2k20, what's the worst enormous tech company?

yea I remember that commercial where that lady is like "ooOoooOOOoh you think VR is just for gamer nerds??" which cuts to her getting an intense VR workout and I always think who fucking wants to do that. workouts may feel good but one thing they are not is "fun". and they never will be!!! sorry!!!!!

also who wants to move around that much when you don't know where you are in the room? cmon Suzie

Hey blu-ray is way better than dvd don’t mix that up with all this other useless stuff

the thing about the metaverse via headset is that kids these days are always multitasking. how do I get on Discord while also in the metaverse? do I walk up to a computer in the metaverse to check on the chat?

to return to the thread caek linked, lmao

Google Glass actually had *two* fatal flaws:

- It didn't really do anything very useful.
- You looked stupid while wearing it.

The culture in the Google Glass team grew to completely ignore these flaws, too. 7/n

— Warren Craddock (@warren_craddock) October 10, 2022

strong "oh my god, he say it!" vibes here

it's a great thread! what a fascinating career!

mh otm about multitasking

i’m pretty sure horizons actually does have a thing where you can look at a virtual “tablet” that does remote desktop to your actual laptop so that you can rudely answer emails even during your VR meeting but come on, the pure faff of it

My outsider view is that the whole Meta rebranding is simply to make Facebook look like it is capable of innovation and VR can be sold to market analysts as the Next Big Thing, and proposed as evidence that FB can continue to expand its revenues into the future. Whatever comes of it, if anything useful, won't look much like what we are now being told it will look like, which is just silly and needlessly cumbersome.

C'mon, if Brainstorm is any indication, the headsets are gonna seem like Viewmasters in a couple years, when they start mainlining content directly into THE MIND:

https://prod-images.tcm.com/Master-Profile-Images/brainstorm1983.69568.jpg

wtf that Twitter thread. Yeah, build a culture where you can say to your boss, hey how about canceling this junk and firing us? Notice the protagonist never dared suggest this. Because who would?!

I'd never seen the Google Glass spread in Vogue. That really didn't help matters.

In the Future, we will all be Christopher Walken

Hey blu-ray is way better than dvd don’t mix that up with all this other useless stuff

I agree blu ray rules, but think it's a fair example of something people didn't want regardless. At the time I think the general reaction was "well fuck I already have all these movies on DVD, now you want me to rebuy them?". Turned out what ppl actually wanted was no physical media at all and, instead of that, streaming services that give you access to like five movies made before 1990 and The Big Bang Theory.

crazy remembering the HD-DVD vs BluRay beef

what was it, just 8 or 9 years ago? and i'm now getting UHD content streamed to me in 4K

https://kotaku.com/zuckerberg-facebook-meta-legs-feet-video-vr-staged-fake-1849656315

it's fun to imagine the heady early days of internet and the abstraction of social communication, away from in-person speaking and gesturing, away from penmanship or typed letters and sealed envelopes and mailboxes, and toward the near-instant transfer of data, a name or a class or a field standing in for the visual information. abstraction. and then, snap forward to the present and we are desperately trying to add some legs onto shitty cartoon avatars

oh shit, meant that for wherever we're making fun of virtual facebook

or is that here

truly onethreadin today, sheesh

the thing about the metaverse via headset is that kids these days are always multitasking. how do I get on Discord while also in the metaverse? do I walk up to a computer in the metaverse to check on the chat?

― mh, Thursday, October 13, 2022 3:39 PM (yesterday) bookmarkflaglink

this is a really good point, I think this stuff fundamentally misunderstands the way the world has changed the last 10+ years

for me the event that really drove home how fast things were changing was when Michael Jackson died. it felt as though everyone on the planet knew about it like 15 minutes after his heart stopped. there was no period of "holy shit did you hear?", we all just knew, because we're checking social media constantly. if anything that pace would only accelerate today.

obviously there are still a ton of jobs where you can't just be on your phone all the time but the stuff Meta is trying to replace (enhance? what the fuck exactly are they trying to do?) is mostly conferencing/collaborations/hangouts or whatever, situations where now (thanks to Covid) people are used to being online while doing work. you know, I reboot my server, I go post on ILX or check Twitter, or maybe while some meeting is going on that doesn't concern me I'm doing something else. it's amusing to me that even on days where we can have in-person meetings people don't like to do them, because then you have to SIT and LISTEN, as opposed to just working through them like we all do now. and, as most companies are starting to realize, that if anything is making us more efficient. so who is going to want to use this?

