenty of people out there who disagree with
| central bank's existence and policy. I don't know if I'd
| call a currency "stable" when it's lost 80% of it's own
| value since being introduced and can have new liquidity
| created with little due process. All currency is an
| illusion, it's just about which illusion makes you more
| comfortable.
|
| It's all just money, and money isn't entirely rational to
| begin with.
| Kye wrote:
| >> _" I don't know if I'd call a currency "stable" when
| it's lost 80% of it's own value since being introduced
| and can have new liquidity created with little due
| process."_
|
| By that logic, Earth is tilting dangerously out of
| control and the moon is hurtling off into deep space.
| cmh89 wrote:
| >I don't know if I'd call a currency "stable" when it's
| lost 80% of it's own value since being introduced and can
| have new liquidity created with little due process.
|
| Something that depreciates can still be stable. The US
| dollar loses value at a relatively predictable rate. We
| can see what an unstable currency looks like right now by
| looking at Argentina, where the peso has lost 47% of its
| value in a _year_.
|
| BitCoin is more like the peso than the dollar, hence why
| its called unstable.
|
| > All currency is an illusion, it's just about which
| illusion makes you more comfortable.
|
| Currency isn't an illusion, it's a social construct, and
| its a deeply embedded social construct.
| [deleted]
| edgyquant wrote:
| Devaluation is a widely discussed topic with decades of
| scholarly economic input as to why it helps generate more
| wealth in the long run. There's a reason we have target
| rates etc. Crypto bros just want to replace the 1% not
| build a better financial system, it's obvious because they
| don't understand the financial system to begin with.
| eniotna wrote:
| Devaluing money doesn't create wealth, increased in
| productivity does. Devaluing money in many instances
| lowers productivity because people have to invest time
| into protecting the value of their labor instead of
| making more stuff they are good at. I haven't read a
| single convincing explanation as to why encouraging
| consumption somehow generates more wealth on the long
| run.
|
| > There's a reason we have target rates
|
| In an interview Powell admitted no one really knows why
| the target is 2%. Why is 2% better than 10%, why not 0%?
| We don't need to encourage consumption with artificial
| money devaluation, humans already discount the future
| because of the finiteness of our lives
| jstx1 wrote:
| As opposed to currency being devalued by the latest scandal
| in the crypto space? Crypto prices swing wildly based on
| news, and news can be manipulated by a small number of
| actors. Just because the transactions are validated in a
| secure and distributed way doesn't mean that the underlying
| value is safe.
| defrost wrote:
| Countries that don't want to be tied to the US dollar for
| trade between themselves outside of the US hegonomy.
|
| In abstract terms, independant trade without ties to a
| dominant financial gorilla (once a time the pound sterling
| and _perhaps_ one day the Yen (or other)).
|
| That was a clean enough goal from the outset, my personal
| objections (expressed in cypher forums back in the day circa
| the bitcoin paper dropping) are wrapped in the failure to tie
| the OG bitcoin to some form of verified "energy used to mine"
| signature (a curly one) and the high energy cost of verifying
| OG bitcoin transactions.
|
| With 20/20 hindsight it was likely a premature release, in
| fairness it was more of a proof of concept begining that
| lasted longer than expected and then took off.
| andsoitis wrote:
| > Countries that don't want to be tied to the US dollar for
| trade between themselves outside of the US hegonomy.
|
| What currency do you propose people, companies, and
| countries trade in? And why that currency?
| dkirill wrote:
| People not privileged enough to have access to western
| banking
| rrdharan wrote:
| Yet somehow sophisticated and well informed enough to keep
| their keys secure and not get scammed.
| dkirill wrote:
| I don't understand your point. Are you implying that
| people don't have access to western finance because they
| are not sophisticated enough? If you don't luck into
| being born with good citizenship lots of things you might
| take for granted are inaccessible. It has nothing to do
| with level of sophistication
| jeromegv wrote:
| The point is that people who were the most impacted of
| the fall of FTX and all those others exchanges are
| actually people in developing countries that lost ALL
| their savings. It was perhaps a few thousands dollar for
| people in the western world, an alternative way to do
| some investing, but lots of people in countries with bad
| financial systems (lets say Argentina or Venezuela) tried
| to use crypto as their stable banking system and it
| failed them miserably and now lost almost everything.
|
| So while in theory crypto offers that alternative that
| should be better than those shitty countries economic
| policies, in practice, this gave them something worse
| than their local bank.
|
| Yes Yes, you can use a hardware wallet and would have
| avoided all of that, the reality is that a very high
| percentage of people were just using the tools offered to
| them and didn't think it was all a giant fraud.
| dkirill wrote:
| Fair. Crypto is not just ftx/investment tho. It's also a
| mean to transfer wealth outside of your country. It might
| be risky but any option is better than none
| nightski wrote:
| SVB depositors were almost in the same boat. Maybe not
| this time, but there is no guarantee the government will
| bail you out. In fact, Janet Yellen (who has a lost any
| credibility she may have had imho) even said they don't
| intend to extend that protection to all banks. They
| prefer to pick & choose who they extend the protection to
| (especially rich liberal donors).
| jboy55 wrote:
| Only depositors who had more than 500k deposited. For
| SVB, a high number for sure, but its not a counterpoint
| to someone posting how putting trust in crypto bankrupted
| a large number of people in developing countries when
| they mistakenly thought they could trust crypto more than
| a bank.
| nightski wrote:
| FDIC insurance is 250k, not 500k. It's not Apples to
| Apples, but it demonstrates that the banking system is
| not rock solid either.
|
| Not only that, if you really want to look at exploitation
| of the poor look no further than our large banks in
| America.
| JasserInicide wrote:
| "Western finance" is heavily regulated (well, consumer
| banking anyway) and for the most part is pretty secure.
| Crypto is completely unregulated and chalk full of bad
| actors distracting you with grandiose promises while
| fleecing you behind your back. Every other month there's
| a report of some massive theft/data breach at an
| exchange.
| int_19h wrote:
| Conversely, part of those regulations involves excluding
| whole countries from the system, most of them for purely
| political reasons.
| red-iron-pine wrote:
| Banking is doing just fine with cell phones in places like
| Africa.
| throw_pm23 wrote:
| This argument comes up so often, it needs a name like the
| "think of the children" mantra politicians use to promote
| bad policies.
| dang wrote:
| We detached this subthread from
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35538174.
| pcthrowaway wrote:
| Agreed with all of the above, but crypto !== bitcoin, and
| bitcoin is basically one of the few last holdouts using Proof
| of Work consensus at this point.
|
| I don't know if it will ever be displaced because there are so
| many irrational people in the space, but whatever happens with
| crypto, I hope consensus mechanisms that aren't energy-hungry
| displace proof of work.
| pid-1 wrote:
| > But I don't think it's bullshit because it does solve a real
| problem - verifying transactions independently. But of course
| there are trade offs with this, such as bitcoin's power
| consumption. The disconnect comes from crypto people misjudging
| the world. The current financial system simply isn't so bad to
| require all the weird trade offs of crypto.
|
| If the current financial system stopped working and for some
| reason we needed to actually use Bitcoin to pay stuff, it would
| not be possible. Cryptocurrencies don't scale, because the way
| they work is extremely inefficient.
| nonethewiser wrote:
| When you say it would not be possible, do you mean that it
| couldn't handle the volume? That hardly means it's worthless.
| And I already granted it's worth less than the current
| financial system. So I believe we're in agreement.
| incrudible wrote:
| We would not use Bitcoin for ordinary transactions, at least
| not Layer 1. That would be the equivalent of transporting
| your money in an armored truck. There is plenty of ways to
| scale with Layer 2, but Layer 1 fees on Bitcoin Cash or other
| smaller cryptos are currently so low that this is not
| necessary.
| throwway120385 wrote:
| So what you're saying is we will have some kind of central
| system, like a bank, that issues Bitcoin, and then a bunch
| of spoke systems that issue currency based on the value of
| the Bitcoin holdings?
|
| How is that different from what we do now?
| ericd wrote:
| I'm pretty sure that's not at all what he's saying, he's
| just saying that the existing bitcoin network would serve
| as a net settlement layer for L2 systems, which handle
| the much higher volume of everyday transactions. My
| understanding is that net settlement between banks is
| much less frequent than the capacity of BTC.
|
| Lightning (an L2 system on Bitcoin) is essentially a
| system of peer to peer exchange of signed BTC
| transactions, which supersede previous ones, but don't
| get committed to the main net. In that way, you can keep
| a running tab between counterparties with effectively no
| marginal cost until one of you decides to close the tab
| by committing it.
| toast0 wrote:
| There were 4,746 FDIC insured banks as of the end of Q3
| 2022, and 5,099 NCUA insured credit unions as of the end
| of 2020. If each of those institutions does net
| settlement with 200 other institutions daily, you've got
| roughly 1 million settlements a day (each settlement has
| two parties, so 100 * 10,000). Earlier in the thread,
| someone said BTC can do 3-7 transactions a second, which
| doesn't quite make it to 1 million transactions per day.
|
| Of course, I just made a wild guess about how many net
| settlements between banks would happen; maybe banks don't
| settle up from check clearing daily, but in a world where
| transactions are difficult to reverse and nobody trusts
| anyone, you'd want to settle up regularly.
| ericd wrote:
| Thanks for running the numbers. The amounts in the
| channels are committed with those signed transactions,
| there's no opportunity to double spend, so it's fine to
| settle much less than daily, as long as the net flows are
| well balanced (big if). Transactions hop through the
| graph, you don't have to have a running tab with more
| than a few other nodes.
| capableweb wrote:
| > If the current financial system stopped working and for
| some reason we needed to actually use Bitcoin to pay stuff,
| it would not be possible. Cryptocurrencies don't scale,
| because the way they work is extremely inefficient.
|
| What exactly do you mean? This is exactly the one use case
| where cryptocurrencies do work, compared to all the other
| bullshit use cases cryptocurrency hypists have came up with.
| Doing non-centralized transactions is what it excels at.
|
| Unclear if you're talking about Bitcoin specifically or
| cryptocurrencies in general, but there are cryptocurrencies
| that handle transactions quickly and at scale in a secure and
| decentralized manner. Algorand is one of those, but there are
| plenty of others out there that fits the requirements.
| btreecat wrote:
| In what situation does the entire financial system shut
| down, and we still all have reliable electricity and
| Internet to use crypto with?
|
| Also most market cap isn't in those "more efficient" and
| "more decentralized" coins.
| nbar1 wrote:
| HN hates crypto for no apparent reason other than hive-
| mind. Not even worth arguing around here.
| mschuster91 wrote:
| > HN hates crypto for no apparent reason other than hive-
| mind.
|
| To give you an example of a HN reader with reasons to
| dislike most cryptocoin stuff:
|
| - cryptocurrencies, particularly those mineable on CPUs
| and/or easily laundrable, provide a serious financial
| incentive for scriptkiddies and other hackers to go and
| hack systems to have them mine for coins, encrypt them in
| coin-extortion schemes, or steal the content of wallets
| they find. Basically, it's like the absence of
| STIR/SHAKEN on a phone network - it invites scammers to
| robocall people and pull scams on them.
|
| - mining of cryptocurrencies, especially on Bitcoin and
| other ASIC based coins, consumes an awful lot of
| electricity, which has been incentive enough for multiple
| operators to reactivate fossil fuel plants that had
| already been shut.
|
| - cryptocurrency mines of everything but proof-of-stake
| coins produce an awful lot of e-waste. Some of that can
| be repurposed (e.g. CPUs, RAM, GPUs, FPGAs) which has
| serious side effects on its own (such as enormous gluts
| in the used markets when miners drop their rigs), some of
| that is uneconomical to repurpose (HDDs/SSDs for proof-
| of-storage coins, the mining process eats through them at
| an insane pace) and some of that is impossible to reuse
| (ASICs).
|
| - cryptocurrency mines can lock up large parts of the
| hardware supply because miners pay so much more than even
| the richest gamer can afford. One might argue that that's
| a natural function of a capitalist economy, but sorry
| when you can't get a new halfway-decent GPU for years
| because scalpers buy up all the stock then the market has
| fucking failed.
|
| - cryptocurrencies invite undesirable people and events.
| There have been almost infinite amounts of these,
| documented on [1] - legitimate hacks, legitimate coding
| issues that sent coins to null addresses, rug-pulls
| disguised as hacks, shoddy accounting or general business
| practices by people who got in way over their head
| (MtGox) or had no idea WTF they were doing (FTX). Or NFTs
| which all went down the drain once the free money spigot
| and the novelty wore off (on top of the OG NFT Bored Ape
| copying and thus promoting outright Third Reich Nazi
| symbols and edgy far-right memes [2]).
|
| - cryptocurrencies invite those who think it's a good
| idea to use them as a proxy to evade securities laws or
| KYC rules, luring in gullible morons in the process and
| leading to loss of money.
|
| tl;dr: too much money lures in too many morons and
| everyone but the original "investors" loses.
|
| [1] https://web3isgoinggreat.com/
|
| [2] https://gordongoner.com/
| LawTalkingGuy wrote:
| > cryptocurrencies invite undesirable people and events.
|
| Many early adopters are salty that nobody would listen to
| us and investigate the criminals we were pointing out all
| along.
|
| > cryptocurrencies invite those who think it's a good
| idea to use them as a proxy to evade securities laws or
| KYC rules, luring in gullible morons in the process and
| leading to loss of money
|
| Generally the criminal schemes that actually took
| everyone's money were so simple as to not even be
| securities scams. The complex non-deliverable defi
| contracts were something people were playing around with
| to make prediction markets and other useful things.
|
| > when you can't get a new halfway-decent GPU for years
| because scalpers buy up all the stock then the market has
| fucking failed
|
| Okay, seriously, what system would actually create more
| cards here, some command economy where gaming is
| allocated a higher value than other activities? How does
| the company know how many fabs to buy/lease to prepare?
|
| > promoting outright Third Reich Nazi symbols and edgy
| far-right memes
|
| I don't see a lot of value in some censorship system that
| makes that enforceable. Should books not have been
| invented until we developed a technology to make it
| impossible to say mean things?
| Abroszka wrote:
| All of this is basically:
|
| * shitty people scamming other people: Yes, everyone
| knows. It happens with normal money as well. I regularly
| get "How to avoid scammers" emails from my bank too. As
| long as something has value someone will try to use it to
| scam someone else.
|
| * mining: Yes we know, mining is bad. Nobody wants it,
| it's going away. Could it go away faster? Yes, but it
| will happen eventually. Ban mining for all I care, nobody
| really needs it.
| mschuster91 wrote:
| > shitty people scamming other people: Yes, everyone
| knows. It happens with normal money as well.
|
| The thing is, governments _don 't want_ people to get
| scammed, and so they act to prevent scam avenues. But
| unlike, say, the trad-bank system the percentage of
| "scam" vs "legit" operations in cryptocurrencies is
| drastically skewed to the "scam" side, made easier by the
| anonymity that cryptocurrencies provide by design.
| rhaway84773 wrote:
| I've never seen crypto hate on HN which isn't followed by
| a laundry list of specific complaints about crypto.
|
| Arguably it's even more annoying than if we just had
| posts that only say "I hate crypto". But the idea that
| there is no apparent reason is laughably wrong. People
| give a lot of reasons.
| otikik wrote:
| > hive-mind
|
| Relevant:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psychological_projection
| hdjjhhvvhga wrote:
| > no apparent reason
|
| That's an oversight of the year.
| kibwen wrote:
| For some reason I'm reminded of the famous essay "The
| Missing Missing Reasons", which is about the group
| behavior of parents who are estranged from their adult
| children:
| https://www.issendai.com/psychology/estrangement/missing-
| mis...
| roland35 wrote:
| Hate crypto for no apparent reason? There are so many
| reasons to hate it! Fraud and waste are the main problems
| for me personally. The entire enterprise is rotten.
| infamouscow wrote:
| I'd be curious where you're gathering your information
| about how much fraud and waste exists in the current
| system.
| nailer wrote:
| HN thinks crypto is scams and speculation.
|
| Crypto people think it's getting rid of visa, Western
| Union, and government censorship.
| [deleted]
| callmeal wrote:
| >This is exactly the one use case where cryptocurrencies do
| work, ... Doing non-centralized transactions is what it
| excels at.
|
| Isn't it backwards? If I have a few (officially issued)
| colored pieces of paper in my pocket, I can give them away
| in exchange for other stuff, but if I have a cryptocoin in
| my pocket, there is no way I can exchange it for anything
| unless another party (or a majority) agrees to that
| exchange.
| sowbug wrote:
| You're begging the question.* Both cases rely on the
| network effects of the currency. I am not convinced that
| a government-backed piece of paper will still have value
| when "the current financial system stopped working." That
| financial system _is_ part and parcel of the government.
|
| *https://begthequestion.info/
| pid-1 wrote:
| > Unclear if you're talking about Bitcoin specifically or
| cryptocurrencies in general, but there are cryptocurrencies
| that handle transactions quickly and at scale in a secure
| and decentralized manner. Algorand is one of those, but
| there are plenty of others out there that fits the
| requirements.
|
| In general. Every time I heard a cryptocurrency claiming to
| be fast and decentralized, it either didn't live up to
| performance expectations or there were major caveats to
| decentralization. I can't comment on Algorand specifically
| as I gave up on following crypto.
| mjburgess wrote:
| Bitcoin is c. 3-7 transactions/sec for the entire
| electricity useage of a medium sized country.
|
| Ethereum is about 20 for the electricity usage of a few
| steel plants.
|
| Cryptocurrencies have one use: to evade regulation. As soon
| as that use disappears so will cryptocurrencies.
|
| Crime isnt a side-effect, it's the point.
| nullc wrote:
| The enegry usage is not proportional to the transaction
| rate, it's a security margin so it's only weakly related.
|
| Payment channels allow arbitrarily high transaction rates
| w/ bitcoin, I've seen demonstrations sustaining hundreds
| of transactions per second. A side effect of their
| scalability is that no one knows the actual transaction
| rate-- only the few transactions related to opening and
| closing channels are broadcast the bulk is only seen by
| the participants in the channel, which is what makes it
| scalable to begin with.
|
| [And, as an aside,-- 5 tx/sec is roughly fedwire's
| average transaction rate]
|
| > Crime isnt a side-effect, it's the point.
|
| That is false and defamatory towards anyone whos used or
| worked on Bitcoin. Please withdraw this point, the
| hyperbole doesn't illuminate the subject or add to the
| discussion.
|
| If you want to argue that the only use _you_ have for it
| would be to commit crimes, feel free but jumping from the
| fact that the only thing you can think to do with Bitcoin
| is commit crimes with it to crimes being the point is a
| bridge too far.
| dboreham wrote:
| > Ethereum is about 20 for the electricity usage of a few
| steel plants.
|
| Does this take the migration to proof of stake last year
| into account?
| idkyall wrote:
| Yes, I would imagine PoW for Ethereum was millions of
| GPUs at least
| pcthrowaway wrote:
| It doesn't. A steel mill produces 200,000 tons of steel
| per year (at the low end) and consumes 770 Kwh of energy
| per ton, which works out to 0.154 Twh per year. Post-
| merge ethereum uses 0.0026 Twh, so about 1% the energy
| usage of one steel mill
|
| Some produce up to 3,000,000 tons, so the ethereum
| network would consume about 0.1% as much energy as one of
| those
|
| edit: Bitcoin for comparison consumes somewhere around
| 100 Twh, so is comparable to 1000 steel mills (which
| might be more than the number of actual steel mills in
| operation globally?)
| logicalmonster wrote:
| > Cryptocurrencies have one use: to evade regulation. As
| soon as that use disappears so will cryptocurrencies.
| Crime isnt a side-effect, it's the point.
|
| Sometimes, HN appears to have the collective memory of a
| goldfish.
|
| On HackerNews over the years, we've seen hundreds, maybe
| even thousands of sob stories from people like "X payment
| provider has locked my account and is not giving me
| access to my funds"
|
| In every case, it's pointed out that crypto might be a
| way for people to reduce risk of this kind of thing
| happening.
|
| Yet there's some people who continue to insist with a
| straight face that crime is the only conceivable use of
| crypto.
| donkey-hotei wrote:
| Also, I support sci-hub through crypto. That's pretty
| much my only use case for it, but it is one. Wish we
| lived in a world where we didn't have to bypass
| regulations to get free access to journals... but
| cryptocurrency is a solution for now.
| logicalmonster wrote:
| Morally speaking, it's a laudable use case to spread
| knowledge.
|
| But one could make the argument that this site is
| technically an example of "crime", at least legally
| speaking.
| uoaei wrote:
| The moment you start letting laws define your morals, you
| have lost what it means to be human.
| logicalmonster wrote:
| As some flavor of libertarian, I understand the concept
| of the NAP (non-aggression principle) and make the
| distinction between morality and legality and would like
| to have a different definition of "crime". That said, as
| we operate under a legal system that is forced on us, we
| do have to make references to the legislation that
| exists.
| mjburgess wrote:
| I'm aware that under the status quo a person can be
| denied banking, online payments, etc. without appropriate
| systems of redress.
|
| In blockchain, redress is impossible. That's part of why
| it's so lucrative for fraudsters.
|
| The failure modes in monetary systems are human, not
| technological -- and blockchains fuck humans. They make
| the problem worse.
|
| The sales pitch for blockchains _is a lie_. The problem
| is real, but this isnt the solution. This solves only the
| needs of criminals in the strongest sense: people out to
| get other people.
|
| Regulation will pop these schemes and nothing will be
| left -- it took 10-30 years to regulate credit cards.
| Hopefully regulators will step in sooner here.
| logicalmonster wrote:
| The following is clearly labeled as an opinion and a
| purely subjective value judgment, but here's one thing
| about crypto that I can't shake my head from.
|
| I notice that disgusting, wicked authoritarians that
| relish in their desire to achieve control over other
| human beings absolutely _despise_ crypto.
|
| If I knew absolutely nothing about crypto other than the
| fact that enemies of humanity hate it truly vehemently,
| what should my judgement of crypto be?
| mjburgess wrote:
| That you're a sucker for a sales pitch which begins, "You
| know those people you hate, we hate them to!"
| logicalmonster wrote:
| Is the person with an opinion that isn't aligned with the
| establishment media the sucker for a sales pitch?
|
| Or is the sucker for a sales pitch the person who parrots
| whatever the nice funny man on the TV tells him to think
| about any given issue?
| mjburgess wrote:
| People who think they're smarter than everyone else tend
| to be very gullible. It's not about TV, its about you.
|
| If you want to be smart, don't judges technologies based
| on supposed virtues signalled; judge them by
| understanding how they work independent of how their
| salesmen say they work. Learn, know and understand.
|
| Your entire world view is pretty dumb: who is signalling
| what I should be allied to?
|
| That's a dumb question; and it signals that you're ripe
| for abuse. All you need to be sold an idea is to have it
| associated, by signals of virtue, with what you hate.
|
| You're not alone. This type of gullibility is the
| mentality of most victims of crypto; and indeed, many
| scams.
|
| 80% of the crypto community is people who think they're
| smarter than the people scamming them -- that's the other
| 20%, and they're winning
| hackingforfun wrote:
| > If the current financial system stopped working and for
| some reason we needed to actually use Bitcoin to pay stuff,
| it would not be possible.
|
| This is... not true [1]. We'd need to use something like the
| Lightning Network. The traditional financial system also has
| layers build on top of it, so it makes sense that you
| wouldn't only use the Bitcoin base layer.
|
| [1] https://voltage.cloud/blog/bitcoin-education/how-many-
| transa...
| SoftTalker wrote:
| > If the current financial system stopped working and for
| some reason we needed to actually use Bitcoin to pay stuff,
| it would not be possible. Cryptocurrencies don't scale,
| because the way they work is extremely inefficient.
|
| Not because the way they work is inefficient, but because if
| the financial system collapsed that badly, we would not have
| an internet, or power, or food, most likely.
| VHRanger wrote:
| Bitcoin's power consumption isn't a "tradeoff". It's just as
| centralized as proof of stake systems.
|
| Bitcoin's power consumption is just appealing to the religious
| aspect of the network : if we changed it, it would go against
| the original design. Even though it burns 1% of world energy
| consumption for that stupidity.
| nivenkos wrote:
| The real issue with cryptocurrency is that it's not scaleable.
|
| If they had some magic way of handling transactions so every
| node didn't need to keep all history, and nodes could be
| sharded in a hierarchy like DNS, etc. transactions times were
| near-instant and almost-free, etc. then it'd be a lot more
| useful.
| rybosworld wrote:
| > The real issue with cryptocurrency is that it's not
| scaleable.
|
| This is very outdated commentary. Cryptocurrency's get better
| at scaling every year.
|
| Bitcoin was the first, so naturally it is the slowest.
| Transactions per second (TPS) is around 5.
|
| Ethereum, which released a few years after Bitcoin is around
| 30 TPS.
|
| There are newer crypto's like Loopring that can currently do
| 500 TPS.
|
| Ethereum 2.0, is aiming for 100,000 TPS. If they meet this
| goal, they'll be capable of more TPS than Visa.
| cableshaft wrote:
| And Solana has already proven to handle up to at least
| 8,453 TPS[1]. There might be others that can get higher,
| not sure.
|
| [1]: https://crypto.news/solana-transactions-per-second-
| hit-an-al...
| Hoasi wrote:
| > Not really that useful at the moment (and maybe never will
| be)? Yes.
|
| One of the only valid points of crypto is separating money from
| the government.
|
| However, its proponents emphasize obscure benefits that make it
| look more obtuse than it should. As they stand,
| cryptocurrencies, in the eye of the general public, look either
| like a Ponzi scheme, free money, or too convoluted to bother,
| as they solve nothing other technologies don't solve already.
| nradov wrote:
| How is separating money from government a valid point? Money
| is inextricably bound up with fundamental governmental issues
| including a monopoly over violence and the ability to levy
| taxes. Cryptocurrency might have some temporary utility for
| people physically stuck inside failed states like Venezuela
| but those situations are by nature unlikely to persist long
| term.
| bullen wrote:
| [flagged]
| pevey wrote:
| Just open the link in a private/incognito window
| WakoMan12 wrote:
| private/incognito window is for pr0n not ycomnews
| neom wrote:
| You can go to archive.is and put the url in. Braves
| "speedreader" mode typically works too, I use it _a lot_
|
| Here is the bypass url for you: https://archive.is/ta5js
| hendersoon wrote:
| Meta has always had a morale crisis, recently exacerbated by
| Cambridge Analytica and the like. People wanted to work there
| because of the money. Flat-out.
|
| Once the pay is equivalent to the rest of the industry and the
| extravagant perks are gone, wouldn't you prefer to work somewhere
| at least moderately less evil? I certainly would.
| not_enoch_wise wrote:
| Mass layoffs have hard-to-measure second- and third- order
| effects? Wall St. wouldn't reward something that was bad for a
| company in the long run!
| MangoCoffee wrote:
| a lot of big techs doing layoffs. you will find a lot of ex-
| employees got something to say about their former employer.
| RcouF1uZ4gsC wrote:
| Workers at Facebook 10 years ago: I'm glad my company isn't like
| Microsoft.
|
| Workers now: I wish my company was like Microsoft.
| tomrod wrote:
| Aye! Meta tried recruiting in the ML space. The hook? Half of
| the interviewers were Microsoft alumni that had a ton of money
| thrown at them. I wonder where those folks are today.
| prepend wrote:
| Probably back at Microsoft.
| romanovcode wrote:
| MS bet on OpenAI is one of the biggest tech success stories
| of this decade for sure. Now everyone wants a pie of it but
| it seems that they are way behind for some reason (for
| example Google Bard is nothing compared to OpenAI
| implementation)
| salawat wrote:
| Microsoft bet on Github to get the requisite training
| corpus needed for OpenAI to even achieve relevancy.
|
| If there had been negotiation for permission to train on
| others code like there should have been, things would
| have gone differently.
| brookst wrote:
| While GitHub copilot is a big deal, it is a tiny tiny
| tiny portion of the promise of LLMs. There will be far
| more economic disruption from LLMs as productivity tools
| than as coding tools.
| red_admiral wrote:
| Yes, it's quite ironic isn't it that the big AI progress
| is being made not by the cool kids at Alphabet and Meta
| and the like, but in a place backed by "boring" old
| Microsoft. Whatever next - Bing becoming actually useful,
| perhaps?
| threeseed wrote:
| The fundamental research in the AI space (that OpenAI
| depends so much on) originally came from Alphabet and
| Meta.
|
| They just never thought to productise it.
| simpleladle wrote:
| They did; perhaps not in ways that were immediately
| obvious to the general public. Back in 2014, they created
| attention to improve how RNNs handled long sequences, an
| effort driven by google translate. Same goes for when
| they created the transformer architecture. The first
| product to see an improvement was also translate. They
| simply never exposed the bare language models to the
| public a la OpenAI style with GPT3
| theGnuMe wrote:
| OpenAI has taken it to the next level though.
| threeseed wrote:
| > Google Bard is nothing compared to OpenAI
| implementation
|
| That's simply not true based on the comparison done by
| MKBHD [1].
|
| Bard has the requirement that it needs to deliver an
| accurate and quality result above everything else. This
| makes it more useful but far less interesting and
| compelling than OpenAI.
|
| [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HKvo6acp5aI
| int_19h wrote:
| It's true based on its demonstrable lack of ability to
| solve tasks that even ChatGPT (3.5) can handle. Sure, you
| can cherry-pick some test suite to come up with a number
| that says otherwise - just like there are people claiming
| that LLaMA can match ChatGPT - but this is more of a
| "squinting at it right" kind of thing.
|
| I don't know of _anyone_ using Bard over ChatGPT in any
| application where quality of the output matters.
| Vapormac wrote:
| https://archive.is/RHz9R (No paywall)
| annadane wrote:
| I think people are missing the point when they call Metaverse a
| 'misstep' because it implies Zuckerberg was a good actor who just
| happened to get this one thing wrong... if you look through his
| history of things like forced Whatsapp sharing (plus Onavo), Free
| Basics, all of the shitty things the company does... the
| Metaverse was never a good faith effort and people need to
| understand that; newsflash, he's not a shining example of what a
| good person is
|
| (And the whole stealing Facebook from other people in the first
| place, anyway)
| grej wrote:
| https://archive.is/ta5js
| yumraj wrote:
| How's the morale at Twitter?
| jti107 wrote:
| fantastic! everyone left is hardcore
| [deleted]
| romanovcode wrote:
| The article does not state it. But I wonder - do these layoffs
| are from Metaverse project? If so, what would those people
| expect? Did they really believe in the project when they applied
| and worked on it?
| theGnuMe wrote:
| I would want to be on a team that builds (or uses) AI tools
| that can be used to build out the metaverse. That seems like a
| balanced approach.
| jhatemyjob wrote:
| Ok so I actually work at Meta and I hope they do more layoffs.
