Feeding the [A.I.] Beast 🧠🤖
Google launched a lot of new home devices📻, services, and smartphones last week📱, thus their data trove is becoming larger and more diverse, but to what end?
Google’s Launch Night In event last week was a breath of fresh air, not lastly because it was a 30-minute affair in a world where we’ve grown accustomed to keynotes going for more than two hours. But there were some interesting products showcased as well, here are the ones that stood out to me…
Google TV is definitely not a physical television product, but an aggregator for other services, in the same vein that YouTube TV was in the past. I said in the past that with the recent deluge of new subscription services launching over the past year, consumers getting back into pirated content would be a real possibility since those sources are good at gathering content from multiple places in one outlet. YouTube TV and now Google TV are Alphabet’s solutions to countering this trend before it even begins and a good one at that.
The issue with deploying this kind of service worldwide is that it requires deals with local media companies in each market and scaling has historically proven difficult. Owning Android, an operating system already used by a lot of these companies to distribute their content, might help Google on-board this trove of scattered companies but it’s definitely not a given and there’s no telling on what cable companies will do to stand in the way of progress once again.
The new Chromecast, now with a Google Assistant-enabled remote, is up for grabs in exchange for $49 and it definitely has Google TV on it. A while ago Alphabet saw the power Apple wields over its consumers and the market by owning both software and the hardware it runs on so they decided to start making their own devices, from smartphones that run Android to smart speakers that include their voice assistant and Chromecast devices that keep an eye on what people watch on TV.
This latest device integrates all that Google has to offer and gives the company yet another data stream they can gather insight from in order to predict what ads we’ll respond best to. If you were a company that’s developing a Westworld-Season-3-level-of-AI that can look into everyone’s lives and can anticipate your next move, the key ingredient for such a system to work is not only big data but diverse data. Gathering diverse data is done by spreading these data gatherers in as many places as possible and Google is safely on its way to data gatherer ubiquity in all of our lives.
Google’s Nest Audio is better than its smart speaker predecessor in almost every way when it comes to audio quality but it’s an incremental step, nothing disruptive. The reason why it made this list is the new price point, at $99 Google transformed this smart speaker from an enthusiast’s purchase into new house/Christmas gift material. I’ve spoken on Google’s new industrial design language every since Ivy Ross took over the home division and I’ll just say this now: it continues to be fantastically good and the entire line continues on the recycling trend.
The Pixel phones were just what you’d expect from the series, decent hardware at prices that are more affordable than the competition and with smartphones today displaying features that well exceed the needs of the majority of consumers, this is a good strategy until the end days when the entire market gets disrupted. As always, Google is betting on software to sell their phones, features like HDR+, NightSight Portrait Light are made possible by the company’s never-ending investments in AI, and with hardware slowly reaching a limit when it comes to miniaturization, software is already proving to be the thing to invest in going forward.
5G support is cool, but still early in most countries. Stadia made a short appearance but it was more of a check-in meant to keep people from forgetting about the service.
Moore’s Law is out —has been for a while— but Huang’s Law of AI is in for the next age of computing. Named after Nvidia’s co-founder, it states that silicon chips that power artificial intelligence double their performance every two years and it looks like a good landmark to keep an eye on in the future for a glimpse into the pace of development of the technology. The name keeps the trend of the initial law, I like it 🤖
The judge in the trial of Apple vs. Epic Games decided that the case should go to a jury trial slated for July next year, but the companies themselves agreed it be solved by a judge. Apple even requested their countersuit of Epic follow the same route. And, I mean, can you blame ‘em? The legal equivalent of Apple’s antiquated 30% tax is the jury by ‘a trial of your peers’, both companies know this and neither of them wants to be judged by the old lady who hasn’t gone outside in a decade and can’t spell ‘AppStore’👵
After raising $150M in February, Roblox is looking at going public next year at a valuation of $8B! For some context, Unity IPOed at a valuation just under $14B a few weeks ago. If anyone needed confirmation that Roblox is a content-creating platform product more aking to game development engines and not just a game, this is it. The level of accessibility of creating an experience in Roblox compared to the industry-standard engines like UE4 and Unity is miles apart, the former requires a few days/weeks of research while the latter take years to get to a decent enough level. If Roblox can figure out a way of adding tools that allow developers more freedom in creating their vision without making the toolset overly complex, they’ll have a contender on their hand 🏗️
Here’s a newsflash: Working conditions in the gaming industry are inhumane. After committing to stop their usual business of overworking people in an interview earlier this year, the leaders of CD Project Red are going back on that word in order to ship the project in time, regardless of the human cost. As I’ve said on previous occasions, situations where developers abuse workers arise from two main sources, inexperienced developers wanting to put a big name in their CV and, perhaps more importantly, from consumers encouraging these companies to take advantage of these people by purchasing their products despite being aware of the problems. If you care to make a difference, feel free to skip Cyberpunk 2077 when it comes out 👎🎮
SNAP claims that 1 million people registered to vote through their system until now, more than half of which are voting for the first time and over 80% of them are under 30 years old. It’s tough to say whether social media platforms are feeling some retroactive guilt about the result four years ago or whether they’re looking out for their own good in the long term. My money is on the latter🗳️🗳️🗳️🗳️🗳️🗳
A *very* close look at the PS5 hardware from Japanse website 4gamer this week🎮🎮
Apple is laying the groundwork for upcoming AR tech in a lot of different places..
Pirates, dragons, anime-level hair, Jackie and Arnold himself…how can this ever be bad?🐉
The Witches look pretty real to me and the movie well suited for a light night in 💃💃
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