tbf any meeting that you're just working through you shouldn't be at, that's a management failure and no amount of tech is going to be able to fix that

I dunno for me it usually means I'm easily distractible in meetings I should be paying attention to...

yeah though tbf you're seated at the greatest distraction machine ever built. maybe Meta meetings will be enforced. no multitasking during my important rant!

plus think of all the bs data analytics you can run with a device that covers your employees' entire heads

Phrenology comeback

the thing about the metaverse via headset is that kids these days are always multitasking. how do I get on Discord while also in the metaverse? do I walk up to a computer in the metaverse to check on the chat?

great point but solvable. in fact it should be better than real life, because in the metaverse you can pretend to be making eye contact with someone while actually looking at an invisible Discord window.

SAN FRANCISCO (KRON) — Salesforce, the largest private employer in San Francisco, is laying off hundreds of employees and joining a string of major Bay Area tech companies cutting their workforces.

The Big Down-Turn is coming fast & hard - not sure if it's just a cyclical contraction or if this is like the whaling industry

The whaling industry at least gave us a pretty good novel.

I for one don't want to pay for anything, or see any ads

Haven't used an oil lamp in years.

definitely eager to hear what Japan's scientific whaling uncovers about these fierce leviathans of the deep

i'd prefer not to

Smart Move, Google

For as long as I can remember, maps.google.com was the defacto domain for Google Maps. Also for as long as I can remember, I allowed this domain to use the location services of my browser.

Yesterday I was asked to allow the usage of location services for Google Maps seemingly out of nowhere. Of course I accepted. After all, I just wanted to check a route to a local business and I was in a hurry. Back home I opened Google Maps again, and noticed that maps.google.com now redirects to google.com/maps. This implies that the permissions I give to Google Maps now apply to all of Googles services hosted under this domain. So far I only identified Google Flights to have made the same switch (google.com/flights), though I'm sure they're just beginning to transfer their services to the main google.com domain.

Congratulations, you now have permission to geo-track me across all of your services.

Smart move, Google.

congratulations to the tories!

As a parent, and based on recent experience, fucking Roblox

my nephew is absolutely addicted. so i've seen him play it a million times, and also read the stuff about manipulating kids into becoming employees. is there anything new to be horrified at with roblox or is it mainly that? the internet, arguably, is bad

The boy's basically learned how to code through Roblox.

I'm not saying that's a great thing, but it's better than what I got from Sega Genesis.

I don't know how common a problem it is or if they've made improvements with this, but I've definitely heard of predators on roblox

YouTube Will Stop Removing Videos Pushing Lies About the 2020 U.S. Presidential Election https://t.co/AUcJ5lfGvN

— Variety (@Variety) June 2, 2023

It's cool to see the entire world slowly shifting towards 'but what if we just stopped giving a fuck about anything?' as an overarching ethos. The structure of society will regulate itself independent of the behavior of its constituents, nbd.

I just wanna see Deep Purple videos from 1971, not this garbage

Google’s return-to-office crackdown reportedly includes a $99 hotel for workers

The tech giant is offering a $99-a-night “Summer Special” deal for an on-campus hotel to “make it easier for Googlers to transition to the hybrid workplace,” according to CNBC, which viewed promotional materials and internal forums. Employees must pay out of their own pockets for the special, which is open until Sept. 30, the outlet found.

The offer comes as the YouTube and Android owner cracks down on remote work by more strictly enforcing its three-day-a-week policy. The Wall Street Journal reported in June that Google told employees office attendance records would start to figure into performance reviews.

I'd figure the answer is ALL OF THEM at this point.

Good, I want people to stop moving here while still making their coastal salaries.

Well this pretty fucted. Humans suck.

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2023/aug/02/ai-chatbot-training-human-toll-content-moderator-meta-openai

https://erinkissane.com/meta-in-myanmar-part-i-the-setup

ignoring repeated credible warnings that your product is enabling genocide - pretty bad i would say.

they pay very well though.

https://www.cnn.com/2024/01/11/business/ebay-cyberstalking-settlement/index.html

Seems like a slap on the wrist, though the lawsuit from the targeted couple is still pending.

Should have been more, but:

the $3 million settlement, announced Thursday, is the statutory maximum fine for eBay’s charges