| There are so many redundant teams and useless features being
| pushed. After the last layoff my job got so much easier because I
| wasn't constantly fighting people trying to ship dumb features
| that pollute the codebase.
|
| And even if I get laid off there's a fat severance package
| waiting for me. It's a win-win.
| [deleted]
| pascalxus wrote:
| >>> ""They're saying it's 'Hunger Games' meets 'Lord of the
| Flies,' where everyone is trying to prove their worth to
| management."
|
| It sounds like people are really insecure about themselves
| financially or egoistically. You don't want to put yourself in a
| position where you have to have your job or you can't go without
| one for a few a years. and if you're ego can't handle being laid
| off or fired, you may want to do something about that because
| jobs these days don't last much longer than 2-4 years at most
| places: just look at people's resumes on linkedIn.
| klodolph wrote:
| Realistically speaking, it's hard for many adults to get into a
| position where they can go without a job for a few years, even
| if you are at a high-paying company like Meta. A lot of Meta
| employees are at places with high cost of living, and you can
| try to live frugally, but frugality doesn't solve your problems
| instantly.
|
| I think we can be sympathetic to the insecurity these people
| have without considering whether they _put themselves_ in that
| position. There is a combination of internal (psychological)
| and external (environmental) factors at play here.
| JohnMakin wrote:
| yea that comment is so out of touch. What % of US adults have
| enough savings to live 2-4 years on their current lifestyle?
| I'd bet it's very low. Maybe not as low as the subset making
| a FAANG income, but probably still low.
| pascalxus wrote:
| There's nothing wrong with sympathy. I have all the sympathy
| in the world for anyone who works at a software company.
| Those FANGs can be especially toxic.
|
| The fact is, how you spend your money, it's a choice,
| especially if you're single. For singles, no excuses. In my
| twenties, i rented a room, slept on a surfboard and ate
| oatmeal. If you combine that with a Meta salary, you could
| retire in 5-10 years.
| klodolph wrote:
| > If you combine that with a Meta salary, you could retire
| in 5-10 years.
|
| Could you elaborate on this? Do you think that other people
| SHOULD do this? Because I think we should be sympathetic to
| people who don't live like ascetic monks, and it seems
| unkind to tell people that they could have retired if they
| lived like an ascetic monk.
| greatpostman wrote:
| No you can't retire. Only if you don't have a family, and
| even then you just get ten years of not working. And good
| luck attracting a good woman to have kids with while you
| sleep in a dump
| pascalxus wrote:
| are you really telling me, that after humanity somewhat x100
| times productivity improvement over the last 10,000 years, in
| one of the "richest" countries in the world, the richest 1-4%
| within that rich country (top 0.1-0.4% in the world, very
| roughly) can't take a couple years off from work because they
| can't afford it?
|
| What's wrong with this picture?
| klodolph wrote:
| Most of these people aren't in the top 1% for sure,
| absolutely sure. Top 1% richest in the US have a net worth
| of >$10M, and you need >$1M to get into the 90th
| percentile. Let's say that you're fresh out of college and
| land an IC3 data scientist role at Meta. Your total
| compensation is probably below $200k and your base salary
| is closer to $140, maybe $130.
|
| From that, you can run projections on _how long_ it would
| take you to get to the 90th percentile of household wealth
| in the US, assuming you stay in the same role. You can try
| running different scenarios--suppose your rent is free
| (you're living with your parents to save money), suppose
| that you're paying $1,500 for your share of an apartment
| with roommates, or suppose that you're paying $2,500 for a
| tolerable studio or 1BR in a high-COL area like SF or NYC.
|
| By my math, our IC3 data scientist with a $140k salary has
| a take-home around $8,800 a month after federal taxes, and
| if you subtract say $2,250 in living expenses for living
| with roommates ($1,500 rent + $750 other expenses). It
| would take this person 12.7 years to save $1M--you can
| accelerate the timeline when you look at RSU grants, but
| this is still a lot of work for a "high-paid" worker to get
| into the 90th percentile of wealth. RSU grants are also
| tied to employment, so if you are _assuming_ that people
| are vesting their RSU grants, you're assuming that people
| manage to stick it out at places like Meta even when there
| are morale problems and layoffs. It may be fair to assume
| promotions, but not everyone gets those promotions and we
| should hope that the people who _don't_ get promoted are
| still able to live their lives.
| toast0 wrote:
| > you're assuming that people manage to stick it out at
| places like Meta even when there are morale problems and
| layoffs. It may be fair to assume promotions, but not
| everyone gets those promotions and we should hope that
| the people who don't get promoted are still able to live
| their lives.
|
| Facebook has up or out; I don't remember the timelines,
| but if our IC3 data scientist doesn't get promoted to IC4
| and then IC5, they're not going to be there in 12.7
| years, so we may as well go ahead and assume they will be
| promoted, since the analysis only applies if they are.
| klodolph wrote:
| I do think you should account for the "out", and not just
| the "up".
| toast0 wrote:
| Well, if you go out, then you're in the didn't make it
| for 12.7 years bucket.
| [deleted]
| greatpostman wrote:
| Was thinking the same thing. Something very wrong with the
| cost of living in this country
| gspencley wrote:
| Funny, I thought working at Meta would be the thing that would
| create a morale crises at Meta.
| themagician wrote:
| People look at Meta with these bizarro rose-colored glasses, as
| if it was once a company with some nobel mission that lost its
| way.
|
| Facebook, from the very beginning, knew what it was doing once
| they found the "secret". They found, by accident, the ability tap
| into people's insecurities and exploit that to extract data and
| then serve ads that further insecurities. They found an emotional
| loop that printed dollars. People gave up an entire lifetime of
| information for free so they could feel connected.
|
| The Metaverse is just trying to get lightning to strike twice. It
| will probably get there. As people become more isolated they will
| become more insecure and place an even higher value on social
| interaction.
|
| VR sucks. Flat screens and fixed focal point lenses result in a
| huge out of focus area--you move your eyes within the headset and
| you can't focus--which feels unnatural. Eventually we will solve
| this, and once we do it will go mainstream. If you can look past
| the crappy optics and you log into VRChat today it feels... good.
| It feels like you are actually interacting with people. It simply
| feels good. Most people just can't look past the poor optics. You
| put a $2000 headset on the average person and their response is
| always, "Cool, but it's kinda heavy. Also, why is it so blurry?"
| Someone will solve this, eventually.
|
| Meta is banking on exactly what made Facebook. They will create a
| space that makes you feel good, and then get you to give up even
| more information and see even more ads designed explicitly to
| manipulate you because the advertiser knows so much about you.
| Honestly, it's a brilliant idea to try and do the same thing
| again but harder. Possible it's too early, but if you have
| billions to blow why not. Right now it's a product that only
| caters to the most socially isolated individuals. That will
| change.
|
| Why did my parents join Facebook? They did it because they were
| lonely. It's why the Facebook audience is now so old. It took
| them a while to come up with a UI that was easy enough for old
| people to use it, but they did. They are trying to do the same
| with VR. There's a pretty good chance of success in my opinion.
| jareklupinski wrote:
| > you log into VRChat today it feels... good. It feels like you
| are actually interacting with people.
|
| That's exactly it: you're actually interacting with people. In
| the beginning, Facebook had _only_ people: your friends. If you
| logged into Facebook then and had 0 friends, arguably nothing
| would happen.
|
| Today, only about every 3rd post is by a person, even if you
| have hundreds of friends. There probably is a ratio of
| algorithmically-generated v.s human content that is acceptable
| to their users.... but I'm chasing the 100% too :)
| pengaru wrote:
| If only I could remember where I left that tiny violin...
| etc-hosts wrote:
| It's only been a few years.
|
| Genentech dumped money into a hole for 20 years before having a
| viable product.
| lisasays wrote:
| There's a difference developing stuff that's costly/risky but
| which people clearly need -- and hence, taking a longer than
| usual road to profitability ...
|
| And going all out building stuff, like the Metaverse -- that
| people just plainly don't want.
| symlinkk wrote:
| I honestly don't understand why VR hasn't caught on. Every time I
| let someone try my Quest for the first time their minds are
| blown. It's very cool technology and seems like the next logical
| step for video games.
| [deleted]
| graupel wrote:
| https://archive.is/RHz9R
| tyingq wrote:
| The mixed messaging is pretty stunning. Pushing the metaverse,
| but simultaneously pushing "be at the office". Then seniors
| leaders spending more time on LLM projects than on the metaverse
| concept. All from their new remote homes rather than the office.
| lowercased wrote:
| About ... 10 years ago I got a recruitment offer from a company
| working on remote collaboration tools for software developers.
| it was going to 'revolutionize' what was possible. but... i had
| to move to SF to work in their office. they didn't even see
| anything wrong or odd or off about the requirement.
| dumbotron wrote:
| I don't see mixed messaging. They're pushers, not users.
| pascalxus wrote:
| The major selling points of metaverse is that you can do work
| or play from anywhere (why else would you wear a 1500$ helmet
| that makes you look like a goofball). The push to "be at the
| office" is proof that metaverse does NOT work. It's truely
| ironic.
| nostrademons wrote:
| Zuckerburg was always a bit of a hypocrite. "Facebook's mission
| is to create a more open and transparent world", while
| simultaneously buying the 4 properties around his Palo Alto
| estate so that he'd have privacy from the neighbors and general
| public.
| s1artibartfast wrote:
| Seems like a pretty stretched comparison. Transparency and
| fairness can be applied to different topics and domains. It's
| like saying that If Zuckerberg really believed in
| transparency, he should work naked and have a public webcam
| in his bedroom.
|
| I don't know that Facebook is living up to an ideal of
| fairness and transparency, but I don't think bad comparisons
| really shed any light on the topic
| [deleted]
| loeg wrote:
| There's also mixed messaging about being at the office. They're
| cutting transportation programs and in-office benefits. Even
| reducing the variety of sodas stocked in the kitchens (you
| would think there isn't much cost saving there).
| prepend wrote:
| I think it's getting toward that dystopian future where we are
| forced to Jack into the matrix only from regulated spots in the
| physical world.
|
| So rather than just putting on your goggles from wherever you
| are and working, Meta wants you to drive into the office, sit
| in a tiny cubicle, put your goggles on and work there.
|
| Hopefully it's just stupidity and culture clash and not
| maliciousness.
|
| It's similar to an early push at my org for "return to office"
| that involved everyone coming in and zooming all day with
| people in mostly different spots. Some people like this, but
| for many it seemed like a waste.
| slowmovintarget wrote:
| More _Brazil_ than _The Matrix_ I 'd venture.
| 908B64B197 wrote:
| > It's similar to an early push at my org for "return to
| office" that involved everyone coming in and zooming all day
| with people in mostly different spots. Some people like this,
| but for many it seemed like a waste.
|
| Would have made sense in the early 2000's. Back in the days,
| corporate HQs had fast networking. Even lugging a machine
| home, doing anything over 56k would have been a pain. Now
| folks have dedicated fiber going straight to their router.
| kevstev wrote:
| Heh yeah even in the mid 2000s I at one point lived
| directly across the street from the office. I would get
| calls sometimes on the weekend to the tune of "hey man can
| you just run in real quick and check something for me?"
| because it was just such a PITA to use remote tools in
| those days. I think the tool of that era was WinVNC IIRC,
| though there were slight improvements every other year or
| so until RDP became the defacto standard.
|
| Also, at work you generally had much better equipment, a
| bigger monitor, and later multiple, etc. Nowadays the
| reverse may be true. I asked the office for a replacement
| monitor after one of mine kicked the bucket, and they sent
| me home a 1920x1080 monitor, which compared to my
| thunderbolt and 2560x1440 dell, looked like a window back
| in time 10 years.
| FiberBundle wrote:
| > Meta wants you to drive into the office, sit in a tiny
| cubicle, put your goggles on and work there.
|
| They want you to sit in an open office, which is even worse
| imo.
| saddist0 wrote:
| Nope, no longer "open" office.
|
| https://www.wsj.com/articles/inside-metas-push-to-solve-
| the-...
| q7xvh97o2pDhNrh wrote:
| This is one of the funniest things I've seen yet from the
| RTO movement.
|
| It's a cubicle, but smaller! And someone could steal 1/4
| of it at any time! Brilliant.
|
| To make it doubly funny, I'd actually love a few of these
| panels for my home office -- they look great for just
| mounting on the walls to quiet things down a bit. I just
| bought a bunch of those hexagonal acoustic panels that
| are marketed to Twitch streamers for the same purpose,
| but this thing that Meta made looks even better.
|
| They should just brand it as a "Metaverse Pod" and sell
| it directly. Maybe they could probably even book the
| revenue under their Metaverse unit.
| ethbr0 wrote:
| The cubicle walls are virtual.
| testbjjl wrote:
| You left out getting paid (well) every two weeks and
| receiving options that are increasing in value as the company
| becomes more efficient. It's not personal, it's not stupidity
| it's just business and there are hundreds of thousands of
| developers who are willing and capable of replacing any of
| us.
|
| The alternative is to start your own business. If you did and
| generated more revenue while your employees were in the
| office based on previous data, I think you'd end your remote
| work policy for all but the people who are irreplaceable to
| your revenue stream.
| abeppu wrote:
| > If you did and generated more revenue while your
| employees were in the office based on previous data, I
| think you'd end your remote work policy for all but the
| people who are irreplaceable to your revenue stream.
|
| This is confusing "happened in overlapping time periods"
| with "happened because of". What if you generated less
| revenue during a period where TikTok was eating your lunch,
| Apple changed privacy controls which impacted the targeted
| ad landscape, your CEO was focused on VR, and also lots of
| people were WFH? From the stories I've heard from Meta, the
| issue was way more that there were a lot of strategically
| questionable projects than that staff were less efficient
| at pursuing them because of WFH.
| ethbr0 wrote:
| +1. It is important to put it in context.
|
| Meta can be shitty to its employees... but tech in general
| (including Meta) can also still be better than other jobs.
|
| On the other hand, the value of stability (aka "every two
| weeks") appears to be decreasing as it becomes apparent a
| lot of tech management has no strategic clothes, and the
| end result of that is going to be 1/3 of the company being
| laid off.
|
| Or as the quip goes, 'Anyone can make money in a bull
| market.'
| lisasays wrote:
| _It's not personal, it's not stupidity it's just business
| and there are hundreds of thousands of developers who are
| willing and capable of replacing any of us._
|
| I agree that it's just business, and that ultimately what
| employees at most large companies are paid for -- is to
| smile, and eat boneheaded apparently blatantly hypocritical
| directives from upper management (in the latter sense,
| referring specifically to the attempt to drag mid-level
| employees back to the office, while top lieutenants are
| apparently exempt).
|
| But I don't see why we're not allowed to call it "stupid"
| (or to apply even stronger words) when that's plainly what
| it is.
|
| _The alternative is to start your own business._
|
| Or join a company with more manageable levels of cognitive
| dissonance.
| lisasays wrote:
| "boneheaded _and_ apparently ... "
| prepend wrote:
| > The alternative is to start your own business. If you did
| and generated more revenue while your employees were in the
| office based on previous data, I think you'd end your
| remote work policy for all but the people who are
| irreplaceable to your revenue stream.
|
| I think it's simpler than this and if my goal is maximum
| productivity to recognize that different work modes get me
| there. I think some work and people combo (eg, software dev
| and data work) is well-suited for remote work. So I'll
| actually outperform in office companies in my field by
| strutting my work culture to maximize this.
|
| I'd certainly start my own org if needed. Or more likely
| just choose to work with others who have done the same.
| sp332 wrote:
| That is too defeatist. There isn't an unending pool of
| potential employees _that FB wants to hire_. The company is
| getting _less_ efficient because they are not negotiating
| effectively. Remote work is a powerful bit of leverage for
| recruiting and retention, and FB has flushed it.
| tyingq wrote:
| > options that are increasing in value as the company
| becomes more efficient.
|
| I feel it's more like options that are recovering lost
| value. Recovering after admitting mistakes with the
| metaverse concept and over hiring.
| FooBarBizBazz wrote:
| > there are hundreds of thousands of developers who are
| willing and capable of replacing any of us.
|
| You're basically describing a Prisoner's Dilemma.
|
| Who runs the prison?
| eikenberry wrote:
| > [..] there are hundreds of thousands of developers who
| are willing and capable of replacing any of us.
|
| Where are all these developers and why are they available?
| Everyone I know is either already working for someone they
| like or wouldn't consider Meta anyways. My guess is that
| Meta will have a tough time hiring if/when they get past
| their current problems.
| tempestn wrote:
| I've got a friend who works for a government agency up here
| in BC, Canada. She's been all remote for years, but they now
| want her (and everyone else) in the office 2 days a week,
| likely going up to 3. Problem is, the office is almost a
| 2-hour drive, one way, from home, and she's not doing
| anything there that can't be done from home. Her manager (who
| has no power over the policy itself) thinks he has a solution
| though; there's a different government office in her city
| that she could probably work at instead, at least most of the
| time. She doesn't know anyone there, and there's no work done
| there related to her work (let alone anything she couldn't do
| at home), but they think it could check the "be in the
| office" box.
| smeagull wrote:
| If they cared about the metaverse then they'd be dogfooding it
| and insisting all meetings happen there.
| johannes1234321 wrote:
| They tried. But employees apparently rebelled.
|
| https://www.theverge.com/2022/10/6/23391895/meta-facebook-
| ho...
| roland35 wrote:
| I personally like VR meetings but there is still too much
| friction versus how quick it is to start up a video call.
|
| In my opinion larger meetings do work worse in video calls.
| It just isn't great having lots of small squares. But small
| <4 people meetings do work better when you can really see
| and pay attention to every clearly.
| api wrote:
| Their metaverse sucked and nobody wanted to use it.
| coredog64 wrote:
| You can't kick ideas around without legs.
| DonHopkins wrote:
| You've talked the talk, now walk the ... oops.
|
| Never mind.
| erinnh wrote:
| IIRC, they tried to mandate that some quota of meetings
| needed to happen there.
|
| But it wasnt very popular.
|
| I think it was this or around that time:
| https://futurism.com/the-byte/leaked-memo-facebook-metaverse
| [deleted]
| jayd16 wrote:
| I'm sure they do dogfood but insisting every meeting is in VR
| is like banning the command line while working on an
| unfinished GUI OS.
|
| It's also not a realistic dogfood either. Users are not going
| to be fully in VR so why dogfood that way? It's better to
| figure out what flexible and low friction workflows.
| chaostheory wrote:
| It's not mixed to me. VR and mixed reality failed for work.
| Text is too hard to read and the headsets are too heavy for all
| day use. Still, VR is great for gaming though
| bentcorner wrote:
| Completely agree. I love games like Beat Saber and Half-Life:
| Alyx. But it doesn't work for fine text and it's very very
| hard to make VR presence feel like anything other than a
| game.
| int_19h wrote:
| It needs to be at least 4K per eye to work well for text,
| IMO. Then I could see it being actually useful in a sense
| that you can get as many large virtual displays as you want
| around you for different tasks.
|
| But that still has nothing to do with the "verse" part of
| the metaverse. Why would I want that, either for
| productivity or for entertainment?
| brookst wrote:
| No defense of meta, but this doesn't seem like a contradiction.
| If they thought the metaverse was done and ready to use for
| work, they wouldn't need to invest in building it. Seems a bit
| like wondering why the construction management team doesn't
| just use the office building they're constructing rather than a
| trailer.
| tyingq wrote:
| I was assuming the metaverse was an extension/improvement on
| doing things remotely, rather than a pre-requisite for it to
| work at all. Meaning you would have to believe remote is a
| solid concept to start with. And, there's the obvious
| contradiction that working remote seems fine for a lot of the
| senior leadership.
| btown wrote:
| If you're $13.7 billion into a project and can't even dogfood
| it internally, you're at least $13.6 billion beyond where you
| should be.
| game_the0ry wrote:
| > Within Meta, there is pressure to demonstrate that people are
| working hard, two employees said. Intense scrutiny has come in
| recent workplace reviews, which the management consultancy firm
| Bain and Company is assisting. Workers, especially in middle
| management, are being asked to justify why their jobs are crucial
| to Meta's goals.
|
| I thought scenes like this would only happen in movies like The
| Office. Never did I expect something like that to happen in real
| life.
|
| Corporate america is so dumb.
| dumbotron wrote:
| FAANG hires 2 types of people: people who are good and people
| who are good at working the system. A lot of people who are
| good at working the system worked their way up to VP of very
| little, but even that comes with VP pay. It happens on the IC
| track, too. There are people who have big, handwavey ideas, but
| in hindsight, didn't deliver anything concrete other than
| google docs.
| JohnMakin wrote:
| It seems to me like it'd be extraordinarily difficult at a
| company whose product is supposed to "connect people" and bring
| people together, while even from the outside it's transparently
| built to extract the most data and dollars it possibly can from
| its users, often at their great expense (see teen suicide numbers
| and depression being linked to social media usage). While
| internally, they don't even pretend to care.
|
| For a while this was probably easy for "metamates" to ignore due
| to the astoundingly inflated salaries compared to the rest of the
| non-FAANG tech sector, but when you start wantonly laying off
| massive chunks of the company based on poor decisions you made
| pursuing this "goal," I mean, it would seem to be that nearly
| anyone with a soul would be feeling demoralized by now.
| JCM9 wrote:
| You don't find out who is great at business when everything is up
| and to the right, you find out when the market is rough. The
| current market is already doing a good job of shaking out
| companies and executives that really weren't very good but that
| was being masked by a market where you had to try hard not to
| succeed.
| theGnuMe wrote:
| The layoffs will continue until the stock (market) improves.
| anticristi wrote:
| I can't help wondering if Meta is suffering death by GDPR and co.
| Meta really had only one revenue stream: ads. Given the recent
| GDPR fines, it's clear that personalized ads are increasingly
| illegal in the EU. Other jurisdictions will follow suit (e.g.
| CCPA).
|
| Contrast that with Google, who, although makes tons of ad money,
| had other revenue streams: cloud, workspace, YouTube Joins, pay,
| App Store, etc.
| carlsborg wrote:
| Facebook has been building out one of the most powerful GPU
| clusters on the planet [1] for AI research, since at least 2021.
| This blog post in Jan of 2022 says they were already doing NLP
| research on it "with the aim of one day training models with
| trillions of parameters.". Their 2017 cluster, had 22,000 NVIDIA
| V100s.
|
| [1] https://ai.facebook.com/blog/ai-rsc/
| steve_adams_86 wrote:
| I expect that they aren't wasting these resources, either. The
| first useful machine learning models I ever used were from
| Facebook research. There were other options at the time, but
| what they created was accessible, fast, and had very usable
| outputs.
|
| I suspect there is still more useful work in the area happening
| there.
| int_19h wrote:
| The problem is that, given past Facebook/Meta reputation wrt
| privacy, who would trust their "AI cloud" if they monetize it
| like Microsoft is doing right now?
| esotericimpl wrote:
| [dead]
| psniff wrote:
| This is a poorly reported article.
|
| 1) The author seems to think 2 rounds of layoffs have already
| been executed and now a third is coming, when actually the 2nd
| round of layoffs is still being executed. 2) The author mentions
| twice that the coming round of layoffs will affect engineering
| for the first time; this is not true -- thousands of eng were
| laid off in the first round. 3) The author mentions that the
| stock price has dropped 43% from its peak as evidence that Meta
| faces a precarious future. No mention that META has been one of
| the hottest tech stocks in 23Q1, gaining more than 75%.
|
| I'm no Meta apologist, and this is really a "dog bites man" story
| anyway ("layoffs announced; morale bad") but I don't really trust
| this author's general reporting competence.
| jmacd wrote:
| In a comment I made about 18 months ago, I noted that Facebook's
| insufficient investment in anything useful would hold them back.
| The true cost of the Metaverse isn't solely the capital needed
| for development; it's also the opportunity cost that will become
| apparent in the future. What aren't they doing that they could
| be?
|
| There is also another aspect to consider. The swift expansion of
| generative AI is driving the transition from a Social Graph to a
| Content Graph. Online users are now more interested in engaging,
| up-to-date content rather than keeping up with their friends'
| activities. Platforms like TikTok and YouTube pioneered this
| trend, while Twitter's timeline modifications serve as a
| functional yet imperfect example. Content discovery now takes
| precedence over static friend lists.
|
| The core principle that Facebook was built on is gradually
| crumbling. This isn't just about Apple's privacy policies or
| regulatory constraints; it's a fundamental shift in user
| behavior. The primary reason people visit Facebook--connecting
| with people they know--is now at odds with their main online
| activity: consuming content from strangers. Facebook has become a
| platform for discovering uncomfortable opinions of acquaintances
| and realizing the irrelevance of past social connections.
|
| Facebook is attempting to adapt, but their efforts only diminish
| the platform's value for average users. Instagram's discovery
| page and Reels are examples, but the latter pales in comparison
| to TikTok. Facebook's endeavors in short-form video are likely a
| futile game of catch-up, a classic innovator's dilemma.
|
| The Metaverse's introduction seemed like a desperate, last-minute
| attempt from the C-suite to save face. Anyone who has worked at a
| high-profile tech company has likely seen this tactic before:
| weak financial quarters lead to premature product announcements.
| The all-encompassing nature of the Metaverse announcement signals
| that something is amiss. It's only more futile now.
| themagician wrote:
| The core principle that Facebook was built on is nearly as
| strong as ever , doubly so with the demographics that actually
| have money to burn. Facebook's core principle was to make you
| feel less lonely so you'd give them outrageously specific data
| about yourself--for free--which they would then sell to someone
| else who would use that information to sell you things that
| prey on your specific insecurities.
|
| You can do this on TikTok with a new generation today, and
| Facebook is banking on being able to do this in VR tomorrow.
|
| Tell us what makes you happy and sad. Tell us everything about
| you. Tell us for free and we will give you an endless stream of
| content/notifications/things to do that make you feel less
| lonely. We will then work with companies that inject ads that
| directly prey on your insecurities. You need these things or
| you can't be happy. All your friends have these things. We will
| reinforce this message several times per hour.
|
| The only way for Facebook to "double down" on its core
| principle within its current platform is to do something like
| buy QVC and start to really focus on bleeding seniors. There's
| a lot of money to be made on Social Security Wednesdays.
| asdfman123 wrote:
| > Facebook has become a platform for discovering uncomfortable
| opinions of acquaintances and realizing the irrelevance of past
| social connections
|
| This is it. FB was actually super fun in college: it was a
| virtual dorm hall. It was a party. You could post crazy shit,
| post party pictures, and hope that girl you liked saw it.
|
| Now it's a combination of a class reunion and your aunt's 70th
| birthday party, but the usual social restraint is conspicuously
| absent.
|
| Meta as a company seems unable to recognize the change, because
| doing so would have threatened their cash cow.
| jeffwask wrote:
| > Meta as a company seems unable to recognize the change,
| because doing so would have threatened their cash cow.
|
| While I agree with the rest of what you say, I don't know if
| this is true.
|
| They pushed their platform to this. They pushed the
| controversial and divisive content. They platformed
| questionable advertisers. The negative interaction was more
| profitable than a place to share pics of your kids with
| friends or plan a birthday party.
|
| I think they absolutely know but you can't unring that bell
| which is why they were running so hard at something else to
| be their primary product.
| luckylion wrote:
| > Online users are now more interested in engaging, up-to-date
| content rather than keeping up with their friends' activities.
| Platforms like TikTok and YouTube pioneered this trend, while
| Twitter's timeline modifications serve as a functional yet
| imperfect example.
|
| Aren't users mostly forming parasocial relationships with
| "creators" and consider them friends, and want to be with those
| friends, regardless what they'll do?
|
| I never understood the reaction videos and found them boring
| and stupid, if I wanted to have an idiot constantly pause the
| video and say something dumb that shows they didn't understand
| it, I'd watch it together with my 15yo self. But when I read
| discussions about it, users commented that they like it because
| it's something they can do "with" the content creator and
| they'll get signals to what their famous friend thinks about
| some topic etc.
| jmacd wrote:
| I think that's fair, but it's not like it's actually a 2-way
| relationship. It's just some approximation of one. One that
| is easier to consume and requires less commitment.
|
| It all feels like the groundwork for "AI lovers" anyway. Our
| desire to reshape the world in our own view and to our own
| desires is how this feedback loop is going to be used. We do
| it now in social groups that are self-reinforcing, like
| churches, cults, interest related groups, workplaces (one
| team!) etc, but I think those will all become superfluous to
| our desire to just feel seen, heard and entertained. In a
| group you have to compete to have those needs met, in the
| future it might be easier to just get it from a robot that
| understands us far better, gives us undivided attention, and
| only responds in ways that elicit the feelings and
| experiences we want.
| luckylion wrote:
| On the commercial level at least AI-personalized
| interaction. You'll actually be able to have a 2-way
| relationship with Justin Bieber, and he'll chat with you
| and comment on your goofy pictures, and message you late at
| night when he can't sleep. Or rather when the AI has
| estimated that him sending you a message about not being
| able to sleep because he's anxious because of the album
| release will increase the chances of you buying that album.
|
| What will be the term? It's no longer just parasocial.
| Augmented Relationship?
|
| I believe you're spot on with regards to it being easier to
| get positive social interactions from a robot. I don't
| think that's a bad thing either. Many social dynamics are
| close to winner takes all, and especially among teens often
| work by singling out someone and mercilessly attacking them
| to induce group cohesion. Opting out of that hell and
| having a nice chat with a bot instead? That'll be an
| improvement for the victims at the very least. The same
| goes for loneliness, I'd rather people talk to robots than
| to not communicate at all when they have a desire to
| interact with others but no means to.
| jmacd wrote:
| Negative social interactions can be pretty damaging to
| people.
|
| While I cannot relate to the idea of choosing to have a
| relationship with a robot, I can see why a lot of people
| would choose to opt out of the social sphere. All the
| abuse it hurls at them, why bother?
|
| It's not going to seem strange to them at all.
| dddddaviddddd wrote:
| > Online users are now more interested in engaging, up-to-date
| content rather than keeping up with their friends' activities.
|
| I'm still interested in keeping up with friends, but Facebook
| has undermined this by anti-patterns that show me more ads,
| more trashy content, more recommendations, and less actual
| content from friends. If Facebook wasn't incentivized to
| maximize the number of ads it showed, maybe it would be able to
| actually deliver on that value proposition to users.
| ZooCow wrote:
| >The swift expansion of generative AI is driving the transition
| from a Social Graph to a Content Graph. . . . The core
| principle that Facebook was built on is gradually crumbling.
|
| Arguably, the proliferation of cheap generative AI content will
| cause the value of that "fake" content to decrease. Users may
| begin to value the "real" content created by one's friends. So
| Meta's social graph may become increasingly valuable in the age
| of AI content.
| jmacd wrote:
| Personally, I like that future.
|
| I just don't see any evidence that social graphs are becoming
| more relevant or even that they exist for many people
| onboarding on to the internet/apps for the first time. You
| can use Instagram, TikTok, Twitter and even Facebook now
| without creating any social graph at all. In fact, it seems
| like they prefer it that way.
| surgical_fire wrote:
| Same here.
|
| People repeat _ad nauseam_ that AI generated content is
| somehow of worse quality, without ever saying why. It 's
| left as an undeniable fact.
|
| Some point at AI generated content being "fake", which is
| even more of a head scratcher. What can even be considered
| fake in that context? As long as it's not misleading, AI or
| human generated content should amount to the same.
|
| Once I'm consuming content from strangers, why would the
| creator matter?
| DoughnutHole wrote:
| Plenty of content derives its value from perceived
| authenticity.
|
| Content that is made by humans that is
| fictitious/constructed is perceived differently from
| content that is considered "real" - tweets from an
| American pretending to be in Ukraine would be perceived
| differently from tweets from someone actually in the
| warzone. A novel written by someone reflecting such an
| experience can also affect how we relate to it.
|
| There will certainly be some content where people won't
| care if it's AI generated or not (certain kinds of
| fiction, technical writing (provided the reliability
| issues are resolved), etc) - but a lot of content
| (fictional and non-fictional) derives it's value from
| reflecting in some way things that actually happened to
| actual people. Of course AI could still very much play a
| part in putting that content to paper, so to speak.
| Balgair wrote:
| One Nit: I'd say that it's not just friends that will
| generate 'real' content, it's 'trusted' people. Some of that
| will be AIs and more of it will be strangers that you know
| produce 'good' content, but most will be friends, as you say.
|
| So, the combination between the social graph and the content
| graph, with a dash of AI, will be the outcome I see coming.
| jltsiren wrote:
| > Online users are now more interested in engaging, up-to-date
| content rather than keeping up with their friends' activities.
|
| You can't infer what people want to do from what they are doing
| when the platform is trying to influence their behavior.
|
| Facebook has not been a good platform for keeping up with your
| friends in 10+ years. The main reason is that Facebook is a
| business that needs a business model. It's not enough to
| provide a useful service to the users, but you must also be
| able to monetize it. For FB that meant ads, and then it meant
| an addictive algorithmic feed to make more money.
|
| That happens often when you run an online service as a
| business. First you have a good service that attracts a lot of
| users, and then you gradually destroy it and replace it with
| something similar but worse to make money. When young people
| started preferring other social networks, it was a clear sign
| that Facebook had done that.
| helen___keller wrote:
| > Facebook has become a platform for discovering uncomfortable
| opinions of acquaintances and realizing the irrelevance of past
| social connections.
|
| At some point, the social internet started existing primarily
| to make people feel good about their own strongly held
| controversial opinions.
|
| Why would I go on Facebook, where the experience is seeing an
| old friend hold some dumb half baked opinion they picked up
| from Fox/CNN then bicker with them, when I could go to twitter
| and watch the top influencer in my ring dunk on the top
| influencer in the competitions ring, making myself instantly
| feel more right?
| endisneigh wrote:
| Meta is a great example of why you need a really good vision and
| execution.
|
| Imagine an alternative world where instead of acquiring Oculus
| and later pivoting to the metaverse, Zuckerboard went all in on
| AI (LLM weren't a thing quite yet then), and instead rebranded
| the company Fabula (tale in latin), and developed AI technology
| to accelerate their original mission of connecting people. Though
| it's true Facebook has an amazing AI team, it's my understanding
| none of it has really been turned into product. In that regard
| they have been more like Google and less like OpenAI
|
| They likely would've created something similar to LLMs by
| themselves in short order, but in the worst case could have made
| their own LLM after the Google paper.
|
| You could imagine all sort of neat affordances given by an AI:
|
| - Friendship level suggestions on what to do
|
| - Meetup work, suggested on similar likes
|
| - Improved suggestions
|
| etc
|
| I bet that hypothetical pivot would've been better than the
| metaverse. At this point (2023) you might imagine things
| iterating to the point where users have some sort of assist that
| helps facilitate engagement with your facebook friends (with ads,
| of course, hah).
| tinyhouse wrote:
| The metaverse pivot was a bold move that aligned well with
| their moto of connecting people. I always thought that the
| concept of the metaverse is silly but did think (and still do)
| that the potential of VR is huge if Meta can pull it off. For
| example, watching a live show or game in VR from your living
| room. (e.g., first row in a NBA game)
|
| The technology is not there yet. The Quest is nice but gets
| boring pretty quickly. They still don't have a killer app. That
| doesn't mean they won't find one in the next few years. As we
| saw with ChatGPT, many years of work can turn to an overnight
| success with one killer app.
| endisneigh wrote:
| we'll have to agree to disagree.
|
| you don't need VR to "connect" with people. it's literally
| isolating. it's more or less a failure, hence the pivot
| towards AI.
|
| per the article many employees working on it are skeptical.
| if they are skeptical, it's basically already dead.
| tinyhouse wrote:
| I'm fine to agree to disagree but one comment about VR
| isolating people. It is today because the tech isn't there
| yet and most people use it to play a game by themselves.
| Think about an app where you can watch a live game with a
| friend who is 5000 miles away, feeling like you're together
| at the stadium. That's the opposite of isolating.
| endisneigh wrote:
| > Think about an app where you can watch a live game with
| a friend who is 5000 miles away, feeling like you're
| together at the stadium. That's the opposite of
| isolating.
|
| i suppose - or you can watched live stream together over
| video chat, and not have something over your face. you
| can do that today and not have to pay hundreds of dollars
| for hardware too :D
| fatnoah wrote:
| > i suppose - or you can watched live stream together
| over video chat, and not have something over your face.
| you can do that today and not have to pay hundreds of
| dollars for hardware too :D
|
| Speaking as someone who does sit with something on their
| face to "hang out" with friends thousands of miles away,
| it's an infinitely more immersive experience than video
| chat. We actually started with the chat route, but
| eventually gave getting together on the Quest a try, and
| it won us over immediately.
| endisneigh wrote:
| I see. personally when I tried I found it annoying that I
| couldn't see my friends' faces so we switched back to
| video
| ripvanwinkle wrote:
| Part of the Meta's problem is this spiel about connecting
| people.
|
| Conversations internally are all about monetizing users and not
| losing any revenue due to new privacy regulations.
|
| Apart from the Metaverse which is also cloaked in "connecting
| people" there is no effort to take the technology and
| capabilities in the company and conquer new domains. Like
| Google getting into Office collaboration and Cloud computing
| etc.
|
| So that spiel about "connecting people" while being a bunch of
| whitewash is also restricting possibilities for the company
| suzzer99 wrote:
| The problem is I don't _need_ any of this stuff and I know a
| ton of people who feel the same way. If FB 's timeline had a
| chronological option like twitter, I would switch to it
| tomorrow, then mute people who bugged me.
|
| Every algorithm seems to end up optimizing for engagement,
| which basically means car wrecks, conspiracy theories, and
| other outrageous controversial stuff.
|
| Youtube will never stop recommending Jordan Peterson, no matter
| how many times you vote it down, because the algorithm has
| figured out that if it can get you into JP, it will open up a
| whole new world of engagement as you head further and further
| down the alt-right rabbit hole. So it's worth a periodic try at
| the hail mary, even for users who previously showed active
| aversion to JP.
| lostmsu wrote:
| > Zuckerboard went all in on AI
|
| Hindsight is 20/20
| pavlov wrote:
| Have you heard of LLaMa? Segment Anything? Those are just two
| major Meta AI projects released within the past two months.
|
| Generative AI is a major part of Zuck's metaverse hopes and
| investment priorities.
| PLenz wrote:
| To be fair, releasing the interesting parts of Llama was a
| decision made for instead of by them
| endisneigh wrote:
| uh, what I'm saying is that all of that could've _begun_ in
| 2014, not just now. clearly they 're playing catch-up. Before
| OpenAI what language models did they release, exactly?
|
| how is segment anything playing into their metaverse strategy
| exactly?
|
| it's very clear that they're relasing this stuff to make it
| known that they're not going to fall behind to Microsoft
| (OpenAI) and Google. it clearly was not part of their
| original strategy around the metaverse, which is why it's all
| coming out _now_.
| ianbutler wrote:
| https://ai.facebook.com/blog/roberta-an-optimized-method-
| for...
|
| As just one example, which was (is?) one of the most used
| flavors of transformers from the BERT era.
| endisneigh wrote:
| I'm not talking about papers, I'm talking about a product
| offering, ala ChatGPT. Even Segment Anything isn't a real
| product. It's a glorified tech demo. Is it integrated
| into say, Facebook photos? no.
| Moldoteck wrote:
| idk about llm, but they had released multimodal wav2vec,
| some variations of bert, transcoder if we talk pre gpt3
| release and a lot more stuff after. Is it because of gpt or
| because some general advancements in AI&GPU power, we can't
| say
| ZephyrBlu wrote:
| Yeah I see people talk shit about Meta and AI, but FAIR is
| one of the most prolific research labs...
| version_five wrote:
| Fair is a research powerhouse but Facebook doesn't really
| commercialize AI outside of (assumed) advertising algorithms.
| I think that was the upstream point.
| endisneigh wrote:
| Yes, precisely.
| jfranche wrote:
| [dead]
| henry2023 wrote:
| The morale crisis should have come when they understood that
| their work directly and negatively impacts on our younger
| generation's mental health.
| standardUser wrote:
| I still can't believe the Metaverse is the core strategy of a
| major global corporation. I've been deep in technology my entire
| life and I honestly couldn't even tell you _what_ the Metaverse
| is. I can talk all day long about AI or crypto or online gaming
| or how to build web apps but gun to my head, I could not give
| even a rough definition of what the metaverse is or is supposed
| to be.
| krapp wrote:
| Have you tried googling it?
| croes wrote:
| Which of the dozens of definitions is the right one?
| krapp wrote:
| I'm not aware of dozens of definitions, at least not which
| apply to the context of this particular thread. Maybe you
| should start at the Wikipedia page[0] for what is commonly
| accepted as the general definition.
|
| [0]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metaverse
| croes wrote:
| It's a buzzword that is used for multiple similar things
| without a clear definition:
|
| "Broadly speaking, the technologies companies refer to
| when they talk about "the metaverse" can include virtual
| reality--characterized by persistent virtual worlds that
| continue to exist even when you're not playing--as well
| as augmented reality that combines aspects of the digital
| and physical worlds. However, it doesn't require that
| those spaces be exclusively accessed via VR or AR.
| Virtual worlds--such as aspects of Fortnite that can be
| accessed through PCs, game consoles, and even phones--
| have started referring to themselves as "the metaverse."
|
| Many companies that have hopped on board the metaverse
| bandwagon also envision some sort of new digital economy,
| where users can create, buy, and sell goods. In the more
| idealistic visions of the metaverse, it's interoperable,
| allowing you to take virtual items like clothes or cars
| from one platform to another, though this is harder than
| it sounds"
|
| https://www.wired.com/story/what-is-the-metaverse/
| standardUser wrote:
| Based on what I just read, I think it would take
| significant effort to outline the precise differences
| between the Metaverse and the Internet. Kind of like "Web
| 2.0" which was just a bizarre way of saying "The
| internet, but it has changed gradually over time, as most
| thing do", as if we needed to be reminded that
| technologies are not eternally static.
| standardUser wrote:
| I guess I don't often google things that have zero bearing on
| my life. I'm not even sure if the Metaverse exists, or is it
| some kind of proposal? I keep waiting around for it to matter
| enough that I have no choice but to know something about it
| (as has happened with a dozen other technologies since the
| metaverse was announced, with no special effort on my part).
| krapp wrote:
| I just don't know why, if it has zero bearing on your life
| and you never even bothered to put forth even minimal
| effort towards understanding it, you would even bother to
| comment about it. Like, who goes out of their way to boast
| about how little they care about something?
|
| I mean, you at least knew what "metaverse" meant a year
| ago[0]. What happened?
|
| [0]https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30151069
| standardUser wrote:
| Haha, ok, I both admire and am creeped out by your
| thoroughness! That was my take on the Metaverse when I
| first came across it, based on what little I had gleaned
| at that point. The situation now is, I have gleaned
| _nothing_ new despite seeing many headlines and
| references. And I assumed that my initial take - that the
| Metaverse is a avatar-based chatroom like the kind that
| have been around for 30 years - is simply too absurd to
| be on the mark.
| standardUser wrote:
| As for boasting about something I don't care about, it
| comes back to what I implied in my original comment. One
| of the largest and most influential global corporations
| seems to have pivoted their entire business strategy
| towards something that, as of today, does not exist, is
| ill-defined, and is not even widely understood (or cared
| about) by people who work in technology. That, to me, is
| fucking crazy. And I suppose I was hoping someone would
| take umbrage at my comment and proceed educate me as to
| why it might not be completely fucking crazy. So far, no
| one has (they've taken umbrage, just not offered any
| reason for me to think my initial take isn't exactly
| right).
| gardenhedge wrote:
| > I've been deep in technology my entire life
|
| > gun to my head, I could not give even a rough definition of
| what the metaverse is or is supposed to be
|
| I don't think you're as deep as you think you are then. Come on
| give it a try - what is the metaverse?
| standardUser wrote:
| Based on my discussions in this thread, maybe I've learned a
| little more! First and foremost, I believe that the Metaverse
| is something that does not exist and is mostly corporate
| jargon. I don't think I can "log on to" or "download" Meta's
| Metaverse at this point in time. I believe it is _intended_
| to be a 3D, avatar-based chatroom, presumably with some yet-
| to-be-defined killer feature that is intended to
| differentiate it from the kind of avatar-based chatrooms that
| have existed for a generation.
|
| Am I close?
| jfranche wrote:
| [dead]
| Entinel wrote:
| I would think working at Meta at all would be a morale crisis.
| neom wrote:
| The problem I have with articles like this is, well, sample size.
| They talked to 9 former _and_ current employees, out of 60,000
| employees. I 'm no fan of Meta, but is it really fair to say
| there is a "crisis" of morale at a company with such a tiny
| sample size?
| waylandsmithers wrote:
| Yeah, Facebook is just the company that everyone loves to hate,
| and the NYT often joins in the chorus. This one seems
| especially agenda-laden, however:
|
| > absentee leadership,
|
| > Mr. Zuckerberg, 38, is on parental leave after the birth of
| his third child
|
| > The company's stock price has dropped 43 percent from its
| peak 19 months ago
|
| This is pretty disingenuous, considering nearly all tech stocks
| fell off, and Meta stock has more than doubled since bottoming
| out at around 90/share several months ago.
|
| The metaverse is stupid and nobody wants it!
|
| > While the company has sold 20 million virtual reality
| headsets -- more than any other company producing similar tech
| --
| roland35 wrote:
| It's not just Meta, journalists and commenters even on tech
| sites like Ars Technica or Verge seem to love piling on any
| negative coverage about working at big tech companies
| (Google, Uber, even Apple occasionally).
|
| I think Meta and Google are particularly disliked by
| journalists due to both specifically cutting into news
| industries. But I think a bigger part of it is the idea that
| software engineers are overpaid and spoiled brats!
| fallingknife wrote:
| Remember that this is the NYT which has a directive that tech
| coverage must be critical
| (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33473275). Not that I'm
| implying you were dumb enough to trust the NYT in the first
| place.
|
| Also important to remember that FB is a competitor to legacy
| media.
| lisasays wrote:
| _The NYT which has a directive that tech coverage must be
| critical_
|
| Does it? That "directive" appears to have been hearsay -- and
| the original "source" tweet has been deleted.
| Quindecillion wrote:
| [flagged]
| ghaff wrote:
| Even if you have access to employee survey data, what
| constitutes a "morale crisis" exactly?
|
| So a variety of metrics are down after layoffs, general online
| negativity, and bad press. In other news, water is wet. And
| doubtless execs are concerned. But is that really a "morale
| crisis" or just what to expect in a belt-tightening era at just
| about any company (and certainly one whose employees expected
| great stock appreciation and job stability and now don't have
| either)?
| baby wrote:
| When I was at Facebook the same kinds of articles would pop up
| all the time while morale + trust in leadership was pretty high
| internally. It made me think a lot about how we perceive other
| companies and even governments from the outside versus what the
| reality can be.
| pcthrowaway wrote:
| Sounds like you've independently observed the Gell-Mann
| amnesia effect[1] Media carries with it a
| credibility that is totally undeserved. You have all
| experienced this, in what I call the Murray Gell-Mann Amnesia
| effect. (I refer to it by this name because I once discussed
| it with Murray Gell-Mann, and by dropping a famous name I
| imply greater importance to myself, and to the effect, than
| it would otherwise have.) Briefly stated, the
| Gell-Mann Amnesia effect is as follows. You open the
| newspaper to an article on some subject you know well. In
| Murray's case, physics. In mine, show business. You read the
| article and see the journalist has absolutely no
| understanding of either the facts or the issues. Often, the
| article is so wrong it actually presents the story backward--
| reversing cause and effect. I call these the "wet streets
| cause rain" stories. Paper's full of them. In
| any case, you read with exasperation or amusement the
| multiple errors in a story, and then turn the page to
| national or international affairs, and read as if the rest of
| the newspaper was somehow more accurate about Palestine than
| the baloney you just read. You turn the page, and forget what
| you know. That is the Gell-Mann Amnesia effect.
| I'd point out it does not operate in other arenas of life. In
| ordinary life, if somebody consistently exaggerates or lies
| to you, you soon discount everything they say. In court,
| there is the legal doctrine of falsus in uno, falsus in
| omnibus, which means untruthful in one part, untruthful in
| all. But when it comes to the media, we believe against
| evidence that it is probably worth our time to read other
| parts of the paper. When, in fact, it almost certainly isn't.
| The only possible explanation for our behavior is amnesia.
|
| [1]:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Crichton#Why_Speculate?
| ke88y wrote:
| Gell-Mann Amnesia is about competence. Major Media Outlet
| coverage of Big Tech isn't (just) incompetent, but also
| openly adversarial. For both financial and cultural
| reasons.
|
| That said -- I interviewed with FB last month and got the
| distinct impression that morale was rock bottom.
| kevinventullo wrote:
| As a former FB employee, I have since treated everything
| from the NYT in particular with suspicion. That said, part
| of the reason I left was my belief that the VR play was a
| massive boondoggle.
| loeg wrote:
| That also jumped out at me. I think they're probably right in
| the sense that moral isn't great, but their methodology doesn't
| show that very persuasively.
| Jgrubb wrote:
| > [Meta] has conducted two rounds of cuts over the past six
| months, eliminating more than 26,000 people, or nearly 30
| percent of his company's work force.
|
| I thought the same thing about the sample size but if a third
| of the company gets chopped, you're going to have major morale
| problems. It points to many, many leadership and management
| problems.
| SimonPStevens wrote:
| I wonder if the visible white patch around Zuckerberg's eyes in
| the main photo are genuinely because he's been wearing a VR
| headset for 12 hours a day testing the metaverse or if they added
| it in Photoshop to make it look like he had.
| steve76 wrote:
| [dead]
| loeg wrote:
| > And for the first time, some of those cuts could be in
| engineering groups, which would have been unthinkable before the
| trouble started last year, two employees said.
|
| What? The November 2022 layoffs were already 50:50
| engineering:biz. The communication around the April layoffs has
| been that they will cut less in engineering groups (or at least,
| software engineering roles).
| Giorgi wrote:
| As AI takes over, it is going to get worse.
| asdfman123 wrote:
| The comments in this thread baffles me, because I thought the
| Metaverse was doomed from the start, and I think the disconnect
| is many people believe in the "great man theory."
|
| Mark Zuckerberg didn't create social media: he rode the social
| media wave. He was the best-positioned competitor, which counts
| for a lot, but the other conditions had to be there first.
|
| Some seem to think he willed social media into existence --
| including himself -- which suggests he'd be able to will the
| Metaverse into existence too.
|
| But no amount of investment or strategy will make a large
| fraction of the population want something.
| mmmmmbop wrote:
| The Metaverse was always such a bad direction. At the time, I was
| really unsure about my intuition -- I figured that if Mark
| Zuckerberg decided it's worth pivoting his entire company towards
| that goal, he surely must have _some data_ to back that up. As it
| stands, my intuition (and everybody else 's) turned out to be
| right.
|
| It's been the same with crypto, for that matter. None of the
| reasonable people I know ever saw any grand value in crypto.
| Researching myself, it always just seemed to be a bullshit
| fractal. At the height of the crypto boom, I was beginning to
| doubt my conclusions and started to think that perhaps the
| societal nature of crypto is a force in itself. Like religion, if
| enough people believe in it, it becomes reality to some extent.
| But now we see that crypto was indeed bullshit all along.
|
| Contrast that with the generative AI models revolution. It's
| clear to anyone from day one how useful those models will be, and
| that they are providing clear value right away. It's no wonder
| that all the companies are immediately pivoting towards it. Maybe
| Mark Zuckerberg was just unlucky to decide on a company pivot two
| years too early -- I'm sure that if he had to decide on a
| direction to pivot to today, it'd be towards generative AI.
| sircastor wrote:
| > started to think that perhaps the societal nature of crypto
| is a force in itself. Like religion, if enough people believe
| in it, it becomes reality to some extent.
|
| This is essentially how fiat currency works, isn't it?
| [deleted]
| mmmmmbop wrote:
| That's a bit simplistic. Fiat currency "works" by being
| backed by a state, implying that the state will work to
| protect the fiat currency's value, be that through fiscally
| responsible governing and/or the use of force to protect its
| interests. For states which can not guarantee that, the
| currency tends to rapidly lose its purchase power.
|
| When I mentioned the societal nature of crypto, I meant
| something different. People who hold crypto have a vested
| interest in the wider adoption of crypto, and they often tend
| to become vocal proponents of crypto projects. I don't even
| claim bad intentions - I believe there is some psychological
| effect at play here that causes people to hold opinions that
| serve their interests, and becoming a crypto holder means
| that from that moment on, the spread of crypto is in one's
| interests.
|
| Now, my point was, that perhaps I overlooked this
| sociopsychological aspect of crypto. If enough people in
| power are personally invested in crypto, and they use their
| power to advance crypto adoption because it personally
| benefits them, then at some point it doesn't matter whether
| there's any intrinsic value in crypto or not - it becomes a
| self-reinforcing system.
| weberer wrote:
| >I was beginning to doubt my conclusions and started to think
| that perhaps the societal nature of crypto is a force in
| itself. Like religion, if enough people believe in it, it
| becomes reality to some extent. But now we see that crypto was
| indeed bullshit all along.
|
| This is what Ron Paul and others have been saying about fiat
| currency for decades.
| tlogan wrote:
| Mark Zuckerberg believed VR would be the key to the company's
| future expansion. Unfortunately, he was wrong. However, it is
| important for leaders to take risks and lead their companies in
| new directions. So he has my respect.
|
| Simultaneously, it is worth noting that major technology
| companies did not develop working generative AI. Examples
| include Apple's Siri, Amazon's Alexa, and even Google's search
| algorithms, they all fall short of user expectations. And they
| had years and years and billions of $$.
|
| The parallel between virtual reality and artificial
| intelligence is intriguing. If some company can successfully
| develop a VR system which does not suck, it could revolutionize
| the industry in much the same way as a openAI.
|
| But that company will not be any of these big ones...
| machiaweliczny wrote:
| This isn't true. Google developed most significant
| advancements in AI. It's just that MS beats them hard on
| vision and execution right now.
| crazygringo wrote:
| > _I 'm sure that if he had to decide on a direction to pivot
| to today, it'd be towards generative AI._
|
| I don't think so -- generative AI doesn't really provide
| strategic advantages to Facebook/Instagram/WhatsApp the way it
| seems to hold promise for search (Google/Bing) and productivity
| software and certain jobs. Same way crypto isn't strategic to
| Meta either.
|
| You don't _have_ to pivot your company. If you 're still raking
| in cash, it can be much smarter to just continue that, rather
| than make a giant bet that might ultimately sink everything.
| x3sphere wrote:
| > But now we see that crypto was indeed bullshit all along.
|
| You say that, but crypto bubble hasn't really popped. At 30K,
| BTC is only down around 55% from the highs, that's about in the
| same league as many tech stock declines this year. A true
| bubble pop should be like 90%+ down. The masses clearly don't
| agree that it's bullshit so far.
| amalcon wrote:
| The thing about the metaverse (and related tech) is that its
| success or failure rested entirely on the rate of improvement
| of the hardware. If the headset could present, say, an office
| that I could work from for 8 hours -- this would represent a
| massive disruption to the commercial real estate market. If I
| could sit down for a real conversation with my mother (who
| lives a 2 hour drive away) without it feeling like Zoom with
| motion sickness, that's a social game changer.
|
| The problem is that the tech cannot actually do things even
| close to this caliber yet. The fidelity has not reached the
| uncanny valley yet, much less gotten over it. Zuckerberg
| clearly thought he could make this possible with Meta's
| resources, but that just didn't happen.
| Night_Thastus wrote:
| People seem to misunderstand _why_ the metaverse was pushed so
| hard. Meta isn 't stupid and was doing it for a good reason.
|
| It all comes back to how Meta makes its money - data
| collection.
|
| Facebook is in a really tricky position right now. They don't
| control the hardware _or_ OS that it runs on, or the app
| stores. That means that at any time, Apple or Google can screw
| them over and deny Facebook from collecting data.
|
| However, what if they had their own hardware (Oculus) running
| their own OS? Then, they could collect as much data as they
| wanted without any interference from Google or Apple. That
| means significantly more profit! There's no way in hell they're
| going to break into the mobile phone market, so VR was their
| best option.
|
| That's why they pushed VR so hard. They _need_ it to work
| because otherwise they have no control over their main source
| of income, and the squeeze on them is getting tighter ever day.
| barbazoo wrote:
| > It all comes back to how Meta makes its money - data
| collection.
|
| They make their money selling ads _using_ that data.
| yardstick wrote:
| Yeah it's about control. They should have launched their own
| phones, hardware and OS, which waaay more people would use
| than VR.
| importantbrian wrote:
| > There's no way in hell they're going to break into the
| mobile phone market, so VR was their best option.
|
| They even tried to break into the mobile phone market at one
| point back in 2013. Then apple made it's privacy changes and
| now Google has said they will do something similar on their
| platform. I think you're right that Facebook got desperate to
| find a platform they can control.
| mrazomor wrote:
| Err... as much I'd like to have a VR headset and use it, I
| simply can't.
|
| I don't have time to immerse myself in the environment where
| I don't see the reality that surrounds me (as in, people
| which share my public transport, cars that stop at the
| traffic lights next to me, my kids running around me, people
| I work with, etc.). It's not that I need the reality, but I
| can't disconnect safely. Facebook is easy. Just reach the
| pocket, get the phone, a few swipes and you are using it. Be
| it in the office, around your kids, in the waiting room, ...
|
| I don't see how VR can provide you a FB scale of users.
| gsatic wrote:
| That maybe a factor but it's also possible the attention
| economy is peaking. We always knew attention available is
| fixed.
|
| Google and Apple have reported slight slow down. Smartphone
| market in the west has saturated and not growing. Ppl have so
| many other options where they can spend their time online.
| Its possible everyone is seeing less ad revenue.
| rurp wrote:
| None of that does a thing to make people actually want to use
| the product though. Nobody wants to strap a VR set to their
| head because it would be good for Facebook. I get why they
| want that to be true, but spending immense amounts of money
| trying to force it to be true has been a stupid waste.
| dustedcodes wrote:
| The squeeze is getting tighter because mass data collection
| of the world population is perhaps a very questionable and
| ethically wrong business model for a private company and
| instead of developing the "Metaverse" which would make it
| even easier maybe Facebook should have looked at
| opportunities to turn their users into paying customers by
| providing valuable products and features that are worth
| paying for. The way you describe it is as if they have their
| hands tied together and because ad revenue was their initial
| model to success it means they cannot ever have any other
| profit model anymore, but I think that is wrong and that's
| where they've made a mistake.
| WorldMaker wrote:
| It certainly does make you wonder which Meta execs believed
| that all of Facebook's ethical, legal, and political
| problems somehow "vanish" just because they've added an
| extra dimension and are trying to do "Facebook, Now in 3D".
| It feels like playground naivety by children that there's
| that much difference in real world consequences between
| scrolling Facebook on a 2D plane and scrolling it in 3D
| instead. "We'll just escape our pursuers and hard problems
| by jumping into 3D! Woo!" said the kids imagining the park
| slide was a rocket ship. It's such a bizarre response to
| "our current business model is breaking down and we are
| having a hard time with regulators, politicians, and trust
| from the general public".
| tormeh wrote:
| Google has the same data-slurping business model, they
| just aren't quite as big dicks about it as Facebook.
| crazygringo wrote:
| I agree 100% that was the strategic motivation.
|
| It still doesn't change the fact that it was a dumb decision.
| Facebook would have been _much_ better off simply accepting
| that they couldn 't control the hardware or OS or app stores
| and continue to do the best they could within those
| constraints.
|
| Instead they just threw away a ton of money that could have
| gone to shareholders and employees instead.
| Night_Thastus wrote:
| What business would have accepted that their primary
| revenue stream is 100% in the control of other companies,
| and is _shrinking_? Of course they can 't accept that.
|
| If things continue as they do, the whole company will
| collapse. Better to throw whatever they have at a solution
| than to just lie down and die.
| crazygringo wrote:
| > _Of course they can 't accept that._
|
| Companies accept that all the time. It's _far_ more
| profitable to slash investment and turn something into a
| cash cow over the next 10-15 years than bet the farm and
| lose. It 's actually in shareholders' interest -- which
| is why so many shareholders have been upset about the VR
| pivot.
| rurp wrote:
| Right, cutting R&D spend and upping dividends or buybacks
| is a totally normal thing that companies do all the time.
| It's just not nearly as sexy as changing the world or
| whatever Zuck says he's doing.
|
| He was only able to pursue his metaverse vision because
| he has shareholder control, and given the change in stock
| price it looks like increasing numbers of investors are
| no longer interested in a company he has total control
| over.
| JohnFen wrote:
| > Of course they can't accept that.
|
| If that's true, then they're doomed.
|
| Their real problem is that their entire business model is
| in danger. What they should be throwing their money at is
| changing their business model, not trying to invent a new
| field to apply it in.
| rurp wrote:
| You make it sound like the metaverse was the only
| possible thing they could try, which couldn't be further
| from the truth. There are hundreds of areas where those
| billions could have been invested with a shot of
| developing something real. LLMs for instance! Or they
| might have discovered whatever the next big hyped
| technology will be. Burning it on their metaverse was a
| laughable idea at the time and has failed even faster
| than many expected.
| asdfman123 wrote:
| I understand why they _wanted_ to pivot.
|
| But you can't will something into existence, and that's why
| Meta's approach was baffling.
| sharkweek wrote:
| > I figured that if Mark Zuckerberg decided it's worth pivoting
| his entire company towards that goal, he surely must have some
| data to back that up
|
| Maybe like 10 years ago when PG was more active on here he was
| participating in a thread (honestly forgot about what) where I
| ended up asking him "If Mark Zuckerberg applied to YC with
| objectively the worst idea you've ever heard, would you
| invest?"
|
| And he said, "of course!"
|
| I think at the time VR started making headlines, I thought was
| a pretty cool concept. I loved that Valve and Oculus (private
| at the time) were both going after it.
|
| When FB bought Oculus I didn't see an obvious connection, but
| like you're saying I just assumed Zuckerberg knew exactly what
| he was doing.
|
| Over time I've come to appreciate WHY they made the investment.
| If they had been right, they were going to be very right (and
| frankly in kind of a terrifyingly dystopian way imo).
|
| I also wonder if FB could go back in time would they completely
| scrap VR investment? What (at the time) would have been their
| big bet instead?
| s1artibartfast wrote:
| >I also wonder if FB could go back in time would they
| completely scrap VR investment? What (at the time) would have
| been their big bet instead?
|
| I think this is the relevant question. So many people fall
| into the Trap stop thinking in terms of binary outcomes,
| especially with hindsight information. This isn't how
| business investment works at all.
|
| The same people that are quick to judge investment failures
| can rarely produce an alternative idea with multi-billion
| dollar upside.
| nivenkos wrote:
| It seems crazy to me that Amazon laid off a lot of the Alexa
| and robotics teams.
|
| You'd think if anything they'd want to invest in that more now
| that LLMs could be used in combination to produce a much more
| natural home assistant experience.
|
| That said, whilst I think VR doesn't have a huge amount of
| potential (the equipment is expensive and awkward), I think
| there is still a lot of space for making it easier to meet and
| communicate with people virtually. There's still a huge amount
| of friction where nowadays almost every service has limited
| public messaging and comments, etc., and online communities are
| fractured across dozens of Discord or Matrix servers. I think
| one of the main parts of Tiktok's success has been that it
| makes it easy to speak to new people either via public comments
| or video replies, etc.
| dmarchand90 wrote:
| The problem with vr is it is extremely good for cyberpunk
| raves but very so so at everything else
| AeiumNE wrote:
| What is sort of ironic is that they were already leading in
| that area too, they have one of the best labs in the world for
| that kind of research.
|
| But they didn't really do much public messaging around it.
| eschneider wrote:
| I'm going to go out on a limb and say that the metaverse isn't
| a bad idea, but the implementations just aren't there yet. Or
| at least, folks aren't coming up with applications that are
| both compelling and supportable with affordable hardware.
|
| Google Glass had similar problems.
|
| Eventually someone's going to nail both these things, we just
| haven't seen it yet.
| dannyr wrote:
| Timing is also not great IMO.
|
| We're just getting out of the pandemic and people are excited
| to be outdoors.
|
| I wouldn't want to spend time in the Metaverse after all the
| lockdowns and travel restriction during the pandemic.
| davidw wrote:
| This is fair - it's at least real engineering and might find
| some uses. It's probably just not a zillion dollar business
| from day one.
| kibwen wrote:
| The notion of "metaverses" is a fine idea, and we've had
| great implementations of these for years, decades even.
|
| Meanwhile, Facebook's notion of "The Metaverse" is downright
| dystopian, and I'm happy that it's proving to be a
| demoralizing money pit.
| rvnx wrote:
| The worst part is that it feels that most Metaverse things
| are a poor copy-paste of a French project "Le Deuxieme
| Monde"
|
| https://twitter.com/bompard/status/1526968731825491969
|
| It wouldn't be an issue if it wouldn't look like we were
| still in 1997 (and Meta's Metaverse isn't the greatest
| piece of software either).
| _fizz_buzz_ wrote:
| I can see the tech being super interesting for video games.
| But the angle of going to work, going to a mall etc. in the
| metaverse is just super unappealing. The nice thing about
| working remotely is that I don't have to go to an office and
| the nice thing about shopping online is that I don't have to
| go to a mall. So, why would I want to emulate the these
| things on a platform where something better already exists?
| eschneider wrote:
| Sometimes going to work involves manipulating things in a
| hazardous environment and VR can make it easier to do that
| sort of stuff remotely. Similarly, augmented reality makes
| it easier to do things when you need dynamic information
| about a task and you've got your hands full doing the
| thing.
|
| Get VR and AR _really_ good for those sorts of use cases
| (and I think there's some money in that stuff) and it
| becomes a lot easier to expand into other areas.
| tltimeline2 wrote:
| of course it's interesting for video games, the tech
| originates from video games.
| stubybubs wrote:
| > I figured that if Mark Zuckerberg decided it's worth pivoting
| his entire company towards that goal, he surely must have
| _some_ data to back that up.
|
| You know, I never really though these founders were visionary
| geniuses. For the most part they are well connected/already
| well off, and did the right thing at the right time. I think
| the last couple of years have made that even more clear.
|
| Facebook really started taking off about the time that a second
| golden age of tech was starting, fueled largely by near-zero
| interest rates and a focus on massive IPO exits without any
| proof of profitability. Nobody had to make any money for years,
| if at all. Uber hasn't made any money and neither has Spotify.
| Tesla does make cars, but its real product is arguably its
| absurdly valued stock that has allowed it a large runway fueled
| for the most part by the delusions of grandeur of its CEO.
| During this time larger companies simply acquired everything in
| sight, hoping that it would pay off. I mean, of all these
| acquisitions by Meta, which have been worth it? They're not all
| Instagrams.
|
| https://www.techwyse.com/blog/general-category/facebook-acqu...
|
| Facebook made it, but not because Zuckerberg made the best PHP
| site ever. Right place, right time, maybe among the first to
| realize that any engagement is good engagement, and I doubt it
| was Zuckerberg himself who had that realization.
|
| On top of that, Google, Meta, and advertising companies in
| general have grown mostly on the theory that the mass amounts
| of data that they collect and use to sell hyper-focused ads is
| worth something. Recently it's been revealed that this isn't
| true, and you get just as good or better results by simply
| advertising the last thing somebody looked at, or whatever they
| are currently standing next to IRL. Knowing that you looked at
| hemorrhoid cream 3 years ago doesn't help you sell anything
| today. So it's arguably based on lies as well.
|
| Now with interest rates up, I think we'll see how that plays
| out as advertisers finally start pulling back due to economic
| conditions. Uber turned off 2/3 of its ad spend in 2017 after
| it found that most of "conversions" were in fact fraud. Curious
| to see what other companies experience on this front. We'll
| find out how many of these founders are true geniuses or were
| just burning cash. I mean shit, give me a billion dollars and
| I'll give you _something_ that looks like the next big thing no
| matter what...
| beambot wrote:
| > But now we see that crypto was indeed bullshit all along.
|
| Just looked it up. Between BTC, ETH & top stablecoins, crypto
| has $900B+ market cap and $60B+ in 24-hour volume. I'm not
| saying your conclusions are wrong (though I disagree), just
| that you're calling the game "over" at the end of the first
| quarter based on one hype-cycle. I remember people doing
| something similar in the dotcom bust: "WWW is dead."
| EduardoBautista wrote:
| There have been multiple hype cycles for crypto. In over a
| decade, I have yet to see something priced in cryptocurrency.
| Pricing something in dollars and then converting that amount
| in cryptocurrency for the next 15 minutes is still a
| dependence on government backed currency.
| beambot wrote:
| Contrary to some peoples' understanding, replacing fiat
| currency for everyday purposes isn't the only viable
| application of crypto.
|
| As one example: There are already banks that use XRP as the
| international settlement medium. You'll also see a lot of
| conversation right now about central bank digital
| currencies (CBDC) that could plausibly utilize crypto in
| some fashion.
| hnfong wrote:
| > It's clear to anyone from day one how useful those models
| will be
|
| I agree it's clear on day one that these models will be useful.
|
| What's less clear is _how_ useful they are -- a year ago most
| experts would have told you that an architecture that
| "predicts the next word" won't be powerful enough to make a
| model that could lead to AGI-alike abilities (and many people
| here still argue the same today), but here we are now.
|
| > Maybe Mark Zuckerberg was just unlucky to decide on a company
| pivot two years too early
|
| That's just a lack of vision. GPT-2 was released in 2019, GPT-3
| in 2020. He had plenty of time to commit to AI development
| instead of Metaverse.
| gspencley wrote:
| Personally I predict that generative AI is going to be the next
| Metaverse and crypto.
|
| It's not about whether or not there is value there to be
| provided. VR and cyrpto provide value too, it's just that the
| markets for that tech are way more "niche" than companies were
| hoping for.
|
| And I don't think VR is going away. If it wasn't dead in the
| water in the 90s, then it's not going to die because the
| Metaverse failed. But its applicability is currently limited to
| a few niche applications like video games and possibly CAD type
| software.
|
| The thing that generative AI has going for it is that it is
| extremely broad in so far as its applicability. In other words,
| good luck selling my next door neighbour on generative AI. What
| is it? What is it good for? What problems does it solve in the
| here and now?
|
| Generative AI is like electricity, only I don't think quite as
| useful. The point is that, on its own, it has no value what-so-
| ever. The value lies in what it is used for.
|
| Right now what I am observing is a phenomenon that is way too
| common in our industry. Companies are rushing to go to market
| with some AI "thing." 99.9999% of those "things" will end up
| being more versions of the Metaverse and crypto. Because most
| of these companies aren't really sure what problem they are
| solving for actual people. It's all so novel and abstract and
| people are seeing dollar signs with very little understanding
| of how they are going to put it to use.
|
| Where it finds its uses, I predict will be limited to the same
| applications that we're already using ML for. Chat bots,
| entertainment, generating document outlines etc. Just because
| we made a big breakthrough with the technology doesn't mean
| that we've actually created a solution to real world problems
| that real world people are having here and now in the real
| world. No one, other than maybe Open AI, is going to get rich
| on "generative AI." If they get rich and change the industry,
| it will be finding a use for it that many people want.
| kenjackson wrote:
| I think crypto, metaverse, and generative AI are all really
| different -- and I agree with the original poster. Generative
| AI seems much more likely to be a game changer.
|
| Crypto was something I always struggled to make sense of. My
| son asked, "why didn't I buy bitcoin when it was a few
| cents?!" -- The simple answer was it didn't seem like it had
| much use. The value in crypto eventually came in the form of
| a pyramid scheme. Admittedly, I do use crypto to do
| transactions with untrustworthy people (don't have to worry
| about chargebacks and things like that). But it's hype was
| around it being a speculative commodity. For normal people --
| it's just not all that useful.
|
| The metaverse is different in that I do see the theoretical
| value in it. But it seems a LONG way off. I haven't seen
| anything that really makes me think, "wow -- this is it". It
| doesn't seem like we're close. And honestly I think
| generative AI maybe a prerequisite to deliver a truly
| valuable metaverse.
|
| Generative AI is useful now and represents a huge leap over
| the state of the art, not that long ago. I worked with RNNs
| and LSTMs to answer questions not that many years ago, and
| honestly I wouldn't have predicted this level of
| effectiveness for LLMs for probably 20 plus years -- and I
| certainly didn't know how we'd do it. But more importantly
| I'm finding it valuable today. As I noted in another post --
| ChatGPT-4 already has shown better differential diagnosis
| skills than my family's doctor. I use it literally every day
| already. There are things that I want it to do that would
| make my life 10x better -- and I could see a clear path to
| get there (like, if that was my day job I think I could put
| together a project plan to deliver it).
|
| I just don't think these techs are comparable at all.
| pilooch wrote:
| Generative AI basically unlocks the metaverse, since all
| the 3D environment can now be generated. The metaverse
| changes people's context and senses with generated data.
| Interestingly AI will paint a new world for humans to learn
| and experience new situations more often, more easily on a
| broader spectrum. Exciting !
| tomtheelder wrote:
| Honestly I don't think content generation is a limiting
| factor for a compelling meta verse. IMO the constraints
| are more to do with fidelity and the quality of the
| experience.
|
| There are currently so many weaknesses and limitations
| with the medium of VR that it's just not particularly
| appealing for folks to spend a lot of time using it, and
| I think that's why you don't have great content gen.
| aeturnum wrote:
| I do think generative AI has some really interesting
| possibilities for interactive media - but I don't see how
| it unlocks anything.
|
| It's clear there's a market for well-designed and
| compelling VR chat. VRChat[1] has a large community and
| had a very active developer community[2]. Facebook had no
| luck in attracting users in a proven market - there's no
| reason to believe their products would be more popular
| after hooking a generative agent up to it.
|
| If you are looking for "the metaverse" in a generic sense
| - other people are already doing it better than Facebook
| (and have been for some time). It's been unlocked for
| years. Facebook hasn't even managed a capable clone, much
| less broken new ground.
|
| [1] https://hello.vrchat.com/
|
| [2] Until they banned all modding - here's a video of a
| user using sign language and subtitles:
| https://twitter.com/TheFoxipso/status/1551640725455982593
| quadrifoliate wrote:
| > Interestingly AI will paint a new world for humans to
| learn and experience new situations more often, more
| easily on a broader spectrum.
|
| This is ignoring the instinct built over _generations_
| that humans don 't want to "experience a new world", they
| want to explore it with _other_ humans.
|
| We are social animals. Facebook is so successful because
| it started out as a way to connect more with people you
| _already_ knew or were acquainted with.
|
| The "metaverse" and all its AI-generated worlds add
| little to no value in that direction. Wake me up when the
| metaverse makes it trivial to host a garden party and
| cook for the 5-10 attendees.
| adriand wrote:
| > This is ignoring the instinct built over generations
| that humans don't want to "experience a new world", they
| want to explore it with other humans.
|
| I think humans want to explore it with intelligent
| beings, not necessarily "humans". These new technologies
| have the potential to create agents in the movie "Her"
| sense that are compelling to interact with. The metaverse
| applicability seems clear.
| JohnFen wrote:
| > I think humans want to explore it with intelligent
| beings, not necessarily "humans".
|
| I think the majority humans want to be with humans, not
| just intelligent beings. Some don't, of course, and
| there's probably a decent business catering to them.
| kenjackson wrote:
| Here's another scenario I envision now:
|
| You and your friends jump in the metaverse every Tuesday
| night to play some virtual game, e.g., go hunting or rob
| a bank. Timmothy is out on vacation this week so won't be
| joining -- but now you can spawn up virtual Timothy,
| which is trained on a bunch of Timothy's data (see the
| other HN post about the guy who trained his bot on his
| friends group chats). Now Timothy is with his friends in
| this virtual world and he behaves mostly how Timothy
| does.
| gonzo41 wrote:
| Virtual timothy plays better and without complaining.
| Weeks later the gang dreams of virtual tim. A week later
| they start playing, but this time without Tim.
| JohnFen wrote:
| > now you can spawn up virtual Timothy, which is trained
| on a bunch of Timothy's data
|
| Not just no, but _hell no_.
|
| If I'm going to play with a robot, I absolutely don't
| want it to replicate a friend. Even more, I would be
| furious if any of my friends replicated me like that.
|
| When I'm playing with my friends, I'm doing it to play
| with my friends, not simulacra of my friends.
| thrashh wrote:
| People seem to see new developments as black boxes that you
| can't analyze. Like they see something new and ask
| themselves "will it work?" and then say it will work or not
| based on whether the last thing worked... with zero nuance.
|
| Let's try to analyze crypto on its own as an example: yes,
| crypto was a new frontier in money supply, but what makes
| it critically different? And are these critical differences
| actually desired?
|
| Crypto was critically different in that it would
| decentralize the financial system.
|
| Was it desired?
|
| Centralized institutions are unfair and can be in-equal,
| but they are actually really great. When the financial
| becomes unstable, these institutions intervene and settle
| things down (see the Great Depression). When someone steals
| from my credit card, I just call up my bank and they fix
| it. How would crypto handle these situations?
|
| No one could figure it out. So if crypto was trying to sell
| something that no one really wanted, how the heck could it
| work? ...then it crashed... because there was no
| centralized control. It's not like we haven't had this
| happen in history already.
| netsharc wrote:
| > When someone steals from my credit card, I just call up
| my bank and they fix it. How would crypto handle these
| situations?
|
| So far the crypto orgs have called a centralized
| institution called law enforcement...
| Rantenki wrote:
| That doesn't return your money to you like the credit
| card though. The irreversibility 'feature' of most
| cryptocurrencies makes it really hard to recover funds
| stolen through fraud... I guess that is a desirable
| feature for anybody performing fraud though.
| JohnFen wrote:
| Of the things that make cryptocurrency something I want
| to avoid, the irreversibility part is the biggest
| problem.
| panarky wrote:
| VR doesn't need to replace social media for it to be
| useful.
|
| AI doesn't need to replace doctors for it to be useful.
|
| Crypto doesn't need to replace your credit card for it to
| be useful.
|
| If none of these things are useful to you, that's fine,
| other people find them useful and that's okay.
|
| Think "and" instead of "or".
| selimnairb wrote:
| I agree. VR will have killer apps in particular domains,
| but that doesn't mean it will be used by everyone all of
| the time. For example, I work in ocean mapping where we
| have large amounts of point cloud data that need
| occasional manual editing/QAQC in an environment that
| matches the dimensionality of the data. My colleagues are
| working on some very interesting VR point cloud editing
| tools [1].
|
| [1] https://ccom.unh.edu/vislab/projects/point_clouds/
| JohnFen wrote:
| I agree!
|
| But that's not how any of those things are being sold.
| _glass wrote:
| I think crypto is great for anonymous digital markets. It
| would be great to disrupt the financial industry, but
| that's a really big thing. For the markets, I think NFTs
| is a really good use case. That's a way for artists to
| have digital galleries, receiving international payments,
| work can get traded, all independent of the marketplace
| itself. No company behind that. Books, audio content,
| ..., and so on are also easily the target of a next
| generation. I don't believe in this tokenization of
| physical goods, because then you have a company behind
| creating the link between token and good. But for purely
| virtual goods, I think it is great.
| JohnFen wrote:
| > It would be great to disrupt the financial industry
|
| Only if there was something at least as good to replace
| it. Cryptocurrency isn't that.
|
| Disruption just for disruption's sake is a Bad Thing.
|
| > NFTs is a really good use case.
|
| Honestly, I still don't see how. None of the explanations
| make any real sense to me.
| tomcam wrote:
| In a Blockchain world, how was there anonymity with
| crypto?
|
| I'm guessing the answer is that not all crypto is on
| blockchain, but I actually have no clue.
| bombcar wrote:
| Monera supposedly is untraceable somehow. And you can do
| things with passing private keys and mixers even on
| bitcoin.
| warning26 wrote:
| _> The thing that generative AI has going for it is that it
| is extremely broad in so far as its applicability. In other
| words, good luck selling my next door neighbour on generative
| AI. What is it? What is it good for? What problems does it
| solve in the here and now?_
|
| Disagree; I'd argue that the key distinction between
| generative AI and those other things (metaverse/crypto) is
| that the value of it is _immediately_ apparent to almost
| anyone. There 's a reason ChatGPT ended up becoming a
| household name with literally no marketing whatsoever.
| gspencley wrote:
| Cool, so I'm Joe Sixpack next door. Things I care about:
| how to feed my kids, avoid getting laid off at the
| manufacturing plant I work for and my oldest daughter is
| learning to drive and has no idea how she's going to be
| able to afford a home of her own and, despite how much I
| love my kids, I _really_ want her to move out before she 's
| 30 so that my wife and I can enjoy retirement. Things I do
| for fun: play sports, video games and drink.
|
| What problems in my life does generative AI immediately and
| obviously solve for me?
|
| Like I said, it is "abstract" which is why you can make
| such a claim with such a high degree of confidence. Every
| person who sees POTENTIAL with generative AI has their own
| ideas as to what sorts of applications it has that they
| would find useful. The very words "generative AI" and
| "ChatGPT" create a Barnum Effect
| (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barnum_effect). Right now, I
| would posit that ChatGPT is like pet rocks. It got popular
| because it is neat and novel. Once that effect wears off,
| people will stop caring and the hype train will die as fast
| as crypto.
|
| Therefore, until a company releases a product that uses
| ChatGPT under the hood and solves a real problem that a lot
| of people need solving right now, there's no tangible value
| that is inherent in the technology that can be identified.
| Only ideas and potentials.
| krisoft wrote:
| Your problem is that you think we need to sell generative
| AI to Joe for it to be significant.
|
| > video games
|
| Cool. There is a very real chance that he will have more
| of those because they will be cheaper to make. He won't
| be using the generative AIs, he will be consuming content
| made with them.
|
| > my wife and I can enjoy retirement
|
| Joe doesn't have to worry about retirement. Someone will
| use a combination of these AI technologies to make his
| wife fall in love with a perfectly attentive, smoky
| voiced older guy. When this AI powered person suffers a
| terrible car accident on a business trip she sends a
| significant portion of their savings to him. When Joe
| finds out he immediately calls his bank. There an other
| AI powered agent handles his issue. It takes a while for
| Joe to be understood, because the agent he is interacting
| with is heavily biased towards trying to upsell Joe on a
| new mortage.
|
| Eventually he is able to claw back some of the money, but
| the stress and the implied emotional infidelity ruins
| their mariage. He talks with the assistant of a divorce
| lawyer (another AI). She collects all the information
| from him and the lawyer (this time a real person, albeit
| one heavily supported by various AI systems) sends over
| all the paperwork. The AI of Joe's lawyer agrees with the
| AI of his wife's layer about the details and once that is
| done the humans sign the papers and they are divorced.
|
| Joe still has some money left. He can rent a bungallow
| and maybe he can spend his retirement there, but
| unfortunately Joe picks up a nasty addiction to online
| porn. (What Joe doesn't know that the booties he is
| looking at are generated exactly to his taste, as
| measured by his pattern of clicking on the free samples.)
| This is the last straw, the addiction sucks Joe's wallet
| empty and he dies destitute. Many many people with
| generative AIs have Joe's money now.
|
| To his last breath Joe doesn't really understand what
| this AI thing is everyone is talking about on the news.
| vikramkr wrote:
| I mean, off the bat you might use it to replace Google,
| like bing is already doing.
|
| And it doesn't have to solve a problem for you to make an
| impact on your life- it can make your life worse too. If
| your daughter is interested in writing, graphic design,or
| programming, well, finding a job and moving out by 30
| might become a lot harder. Bing is already in use.
| Copilot is already in use. These are not small markets or
| use cases.
| JohnFen wrote:
| > I mean, off the bat you might use it to replace Google,
| like bing is already doing.
|
| That's not for me. I gave it a try for a couple of days,
| but using ChatGPT as a search engine is much, much less
| useful to me than the old-fashioned method.
| velp wrote:
| To be fair, using Google as a search engine is much, much
| useful than it used to be
| JohnFen wrote:
| Not sure if you meant to say "more" or "less" in there,
| but I assume "less", and I agree. That's why I don't use
| it either.
| gspencley wrote:
| Bing was already in use before ChatGPT and Copilot is
| seen by most as an evolution of auto-complete. My last
| paragraph specifically said that I predict that the
| applications for generative AI will be in areas where
| we're already using ML. Search and auto-complete are two
| examples.
| tibbar wrote:
| It's not clear that Joe Sixpack even owns a computer from
| this description. Joe may not even have internet access
| -- just cable and a console. And there are probably a lot
| of folks in this bucket still, but it's categorically one
| that generative AI isn't personally useful for (though
| they may be affected by the tech indirectly.) But for
| anyone who performs knowledge work on a computer, or has
| a question about an offbeat subject, or needs help
| learning a new skill (eg, Joe's daughter wants to know
| why a certain answer on the practice drivers' exam is
| wrong), or needs to improve written communication, or
| wants a summary of a complex topic, or needs help
| transforming text... a very large group of ordinary
| people can still benefit from this tech.
| HDThoreaun wrote:
| > Things I do for fun: play sports, video games and
| drink.
|
| Video game NPCs will very quickly be replaced by LLms. No
| more boring scripted dialogue. This allows for a truly
| open world where the inhabitants can dynamically respond
| to your actions. Video games will become cheaper to
| create with generative AI that can quickly create a
| layout of a game world that can then be built on.
| fauxpause_ wrote:
| No more boring scripted dialogue. Now you get boring,
| procedurally generated dialog. About things that don't
| matter, don't make sense, or veer wayyyy off topic.
|
| You fundamentally cannot make a random npc interesting
| because they are not supposed to be interesting. Ideally
| they say very little.
| bigbob2 wrote:
| I think whether or not it will actually be cheaper
| remains to be seen. Right now many AI products are still
| being heavily subsidized, thus the cheap or free price
| tag. Once these services decide they need to monetize, it
| may not be cost effective for most video games at scale.
| Maybe eventually these computations can (reasonably) take
| place on the client side, but I think that's so far away
| that we could very well see another paradigm shift by the
| time that's realized.
| 12_throw_away wrote:
| Agreed that LLMs, etc., will game development _cheaper_
| by requiring less labor. It seems like software
| development in particular is will be getting a lot of
| powerful new tools over the next few years.
|
| > Video game NPCs will very quickly be replaced by LLms.
| No more boring scripted dialogue.
|
| I'm skeptical that this is what the users want. Sure, it
| would be nice to have, say, less repetitive background
| chatter in Skyrim. But, human-scripted dialog is
| intentional, which is at the core of a lot of gaming.
| Take that away and you end up with the early versions of
| No Man's Sky, where yes, there's an infinity of different
| variations to explore. But it wasn't what users actually
| wanted; they wanted a designed experience.
| HDThoreaun wrote:
| Sure, there are still scripted stories/quests and what
| not. But the background characters can become much more
| interesting if they're all LLMs that are just given a
| prompt like "you live in this cabin and are a subsistence
| farmer who has a dark secret" or something instead of
| just standing around looping a few lines. Open world
| games don't feel organic at all imo because these
| characters who should be adding flavor and making the
| game dynamic are just completely static.
| int_19h wrote:
| And it's not necessarily about dialogs. All kinds of
| decision making can be wired up: https://gist.github.com/
| int19h/4f5b98bcb9fab124d308efc19e530...
| [deleted]
| kenjackson wrote:
| Your daughter can use the new learning tutor, based on
| generative AI, that helps with her coursework and learn
| new materials. It's like an expert tutor in a bunch of
| fields that she didn't have access to before -- at least
| not at a reasonable price.
|
| Now your daughter has learned a lot more, has opened up a
| world of possibilities and this helps her get a job (or
| create a company) that helps her buy a new home.
|
| Also for video games, they could use these generative AIs
| to create more immersive characters and worlds. Your
| video game experience just became much better --
| especially if you're drinking while playing.
|
| And if you play sports at a local level, generative AI
| can take in as input a bunch of rosters and play-by-play
| data (maybe eventually creating the play-by-play data
| directly from video) and being able to output stories
| about games. Today coverage of local and club sports is
| limited because of resources -- but if you could apply AI
| to this problem then you're local bowling league could
| almost be covered like the NFL on the web.
|
| EDIT: And another thing -- which actually is something we
| started doing now. You have a personal medical assistant
| that you use with your doctor to ensure that your wife
| gets the help she needs with her current condition. Joe
| Sixpack is happy that it is much less likely that the
| doctor misses something "obvious".
| JohnFen wrote:
| > the value of it is immediately apparent to almost anyone
|
| I'm not so sure that's actually true outside of enthusiast
| circles, to be honest. The value of what the hype describes
| is apparent, but the hype is about a possible future, not
| what's actually here right now.
|
| There are a couple of people in my workplace who are using
| ChatGPT as part of their development process. So far, the
| value of them doing so isn't obvious to the rest of us.
| Their work isn't better, nor are they working more
| productively (although they think they are).
|
| > There's a reason ChatGPT ended up becoming a household
| name with literally no marketing whatsoever.
|
| Most noncomputer people I know have barely heard of
| ChatGPT, and those that have only know of it by the hype
| that has spilled over into the news feeds. They certainly
| don't really know what it is, and don't think of it as
| being anything important.
|
| Those that do understand it and think it's important mostly
| consider it a threat and are afraid of it.
| superhuzza wrote:
| My 65 year old, tech illiterate mom messaged me the other
| day and asked if ChatGPT or Midjourney could be used to
| generate layouts for her new garden. I'm not kidding.
| int_19h wrote:
| Of course the non-techies know it from the hype in the
| news; that's the usual pipeline. And of course they don't
| know "what it really is", because that requires
| specialized knowledge. But whether they "think of it as
| being anything important" is more a function of your
| circles; in mine, people are mostly terrified of what it
| will do to jobs and how it'll be used for surveillance.
| JohnFen wrote:
| > in mine, people are mostly terrified of what it will do
| to jobs and how it'll be used for surveillance.
|
| Mine as well, as I mentioned.
| int_19h wrote:
| You said that about "those that do understand it", which
| to me implies at least some degree of technical
| understanding. I'm talking about casual users with no
| background whatsoever, who have just been exposed to
| ChatGPT or (mostly) Bing AI.
| rurp wrote:
| I do think there is a pretty extreme overlap between
| generative AI early adoptors and people who are excited
| to spend half of their waking hours interacting with an
| AI assisstant. Interest in the raw tech fades pretty fast
| the further you get from very online groups.
|
| That said, the new tech is powerful and likely to have a
| large impact, just not as much through new interfaces as
| the hype suggests.
|
| Unfortunately I think the biggest use-case for generative
| AI in the medium term will be automating away middle
| class jobs. The cabability is looking very possible, and
| the profit motive is immense. Despite the fun creative
| uses and the strong PR, the development of this tech is
| _extremely_ profit focused.
|
| Everyday people will likely feel the effects of this
| tech, but it mostly won't come in the form of fun and
| games.
| JohnFen wrote:
| Yes. This is why I'm of the opinion that if the
| enthusiasts are correct about where this tech is going,
| it is going to be a disaster.
|
| You can't eliminate the ability of most people to earn a
| meaningful living and expect anything but a dystopian
| nightmare.
|
| This is also why I'm hoping the enthusiasts are
| completely wrong.
| tablespoon wrote:
| > Personally I predict that generative AI is going to be the
| next Metaverse and crypto.
|
| A common thread tying those three things together is that, in
| large part, they're all impressive technologies in search of
| problems to solve.
|
| Technologies like that are pretty much always overhyped and
| oversold.
| dvt wrote:
| > in large part, they're all impressive technologies in
| search of problems to solve.
|
| I'm no AI fanboy, but let's be fair: machine learning has
| been solving problems for decades now. From OCR, to
| translation, to facial recognition, etc. While GPT4 or
| DALL-e may be "toys," large models (be they language,
| vision, or otherwise) _definitely_ have a future in
| business automation, data collation, military applications,
| etc.
| WorldMaker wrote:
| I feel like this is some of where my own cynicism comes
| from: the machine learning that has been solving problems
| for decades now were almost all predicted and prototyped
| in the 60/70s "AI boom". The generative models were all
| "toys" then, too and none of the 60/70s "predictions" of
| when/where/how they might become more than "toys" ever
| really came to pass and sounded so much like people on HN
| are saying today.
|
| We're certainly doing _more_ of (almost) everything
| explored /predicted by "the ancients", we're doing it all
| much, much faster with much more massive data sets of
| input and output. For me, though, there isn't a sense
| that we are doing anything _substantially new_ beyond
| Moore 's Law meets mega-scale GIGO. There's something of
| a pervasive feel to me to this hype cycle like we are
| just recreating past mistakes of boom and then
| (inevitable) bust and haven't learned enough from them.
|
| But I've become too cynical, perhaps.
| int_19h wrote:
| The tech may not be substantially new, but the emergent
| phenomena definitely are.
| WorldMaker wrote:
| The quantity has certainly changed. It took researchers
| months to build an "AI generated novel" way back in the
| day and some form or relative of ChatGPT spits out nearly
| that every minute now.
|
| I still haven't felt impressed that the _quality_ has
| truly changed, yet. LLMs seems more "fluent" in the
| language than ever before, but it's still hallucinating
| nearly as much and now the fluency just helps make people
| more often see "meaning" or "anthropic action" (lies,
| defamation) where the hallucinations are. The underlying
| structures of LLMs are still complicated casinos that
| invoke the Gambler's Fallacy much more than any signs of
| true "learning". We've put millions of monkeys in front
| of billions and trillions of slot machines and told them
| to produce Shakespeare and many of them believe they are
| doing just that. (Not just metaphorically, by monkeys I
| mean as much humans susceptible to casino payout
| mechanics and excitedly spinning slot machines.)
|
| Again, yes, I'm a terrible cynic right now, and I hate to
| be so down on the technology, but I'm still waiting for
| something to be excited about that isn't just casinos
| masquerading as "learning". But people love casinos, they
| deliver addictive fun. I'm not going to stop people from
| being excited about all these casinos. I just think that
| professionally as a software developer, if I wanted to be
| a bad faith casino manager I'd rather just get into
| mobile games and gacha/loot-box mechanics. That's more
| fun, more profitable, and maybe, weirdly, more currently
| ethical than current "generative AI" hype.
| Hermitian909 wrote:
| While it's early days yet AI is proving itself much more
| readily. If you're in the right networks you've heard that
| several companies who've rolled out AI features are on track
| to generate >100MM ARR charging for them.
|
| One feature I'm quite confident in: translation services for
| i18n in websites using GPT-4 + a much smaller number of human
| translators to check the work of low confidence translations
| and high value surfaces. I can confirm the end result for
| French is better than existing human translation services and
| _much_ cheaper.
|
| Certainly businesses will need to walk back _some_ AI
| features but it really seems like there 's business value
| now, let alone in 2 years when publicly available LLMs are
| even better.
| cjblomqvist wrote:
| Honestly curious, what are the companies generating (or
| close to/on track) these levels of revenue (which they
| would have otherwise)?
| WWLink wrote:
| > Personally I predict that generative AI is going to be the
| next Metaverse and crypto.
|
| I don't disagree, but I think making that claim right now is
| saying the emperor has no clothes lol.
| noodle wrote:
| FWIW, I've found uses for it already that will improve the
| company I'm building in the very short term. Maybe you
| disagree in the magnitude of the value, but I find it to be
| at least somewhat significant. Enough to pursue.
|
| I've never worked for any company where leaning into the
| Metaverse or crypto would generate any meaningful business
| value, short or long term. The promises for Metaverse and
| crypto are always about a nebulous future that could exist if
| only everyone collectively bought into the vision.
| DanHulton wrote:
| The metaverse and crypto were entirely about some kind of
| future industry and society-changing application. "You
| don't see anything _now,_ but the future will be
| unrecognizable, trust me!"
|
| Gen AI definitely has utility right now, and for some it's
| a lot of utility. But the hype around it is exactly the
| same, the hype is all around how "the future will be
| unrecognizable, trust me!"
|
| So I agree that practically, Gen AI is utterly different
| from crypto/metaverse, it's a real thing with real value.
| But it's also attracting the exact same hucksters and
| they're kind of sucking all the air out of the room.
| stonemetal12 wrote:
| >Gen AI definitely has utility right now
|
| People keep saying that, but I don't see it. So far we
| have chat bots, and Copilot. Copilot is going to be in
| legal limbo for years until the license issues are
| solved. Chatting with bing is fun and all but I don't see
| the long term utility.
|
| What is the utility right now? Which of my problems are
| solved?
| lawrenci wrote:
| A few examples:
|
| * My company has a very large codebase, and I am not
| familiar with 99% of it. I can use an AI assistant like
| Sourcegraph Cody to explain parts of the codebase to me
| at a high level, and suggest areas where I should dive in
| to address my specific problem.
|
| * If I am working with a language, library, or framework
| I have not used before, I can ask ChatGPT to explain how
| a certain function works, and provide some code examples.
| If I write some code an get unexpected results, I can
| paste my code and results into ChatGPT, and ask it to
| tell me what went wrong.
|
| * Someone sends me a spreadsheet that specifies some
| business logic, and I want to transform that spreadsheet
| into a YAML file, and write some code to parse the YAML
| config and take some action based on user-supplied data.
| ChatGPT is pretty good at this.
|
| In all of these cases, I have to take the AI output with
| a grain of salt, and may have to do some supplementary
| research or debugging. But that's also the case when I
| ask coworkers for help. Right now, I would say generative
| AI provides a small boost to my productivity, but I can
| see that boost growing larger as language models improve.
| int_19h wrote:
| It might not solve _your_ problems, but there are a lot
| of people using CoPilot and /or GPT-4 for coding already,
| and it does save time for them.
| imhoguy wrote:
| Gen AI, you got me here, for a second I thought it is the
| next one after Gen Z.
| gspencley wrote:
| Anything that is limited to the the company you're building
| at the moment sounds to me like the very definition of
| "niche application."
|
| If you re-read my comment I didn't say that generative AI
| does not have any potential to solve any problems ever.
| What I said is that companies are currently racing to go to
| market with some "ai thing" and most are chasing it because
| it is the "next big thing" in their mind, not because they
| know what problems for their end users that it can actually
| help solve.
|
| I know of companies right now who are banking on "selling
| AI to customers." That is doomed to fail in my opinion.
| Customers don't care about AI outside of the novelty and
| entertainment value it may possess. They have actual
| problems that need solving. My point was that generative
| AI, as the broad umbrella that it is, will see the hype
| train die and people will realize that "it" is not the
| revolutionary and disruptive Internet or printing press
| like invention that they think it will be. The value will
| be in individual applications of it, of which there will be
| a few but not as many I think people think there will be.
| noodle wrote:
| > that companies are currently racing to go to market
| with some "ai thing" and most are chasing it because it
| is the "next big thing" in their mind, not because they
| know what problems for their end users that it can
| actually help solve.
|
| And if you re-read my comment, what I am saying is that
| while I'm not exactly "racing", I do have a very clear
| problem for my end users that this actually helps to
| solve. Its possible I could've cobbled together a similar
| solution with other technologies, but I didn't see a very
| clear path forward on this user-facing problem until very
| recent developments.
|
| I suspect that the people in this same boat far outnumber
| people in the Metaverse or crypto equivalents.
| imhoguy wrote:
| As with any craze the best suited are the shovel sellers...
| NVDA.
| idopmstuff wrote:
| > Generative AI is like electricity, only I don't think quite
| as useful. The point is that, on its own, it has no value
| what-so-ever. The value lies in what it is used for.
|
| I don't really understand this description - electricity is
| one of the most useful things in the history of civilization.
| I think the latter half of what you're saying is true, but
| it's true of everything. There's nothing inherently useful
| about my car, except that it gets me places. There's nothing
| inherently useful about my house, except that it shelters me
| from the elements.
|
| Generative AI will be useful for creating lots of things
| (probably primarily code in its various forms). I've used it
| to write a few Python scripts over the course of the last
| week that simply wouldn't have been possible for me to do
| (without a few weeks of teaching myself Python at least - I'm
| a somewhat-code-literate PM but very much not a programmer).
| Those have solved real problems for me and added real value
| to my life.
| mbesto wrote:
| > And I don't think VR is going away. If it wasn't dead in
| the water in the 90s, then it's not going to die because the
| Metaverse failed. But its applicability is currently limited
| to a few niche applications like video games and possibly CAD
| type software.
|
| VR will go the way of 3D Printing. A surgeon can walk into
| one of the largest medical device company's in the world,
| talk about a new idea for a broken bone transplant and within
| 24 hours can have a 3D prototype printed out. Great for
| innovation of broken bones, but it isn't the ubiquity we
| experienced with something like mobile phones, email, or
| social media. Meta thinks thats what VR is going to be.
| _glass wrote:
| I have no stakes in VR, as I don't want to spend money to
| be seasick, but I think VR is the future for a lot of
| content. Make it less heavy, fix the seasickness problems,
| render people realistically, and I could talk to my parents
| in VR. Or take a walk with an international friend. This
| sounds SciFi, but would really sell well.
| cyxxon wrote:
| That might even be solved by something like Google
| Starline without VR:
| https://blog.google/technology/research/project-starline/
| iLoveOncall wrote:
| I know it's off-topic, but this simply baffles me about 3D
| printing. I have a 3D printer and I plan on buying more,
| but when you look at the most downloaded models on a huge
| website like printables.com, the number 1 has a bit more
| than 200K downloads, and the second drops all the way down
| to only 83K. Only 83,000 people downloaded the 2nd most
| downloaded model :|
|
| Every time I look at the numbers I realize how niche of a
| hobby it is, despite being easier and easier (and cheaper
| and cheaper) to get into and has pretty much endless
| applications.
| JohnFen wrote:
| I do a lot of 3D printing -- but outside of when I first
| started and it was a shiny new toy, I almost never
| download models to print.
|
| Being able to make my own custom parts and such, though,
| has been an incredible superpower, and my printers have
| paid for themselves many times over that way.
| pulvinar wrote:
| The reason for that is that 3D printing's strength is
| one-off designs. Any popular design would get mass-
| produced cheaper and better, and would then lose
| popularity on those sites.
| aix1 wrote:
| It's a niche hobby for sure, but I think a better metric
| to look at is the number of 3D printers sold. This seems
| to be about 2 million units per year.
| eschneider wrote:
| I think a lot of folks looked at 3D printers and thought
| "Star Trek Replicator". Those folks were likely
| disappointed. They might get there eventually, but 3D
| printers aren't there yet.
|
| OTOH, if you're working on hardware and prototyping stuff,
| 3D printers are an amazing tool. It's like CAD-CAM
| software: not everyone needs it, but if you do, YOU NEED
| IT.
| [deleted]
| babl-yc wrote:
| I'm a paid DAU of ChatGPT. I'm using it regularly as a tutor
| to help work through a technical online course I'm taking,
| and it is extremely good at that. My cousin who is in college
| says basically every student is using it to help study.
|
| There could be an excess of hype, but there is clear
| significant and immediate value of these tools.
| iLoveOncall wrote:
| A great way to learn wrong stuff.
| snapdeus wrote:
| It's actually a great way to learn stuff, but go ahead
| and gatekeep.
| suzzer99 wrote:
| Here's ChatGPT confidently spewing a ton of very very
| wrong stuff about the Mesoamerican calendar:
|
| > Is the 1-earthquake inscription on monument 3 at San
| Jose Magote is the oldest known instance of a
| Mesoamerican calendar date?
|
| > Yes, the 1-earthquake inscription on Monument 3 at San
| Jose Magote is considered the oldest known instance of a
| Mesoamerican calendar date. This monument was discovered
| in Oaxaca, Mexico, and dates back to the Preclassic
| period of Mesoamerican civilization, around 1150 BCE. The
| inscription records a date in the Mesoamerican Long Count
| calendar, which was a complex system of timekeeping used
| by various cultures in Mesoamerica. The date is given as
| 7.16.3.2.13, which corresponds to August 11th, 129 BCE in
| the Gregorian calendar.
|
| This is wrong. It's actually more like 647 BCE.
|
| > What does 1-earthquake mean?
|
| > "1-earthquake" is a term used in the Mesoamerican Long
| Count calendar, which was a system of timekeeping used by
| various cultures in Mesoamerica. The Long Count calendar
| is based on cycles of time that are counted in base 20,
| and each cycle has a specific name and duration. The term
| "1-earthquake" refers to the beginning of a new cycle in
| the Long Count calendar, specifically the start of the
| 13th baktun, which is equivalent to 144,000 days or
| approximately 394 years. The Long Count calendar was used
| by Mesoamerican societies to track historical events,
| astronomical observations, and religious ceremonies, and
| it was an important part of their cultural and social
| identity.
|
| This is completely wrong. 1-Earhquake is a combination of
| two shorter cycles. It has nothing to do with beginning
| of a baktun.
|
| > What is the previous 1-earthquake to 7.16.3.2.13?
|
| > The previous occurrence of 1-earthquake in the
| Mesoamerican Long Count calendar before the date
| 7.16.3.2.13 (August 11th, 129 BCE) would have been
| 12.19.19.17.19. This corresponds to August 13th, 3114 BCE
| in the Gregorian calendar, which is the date that marks
| the beginning of the current cycle of the Long Count
| calendar, known as the 13th baktun. It's worth noting
| that the Long Count calendar was designed to be a
| continuous and cyclical system, so there is technically
| no "start" or "end" to the calendar. Instead, each cycle
| represents a new period of time, and the 1-earthquake
| date represents the beginning of a new cycle within that
| larger system.
|
| This doesn't even make sense given chatGPT's own internal
| reasoning. A baktun is 144,000 days or around 394 years.
| It's clearly just regurgitating training data and getting
| it all jumbled up.
| Karrot_Kream wrote:
| I tried the same thing with GPT-4 set to Temperature 0
|
| ===
|
| System Prompt: You are an assistant who specializes in
| the Mesoamerican calendar.
|
| User: Is the 1-earthquake inscription on monument 3 at
| San Jose Magote is the oldest known instance of a
| Mesoamerican calendar date?
|
| Assistant: Yes, the 1-Earthquake inscription on Monument
| 3 at San Jose Mogote is considered the oldest known
| instance of a Mesoamerican calendar date. This
| inscription dates back to 600 BCE and is associated with
| the Zapotec civilization. The monument itself is a carved
| stone slab that displays a combination of the
| Mesoamerican calendar's 260-day ritual cycle and the
| 365-day solar cycle, which together form the 52-year
| Calendar Round.
|
| User: What does 1-earthquake mean?
|
| Assistant: In the Mesoamerican calendar, 1-Earthquake
| refers to a specific day within the 260-day ritual cycle
| known as the Tzolk'in. The Tzolk'in consists of 20 day
| signs and 13 numbers that are combined to create unique
| day names. In this case, "1" is the number and
| "Earthquake" (also known as Caban in Mayan or Ollin in
| Nahuatl) is the day sign.
|
| 1-Earthquake (1-Caban or 1-Ollin) represents the first
| day of the Earthquake/Caban/Ollin day sign within the
| Tzolk'in cycle. Each day sign has a specific meaning and
| symbolism, and the Earthquake/Caban/Ollin day sign is
| associated with movement, change, and the natural forces
| of the Earth. It is believed to symbolize the dynamic
| energy of the Earth and the transformative power of
| natural events.
|
| User: What is the previous 1-earthquake to 7.16.3.2.13?
|
| Assistant: To find the previous 1-Earthquake date before
| 7.16.3.2.13 in the Mesoamerican Long Count calendar, we
| need to calculate the number of days between the two
| 1-Earthquake dates.
|
| The Tzolk'in calendar has a 260-day cycle, and the
| Earthquake day sign repeats every 260 days. The Long
| Count calendar date 7.16.3.2.13 corresponds to a
| 1-Earthquake day in the Tzolk'in calendar. To find the
| previous 1-Earthquake, we need to subtract 260 days from
| the given date.
|
| 7.16.3.2.13 in the Long Count calendar is equivalent to
| 1,244,813 days from the calendar's starting point
| (0.0.0.0.0). Subtracting 260 days gives us 1,244,553
| days. Converting this back to the Long Count format, we
| get:
|
| 1,244,553 days = 7.16.2.4.13
|
| So, the previous 1-Earthquake date before 7.16.3.2.13 is
| 7.16.2.4.13 in the Mesoamerican Long Count calendar.
|
| ===
|
| I studied history in undergrad and still keep up but I
| know nothing about Mesoamerican timekeeping so I don't
| know how accurate this is, but it seems much more
| internally consistent than ChatGPT (which is probably
| GPT-3.5-turbo with whatever temperature settings they
| use?) LLMs are bound to be bad when you get to such
| specialized knowledge which its training sets have little
| of. It was like when I went to grad school I stopped
| being able to Google for theories, formulae, and lemmas
| in my classes because most of the knowledge I was
| learning was only found in papers. Once you're in a
| specialized field of study, no model can help. But not
| many people are working in those fields, and those folks
| should understand that their knowledge resides only with
| them.
|
| I don't think this is a good example to show how people
| learn incorrect things from LLMs. LLMs come with the same
| caveat as Google or Wikipedia in that, the rarer/more
| specialized the knowledge, the more original research the
| person needs to do to corroborate their answers.
| osigurdson wrote:
| The Metaverse is another name for a new kind of interface:
| glasses. If the interface gets good enough then everything
| else will follow.
| tempestn wrote:
| I think you're both right. I think generative AI will be like
| the internet, and we'll experience a 90s-style bubble first,
| _then_ it will gradually transform everything.
|
| Personally though, I've already used it for multiple real-
| world applications in my business and personal life, whereas
| crypto was only ever a toy. VR I'm less sure about; so far
| it's only a toy, and I think it will take longer than AI to
| make a real difference, but I wouldn't be surprised if at
| least AR and probably VR are both eventually very
| commonplace.
| __lbracket__ wrote:
| I mostly agree with this -- the converged value will be ~1%
| of the initial hype. 1% of hype is still massive.
|
| After the noise has calmed, I feel generative AI, at its
| core, will enhance information search and summarization;
| lookup and compression. That itself will have massive value.
| It will differentiate roles that require net new thinking
| from those that require regurgitation.
| germinalphrase wrote:
| " Because most of these companies aren't really sure what
| problem they are solving for actual people."
|
| Tech should hire more broadly.
| [deleted]
| farts_mckensy wrote:
| [flagged]
| wnevets wrote:
| > Personally I predict that generative AI is going to be the
| next Metaverse and crypto.
|
| Generative AI has potential to immediately increase
| productivity, and thus revenue. The only real way to make
| money (in the short term at-least) with crypto and the
| metaverse was to convince other people the digital assets
| created were rare, valuable and worth paying for.
| Bjorkbat wrote:
| You've pretty much nailed what I've been thinking about when
| comparing generative AI hype to crypto/metaverse hype.
|
| I keep hearing this argument that generative AI has more
| utility, making it more "real". Sure, but they're missing the
| point, which is that people made some pretty ridiculous
| claims about the _future_ utility of crypto / metaverse
| ($100k bitcoin, metaverse real-estate speculation) rather
| than the present day possibilities, and they're continuing to
| make ridiculous claims about the future utility of AI (the
| end of web development, AGI soon, etc).
|
| The hype isn't about present day possibilities, but about
| future speculation, and the future speculation can get off-
| the-rails crazy.
| int_19h wrote:
| The hype exists, firstly, because the present day
| possibilities are already impressive enough to net actual
| financial gains from improved productivity, and secondly
| because it's obvious that all this stuff hasn't yet been
| scaled to the limit - but the scaling and improvement that
| we've seen so far (GPT 3 -> 3.5 -> 4) showed massive gains
| on every step in a very short period of time.
| Bjorkbat wrote:
| Incidentally I was about to say that even speculation
| based on present utility can get a little bit out there.
| Modern AI is already quite good at generating code
| snippets, and it already increases developer
| productivity, but just how much is that going to really
| change things? Just how much more productive is an AI-
| augmented software developer? Are LLMs really the thing
| that was missing from no-code website / app builders?
|
| I wouldn't say it's obvious that this stuff hasn't been
| scaled to the limit. I mean, sure, you could make bigger
| LLMs, but I don't think it's a given that LLM performance
| will increase in performance in a predictable fashion. If
| anything I think that performance probably resembles an S
| curve where performance matches improvements in scale
| before sharply plateauing. When's the plateau?
|
| GPT-4 is a clear improvement over GPT-3, but it's also 6x
| larger, and so far I haven't quite seen any real evidence
| to suggest that it's 6x better, other than the fact that
| it scored better on tests.
| int_19h wrote:
| It's hard to say what "6x better" even means, but there
| are tasks that GPT-3.5 consistently fails hard at that
| GPT-4 is much better at (and has improved over time).
|
| I think the next big leap will be the context size. Going
| from 4k to 32k tokens means that the model can see a
| _lot_ more when generating the answer. For code
| especially this makes a big difference in the ability to
| reason about it.
|
| As to the limits, it's hard to predict because what we're
| seeing is more of a series of sudden leaps. But let me
| put it this way - so far we've seen noticeable
| improvements on every iteration of the new LLMs. So given
| this, why should the default assumption be that the limit
| past which nothing new will emerge, whatever it is, is
| close to the present size of the publicly available
| models?
| tomtheelder wrote:
| I think it's extremely dangerous to predict the pattern
| of gains to continue.
|
| Also I'm not actually convinced that there's much value
| provided currently. I've yet to see a particularly
| compelling use case, and every time I go to try something
| that folks are hyping up (image generation, ChatGPT,
| copilot) I leave feeling like it's all sizzle and no
| steak.
| billconan wrote:
| I never wanted to pay for metaverse and invest in crypto. But
| I'm paying for genAI (midjourney and openAI api)
| dustedcodes wrote:
| To me and everyone around me the Metaverse was immediately
| clear to be a massive flop. First of all, before the Metaverse
| neither me or any of my tech friends did even know that anyone
| was still investing into VR. When we heard about Facebook
| pivoting to the Metaverse we all were like "what? why would you
| invest into a technology which has been widely rejected
| already?". It's like Facebook investing in 3D TVs, which had a
| short blip in the market but then died off, because
| fundamentally nobody cared about 3D TVs. I don't know anyone
| who is even remotely excited about VR let alone the Metaverse.
|
| This became even more obvious when shortly after Facebook's
| pivot nobody, I mean like absolutely nobody was searching or
| reading up on VR news. It's a topic that people just don't
| care. They don't want VR in their life. People want more
| REALITY in their life, not less. Especially after COVID.
|
| On the other hand, AI has sparked everyone's imagination. Only
| a few weeks ago I showed my wife ChatGPT and we used it for
| some work she had to do in her field (medicine) and she was
| completely amazed by it. She's got her own account with OpenAI
| now and uses it for a variety of things already. My wife is the
| most non tech person ever. This to me is a strong indication
| that AI has not even scratched on the surface of its potential.
| season2episode3 wrote:
| VR is kind of a gimmick, but AR will, 100%, be the next
| frontier of human-computer interaction. It sparks the
| imagination in an extremely tangible way.
| asdfman123 wrote:
| But IMO, attitudes like "it sparks the imagination" is why
| VR failed.
|
| FB succeeded because it was in the right place at the right
| time. Sure, it positioned itself cleverly, but the moment
| in history was ripe for a social media company.
|
| Things don't just succeed because they spark the
| imagination or because you work really hard at them: they
| succeed because all the factors beyond your control are
| aligned, too.
| jsemrau wrote:
| Having built mobile-based AR apps, I realized that I see
| more value in projected AR over screen-based AR (Glasses).
|
| With the obvious example being : parking instructions while
| driving a car
| moonchrome wrote:
| Wearing tech that can project shit over people's eyes
| while driving should be illegal until it's proven to be
| safe with year(s) of track record.
| blep_ wrote:
| Depends on whether it's the kind that's just glasses when
| turned off, or the kind that's just a VR headset with a
| camera on the front.
| JohnFen wrote:
| AR clearly has more use cases than VR, but AR will also
| remain a niche technology. It just has more applicable
| niches.
| ghostbrainalpha wrote:
| The data I'm looking at makes the Facebook decision a little
| more sensical.
|
| Yes there was a Big Spike in VR interest around Oculus, and
| most of the people who bought one have it sitting in a corner
| collecting dust...
|
| But a significant subset of people continued to use it, and
| their usage is steadily growing. There are huge numbers of
| people willing to pay $500 -$2k, on each new device that
| comes out, just to "see if its ready".
|
| There are tons of people who work from home on a couple
| monitors, who WANT to have a VR work setup that gives them
| screens the size of walls. Obviously the comfort, battery,
| and visual performance is not there yet, but most people have
| a feeling that would could just be a generation or two away
| from it.
|
| I would guess that more than 50% of hacker news readers over
| 40 years old had an MP3 player BEFORE the iPod. They were all
| garbage and completely replaced when the iPod came out, but
| for the 2-3 years before the iPod, all the early adopters new
| something like that was coming and they were hungry for it.
|
| I feel that's exactly where VR is.
| JohnFen wrote:
| > They were all garbage
|
| No, they weren't. There were excellent ones. What they
| lacked was enough storage to carry your entire music
| library with you -- that was the problem the iPod
| addressed.
|
| But in terms of playing music, the iPod was not
| exceptional.
| jsemrau wrote:
| > who WANT to have a VR work setup that gives them screens
| the size of walls. I saw that in the tech demo last year
| and would agree with that sentiment. Yet I wouldn't want to
| wear headset for a full day to achieve that.
| ChildOfChaos wrote:
| Well Apple are going pretty heavy into VR/AR with there
| product likely launching this year, so it's not just Meta
| that got caught up in that wave, a few years ago that was
| where a lot of people thought the future was, so that is
| where both Facebook and Apple seemed to put a lot of
| investment.
|
| It's not done yet. AI is the current buzz because we are
| starting to see some great products and uses for it, we have
| yet to see that with VR/AR but that doesn't mean it isn't
| possible. It's still early, I am not a fan of the 'metaverse'
| idea, but VR/AR still has a lot left to give.
| potatolicious wrote:
| I think the discussion around VR/AR sometimes misses the
| forest for the trees. Yeah, existing products are mostly
| sucky/very niche, and the existing direction for the entire
| sub-industry seems very unlikely to break into the
| mainstream.
|
| But that's not to say it's _not possible_ for a mainstream-
| successful iteration of the idea to exist. My personal
| feeling is that there _is_ a viable path to mainstream
| success, though it 's far from guaranteed that a player
| succeeds in taking said path.
|
| The real question IMO isn't "can VR/AR be made mainstream
| successful" (this is largely unknowable until someone does
| it), the question is "can FB be the company that makes
| VR/AR mainstream successful".
|
| And IMO the answer has always been no. If there is
| viability in the entire subfield I think Meta is poorly
| positioned to be the tip of the spear.
|
| Its fundamental business model works against the interests
| of good products in this field (stuff every virtual surface
| full of ads! Inescapable eyeball tracking for MAXIMUM
| CONVERSION ATTRIBUTION!!!1one) - one can make a (good)
| argument about the implications of Meta's VR play with the
| interests of humanity, but I don't think we even need to
| get that deep. Their business model fundamentally is at
| odds with creating compelling products in this arena. So
| much of their product strategy seems to be stuck in the
| hole of "what is good for Meta" instead of "what is good
| for users".
|
| And then there's seemingly the perennial issue of FB not
| being able to ooze any kind of desirability or cultural
| cachet, which is deeply necessary for any of this to reach
| the mainstream in a big way. Everything it touches, even
| before the VR/AR pivot, is like an even more corporate and
| dead-eyed version of EPCOT.
| rurp wrote:
| I agree, if Meta had focused on building an open platform
| and ecosystem that people could freely experiment with,
| they _might_ have gotten somewhere. It certainly wouldn
| 't have been as dead on arrival. But of course, that's
| not the kind of company Meta is. They want everyone to
| pile back onto facebook where they can control and
| monetize every aspect, except a cartoonish 3D version of
| it.
| throw_nbvc1234 wrote:
| Agreed; i would claim: If video chats/conferencing are
| XX% (95%) of a real-life conversation and a "metaverse"
| product can bring that up to XX%+N% (99%) then people
| will pay for it. If the cost is right it'll become
| mainstream. If the cost is too high it'll probably be a
| business or niche tool. Once that tech exists other
| products will become possible too.
|
| I don't personally see what's controversial with that
| claim and bet. Separately one can argue if the current
| tech is anywhere near good enough to achieve the N% gains
| but the common thread of VR/AR/metaverse as being a
| useless product forever is a textbook example of missing
| the forest through the trees.
| JohnFen wrote:
| But our industry is very fad-driven, and it's common that
| when one big company starts pouring money into a thing,
| others do as well. It's usually FOMO rather than some sort
| of well-considered thing.
| moonchrome wrote:
| I already spend 8+ hours a day in front of a large screen.
| If the tech is good enough that I can use it 8 hours
| without discomfort/side effects and get huge virtual
| screens - me and millions of professionals are sold.
|
| And when I have it for work the play becomes more
| realistic.
|
| So for me that's the killer feature of VR - portable
| monitor replacement - you can take it anywhere, pop it on
| and you're instantly in your virtual office. This would be
| worth 1000s $ if it "just worked" like Apple products do.
|
| Apple and Microsoft are the only tech players I could see
| pulling this off because of the OS integration required.
| And Microsoft failed with Hololens.
| [deleted]
| flxy wrote:
| To offer an additional perspective:
|
| A far less monetized and more user content focused version of
| "the Metaverse" already exists: VRChat. It's been around
| since before Covid and it is still around. Granted, yes, it
| is still mostly a niche hobby for some very dedicated people,
| not all of whom even use VR, but it exists. I think the
| people who would have been interested in Meta's product
| looked at it and thought "But we already have a less crappy
| version of this that's not tied to a questionable company."
| Especially since Meta's handling of Oculus has been far from
| great (i.e. requiring a Facebook/Meta account just to use any
| headset, as opposed to the separate account like before).
|
| But as I said, it's still fairly niche and mostly serves as
| an escape for people. I think slapping the whole "buy in-
| world items with crypto" thing on top of that just made the
| target group even smaller than before. It just felt like
| jumping onto any tech buzz words to broaden appeal, when it
| actually caused the opposite. For all the data they're
| supposed to have, that was poor decision making imo.
| JKCalhoun wrote:
| > They don't want VR in their life. People want more REALITY
| in their life, not less.
|
| For myself, I 100% agree.
|
| Tired: Metaverse; Wired: Protoverse.
| charlieflowers wrote:
| > People want more REALITY in their life, not less.
|
| Agree with most of what you said. But my take is, people
| would LOVE virtual reality if it were done well enough. We
| just don't seem to have the technical capability to pull it
| off well enough yet. Uncanny valley and all that.
| MikusR wrote:
| What does uncanny valley has to do with VR?
| detaro wrote:
| What Meta has been pushing as Metaverse is pretty big on
| human-like avatars.
| MikusR wrote:
| But what does it has to do with VR in general? You don't
| have to use any of Meta social apps to use VR.
| JohnFen wrote:
| It have to do with VR because VR is attempting to
| replicate reality. If you do that almost, but not quite,
| perfectly then you're in the uncanny valley. It doesn't
| have to be about portraying people.
|
| Current VR can't even approach realism -- which keeps it
| out of the uncanny valley.
|
| However, if the technology improves to the point where
| the graphics approach realistic, the uncanny valley will
| become a real problem.
| jeremyjh wrote:
| Yes exactly. ChatGPT is exciting because it actually works,
| not because it's the first AI chat program. If Microsoft
| had pivoted to it even 5 years ago they'd be a
| laughingstock like Meta.
| MikusR wrote:
| VR currently works as good as ChatGPT.
| jeremyjh wrote:
| Not for me it doesn't. I use ChatGPT all the time in my
| work and it saves me a lot of time. With a couple of
| exceptions I haven't found much compelling in VR and
| can't stand to do it more than 60 minutes at a stretch.
| bink wrote:
| or ChatGPT works as poorly as VR.
| int_19h wrote:
| VR itself is great for immersive gaming and other similar
| experiences (e.g. https://store.steampowered.com/app/1318030/
| Fractal_Alchemist...). And some of those can be social, as
| well.
|
| But that is all orthogonal to the "metaverse" as Meta
| envisions it, and I really don't see the utility of _that_.
| nradov wrote:
| There are some people who legitimately love VR games like
| VRChat. I am not one of them, but I have talked to a few. At
| the time that Facebook made it's initial investments into
| that space starting in 2014 there was at least some
| possibility that those people were the early adopters of a
| technology that would disrupt the social media and
| entertainment industries. Of course that turned out to be
| wrong (or at least too early) but at the time it wasn't
| completely implausible. Large enterprises sometimes have to
| invest in long shots as a risk mitigation strategy.
| fghsqwads wrote:
| The only reason Zuckerberg wanted to pivot to the Metaverse was
| because he wanted to be president of the US but couldn't. The
| idea was spread briefly, and he found out that the general
| public hated him and he had no chance to win political office.
| He decided to make his own universe where he could be the
| virtual president / tyrannical dictator.
| chrchang523 wrote:
| An important catch here is that he was eight years too early,
| not two. See https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33538742 .
| seventytwo wrote:
| I think Zuck pivoting meta to the metaverse would be like Steve
| Jobs pivoting Apple to AI in the 80s.
|
| A metaverse-like concept is conceivable, but a long long way
| out.
| pavlov wrote:
| I think in Zuck's mind the analogy is Bill Gates pivoting
| Microsoft to GUIs in 1983. Which seemed pretty crazy at the
| time when PCs ran at 4 megahertz and could barely fill a
| 320*200 screen with four ugly colors. But Gates had seen
| Xerox Star and Smalltalk and Lisa prototypes.
|
| VR's "Mac moment" may be happening this year with Apple's
| hardware unveiling. I suppose Zuck hopes to ship his mass-
| market "Windows 3.0" soon after. I'm very curious to find out
| what consumers think of the Apple product.
| danjac wrote:
| While generative AI may be useful, to what extent is it useful
| to Facebook right now? I mean as a new business model, as
| opposed to helping them do better software development or
| moderation?
| m_fayer wrote:
| Generative AI makes their business case for the meta-verse
| actually work. You can populate the meta-verse with
| convincing NPCs: they fit in, they finesse social
| interactions, they kickstart communities and befriend the
| unpopular, and every once in a while they drop some product
| placement. For an introverted, anxious, and digital-
| preferring generation, this could be perfect.
| gowld wrote:
| People play games today with weak AI. Generative AI might
| be fun in VR, but it's not the "killer feature". Generative
| AI is fun in non-VR too.
|
| I have lots of friends online. I don't need 3D VR
| interactions with them.
| HDThoreaun wrote:
| Absolutely disagree. The metaverses value proposition is
| the ability to create hyper customized communities and
| experiences. Generative AI is a near requirement to see
| that vision. Many, many people do not have friends
| online, or they have different interests, or for whatever
| other reason may prefer interacting with AIs who do
| exactly what they want.
| ulfw wrote:
| It's an unbelievably sad future to live in what you're
| describing.
| m_fayer wrote:
| Brought to you by dystopia.inc
| dralley wrote:
| And literally predicted by South Park
|
| https://youtu.be/jCkL_zuXcY8
|
| https://youtu.be/dCDIgoSlNXg
|
| https://youtu.be/vtOgzVD_zDI
|
| https://youtu.be/kklek8cNDIQ
| rngname22 wrote:
| NPCs that are convincing if you ignore the fact that they
| only can remember less than 5 minutes of interaction
| because they lack long-term context due to the nature of
| LLMs?
|
| I'm not sure if lonely people would rather talk to an
| Alzheimers anime girl or be alone.
| mmmmmbop wrote:
| Meta can't afford _not to_ invest into generative AI. They
| are constantly fighting to stay relevant. Just see how TikTok
| 's better recommender algorithm and content creation tools
| made Instagram play catch-up.
|
| I'm not certain about the direction of Meta, but for now it
| seems that their most important areas are entertainment
| (Instagram, Reels) and messaging (WhatsApp, Messenger), not
| social networking (Facebook), which is dying.
|
| For entertainment and messaging, generative AI is going to be
| huge. In entertainment, content creation and discovery will
| be severely advanced by AI. For messaging, at the very least,
| users will expect AI support in message composition and
| company-customer communication.
| jayd16 wrote:
| It has a lot of uses for their metaverse push. You could
| imagine a future social platform where AI generated pictures
| and video instead of selfies is the communication medium du
| jour.
|
| But in that sense they're not far behind the pack as it is.
| twelve40 wrote:
| Great point, there might not be anything for them there
| despite the insane hype right now. A couple of useful things
| here and there, sure, but not much to profitably "pivot"
| their billion users into.
| tcbawo wrote:
| Generative AI might be able to create compelling characters
| to interact with in Facebook/Metaverse. That would be a
| weird, but possibly therapeutic?
| Dalewyn wrote:
| It's worth remembering that unlike with cryptocurrency, our
| ("reasonable people" as you put it) apathy for the "metaverse"
| stems from the fact that _most of us experienced it_ a long
| time ago, long before that term even came into common(?) use:
| Multiplayer games, and _especially_ MMORPGs.
|
| Be it Ragnarok Online, Runescape, Ultima Online, League of
| Legends, Call of Duty, Minecraft, or whatever, anyone who has
| played multiplayer games of any kind know exactly what the
| "metaverse" was trying to sell to us and the common masses. We
| also know that multiplayer games, unlike practically every
| romanticized depiction, generally _sucks_ to play with
| strangers. You absolutely need a tightly knit group of good
| friends to play with to be able to truly enjoy them.
|
| So when we said the "metaverse" would never take off, it's
| because we have literally been there and done that.
| jayd16 wrote:
| Aren't we on a multiplayer chat board with strangers here?
|
| I think you hit the nail on the head as far as how the
| metaverse is not new, but I think your pessimistic take is
| not so obvious to me and presumably many people bullish on
| metaverse ideas.
| _fizz_buzz_ wrote:
| I feel exactly the same. I have friends that have been trying
| to explain to me what the huge advantages of crypto and NFTs
| are for almost a decade and it's still very hazy to me. Nobody
| explained ChatGPT to me. I saw prompt and started typing some
| questions about a python library and it was immediately obvious
| to me that this would be super useful to me.
| lhl wrote:
| I think different technologies are going to appeal to
| different audiences and users. I've been pretty blown away by
| generative AI, both stuff like Stable Diffusion and now,
| these ultra-powerful LLMs (although I didn't much about it
| before that) - it's obvious that pairing w/ ChatGPT makes me
| a better programmer, and it functions as a pretty good
| research assistant as to boot, however, talking/showing it
| around to a lot of friends, many of them are dismissive or
| pretty meh around then and so far, and profess to not have
| any use for it.
|
| But then again, that may be why there's huge adoption of
| crypto in countries like Nigeria (32%!) or Vietnam (21%) [1]
| (obviously, crypto is a lot more useful in your life if you
| have a weaker central currency or less financial access;
| their deeper dive into Sub-Saharan Africa adoption of crypto
| in particular is fascinating [2]).
|
| Likewise, I'm a believer in the eventual adoption of XR, but
| a big part of my excitement is really my desire for infinite
| screen space. Still, I can see the argument that everything
| will be spatial in the future and personally, I see these
| trends tying together a lot more than not. Maybe they're on
| different hype curves, but decentralized financial
| transactions on credibly neutral, near real time networks (w/
| smart contracts) seem like a natural fit for agentic AI. And
| in the VR arena, I'm seeing some incredibly compelling stuff
| happening with NeRFs and other generative media that is going
| to make virtual/augmented immersion a lot more compelling
| (one of the big bottlenecks for VR right now is generating
| compelling evergreen content and experiences).
|
| [1] https://blog.chainalysis.com/reports/2022-global-crypto-
| adop...
|
| [2] https://blog.chainalysis.com/reports/sub-saharan-africa-
| cryp...
| tpmoney wrote:
| Sometimes I think you need to use a new tech for a while
| before the benefits become obvious. I worked for Apple retail
| back when the iPhone was first released. I remember even
| after getting our hands on it release day that it was neat
| and exciting, but also something I'd completely written off
| at $800 because I just didn't see enough use for what it
| offered compared to a dumb phone and an iPod.
|
| Part of the sales experience at the time was they gave all of
| us one to carry around during our shift on the sales floor
| and encouraged us to show it off and use it to look up things
| we'd normally have gone to one of the demo computers to look
| up. About 2 months later, I'm taking a road trip with a
| destination plugged into my Garmin GPS (remember those?). I'm
| in the final stretches of getting where I need to go when the
| GPS says "you've arrived" while I'm driving down a road with
| nothing on either side of me. I go for another half mile or
| so just assuming it was off by a few hundred feet and I'd
| find an entrance but no such luck. Turn around, punch in the
| destination to the GPS again and try from the other
| direction, same deal. "You've arrived" in the middle of
| nowhere. Tried a couple more times and then pulled off to the
| side of the road and reached for the iPhone in my pocket to
| pull up some information / a map quest search, and then
| remembered that I don't have an iPhone in my pocket because I
| don't own an iPhone and just carry one on shift at work. That
| experience convinced me that there was value in this whole
| "smart phone" thing and that I would eventually be getting
| one.
|
| Which isn't to say that crypto or NFTs are like iPhones, but
| more that I think you can't necessarily understand how useful
| a given piece of tech is just by someone else explaining it
| to you. Some things you just have to use.
| 908B64B197 wrote:
| > because I just didn't see enough use for what it offered
| compared to a dumb phone and an iPod.
|
| You weren't wrong for the iPhone v1. The UI was years ahead
| of everything else, but it was still quite limited.
|
| v2 was the first to support apps. To me that was the
| differentiator that made it a truly revolutionary product.
| ericd wrote:
| I know Jobs tried to talk up webapps as being the future
| at the time, but apps were very clearly coming - it was
| touted as a computer for your pocket, there's no way they
| weren't going to let people write software for it. And if
| they didn't, then someone else would make one that could,
| and completely eat their lunch.
| rchaud wrote:
| the iPhone 1 survived thanks to Apple's enormous marketing
| budget, and a 33% price cut from $600 to $400.
|
| Apple has goodwill from its iPod success and iTunes store.
| FB has nothing. Horizon Worlds is completely different from
| Facebook/Insta, whereas the iPhone had a new UI but with
| many familiar elements.
| _fizz_buzz_ wrote:
| I am not convinced. The first time I used an iphone I was
| blown away by it. Definitely a hefty price tag, but the
| whole user interface with swiping, pinching etc. was really
| eye opening. Android of course quickly caught up, but it
| was a completely new experience compared to existing smart
| phones at the time.
|
| Same thing the first time I used google (my age is showing
| a bit). It was leaps and bounds better than the
| alternatives at the time.
|
| With crypto it always feels to me like I am dealing with
| scams, ponzies or something useless. Solving problems that
| weren't really problems or creating problems that didn't
| exist beforehand. I have rarely been so underwhelmed by any
| technical innovation.
| 0xDEF wrote:
| High-income Westerners do not like to engage in activities that
| make them appear like mindless consumer zombies.
|
| In Denmark the highest income households have small cheap TVs
| they can hide away while low income households have big 4K TVs
| as the main attraction in their living room. The reason is that
| the former don't want to appear like passive mindless consumer
| zombies who watch TV.
|
| It is a very superficial opinion but wearing a VR headset is
| literally the most 1984 consumer zombie thing you could
| possibly do.
| 4ggr0 wrote:
| Why does it matter if I'm gaming while looking at a screen
| which is half a metre away, or while looking at a screen
| which is in front of my face and allows me to move around, in
| fact making me less like a zombie because I don't have to be
| stationary.
|
| It's been a couple of months since I've done anything in VR,
| but I don't understand why you're being so overly dramatical
| about it, comparing it to 1984 and consumerist zombies.
| ChuckNorris89 wrote:
| Rich Scandinavians are difficult to understand. If you're
| rich you gotta look poor because poor people try to look
| rich and you don't wanna be associated with poor people.
| 4ggr0 wrote:
| I think this can be said about lots of nouveau riche/old
| rich/poor people. But maybe Scandinavia is different :)
| BWStearns wrote:
| > Maybe Mark Zuckerberg was just unlucky to decide on a company
| pivot two years too early -- I'm sure that if he had to decide
| on a direction to pivot to today, it'd be towards generative
| AI.
|
| It's also important to remember that Facebook was staring down
| the barrel of a bunch of investigations regarding election
| misinformation and basically tailoring their products to be
| addictive to teenagers while they internally realized it was
| harmful. The rebrand was much more about rebranding than
| meaningfully changing the direction of the company. I think he
| just figured with ZIRP he could do the direction change as well
| at 0 risk.
| yieldcrv wrote:
| You can ignore the grandiose claims of crypto savants and still
| accept how its unrivaled cloud development platform is going to
| continue to attract developers, accept that the entertainment
| sector is valuable, accept that the collectibles sector is
| valuable and we just never had transparency into the size of
| that while reducing friction for some aspects of the
| collectibles market, that financial services is valuable solely
| because there are some frictions to solve from people already
| there, that gambling is valuable, that flash loans are not
| paralleled by any other platform except the central banks
| overnight market, and so on. Outside of crypto its still hard
| to get free live transaction data for your trading algorithm.
|
| None of this _needs_ ideology about the consensus layer or
| fandom about how transactions are settled with claims of "hard
| money" thats going to take over the world, but that sentiment
| does harden it and is intrinsically intertwined. But _you_ can
| ignore it and still recognize the parts that are valuable, even
| if there is no value _to you_.
| mettamage wrote:
| To be fair, when Facebook was created there was no data either.
| Data can be useful but I have yet to hear a story where data
| played a pivotal role in creating a successful startup
| minsc_and_boo wrote:
| _Hot or Not_ was a popular site, and Facebook was created to
| be that but exclusively for college students. It was called
| _Facemash_.
| baremetal wrote:
| There was indeed data when facebook started.
|
| It was called myspace.
| pessimizer wrote:
| And friendster.
| decafninja wrote:
| But when Facebook was created, they were a scrappy little
| startup with nothing to lose.
|
| The Facebook of 2023 is not a scrappy little startup with
| nothing to lose.
| threeseed wrote:
| But remember Zuckerberg will always be rich and is not able
| to be fired.
|
| So he can sure act like he has nothing to lose.
| [deleted]
| johngalt_ wrote:
| Well most of his money is in Facebook stocks so he has
| plenty to lose.
| ghaff wrote:
| And he'll still have more money than he knows what to do
| with assuming just about any level of sensible
| diversification.
| gowld wrote:
| or if he never disversifies at all, and FB loses 99% of
| its value, he'll still have more money than he can spend
| in a lifetime.
| outworlder wrote:
| > The Metaverse was always such a bad direction
|
| I don't think so.
|
| I just think the massive spending is a bit premature. Keeping a
| R&D division inside Meta makes sense. Betting the farm does
| not.
|
| VR has enormous potential but we are still lacking more
| ergonomic headsets and killer apps. I want to do 3D modelling
| in VR - except for some simple apps, I can't do that.
| otikik wrote:
| > bullshit fractal
|
| Oh my. Such a good way to put it. Thank you.
| tinyhouse wrote:
| You cannot compare VR with Crypto. VR can be super useful but
| the tech isn't there yet, similarly to where generative AI was
| two years ago. Once we have a breakthrough with VR it'll also
| be amazing and useful.
| vharuck wrote:
| In my (admittedly uneducated) view, VR can be useful for some
| professional tasks in the immediate future. Things like 3D
| modeling, architecture, explorative data analysis. But
| Facebook is a social media company. Aside from a small
| proportion of enthusiastic users, people won't want to
| socialize with VR. They'd rather check an app on their phone
| every so often while doing something else. If they want a
| more personal and engaged conversation, a video chat is
| better than VR. The Metaverse makes no sense beyond games.
| And the heyday of socializing in MMOs has long passed (much
| to my dismay).
| PinguTS wrote:
| VR is as useful as the whole movie industry and the game
| industry. Yes, it is important for entertainment. With all
| the streaming services the movie industry is moving from
| central cinemas to your home.
|
| So VR will be in competition with all the other entertainment
| industries. But is that useful in any sense just besides
| entertainment? I doubt.
|
| It started all years ago with Google Glass. Even at that time
| I doubted that there is value in this. Now, we are here and
| Google Glass is finally dead. I know it is in the rumors that
| Apple will bring its VR headset soon. But really? Will that
| make it better? I doubt.
|
| VR will be in competition with all the other forms of
| entertainment. It is something, you can't just do besides. It
| will need your full attention. I doubt that there is some
| real usefulness.
| tinyhouse wrote:
| Entertainment is not enough? What's our purpose in life?
| Work and reproduce?
| danaris wrote:
| I think it's important to note that Google Glass was not
| really a VR system--it was AR, essentially overlaying a HUD
| on top of reality. I can see many _extremely_ useful
| possibilities with this that just don 't apply to VR
| (which, indeed, I think is going to be most useful for
| entertainment and a few other niches).
|
| AR can help with navigation (overlaying the directions
| right on your field of view); with social interactions
| (facial recognition, even locally, can identify people
| already in your contacts, and remind you "you wanted to
| thank her for that birthday present", or whatever); with
| learning about the world (look at a tree, a flower, a bird
| and ask for an identification)...
|
| And that's basically just taking apps that exist _now_ and
| imagining them integrated into AR glasses.
|
| (Yes, there are definitely concerns about things like
| privacy, with the possibility of having cameras on our
| faces all the time; I am hopeful that we will find
| solutions for these, but don't have good ones off the top
| of my head.)
| DeathArrow wrote:
| > I'm sure that if he had to decide on a direction to pivot to
| today, it'd be towards generative AI.
|
| And he would have been too late.
| wg0 wrote:
| Not to mention, ruined the brand value along with it. People
| knew Facebook, good or bad, Facebook was Facebook. There was
| still a lot that facebook could do. Could gradually evolve into
| integrating payments becoming a PayPal in the process, a store
| front and what not. Bringing a video platform of its own with
| same revenue sharing model fully integrated and what not.
|
| Yes, there are other companies and products in similar spaces
| but Facebook would have been cash positive in each of those
| ventures pretty soon if not crazy profitable.
|
| Whereas the Meta VR demos are almost close to what we can see
| from 80s, not to mention that they add no value to gaming,
| entertainment, communication or commerce.
| paganel wrote:
| I don't think the European Union regulatory bodies would have
| allowed Facebook/Meta to integrate stuff like payments and,
| as such, to "become PayPal in the process". Maybe if that all
| had happened before 2015-2016, but in today's political and
| business climate I see no way for that being allowed to
| happen.
| manquer wrote:
| Don't have to launch in Europe . Payments aren't like other
| SaaS apps launching in every country is lot of paperwork
| and apps will choose to work in only some geographies .
|
| Also WhatsApp does integrate payments in some geographies
| so it is not like FB wasn't already having a step there .
|
| FB is just chasing fads, few years back it was libre coin
| at the peak of crypto interest . They will keep throwing
| stuff to see what sticks until they run out of money
| csomar wrote:
| > But now we see that crypto was indeed bullshit all along.
|
| In case it's a surprise to you; crypto, after one of the worst
| bear markets, has now around $1.2 Trillion market cap.
|
| So sure maybe it's bullshit but so is facebook and tiktok. They
| still make money selling BS ads and toxic content. Crypto will
| be an upgrade comparing to their present business model (Zuck
| tried to get on crypto but was discouraged by regulators).
| mmmmmbop wrote:
| Right, and FTX was valued at $32 billion at some point.
| Quindecillion wrote:
| Won't find me disagreeing with everything you said there about
| the broader crypto industry. It's nothing more than a massive
| affinity scam.
|
| But you're making an error if you're lumping Bitcoin in with
| "crypto".
| _heimdall wrote:
| Bitcoin is the OG cryptocurrency project. How exactly is it
| not accurate to limp it in with crypto?
| brookst wrote:
| Yeah, there's a lot wrong with religion, as long as you don't
| lump my Zoroastrianism in with all those other bogus
| religions.
| CalChris wrote:
| It's in the paper.
|
| "What is needed is an electronic payment system based on
| cryptographic proof instead of trust, allowing any two
| willing parties to transact directly with each other without
| the need for a trusted third party."
|
| https://bitcoin.org/bitcoin.pdf
| AlexandrB wrote:
| Hasn't Bitcoin largely failed in these goals though? Not
| only is it volatile making it a poor choice of currency,
| but most people transact via trusted third parties for a
| variety of reasons. The concentration of mining in a few
| large entities also points to effective centralization of
| the protocol.
| [deleted]
| endisneigh wrote:
| I agree. I have 4 Quests and know many with Quests. It's funny
| how all of us used it very frequently in the first couple
| months and now they're gathering dust.
|
| The fact of the matter is, if you have people you can hang out
| with in person you're not going to bother with VR, or the
| metaverse.
| [deleted]
| cableshaft wrote:
| I use my Quest regularly, although mainly for gaming and
| fitness.
|
| I've played around with the social aspects, and they're
| interesting, but I don't really have friends with a Quest and
| I struggle to make friends just by butting in on random
| conversations, so I haven't really done it much.
|
| Have had a couple of interesting conversations about movies
| with a movie nerd in a virtual hangout in the Bigscreen app,
| though, and did some dancing in a virtual nightclub a couple
| times, which was actually pretty fun (I think I'd feel a
| little too weird doing going to an actual nightclub nowadays,
| I'm a little old for the scene).
| fatnoah wrote:
| > The fact of the matter is, if you have people you can hang
| out with in person you're not going to bother with VR, or the
| metaverse.
|
| Several of my friends have Quests, and we use them regularly
| with each other, but the catch here is that we all live in
| different parts of the country, so it's great for some more
| informal goofing off while we chitchat.
| spaceman_2020 wrote:
| I think there is value in creating an alternative financial
| system. It doesn't have to replace your currency or be the only
| financial system you align yourself with, but I do believe that
| given the tools we currently have, locking yourself solely into
| a financial system you have so little visibility and control in
| is a little foolhardy.
| renewiltord wrote:
| It is Nov 14 2018. Facebook share price is $139. The WSJ
| publishes reports that Facebook morale is tanking. The top HN
| comment reads that Zuckerberg doesn't understand Facebook.
|
| A year later, Facebook ends 50% higher. Another year later,
| Facebook is 30% again higher. And it happens for another year.
| In the end, what gets Facebook is Apple AAT but it still ends
| up 60% higher than when that comment was posted.
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18450058
| mmmmmbop wrote:
| Really appreciate the perspective, thanks!
| minsc_and_boo wrote:
| Facebook is only up 30% since 2018.
|
| Comparitively, NASDAQ and SP500 are up 69% and 55%,
| respectively. Even GOOG is up 100%.
|
| Facebook is performing worse than the natural growth of the
| markets, so maybe moral is important?
| throwawaycircus wrote:
| I mined bitcoin in 2011 which didn't go well and then made
| first transaction in 2017 which took 2days to be processed as a
| result i ruled it as stupidest digital currency.
|
| Even though I feel technical right all these years i regret for
| not buying as many as i could have even back in 2017/18.
|
| Centeral banks turned everything like a Ponzi scheme. How the
| heck borrowing and spending is a better option than saving.
| piva00 wrote:
| > Centeral banks turned everything like a Ponzi scheme. How
| the heck borrowing and spending is a better option than
| saving.
|
| Central banks are just playing a larger game, they aren't
| causing it, the game is: ever increasing growth capitalism.
| Borrowing and spending creates "growth", saving doesn't.
| While we exist in this system we can try to pinpoint the
| blame at different actors but they aren't the cause of it,
| they are just playing along.
|
| The incentives for growth don't align with what's best for
| society, they align with making people indebted so companies
| can grow their revenues.
| hn_throwaway_99 wrote:
| > The Metaverse was always such a bad direction.
|
| This seems like a bit of 20/20 hindsight. At the time, the
| biggest concern Zuckerberg had was that they didn't own _a
| platform_. Apple had the iOS ecosystem, Google had Android,
| Microsoft had Windows, Amazon had AWS and their logistical
| moat. Zuckerberg made a bet that the world would move to VR
| similarly to the way the world moved to PCs in the 80s, which
| allowed Microsoft to take over a big chunk of the world.
|
| Zuckerberg's fear wasn't unreasonable, he just bet wrong.
| Apple's privacy changes had a huge impact to Facebook, and the
| other FAANG without a "moat-defining platform", Netflix, is
| also in the most precarious position among the big techs.
|
| That said, I agree with most of the other comments. I can see
| VR evolving a little beyond gaming I guess, but it's actually
| kind of a nightmare to imagine myself wearing a fucking headset
| all day. At this point I think Zuckerberg knows he bet wrong
| and AI is the future, and he's clearly trying to pivot, but
| it's really hard to move a big company like Meta quickly, and
| it also means he has to admit he just lit billions and billions
| on fire.
| TigeriusKirk wrote:
| Meta isn't giving up on the metaverse. The effort is not a
| failure. The plan was always going to take closer to 10 years
| to realize. They were explicit about it being a long term
| goal, not a short term one.
|
| They've made some missteps, but it's not even close to being
| over.
| scarface74 wrote:
| Netflix was never a BigTech company based on any objective
| matter - revenue, market cap, ecosystem or influence.
| danaris wrote:
| > This seems like a bit of 20/20 hindsight.
|
| I dunno about you, but I and basically everyone in my circles
| at the time agreed that it was most likely a terrible idea.
|
| Until and unless there's a truly convenient piece of hardware
| to get one into a virtual space--I'm talking weight and bulk
| comparable to prescription eyeglasses, no wires going beyond
| your body (ie, maybe a pack at the belt/pocket/something like
| that), and some form of extremely intuitive UI--you're not
| going to get people interested in regular interactions in a
| VR/AR space.
|
| Frankly, even once we _do_ have something like that, I think
| it unlikely that many people would choose to do things like
| meetings in a virtual space over something simpler like Zoom,
| even if they _did_ already own the hardware.
|
| And none of these views have changed over the past few years.
|
| No; I think Zuck has been far too isolated and out of touch
| with how regular people operate for too long, and when faced
| with, as you say, the fact that Facebook was only running on
| other people's platforms--and it became clear that no one was
| interested in _making_ Facebook their platform, like by
| buying a Facebook phone--he convinced himself that this was
| The Next Big Thing based on sheer desperation.
| drstewart wrote:
| >I dunno about you, but I and basically everyone in my
| circles at the time agreed that it was most likely a
| terrible idea.
|
| Same. No wireless, less space than a Nomad. Lame.
| danaris wrote:
| You appear to be trying to imply that because one
| prominent tech guy (CmdrTaco) pooh-poohed the iPod at its
| announcement, only for it to become a smash hit, anyone
| who looks at an announcement and says "I don't think this
| will do very well" is automatically wrong...? Or
| something?
|
| There are fairly serious differences between the release
| of the iPod and the announcement of Facebook's shift to
| "Meta", and one guy being wrong one time, however
| famously, does not have any implications for other people
| being wrong in completely different circumstances, so
| this feels pointlessly dismissive.
| drstewart wrote:
| You can make all the predictions you want. Predictions
| are forward looking, not backwards. Saying your
| predictions are obviously correct in hindsight is
| engaging in survivorship bias.
|
| Easy way to prove this is to ask people what the obvious
| winners and losers will be in the next 5 years, and then
| see how they've allocated they're investments to that. If
| you can predict the market so obviously, you'll be rich.
| meroes wrote:
| Is there not a single product expert leading any company in
| big tech anymore? What's going on.
|
| Growing up I was used to there being more useful and fun
| tech gadgets than I could ever afford. Now it's like unless
| they own your entire online presence they don't want your
| money. Give me that dumb iPod v1.0 which gets sand in the
| wheel and lasts an hour on battery but for VR. The idea was
| all your music on the go and it met that goal.
|
| For VR it should be hands free/hands minimal portable
| productivity. Give that shitty resolution and battery life.
| I would take navigating YouTube, PDFs, email at the lowest
| res feasible and 2 hour batteries and isn't gigantic and
| prevents you from normal activities. Don't build a multi
| billion dollar platform.
| danaris wrote:
| In general, I think it's very hard for a "product expert"
| to obtain or hold leadership of a company once it gets
| large. The "bureaucracy experts" have a huge advantage in
| that realm.
|
| And that's not _inherently_ a bad thing. Despite his
| often shrill detractors, Tim Cook, who 's definitely a
| "bureaucracy expert" more than he is a "product expert",
| has done a darn good job leading Apple since Steve Jobs'
| untimely death. The thing is, he knows to _listen_ to the
| product experts, and to put the really good ones in
| positions of some power within the hierarchy.
|
| The problem comes when your "bureaucracy experts" only
| value what they understand: Bureaucracy. Numbers.
| Finances, especially in the short-term sense.
|
| Now, I honestly don't think this is precisely
| Zuckerberg's problem. From what I've seen, I don't think
| he's necessarily a "bureaucracy expert" himself--but nor
| is he a "product expert" in the same sense as someone
| like Jobs or Ive; he helped to create the original
| Facebook, but I don't believe he's ever come up with any
| _other_ products that have seen any real success (though
| correct me if I 'm wrong). He's more of a founder who
| rode a wave of money to where he is, and bought into the
| idea that that meant he was somehow smarter than everyone
| else.
| gowld wrote:
| > I would take navigating YouTube, PDFs, email at the
| lowest res feasible and 2 hour batteries and isn't
| gigantic and prevents you from normal activities.
|
| Why? Who else would want that?
| fknorangesite wrote:
| I know, right? The only reason to want a "fun gadget"
| like that is if you're the kind of person who enjoys
| gadgets for gadgets' sake. Which is fine - we all have
| our interests.
|
| But I'm _not_ a Gadget Guy. Why would I want shitty
| YouTube in VR when I have good YouTube on my phone?
| 2muchcoffeeman wrote:
| > _This seems like a bit of 20 /20 hindsight._
|
| 2nd Life, The Simms, various MMORPGS. We have loads of
| experience buildings virtual worlds with virtual belongings
| and conducting meetings virtually. I was part of a WOW guild
| that had meetings about raids and other small bits of admin
| stuff in game.
|
| But a company known for being sketchy as heck slaps on 3D
| goggles and makes it less fun and I'm supposed to want to be
| in it?
|
| I think you'll find that a lot of people were skeptical.
| hn_throwaway_99 wrote:
| I don't disagree that the company is "sketchy as heck", but
| the fundamental bet was that the main computer interface
| display device would move from being a monitor (and also
| perhaps the smartphone display) to being VR. And yes, there
| were people skeptical about that, but I don't think that
| idea in and of itself (that is, taking Facebook's
| nefariousness out of the equation) was that outlandish a
| couple years ago, despite my personal disdain for the idea.
| 2muchcoffeeman wrote:
| My point was that this is not 20/20 hindsight. A lot of
| people thought this was a non-starter from the beginning.
| So far it's panning out the way skeptics predicted. It
| would be 20/20 hindsight if they succeeded and we
| starting post rationalizing it.
|
| Also I think people only think from the "what do I gain?"
| perspective. There is a comment below that asks "what do
| you think display technology will be like in 20 years?" I
| won't argue that 2 high res screens that can show my
| entire workspace where ever I am would not be awesome. I
| would try that.
|
| But consider all the things you do while you work:
|
| - Eat and drink - Stare out the window - Get up and go to
| the bathroom - Just have a stretch, spin in your chair.
|
| And now 2 tiny 4k screens strapped to your head is no
| longer ergonomic and isn't going to cut it. And a cheap
| and normal screens looks really good.
| andsoitis wrote:
| > main computer interface display device would move from
| being a monitor (and also perhaps the smartphone display)
| to being VR
|
| Strapping a screen to your face is not ergonomic. It
| isn't practical.
| bmelton wrote:
| > Strapping a screen to your face is not ergonomic. It
| isn't practical
|
| That argument is only sound for as long as the screen is
| unwieldy. If you could wear a pair of glasses that
| magically converted your laptop into a stable, triple-
| screen workstation, it'd be a no-brainer to assert that
| it was useful in at least some circumstances -- working
| on planes, trains, automobiles now becomes more and more
| possible. If the tech then progressed to the point where
| you could do that from a phone, and not require a laptop,
| or even necessarily pulling the phone out of your pocket,
| then it seemed like a pretty powerful productivity
| feature _at least_ some of the time, and if executed well
| enough, it wouldn't shock me to see people giving up
| their laptops in the same way that many people don't
| bother having tower PC computers any more.
| Macha wrote:
| Right, but VR today to that vision is the gap between the
| Newton and the iPhone, not the gap between the LG Prada +
| iPod Video and the iPhone.
| xen2xen1 wrote:
| There's a TV show called the The First, about going to
| Mars. No on has computers, only voice activated TVs, and
| glasses that replaced computers. It's the most realistic
| next step in computer evolution I've ever seen. It's
| worth the watch just for the "near future" tech. Oddly
| enough, I could not figure out how we'd do the voice
| stuff, but it looks easy for a GPT with a little
| training.
| spacemadness wrote:
| If Apple actually reveals a headset and the ergonomics
| are on par with what's put there now, I think that will
| solidify the idea that this tech isn't going to be ready
| for a long while.
| ModernMech wrote:
| > the fundamental bet was that the main computer
| interface display device would move from being a monitor
|
| That's not _really_ the bet they were making. It was
| deeper than that.
|
| Facebook discovered that people are willing to use their
| product to dissociate to an extreme degree. There are
| some people out there whose entire _lives_ are on FB and
| Instagram. Take their profiles away, and you would
| literally erase the livelihood and even identities of
| some individuals out there. They have no relationships
| and no skills in the material world. Their entire
| existence is a profile, and the relationships cultivated
| in that profile. Just as you and I cease to exist in the
| material world when we close our eyes and go to bed,
| these people cease to exist at all when they log off of
| Facebook and Instagram.
|
| And so Meta, being the consumer-focused company it is,
| was looking to give their best customers exactly what
| they want: a way to complete their dissociation in the
| material world, and to bring even more of their existence
| into the metaverse, the digital plane of existence for
| many of their customers. Their pitch for metaverse
| meetings seems so strange to us on the material plane
| because in-person meetings are the last thing we'd
| replicate digitally. But for those who are ready to
| dissociate into the digital plane, a digital meeting room
| is the next logical step.
|
| It's like what Agent Smith says about the first version
| of the Matrix. Yeah, it was perfect, but it wasn't real.
| So they added pain and suffering to make it real. The FB
| can offer a great dissociative experience if that's what
| you're looking for, but if you're _really_ looking to let
| go of the material plane, you need to bring in all the
| pain and suffering you 're used to into the metaverse.
| Otherwise the distinct lack of meetings gives away the
| charade.
|
| The problem for Meta is that the Metaverse is a very
| expensive proposition, and there are only so many
| hardcore FB and Instagram addicts at this point willing
| to dissociate to that degree. The rest of us enjoy our
| material plane of existence, and aren't addicted to
| Facebook and Instagram the way their users are.
|
| And there it is, the word "user", which reminds us that
| FB customers really have a lot in common with drug
| addicts.
| rchaud wrote:
| People whose lives are FB and Instagram are following
| celebrities and getting caught up arguing with strangers
| over reality TV drama. None of this exists in the
| Metaverse, there are no Groups or Pages where this type
| of discussion could take place. That's the biggest issue
| with Horizon Worlds -- you are expected to go there and
| talk to strangers.
|
| That is 100% unlike the FB experience, where someone else
| provides a prompt (post), and you join in the comments.
| daniel_reetz wrote:
| Also, without crowds inside, there was no reason to go
| develop your identity. I'm only on Instagram to make
| useful connections for my business.
| this_user wrote:
| > the fundamental bet was that the main computer
| interface display device would move from being a monitor
| (and also perhaps the smartphone display) to being VR
|
| That's a terrible bet. Anyone who has ever played a 3D
| game will immediately understand that a 3D world is a
| strictly inferior interface for almost all use cases
| where you are actually trying to get something done, e.g.
| read and answer an email.
| throw_nbvc1234 wrote:
| What do you expect monitor technology to look like in 20
| years; the same as today just with more pixels? If
| someone types by touch, what's the difference between a
| VR monitor and a physical monitor?
| JKCalhoun wrote:
| Never mind the whole VR + Powerglove fail of the 1990's....
| ako wrote:
| Sometimes it takes a few tries before they get it right,
| the iPhone also wasn't the first touch based screen only
| phone.
| hn_throwaway_99 wrote:
| It wasn't? What were the other ones?
| xpl wrote:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LG_Prada for example. It
| looks pretty much like iPhone -- no keyboard, just
| touchscreen. But it did not really "spark joy" (I had
| one), so it wasn't a big success unlike iPhone.
| ako wrote:
| IBM Simon was the first in 1994:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_Simon
|
| I had a Sony Ericsson p900 a few years before the iPhone,
| it had a small keyboard you'd usually flip out of the way
| to get a full screen touch display:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sony_Ericsson_P900
| HDThoreaun wrote:
| > AI is the future, and he's clearly trying to pivot
|
| I don't really understand this take. Generative AI is a
| complement to the metaverse. Biggest problem metaverses face
| is having good content since it's quite a bit more difficult
| to create. Using generative AI to fill the metaverse is not a
| pivot, it's been the plan all along.
| fatnoah wrote:
| > At the time, the biggest concern Zuckerberg had was that
| they didn't own a platform.
|
| I believe the concerns around the lack of a platform were
| both about "moat-defining" and the possibility of being
| deplatformed by Apple and/or Google.
| asdfman123 wrote:
| > Zuckerberg made a bet that the world would move to VR
|
| Only people who are deeply involved in tech think that Mark
| Zuckerberg investing in something makes it happen.
|
| Everyone else correctly understands he is not a main
| character, but someone who rode the wave of social media
| adaptation.
| ridgered4 wrote:
| That's how I read this. Facebook already had a failed
| facebook phone venture everyone seems to have forgotten
| about. Zuckerberg is trying to get to the new world first
| this time. Except even if VR takes off it would only be a
| niche compared to mobile so it doesn't really make sense. But
| AR could potentially and I guess VR might have been seen as a
| stepping stone to that.
| andromeduck wrote:
| And how much money did they burn with that? I doubt it was
| more than a quarter's worth of last year's VR spend.
| roenxi wrote:
| > It's been the same with crypto, for that matter. None of the
| reasonable people I know ever saw any grand value in crypto.
|
| Were these reasonable people banking with Silicon Valley Bank
| like all the smart guys? Crypto is promising a financial system
| that has so far appeared to be much more resilient than the
| traditional system and bitcoin is currently at $30k. Tether has
| survived something like 2x depegs so far.
|
| We might finally have a technology that can resist financial
| authoritarianism; there is no body that can stop bitcoin
| transactions and it is proving itself to be resilient enough
| for medium-term use. That is a change on the same magnitude as
| the internet.
| Kbelicius wrote:
| > Crypto is promising a financial system that has so far
| appeared to be much more resilient than the traditional
| system and bitcoin is currently at $30k.
|
| What is bitcoin resilient to? Not falling to $0?
|
| > We might finally have a technology that can resist
| financial authoritarianism; there is no body that can stop
| bitcoin transactions and it is proving itself to be resilient
| enough for medium-term use. That is a change on the same
| magnitude as the internet.
|
| I don't think that our current financial system fails that
| often because some transactions were stopped.
| roenxi wrote:
| > What is bitcoin resilient to? Not falling to $0?
|
| If we cherry pick, say, the Vanguard Long-Term Treasury ETF
| [0] in the last 3 years it is down 30%. So bitcoin isn't as
| resilient against value loss US treasuries but we're seeing
| changes in magnitude in price that is similar to a long
| term bond ETF. That is a lot better than I expected, and
| probably a lot of others. Really good performance compared
| to the gains, I suspect. No obvious counterparty risk, so
| probably superior to the debt-laden US government in some
| sense.
|
| > I don't think that our current financial system fails
| that often because some transactions were stopped.
|
| Someone is paying for bitcoin to burn a medium country's
| worth of energy to keep running. That speaks to a certain
| sincerity in their disagreement with you.
|
| [0] https://investor.vanguard.com/investment-
| products/etfs/profi...
| unregistereddev wrote:
| > Crypto is promising a financial system that has so far
| appeared to be much more resilient than the traditional
| system
|
| I strongly disagree with this. When SVB failed, there was a
| system in place to insure some of the depositors' funds. The
| government chose to augment that by insuring all the
| depositors' funds. That was an unusual move, and then the
| banking system returned to normal when a better capitalized
| bank took over SVB's assets and liabilities. The bank failure
| cost those who invested in the bank. It cost the bank
| management. It did not cost the depositors.
|
| When a crypto exchange fails, depositor funds are
| unrecoverable. There is no system to protect the depositors,
| no system to recover funds from the failed exchange.
|
| While financial authoritarianism is imperfect, its rules are
| designed to reduce fraud and to reduce the impact of fraud on
| innocent bystanders.
| [deleted]
| basisword wrote:
| >> As it stands, my intuition (and everybody else's) turned out
| to be right.
|
| It's been 18 months since they "pivoted". Come back in 5-10
| years to see who was right. Assuming the metaverse is a failure
| at this point is simply arrogant.
| twelve40 wrote:
| yeah, and then you'll say hindsight is 20/20 and who could
| have predicted the failure?
| rohit89 wrote:
| Most likely people who predict failure will say of course
| Mark managed to make it work because he could afford to
| throw billions on top of billions after it.
|
| The metaverse is a 10 year bet that involves progress
| across multiple axes. No-one here can predict the state of
| progress in ten years.
| johannes1234321 wrote:
| > I figured that if Mark Zuckerberg decided it's worth pivoting
| his entire company towards that goal, he surely must have some
| data to back that up.
|
| I am quite sure he had the data that growth with Facebook,
| Insta, etc. was limited and threatened by TikTok and others.
| The Meta stuff was an attempt to break out of that I to a
| different space, where they could be the early mover. And then
| being blinded by own fascination for the space. I think many
| share the assumption that Mark Zuckerberg and Facebook never
| really understood what users actually want and had luck their
| platform matched the spirit for some time.
| klik99 wrote:
| Exactly this - it's a real startup move, done by a company
| that probably shouldn't be doing startup pivots at this
| stage. I think he got the thrust right - Facebook will
| continue losing share if they continue the 90s MS buy all
| your competitors strategy which it is obvious at this stage
| wasn't working for them, and Meta was an attempt to get ahead
| again rather than just try to scoop up from behind. This
| approach will necessarily be built on some kind of intuition
| rather than data, but should have been a well funded
| skunkworks project instead of gambling many peoples
| livelihood on something that will take a while to pay off.
|
| I'm probably one of the few that thinks the pivot overall
| isn't a bad idea, but it was just done in such an
| irresponsible way and they're paying the price now. We've
| seen this many times (notably Uber, WeWork, Google, and
| arguably Apple until Jobs returned from his exile with a new
| skillset), but the best person to start a company is often
| not the best to run it when it's established. But Mark has
| been so good at keeping equity and control that Facebook will
| fail unless he learns how to adapt. It usually takes a real
| low point for people to get out of established mindsets. Just
| putting this out there so I can point to this in 10 years: If
| I were to predict the future, I'd say Facebook stock plummets
| and everyone writes it off, and Mark wises up, bringing it
| back much stronger. I don't particularly like him, but I
| think he's got it in him.
| johannes1234321 wrote:
| The "buy all your competitors strategy" couldn't work.
| After acquiring wahtsapp and Instagram and all the
| political games around Facebook there was too much
| regulatory, anti-cometition, ... attention on them for them
| to strike any serious deal.
|
| While my impression regarding Metaverse was that Mark
| Zuckerberg was purposely imprecise on what exactly
| Metaverse was, hoping to find a company they can acquire,
| which then in a retcon made that exactly what the vision
| ever was.
| kevinventullo wrote:
| Not to mention that TikTok wasn't selling.
| Waterluvian wrote:
| I wonder how brands like Nike manage to stay "cool" for
| generations but basically every social tech brand has a shelf
| life.
| johannes1234321 wrote:
| Many fashion brands come and go, only few stick. Some go
| through deep valleys of pain in between.
|
| Fashion brands use marketing, in the sports market to
| sponsoring. For Nike the relationship to Michael Jordan for
| instance certainly was a major driver. For Adidas Kanye
| West became a major pain.
|
| Social Media platforms try the same. They try to get famous
| people on their platform. Instagram seems to do quite well
| in that space (I don't have an account there) while Twitter
| on the one side and TikTok, YouTube and Twitch on the other
| try to get people on their platforms.
|
| But then it's different: In sports sponsorship you can
| focus on one side of the person, their atheltic skills. On
| social media they eventually shout out their views on
| things, which might upset people and damage reputation. Of
| both, the person and the platform.
| jollofricepeas wrote:
| Fashion brands remain relevant by leveraging scarcity and
| tightly controlling supply.
|
| They also cycle their top talent.
|
| Facebook does neither of these.
|
| If LVMH were to design social networks, they'd look
| nothing like what Facebook has developed and more like
| members only clubs with glass windows.
| NickC25 wrote:
| I think one of the reasons is that as others have said -
| they know their lane and stick to it - sports apparel. Nike
| doesn't try to take over all your interactions, doesn't try
| to own your life and doesn't grow beyond its domain.
|
| Shit, even within its own domain, it's failed with some
| projects long-term (Nike Golf clubs come to mind). They
| stay relevant by signing young upcoming athletes, some of
| whom go on to become known worldwide in sports that are
| popular worldwide like Soccer, Basketball, and Tennis.
|
| Nike does not have a platform, and in a roundabout way also
| benefits from their competition doing well (the more people
| that are active, the larger the potential customer base
| is). FB/Meta does not have that luxury - to them, if you're
| not on their platform, you're useless. Nike does not have
| that problem.
|
| Nike wants to own the experience when you're doing
| something athletic or casually physical (walking around).
| There's a limit to that as even pro athletes aren't
| physically active all the time. Since so much of our lives
| have a technology component to it, Meta wants to own that
| whole ecosystem , which is much more ambitious than
| anything Nike ever tried or will try.
| hoseja wrote:
| Nike sells product you can buy and there is a limit to how
| good a shoe you can make that we've been exploring for the
| past couple millennia.
|
| Socials need to find worse and worse ways to advertise so
| line can go up and there are new paradigm-shifting features
| invented all the time.
| PeterisP wrote:
| One aspect is that brands like can "rotate" their product
| and sell new stuff to a new generation, but social tech is
| stuck because (if it's good) it keeps the existing users,
| which _inherently_ makes it uncool for new users.
|
| The social tech that your parents use _can 't_ be cool, by
| definition, no matter how good it is, the fact that your
| parents (and grandparents!) generation is already there is
| a big drawback to coolness. But social tech companies are
| reluctant (for obvious practical reasons) to periodically
| create new generations of social networks to capture a new
| generation of users by intentionally providing them "not
| your parents' social network".
| ModernMech wrote:
| Nike makes shoes and other sports related stuff. If you
| don't want Nike, don't buy Nike.
|
| FAANG on the other hand aspires to infect every single
| facet of my life, and they have some glib self-serving
| narrative about how not only are they right to do so, they
| have the moral imperative. And so what do they do? They
| track every single aspect of my life that they can, the
| invade my privacy, they leak my data, they bilk me for cash
| at every opportunity. Dark patterns, bad UI, run arounds on
| the phone, locking out of accounts. I'm sorry but this
| entire industry is completely fucked, and it's only getting
| worse. As someone who has been in tech since the 80s, the
| scene is done. It's been overrun by vultures, bankers, and
| billionaires with more money than ethics, and they think
| you are just an NPC in their world, where they are
| celebrities, kings, and gods.
|
| _That_ is why social tech brands have a shelf life,
| because none of them can resist the dark side. Nike has a
| dark side, but at least when I take them off my shoes aren
| 't trying to take over my life.
| luckylion wrote:
| They are tools you can use to signal status because they
| are expensive. You can't do that with Facebook etc.
|
| Social media is ultimately not selling status though, they
| make money by reaching as many people as possible and you
| have to lower the entry fee to achieve that.
| Waterluvian wrote:
| That makes sense. And a business whose only moat is, "we
| have the most people" will always be a fleeting one.
| bluepizza wrote:
| Staying ahead in this game by pivoting to metaverse was very
| silly. Even if there is no growth in
| Facebook/Instagram/WhatsApp, it could remain a stable cash
| cow for years.
|
| Not to mention that Facebook was a perfectly fine and popular
| social networking platform until Facebook itself poisoned it
| with the engagement algos that put politics and fake news on
| top, and drove people away.
|
| All of Meta's current issues were self inflicted.
| jsemrau wrote:
| Wouldn't really agree with the "drove people away"
| statement
|
| https://www.statista.com/statistics/264810/number-of-
| monthly...
| red-iron-pine wrote:
| > poisoned it with the engagement algos that put politics
| and fake news on top, and drove people away.
|
| publicly traded company. they have to keep that quarterly
| income up, and on a long enough timeline that means taking
| whatever revenue you can. if you don't your executives keep
| getting sacked until they find ones who will do the job.
|
| it's not a question of if they'd do shady stuff but when.
|
| or else they pull a Microsoft and start expanding into
| wildly unrelated fields like the Zune (which failed) or the
| XBox (which is huge).
| idrios wrote:
| Sure it would remain a cash cow if Meta decided never to
| take another risk again, but Zuck was trying to avoid
| Facebook becoming the next Oracle or IBM -- companies with
| consistent revenue but thay have lost their ability to
| innovate.
|
| I also don't think the metaverse was doomed to fail from
| the start -- still not sure if it's doomed now. Based on
| John Carmack's resignation & letter about how hard it was
| to get anything done, it sounds like there are some serious
| cultural or bureaucratic issues getting in the way of
| progress though
| ModernMech wrote:
| > Sure it would remain a cash cow if Meta decided never
| to take another risk again, but Zuck was trying to avoid
| Facebook becoming the next Oracle or IBM -- companies
| with consistent revenue but thay have lost their ability
| to innovate.
|
| At some point, I think society is going to have to admit
| that companies have a lifecycle, and that sometimes a
| company should die, maybe long before it runs out of
| money. If the only outcomes are "grow forever" and
| "become IBM", then I think we should prefer the IBM
| route, because at least that provides value.
|
| Leave the innovation to smaller companies and allow them
| to thrive or die on their merits. This whole thing where
| fossils long past their innovative prime are able to
| control the entire industry, through boondoggles that are
| kept afloat indefinitely through trillion dollar cash
| reserves, rent seeking activities, and strategic
| acquisitions, is just not good for anyone except the
| people who are able to exit.
|
| You want innovation, get FAANG out of the way.
| danaris wrote:
| > Zuck was trying to avoid Facebook becoming the next
| Oracle or IBM -- companies with consistent revenue but
| thay have lost their ability to innovate.
|
| Such sad tales, companies that _only_ make billions of
| dollars a quarter, with a solid chance of continuing to
| do so for the rest of our lives...
|
| This obsession with growth is deeply unhealthy.
| "Innovation" can be great, and we certainly need it
| happening _somewhere_ , but the idea that it's something
| that any given company needs to be doing or it will die
| is preposterous, particularly when applied to an
| established industry giant like Facebook.
| packetlost wrote:
| > It's clear to anyone from day one how useful those models
| will be
|
| I think it's clear they will (and are) be useful, but _how_
| useful is very much an open question
| DubiousPusher wrote:
| I think the reality is that the useful part of meta-verse, the
| meta part, runs contradictory to the interests of a company
| like meta. Because it involves:
|
| 1) De-proprietorizing user data
|
| 2) Handing identity from identity providers (like meta) to open
| systems
|
| 3) Allowing foreign content into the walled garden
|
| So Meta built the least useful but snazziest part of the meta-
| verse, the verse part. And they built it in the face of a bunch
| of other already extant "verses", like Roblox which offer a
| more intersting landscape for interaction.
| isk517 wrote:
| They made Second Life but without the ability to ruin a CNN
| press conference with flying human genitalia, which basically
| means they made a worse version of Second Life.
| Animats wrote:
| > The Metaverse was always such a bad direction.
|
| The Metaverse is coming along just fine. Roblox, Fortnite,
| VRchat, and Second Life all work. None are ad-supported. It's
| not compatible with Facebook's business model.
|
| There's no real role for "brands" in the metaverse. Or even
| ads. All the successful systems charge the user, although many
| have a free to play tier. As a branch of gaming, the metaverse
| works reasonably well, and is getting better. Gaming itself is
| huge, has passed Hollywood, and is going on from there. See the
| current issue of The Economist.
| factualinacc1 wrote:
| You know Fortnite has a huge ad business right? Like in the
| hundreds of millions of dollars a quarter.
|
| Roblox also has a branded games business. It does not mediate
| ads but it also has advertising of other games on its
| platform. They are definitely working on automatic ad
| mediation.
| JustSomeNobody wrote:
| > I figured that if Mark Zuckerberg decided it's worth pivoting
| his entire company towards that goal, he surely must have some
| data to back that up.
|
| I think he's just desperate to have what Apple has; A hardware
| platform on which to hang other services and applications.
| alerter wrote:
| Completely agree. I'm frustrated that Oculus and VR tech in
| general has been lumped in, via the "metaverse", with a bunch
| of less useful and less interesting crypto/NFT stuff. All I
| wanted was some cool niche flight and mech sims, maybe some
| interesting AR projects beyond what Niantic could offer.
| Instead, we got a bunch of ugly tech demos, outright scams, and
| virtual meeting rooms that nobody uses.
|
| Being able to buy drugs online was cool, but I'm not sure it
| was worth the billions of dollars invested and vast amounts of
| carbon emitted.
| JansjoFromIkea wrote:
| Yeah, Facebook's Metaverse pivot made VR pretty toxic right
| at the point where they were getting a significant level of
| adoption amongst the public.
|
| They needed to focus on making a few more games with the mass
| appeal of Beat Saber and making entry level machines a bit
| cheaper again so there was enough users to make the social
| aspect actually have some value.
| 1970-01-01 wrote:
| All 3 of these technologies retain a very strong, putrid stink
| when given a rational smell test. Until someone finds a way to
| permanently wash away this foul odor, I will remain skeptical
| of them.
|
| Metaverse stink: "This could have been an email" in 3-D!
|
| Bitcoin has 2 stinks:
|
| A)Find a lot of computing energy. Think about building power
| plants to make coins, and you're starting to get somewhere.
|
| B)Price will rapidly drop and spike, maybe thousands of dollars
| per day. That's a feature!?
|
| LLM AI: 60% of the time, it's right every time! This tech
| includes very nice graphics to back up any of its highly
| confident and hallucinogenic bullshit. Until this phenomenon is
| well understood, it stinks!
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hallucination_(artificial_inte...
| naravara wrote:
| > Contrast that with the generative AI models revolution. It's
| clear to anyone from day one how useful those models will be,
| and that they are providing clear value right away. It's no
| wonder that all the companies are immediately pivoting towards
| it. Maybe Mark Zuckerberg was just unlucky to decide on a
| company pivot two years too early -- I'm sure that if he had to
| decide on a direction to pivot to today, it'd be towards
| generative AI.
|
| I think fundamentally Facebook is not a product company and is
| consequently bad at actually making products. Apple has been
| moving very cautiously on the AR/VR front in contrast. Granted,
| Apple moves cautiously on everything, but they do seem more
| intentional about what to leave up to users to figure out on
| their own vs the Facebook approach of assuming you can just
| solve the interesting engineering problems and have the cool
| technology and people will just figure out how to use it. Smart
| watches and smartphones existed for a while before the Apple
| Watch and the iPhone, but what really kicked off the market for
| them was just a design that put it out there for people to
| explore with it so Apple could then iterate and figure out what
| the real niche was. But that will never happen if your initial
| test cases are just tech nerds. Tech nerds love the technology
| qua technology too much to figure out why things are
| interesting outside that.
| tmountain wrote:
| Given Facebook's track record with politics, I am glad they
| didn't pivot to generative AI. I don't see anything "good"
| coming from that push as far as societal outcomes are
| concerned.
| kevin_nisbet wrote:
| I think the tricky part with innovation, is almost everything
| innovative looks like a bad idea to almost everyone. And as the
| tech or company progresses, more people look at it and think
| it's a good idea. If it were really obviously a good idea,
| there's no innovation, there would already be others doing it.
|
| And this is in contrast to what YC likes to call tarpit ideas,
| because there are lots of ideas that look good but everyone who
| tries to tackle them fails for whatever reason.
|
| So we can say metaverse was a bad bet for Facebook, but that's
| sort of looking in hindsight at the struggles that tech has and
| the unknown market. And it appears to be a big bet and lost.
|
| But comparing to current state of AI, is sort of comparing to a
| different stage, where there is the beginning of an early
| majority seeing the progress and now seeing the excitement. But
| go back a couple of years, and more of us would be naysayers,
| talking about how bad the tech is, or various failure modes.
| temporal828 wrote:
| > I think the tricky part with innovation, is almost
| everything innovative looks like a bad idea to almost
| everyone.
|
| No. No. The steam engine, modern refrigeration and open heart
| surgery all probably had some naysayers but I don't think
| they looked like bad ideas to almost everyone. A lot of what
| qualifies as innovative from your tech community really just
| might be crap.
|
| From the beginning the complaint with crypto and blockchain
| is that it didn't fix any problems other than maybe assisting
| as a tool in laundering/illegal transactions, and it wastes
| energy to boot. I don't see how the naysayers were wrong.
|
| The metaverse idea didn't even get to the point of hyping a
| purpose. Nobody even bothered to explain what useful human
| need or want it fulfilled (beyond what has already been
| fulfilled for years in gaming).
|
| > But comparing to current state of AI, is sort of comparing
| to a different stage, where there is the beginning of an
| early majority
|
| Early majority? That is a bold affirmation.
|
| I think these large language models are pretty neat. I also
| lived through the first AI winters. I would say the hype at
| this moment isn't even as great as it was then (especially in
| the 80s). It is a bit tough to explain for those that weren't
| there - but numerous knowledgable and intelligent people were
| convinced that the AI singularity was just moments away.
| drstewart wrote:
| > but I don't think they looked like bad ideas to almost
| everyone. A lot of what qualifies as innovative from your
| tech community really just might be crap.
|
| Cool. How about brain surgery? Clarification: how about
| brain lobotomies?
|
| Without the benefit of hindsight, can you explain how open
| heart surgery is "clearly" good and innovative while the
| later is harmful. I mean, everyone knows it's a good idea:
| it even won a Nobel Prize.
|
| The fact is, everyone only obviously knows an idea was crap
| or obvious in hindsight.
| temporal828 wrote:
| > Cool. How about brain surgery? Clarification: how about
| brain lobotomies?
|
| Many of the indications for open heart surgery are no
| longer valid or standard of care today, replaced with
| either vascular access or medical management... and brain
| surgery is a more fair comparison then a specific
| procedure (open heart surgery is not a single procedure
| either), for which plenty of lives have been improved.
|
| Which by the way, lobotomies (temporal lobectomies, but a
| rose by any other name) are still an accepted treatment
| for epilepsy. Sidebar: Frontal lobotomies were not
| without controversy over their well known effects even
| when they were contemporary.
|
| Neither is "clearly" good nor harmful. I never sought to
| engage in this black and white thinking.
|
| And to my original point it is completely obvious to me
| and many in my field why it is beneficial that we should
| be researching alternative treatments to epilepsy other
| than lobectomies (which doesn't feel like the final word
| on epilepsy, as helpful as they have been for some), and
| this goes for a whole host of neurological and
| psychiatric treatments in general. Unfortunately the
| technology hasn't gotten us there yet - that doesn't mean
| it isn't obvious to me why work in these areas would be
| net beneficial. And some of those ideas are not going to
| pan out in the long run, no shit. This is the limitations
| of technological progress, not some issue of vision.
|
| I don't think the metaverse is comparable as no one has
| ever explained to me how, let alone Meta, how it is not
| Second Life with more bells and whistles.
|
| > The fact is, everyone only obviously knows an idea was
| crap or obvious in hindsight.
|
| Well I have plenty of hindsight for all that shit.
| _puk wrote:
| Plenty of truly innovative inventions aren't initially
| universally loved, take automobiles for example[0].
|
| 0: https://www.saturdayeveningpost.com/2017/01/get-horse-
| americ...
| throwingrocks wrote:
| > No. No.
|
| Saying "no" multiple times as if a statement is so absurdly
| wrong is such a meme at this point and another interesting
| difference between face to face and online interactions. I
| can't imagine having a discussion with friends and someone
| throwing a bunch of "no"s out.
| temporal828 wrote:
| Sort of goes with the territory with proclamations
| including words like "everything" and "everyone".
| "almost" feels like meaningless filler.
| EricDeb wrote:
| Crypto can facilitate truly decentralized money, and
| although that hasn't truly happened yet, I would argue that
| is a feature. Does society want that and would government
| allow it? I don't know
| ako wrote:
| What is the benefit of decentralized money, other than it
| makes crime easier?
| Loughla wrote:
| I think until the reality of an actual, true, cashless
| society happens, Joe Averageconsumer isn't going to be
| interested in decentralized money.
|
| When and if that happens is anyone's guess, though.
| temporal828 wrote:
| Gold has been around a lot longer.
| midland_trucker wrote:
| I'm not sure I can get on board with the sentiment of your
| first point. Anaesthesia as another example took more than
| a century to get right, had some huge failures and wasn't
| taken seriously. It surely earns the label of innovative
| but just happened on a much larger timescale.
| kevin_nisbet wrote:
| As I recall, refrigeration also went through multiple
| disruption cycles, or at least how someone got ice. As I
| recall but could be mistaken, almost no company survived
| from one cycle to the next.
|
| The first cycle was ice huts, basically insulated bunkers
| where you could get ice through the summer that was
| collected in winter. This industry got totally replaced
| by the first of commercial refrigeration, that could
| generate and store ice from water. Which got disrupted
| and replaced against, with home refrigeration, someone
| can make ice at home, or get ice from a bigger version at
| a store.
|
| The point I was trying to make, perhaps badly worded, was
| that these disruptions weren't obvious ideas by those in
| the industry. Otherwise they would have embraced the
| change technology allowed and rode into the new markets.
|
| We're looking in hindsight, and going it's obvious it's a
| good idea, because we all have a fridge and can make ice
| at home. But at the time, those who owned the entire
| industry, couldn't see it.
| cirgue wrote:
| > almost everything innovative looks like a bad idea to
| almost everyone
|
| I disagree really strongly with this. Innovative things look
| like impractical long shots that have obvious upsides but
| that violate conventional wisdom around what is possible. The
| smartphone is a great example of this: it was obviously
| innovative, and the idea was obviously great before it
| actually became reality, but the practical limitations of
| hardware made it impossible until one day it wasn't. Same for
| generative language models. The real innovation for both of
| these things is that some element constraining a good idea
| changes and someone notices and can act on it decisively.
|
| Some version of the Metaverse has always been possible in one
| form or another, but no one acts on it because it doesn't
| benefit the users it depends on for success. The fundamental
| limiting factor is participation incentive, and technology
| doesn't change that.
| asdfman123 wrote:
| > almost everything innovative looks like a bad idea to
| almost everyone
|
| But some ideas are obviously bad within that framework. I
| could invest millions trying to build a commuter-friendly
| transportation rocket, but that's obviously not worth trying.
| Any potential critics would almost certainly be right.
| seanhunter wrote:
| Even if you accept that anything innovative looks like a bad
| idea to almost anyone[1] that doesn't mean that anything that
| looks like a bad idea is per se innovative and just
| misunderstood. There are things that are just terrible ideas.
| Lead swimming trunks. Asbestos baby clothes. etc I could come
| up with thousands of things that the vast majority of people
| would think are a bad idea because _they are_.
|
| [1] which I totally don't buy. If you think about the early
| internet as an example - the vast majority of people I knew
| didn't _understand_ it, and/or didn't _care_ and certainly
| didn't have any sense of its future, but no one that I knew
| thought it was a bad idea. If they thought about it all they
| thought it was irrelevant to them until they absolutely got
| it and couldn't get on board fast enough.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _that 's sort of looking in hindsight at the struggles that
| tech has and the unknown market_
|
| There is innovating, trend following and what I'll term trend
| completion.
|
| Innovation creates new categories. Crypto was innovative. It
| looks like a losing bet, but nobody can doubt it was daring.
| Trend completion doesn't create new categories, but it
| delivers on a promise. The iPhone is in this category. A
| product delivered against the incompleteness preceding it.
| (And synthesising categories.)
|
| Absent that tangibility or specificity you have trend
| following. Facebook didn't create the VR/AR category. It
| hasn't delivered a product. It hasn't even described a
| uniquely compelling vision. It jumped into a fad because
| others were doing it and then flailed around helplessly while
| executives penned PowerPoints.
| [deleted]
| version_five wrote:
| Generative AI is the same. Behind crypto was interesting
| technology that was warped out of recognition by charlatans.
| Exact same is happening with AI.
| munk-a wrote:
| Statistically speaking - people who have brilliant innovative
| ideas that result in successful businesses are exceedingly rare
| and those ideas often come from experiences outside of the main
| line of work by combining ideas from disparate disciplines to
| have a true breakthrough. We as a society really need to
| disabuse ourselves of the idea that those ideas are likely to
| cluster on a small set of individuals that continue to crank
| them out. We've developed such an extreme cult of personality
| around the rich and it's pretty baffling to see when, if you
| actually sit down to talk to people - we're all pretty
| brilliant.
|
| Companies that get big and then score repeated out of the park
| hits do so by attracting and nurturing talent[1] - they don't
| do so by having one brilliant star that shines eternal.
|
| 1. And that is a really good and honestly rare talent in the
| modern marketplace - it can be hard to let creativity thrive.
| adrr wrote:
| VR will be something eventually. Bandwidth/Storage isn't there
| and the device technology isn't there. I would love to be able
| to walk around Pyramids or Petra and have it be life like and
| not make me sick.
|
| Zuck doesn't care about the metaverse, he's chasing the next
| consumer device since he missed the smart phone. He knows that
| if he doesn't control the hardware, his business is at risk.
| Apple has reinforced this.
| OkayPhysicist wrote:
| The best theory I've seen is that Zuckerberg was looking for an
| angle where Facebook could control a platform, rather than
| simply be a program on somebody else's. Look around, see VR,
| and think "This space is in its infancy, and doesn't currently
| have a market-dominant platform" and then bet big.
|
| Because at the end of the day, Facebook didn't have much to
| lose. The social media wars were over, FB and especially
| Instagram had won. As long as they didn't actively break
| anything, the information->ads->money pipeline will keep
| flowing until the entire space gets disrupted by something
| fundamental shifting under their feet.
|
| A VR-2ndLife that actually caught on could honestly be a
| relatively believable such shift. Ultimately it didn't, but
| that's still alright news for FB: no big changes means the
| gravy train is still rolling.
| martindbp wrote:
| > The Metaverse was always such a bad direction.
|
| Sure, but VR isn't, they're different things. For VR they've
| sold somewhere around 15-20 million headsets, and many people
| use it quite a bit. I have no doubt VR is/will be big, but the
| path to finding what's compelling in VR will be strange.
| Personlly I rediscovered a love for table tennis and play every
| single day now, I'd probably pay $2-3k for a Quest 2 if I had
| no choice.
|
| That said I think trying to build the "Metaverse" in a top-down
| way will be very difficult, and Meta will probably not be the
| ones pulling it off since they don't have much good will,
| people actively avoid their social platforms if they can. But
| to me, what we need is not a Metaverse, but a good OS/platform
| with integrated social/identity, where friends can easily join
| each other's games, voice is enabled by default and provided as
| part of platform, not individual apps etc. Meta has been
| working on making this easier, but with my friends group the
| friction is still too high. And it's super annoying when third
| party apps (like Rec Room) needs their own login,
| friends/social features etc making it cumbersome to find your
| friends in there.
| ninth_ant wrote:
| Do you have data to back up the statement "many people use it
| quite a bit" (where it refers to VR)?
| martindbp wrote:
| ElevenVR has, according to themselves, 1 million players
| (https://elevenvr.com/en/), how many active I don't know.
| That's just one niche. Other popular games/experiences are
| various shooters (Onward, Pavlov etc), rhythm games,
| fitness games, social experiences like Rec Room and VR
| Chat, movie/tv viewing apps, golf. Fitness has to be the
| most surprising one which few people would have predicted.
| For me, a few of my friends bought one together so we can
| hang out and play games, as we live far away with families
| these days. Remote meetings is obviously a huge potential
| one, but we probably need one or two hardware iterations to
| make that a compelling alternative to video. So it's safe
| to say VR has found some compelling use-cases, the question
| is if it's enough to sustain growth. More use cases will
| open up as the hardware gets better, so I think so.
| ynx wrote:
| A lot of self-proclaimed technologists counterintuitively love
| to see technology fail, especially when they predicted so ahead
| of time.
|
| That's some frustrating shit, because it rewards the least
| patient and surface-level analyses which (correctly!) identify
| deficiencies and lulls in activity, but mislabels them as
| stagnation or dead-ends or fundamental flaws.
|
| It took us 20 years from General Magic to a passable iPhone.
|
| VR will take time, and AI is likely more fruitful to prioritize
| currently (not saying that's a bad idea!) - but we don't yet
| have enough historical perspective to declare VR - or even
| (ick) crypto - as bad directions.
| hackingforfun wrote:
| > It's been the same with crypto, for that matter. None of the
| reasonable people I know ever saw any grand value in crypto.
| Researching myself, it always just seemed to be a bullshit
| fractal.
|
| I consider myself to be a pretty reasonable person and I think
| the value in something like Bitcoin is as a backup or
| alternative to the traditional system. Similar to how someone
| would invest in gold. Except Bitcoin is much easier to
| transfer, requires much less space to store, etc., vs gold. I
| think 95% of crypto is bullshit though, and there are a lot of
| scams.
|
| If you look at recent bank collapses, high inflation, etc., I
| think a reasonable person might question how long modern
| monetary theory can go on like this. I'm not a gloom and doom
| person. I still hold fiat, haven't given up on banks, still
| invest in US treasuries, stocks, etc. But I think holding some
| in crypto and gold, etc., also makes sense.
| pavel_lishin wrote:
| I think this only holds if enough other people believe in
| gold or crypto as a backup system.
|
| If I had some extra zucchini and potatoes, and you were
| running very low on food, it would take quite a bit to
| convince me that a piece of shiny metal or numbers in a
| distributed ledger would be worth the calories I'm
| surrendering.
|
| Right now, dollars _would_ be worth it, because nearly
| everyone believes in their utility, despite being a very
| similar faith-based currency.
| wslh wrote:
| Not a Mark fan but the Meta Quest Pro and Oculus are great and
| innovative devices. The obvious flaw in Meta business execution
| is that there is no content there! If you bet on the Metaverse
| you should build it and not wait developers to come. Or
| incentivize developers to use your platform.
|
| From the business perspective I think they failed in playing
| the Japanese console game old strategy (Nintendo and Sony):
| work obsessively to have great and high quality content and
| synchronize this with the console launch. Not saying that
| Nintendo and Sony are not nightmares for producers but they are
| very obsessive about details.
| jeffwask wrote:
| I'm not sure if Metaverse was a bad idea so much as selling out
| everything else to go full steam on Metaverse was a bad idea.
| It felt like they sold out their core user base and destroyed
| their existing platforms to get there. They were simultaneously
| tanking their image and reputation with users while asking them
| to commit and invest in a new platform.
| vehemenz wrote:
| I agree, but I also think the marketing around the ideas
| wasn't good either. You need public mindshare to build an
| ecosystem like this, and a lot of the potential audience
| never understood the point of it. To this day, I have no idea
| what problem the Metaverse is supposed to solve.
| yufeng66 wrote:
| Initially, I didn't see much value in the metaverse due to the
| high barrier to entry for end users and the limited network
| effect. However, I am bullish now. With the advancement of
| technologies like GPT-4 and Stable Diffusion, there is
| potential for more interesting NPCs in the metaverse.
| Additionally, Virtual Reality (VR) could serve as a superior
| user interface for these technologies compared to text-based
| interfaces like chatGPT. This could enable the metaverse to
| scale without solely relying on the network effect, as engaging
| NPCs and VR experiences can provide value to users even in the
| early stages of development, and continue to evolve and expand
| as technology progresses.
| andsoitis wrote:
| Your thesis is:
|
| a) people didn't join metaverse because there's nobody else
| there
|
| b) generative AI like GPT and Stable Diffusion enable the
| creation of real-looking and real-sounding bots for a VR
| world
|
| c) metaverse is now interesting again because you're not
| there alone
|
| I don't know that a sparsely populated metaverse is _THE_
| reason to be skeptical about Meta 's metaverse.
| velp wrote:
| Also, this reads more like an argument for the usefulness
| of GPT-4 over the Metaverse
| discodave wrote:
| [flagged]
| soulofmischief wrote:
| This is a silly comment. Crypto has tons of amazing use cases
| which existed before the community got hijacked by grifters.
|
| The hilarious thing is how much these use cases will fold back
| into AI.... how else do you expect an autonomous agent to
| manage its finances? Or for a global autonomous economy to
| emerge?
|
| You should do yourself a service and read the original Bitcoin
| whitepaper. Learn about Ethereum. Learn about the drama and
| history surrounding the space; who the good guys and bad guys
| are. It's a really complex subject and I understand if you
| don't want to set aside the time to fully learn about it, but
| you do yourself a disservice by sharing an ignorant perspective
| of the space. At least have the courtesy in such case to
| recognize that your opinions are not fully informed.
| mmmmmbop wrote:
| > Crypto has tons of amazing use cases
|
| Really? Which ones?
| jayd16 wrote:
| It's pretty silly to compare metaverse to crypto. Crypto is a
| solution looking for a problem where as the metaverse exists in
| many forms today with the question being whether the tech and
| userbase can evolve fast enough to sustain Meta.
|
| They could both fail but I don't think you can predict one from
| the other.
| hoseja wrote:
| The crypto problem has an army and intelligence apparatus and
| ostensibly, legality. Some people may think it would be nice
| to not have to lose portions of your savings by indirect
| taxation whenever the problem decides to print money, plus of
| course the rest of the spectrum of wild authoritarian
| control.
| UncleOxidant wrote:
| You're right, crypto is a religion.
|
| > But now we see that crypto was indeed bullshit all along.
|
| The faithful have managed to get BTC up over $30K again,
| though. Saw Tim Bray posit the other day that if the US Gov
| just dumped all of it's BTC holdings (mostly seized from
| criminals) they could crash crypto quickly since the liquidity
| isn't there.
| TheCondor wrote:
| Where are self driving cars in your mind?
|
| Save for tax cheats (even though the laws are clear) and
| speculators, crypto just doesn't provide that much value. There
| are some neat use cases but they are just that.
|
| The "metaverse" stuff... I don't think it was a bad bet to buy
| up Occulus, they still haven't found a great nail for that
| hammer but pivoting the entire company seems questionable.
| There is so much toxicity on the internet, why would you want
| to be "immersed" in it?
|
| I'm not anti-generative AI, I don't want to sound that way but
| Zuck and company have some interesting data on large scale
| systems with giant amounts of data and information, they
| certainly have invested in it too. Maybe it's wasn't "luck" so
| much as they might have some intuitions about the negatives
| uses of the technology. It's seriously cool stuff but I think
| we're still collectively in the honey-moon period. I do
| forecast a world where we will need to exponentially strengthen
| our BS meters.
| maxk42 wrote:
| If the Metaverse was succh a great idea Secondlife would be
| much more successful.
| threeseed wrote:
| It's too easy / lazy to joke about Meta and their bet on a
| future AR/VR world.
|
| But what I don't see is people willing to do the same with
| Apple who has also invested billions in the space and will be
| showcasing their Reality platform in the next couple of months
| at WWDC.
|
| Do people really want to bet against the company that has had
| so many consumer product successes even ones for which there
| was widespread doubt e.g. Apple Watch, AirPods etc.
|
| And what if it takes off ? There will need to be another
| platform similar to iPhone/Android and isn't that the type of
| bet Meta should be making.
| bluepizza wrote:
| It is not easy/lazy to joke about something that has cost
| dozens of billions and has resulted in an empty Second Life
| where avatars have no legs.
| threeseed wrote:
| Meta has sold 20+ million Quest devices making it more
| popular than Xbox.
|
| And most of those billions have gone towards acquiring app
| developers, game studios and Meta Labs.
|
| They deserve a little more credit than building a Second
| Life clone.
| piva00 wrote:
| I don't see where these Quest devices have gone to
| though, who and where is the market? Because even though
| I run around the tech circles where people are eager to
| be early adopters, own multiple tech gadgets, etc. I
| still don't see a single home with a Quest device. I see
| multiple Xbox and Playstation devices but no Quest.
|
| How can that be more popular than Xbox? Where are those
| 20 million devices in use? Do people hide them?
| MikusR wrote:
| Since the iPhone release i have seen about 10 people with
| one. Wikipedia says Apple has sold more than 2.2 billion
| of them. Do people hide them?
| bluepizza wrote:
| Considering the context presented (the sampling of very
| tech forward people who really enjoy advanced gadgets),
| then OP's question makes a lot of sense.
|
| Your comparison is a bit weird. I have seen more than 10
| iPhones today, and all I did was walk to Starbucks and
| back.
| MikusR wrote:
| You live in a place that has many iPhone users
| piva00 wrote:
| Exactly my initial point: I live in a place where a
| gadget such as the Quest should be found quite easily,
| yet I haven't seen one.
| brookst wrote:
| As of 2021, Xbox installed base was 63 million units:
| https://www.tweaktown.com/news/89000/microsoft-gives-
| xbox-co...
| andsoitis wrote:
| But sales have been declining every year from 7.6m in
| 2017 to 0.35m in 2021:
| https://www.statista.com/statistics/1085604/annual-unit-
| sale...
|
| So it seems popularity is decreasing.
| [deleted]
| triceratops wrote:
| That's the Xbox One, which released in 2013. They
| released a new console in 2020 (Series X) which has sold
| 20m units in 3 years.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_best-
| selling_game_cons...
| bluepizza wrote:
| That comparison makes very little sense. Meta Quest is
| the best selling VR unit, maybe you should compare it
| with the best selling console? Nintendo Switch has sold
| more than a 100 million units. Not to mention that Xbox
| games also run on Windows - and that has a market reach
| way above 20 million decices.
|
| The same internal presentation that discusses this 20+
| million number also mentions huge problems in retention.
| People don't use their Quest very much nor very long.
|
| Overall usage numbers are abysmal, and it is a flop. One
| of the major reasons why it is a flop is that even the
| people who really want it and actually buy it don't
| really have anything interesting to use it for.
|
| Legless Second Life is a very good representative of the
| flop that the metaverse is.
|
| If the Meta pivot was going as fantastic as you say it
| is, Mark wouldn't be going ballistic on his own
| employees.
| [deleted]
| AlexandrB wrote:
| I think the Apple headset will be a (relative) disaster. I'm
| sure it will sell OK, but we're talking Apple TV numbers not
| iPhone numbers.
|
| What AR/VR needs is a mass market killer app, like Pokemon GO
| (in its heyday) or World of Warcraft or something. Not
| another headset. People will put up with all kinds of
| discomfort/inconvenience/cost if there's something
| interesting to _do_. The current crop of Metaverses don 't
| cut it in this regard.
| machiaweliczny wrote:
| I think market will be there it's just like 5 years from
| now and most people seem to know this such as Roblox and
| Epic (creative 2.0). It will be speed up by generative AI
| ghaff wrote:
| You certainly _can_ do somewhat useful AR on a phone. See
| e.g. some of the ML photo and sound identification tools
| (e.g. Merlin, Google Lens) that have very quietly gotten
| quite useful.
|
| But AR that is really a killer app almost certainly needs a
| fashionable, light, easy to use headset and that's a
| hardware problem to a significant degree that probably
| doesn't have a quick fix. Yes, you can do something that's
| effectively a prototype that's more like a "headset" but
| that's almost certainly not a mass market device that most
| people will walk around wearing.
|
| (There's also the social glasshole issue but my guess is
| that goes away with a useful enough device even if some
| people hate the idea.)
| crazygringo wrote:
| > _What AR /VR needs is a mass market killer app_
|
| I really think we're just waiting for the resolution to
| increase and it to become thinner and lighter and better at
| hand tracking.
|
| The Quest 2 is already a better experience watching 1080p
| surround-sound content than most people's TV's -- if you're
| watching by yourself. But streamers haven't quite caught
| onto that yet.
|
| But once the screen becomes sharp enough to do real work
| and hand tracking improves dramatically, I think we're
| going to start seeing some dramatic shifts.
| andsoitis wrote:
| > But what I don't see is people willing to do the same with
| Apple who has also invested billions in the space and will be
| showcasing their Reality platform in the next couple of
| months at WWDC.
|
| Nobody is criticizing because... there's nothing to base
| those criticisms on - there's no product (yet) and WWDC is
| rumor. Once (if) it launches, the praises and critiques will
| follow.
| ranger207 wrote:
| I think the Apple headset will be successful primarily
| because it's an Apple product. As a VR headset it'll probably
| be technically worse for higher prices than comparable non-
| Apple headsets (although it'll probably be better than
| competing AR headsets simply because there aren't any), the
| software will be top notch and it'll "just work", and most
| importantly devs will get excited about it and build apps for
| it.
| beauzero wrote:
| This. I have never been a fan of watches but after seeing
| the other 3 people in my house adopt and actively use, year
| over year, I believe they can produce and market about
| anything successfully even in crowded market. They truly
| are good/best at usability.
| duxup wrote:
| There was a story about the Metaverse and Carmak and some
| discussion and disagreement about issues like not being able to
| host stadium sized experiences (not all the avatars could be in
| the same room) and other topics like avatar quality in
| meetings.
|
| I couldn't help but think that I have zero interest in a
| stadium or any size meeting where I have to put a VR helmet
| on....
|
| I can imaging Zuck and Carmak and others would love that people
| listen to them in stadium sized meetings, but I'm not sure how
| users feel. I'm sure one day there will be such experiences,
| but there seems to be nothing appealing to many individuals
| about them now.
|
| God help me when some CEO declares a VR mandatory meeting...
|
| Metaverse seems like a top down driven thing.
| ted_bunny wrote:
| > bullshit fractal
|
| New one to me, love it. Synonymous with ideology, IMO -- keep
| zooming in, the answers are there, we promise! Those who zoom
| out are lost!
| amjnsx wrote:
| What made you decide crypto was bullshit all along? It has had
| quite a few booms as well as busts, and various scams and
| frauds for good measure.
|
| As far as I know the last bust wasn't much different to the
| ones that came before it.
| Veedrac wrote:
| I'm not a crypto advocate, but I don't understand on what basis
| people think crypto has been empirically disproven, at least
| separate from any disproof that wasn't ~equally true at its
| peak. It's not like Bitcoin has failed; it's down 2x from its
| recent spike, but it's up almost 10x from its Jan 2019 dip.
| Ethereum is more wounded but still expensive. Look on a log
| plot as is apt for these things, and it's hard to argue ruin
| here, especially given they've dipped before.
|
| I wouldn't be too shocked if crypto did peter out or flatline
| over the coming years, just it doesn't seem a priori obvious,
| given my broad criticisms of it have not stopped its success to
| date.
| mmmmmbop wrote:
| There was a time around 2020 I believe, where everyone and
| their mother was talking about crypto and the blockchain, and
| how it's going to be this big technological revolution. All
| kinds of private and public initiatives decided to include
| "the blockchain" in their projects, NFTs became huge, and
| there was talk of putting real estate, healthcare, and
| logistics "onto the blockchain".
|
| It's been three years since then, and still no real-world use
| case has emerged. I don't dispute that there are completely
| valid use cases for cryptocurrencies, mainly around avoiding
| governmental financial restrictions and safeguards, and there
| are still loads of people using cryptocurrencies for
| speculation and/or as a "store of value". But the whole
| ecosystem of distributed apps, smart contracts, DAOs, and so
| on, still mainly revolves around itself, without wider
| societal impact.
| 4ggr0 wrote:
| Maybe I'm in a minority with this argument - but just because
| something has a big market cap or a positive trend line, it
| doesn't automatically make it valid. (Bernie Madoff,
| Archegos, ...)
|
| Bitcoin has proven itself to be a useful financial
| speculation object.
| Veedrac wrote:
| Hence "empirically disproven, at least separate from any
| disproof that wasn't ~equally true at its peak" and not
| "discredited by argument from principles".
| koonsolo wrote:
| I never understood why Facebook didn't just wait it out for VR
| and bought a company once it seemed successful. Seems so much
| cheaper and less risky.
| machiaweliczny wrote:
| My understanding is that he pushes hard in hardware
| department to pivot into company like Apple because without
| owning hardware and OS he knows that FB days are numbered.
| Especially when privacy will take some steam in US
| machiaweliczny wrote:
| The other strategy might be going WeChat but that's still
| more risky and there is Twitter that will probably compete
| with that.
| ulfw wrote:
| That is exactly it. It's not the first time Zuckerberg went
| into that direction and failed.
|
| He tried the same with the mobile market (and was
| ridiculously late in the game with a not-much-
| differentiating offering, not unlike Amazon). I guess he
| didn't want to make that mistake again and tried to be
| early in VR, which seemed the 'next big thing' for him for
| some reason.
|
| https://www.lifewire.com/whatever-happened-to-the-
| facebook-p...
|
| He dabbled in crypto thing when that was all the hype.
| Didn't end any better. https://www.ft.com/content/a88fb591-
| 72d5-4b6b-bb5d-223adfb89...
| koonsolo wrote:
| No idea why you are getting downvoted. This indeed would
| explain why they want to do it themselves. No other startup
| can manage that scope.
| tltimeline2 wrote:
| Instead of trying to create some FB vertical, a better
| strategy would've been to let the growing VR community of
| those years keep stewing, while sticking to the hardware
| and core software side to keep the tech moving forward.
| We had amazing things happening for a time, and the
| oculus purchase has basically made VR cringe and killed
| pc vr at the same time.
| 1vuio0pswjnm7 wrote:
| "Contrast that with the generative AI models revolution. It's
| clear to anyone from day one how useful those models will be,
| and that they are providing clear value right away."
|
| https://www.nytimes.com/2021/07/16/technology/what-happened-...
| daitangio wrote:
| My same sentiment. Also NFT are not working like expected. And
| eBook have not destroyed (yet) the old-paper-made books...
| AJRF wrote:
| I think in a room with enough sycophants one could be made to
| believe in the vision of the Metaverse being the answer to
| Facebooks current problems;
|
| - Lack of relevance on the big blue site.
|
| - Huge slide in ad revenue.
|
| - Expensive acquisition of Oculus with not much revenue to show
| for it. $2bn is not a bet-the-company amount of money for
| Facebook, but it is something, and that $2bn spent on Oculus is
| op cost taken from somewhere else.
|
| - Reduction in moats for FB, Web shifted to mobile, FB tried
| bets on mobile + gaming, but those moats have receded.
|
| I imagine Mark wanted something that could increase ad spend,
| new revenue stream (increase revenue from micro transactions,
| digital asset ownership) and something to give them some
| platform strength to shore up their future.
|
| If you look around there is no other technology that is
| offering itself as a platform to own apart from the meta verse.
|
| Now, I absolutely do not think this bet will pay off - but I
| can see how he would think it would.
| AzzieElbab wrote:
| I can't read Zuckerberg's mind, but getting into in-house
| hardware would have freed FB from Apple.
| delecti wrote:
| I don't think the metaverse is such a bad idea, I just think
| we're not there yet, and also that Meta isn't a trusted or cool
| enough company to pull it off. VR now is like a 1995 laptop,
| and it needs to be an iPhone for the metaverse to happen. And
| probably more than that, it'll need to be AR before it could
| happen. It needs to be Google Glass, but what that can be 10
| years from now, and made by a company people like enough to
| generate FOMO.
| Fauntleroy wrote:
| Personally I think it's going to come from the gaming space,
| as they already know how to create virtual spaces people
| _want_ to be in. Either a really good MMO (World of Warcraft
| had people glued to _CRTS_ ) or something like Fortnite,
| where we already have celebrities doing "live concerts".
| dumpsterlid wrote:
| [dead]
| mattlondon wrote:
| I am not so sure about the generative models thing. Everyone is
| losing their shit about ChatGTP et al, yet I am sitting here
| saying yeah neat trick but I cannot trust _anything_ it
| generates since anything and everything can be 100% made up and
| totally inaccurate and outright _false_. It is neat technology,
| but ultimately it is like a dictionary where you have to
| double-check that it is telling you the correct spelling _every
| single time_ you look up a word - totally useless in other
| words: why bother using the dictionary at all if you then need
| to go check that the dictionary is right using some other
| source of truth? Why not just go straight to that and skip the
| dictionary in the first place since it is so untrustworthy.
|
| Every single time I've asked ChatGTP or Bard a "simple"
| question that I know the answer to, there has always (
| _always_!) been something simply outright wrong. It is just not
| ready to be trusted right now, but I look forward to the day
| when hallucinations are solved.
|
| Until we can be sure that LLMs do not hallucinate, I struggle
| to see the value to everyday-people for LLMs beyond use cases
| where accuracy and facts are unimportant. So ignore google-
| killing search engines, ignore medical diagnosis, ignore
| programming, ignore legal advice, and instead embrace making up
| stories or poems about unicorns or whatever where facts,
| accuracy, and correctness simply don't matter. It will still
| have a big impact sure, but I don't think it will be as world-
| changing as people think once the novelty wears off and people
| realise that LLMs are generally not very reliable when it comes
| to giving accurate info, and are better suited to "creative"
| tasks where correctness/accuracy doesn't matter. E.g. with
| stable diffusion (remember that?) no one expected a perfectly
| anatomically accurate picture of a dog or whatever - it did a
| passable picture of a dog eating a burrito or whatever the
| prompt asked for, but no one confused it with reality or
| treated it as _fact_. This is where I feel that we are with
| LLMs right now - passable, but does not hold up to detailed
| scrutiny.
|
| But obviously yes the metaverse is obviously total bullshit and
| facebook have totally jumped-the-shark on this. They're
| currently deep in restructuriung to undo over-hiring during the
| pandemic - it would not surprise me at all to see them also re-
| pivot away from the metaverse too (couching it as some sort of
| "focusing on efficiency" or whatever, i.e. continue working on
| FB, instagram and whatsapp core features)
| fwungy wrote:
| There are $7.5T worth of foreign exchange transactions per day.
| If BTC can take 1% of that it's currently worth $1.5M/btc. The
| rest of the crypto market shadows btc with other blockchains
| having niche uses.
|
| BTC/crypto is a natural alternative to USD settlement. If you
| believe the USD is sunsetting as the global reserve currency
| then crypto, especially btc is probably a good long term
| investment.
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