caligarn

I wonder if the same thing is happening in chess.

I think what’s impressive here is their approach to “Teach Mode”, which essentially teaches the average consumer how machine learning works. I think that’s already a much better approach than Humane Ai and provides a better path long term for where this could go. This approach of a Large Action Model that can control any of your apps by watching you use them is a unique implementation for a hardware device. The hardware isn’t super impressive but the approach has staying power. It’s always way less invasive than Humane AI pin, it’s deliberate usage.

They put a lot of money into a town that might sink or flood into a swamp.

Better link for remarkable discord server: https://discord.com/invite/qEnCVcd

Wow. Love this game.

If Waze had taken the FB deal tho, it would have been a stock deal, and it would have been worth 2-3x more than the Google cash deal.

Why don’t they just restrict it in China and not restrict it for people outside of China?

OpenAI also does this with DallE, fyi.

The Verge doesn’t have an Information sub?

I’m surprised people are still talking so much about a platform that has been so slow to update. Is the engineering team still working on the product?

Just in time to compete with Freeform?

China was never an imperial force like European colonists, but it always saw itself as the “Middle Kingdom” and the most important civilization on earth. It may be a different paradigm but the right to power or hegemony is still embedded in the culture and ethos.

DouYin’s algo is heavily monitored and manipulated by the state.

The twitter account mentioned here appears to be based in New York and is from western media. Her bias seems to be obvious? How can she have a legit read on what Chinese locals are seeing on television, social media, and media?

Multiple people on this thread saying that Chinese people do see these protests and that it is all over state media. I’d welcome the data and evidence for that.

I see a lot of enthusiasm for these protests, but I think the caveat here is that we in the west get to see these protests, footage, and headlines, but truth is the majority of Chinese people do not see this. I think the biggest problem for people in China is access to information like this.

The Chinese government refuses to deploy non-Chinese vaccines. The concern has been that the Chinese vaccine is harmful or ineffective with the elders, so not having lockdowns causes a surge in the elderly being hospitalized or dying.

Does remarkable2 have Bluetooth though, that's really what I am looking for. I want to be able to pair this with a keyboard and stop staring at my laptop.

Is Paul unfamiliar with what makes good academic writing? He starts by digging into academic writing, but I am not sure he knows how it functions and what it functions to do. Good and great academic writing pushes the envelope on theories and frameworks and tends to be the repository for new ideas that people like Paul use to make sense of the world. A case in point is Clayton Christensen. It's in the forges of his profession and writing practice that his Innovator's Dilemma was born. Academic writing may not be accessible and easy to read for outsiders, and tends towards a high degree of density. But that's the task of journalists, business people, educators, and essayists etc. to translate and apply it to the real world.

A journalist originally noticed the dog and reported on him, thus capturing the imagination of the citizens of Tokyo.

Makes sense. Google needs access to our wrists and Fitbit is widely used and a cheap company, relatively speaking. That means they've got the Home, Nest, Fitbit, Phone, Computer, Car...all wrapped up. Now I wonder when are they going to buy a drone company. Oh wait, they did that already with Titan Aerospace and Boston Dynamics (even though the latter is gone). Anyhow, with this all lined up, it sounds like the Google 2020 announcements for 2025 will have watches.

When is someone going to come up with a tactile touchscreen, with buttons that indent or protrude out of a flat touchscreen, depending on audio or tactile usage.

They’ve been around for a long time but the Valley historically doesn’t pay attention to non-Valley players until they reach Valley shores. Softbank, after all, was one of the only very early investors in Alibaba. Alibaba wasn’t even on the Valley’s radar until they IPO’ed. Californian tech folks can’t help but see only within a 100-mile radius.

I’m pretty shocked no one in this thread gives credit to China. Kim Jong Un did travel to Beijing in an armored car and met with Xi Jinping. China has also been levying sanctions and restricting tourist travel etc into the country. China is quite annoyed at what Korea is doing to threaten its Belt Road plans. And with the Korean conflict potentially over, China has free reign to dominate Asia, and push up against Japan. No doubt Trump likely pushed things to a head with his Twitter diplomacy but an extremely globally ambitious China has to play a role in this as well.

Putting the beauty and power of going to the movie theater aside, I think what is most powerful about Netflix, and something they learned from HBO, is how to give the directors/writers/producers more autonomy over their work. This is something TV execs have failed to do again and again. I think the problem is this does not translate to cinema. Films are a much more tight medium where spreading your wings and entertaining a multitude of ideas fudges the thrust of the narrative. With TV, we are willing to entertain long arches of story that wind and weave without a clear endpoint or direction. Let’s take Game of Thrones, for example, it’s rarely quite clear what is going to happen. We do have the specter of the Khaleesi and the white walkers arriving on the shores of Westeros, but throughout you have an overarching theme of uncertainty with any and all of the characters. Cinema would not allow this kind of uncertainty. And that’s exactly one of the reasons why superhero movies do so well. They have a clear and crisp narrative that we go to the cinema to satisfy. Being nuanced in film is much harder because in film you also have to be blunt. In film, you must pay more close attention to the heroes journey. In TV, you can hack and toy with it.

This is why I think Netflix thrives in TV shows but flounders in cinema. Cinema requires tight thinking and TV requires open thinking. Netflix, by its business model and Silicon Valley culture, is inherently an open culture. They are willing to entertain and support the ideas of creators. Now, you might argue, hey look at A24, they allow their creators a lot of space and still pull off great cinema like Ex Machina and Moonlight. I think Netflix hasn’t quite made it there yet but is inching towards it with movies like Annihilation. Annihilation also tries to do too much but it is succinct as compared to Bright. That’s A24’s strength it picks and guides its creators towards succinct storylines that, in the end, are powerful.

I think the best example of the above points is how weak Netflix superhero shows are overall compared to its big hits like Stranger Things and House of Cards. With superhero stories, they are inherently tight: the hero must win. There isn’t much room for subtlety and so these shows tend not to catch on. It doesn’t play to Netflix’s open-ended storytelling strengths (and granted their production value is usually B level). Whereas with Stranger Things, the open-ended nature of the story keeps the viewer entranced.

Unless Netflix hires some people who understand these fundamental issues at its top levels, it will be hard for them to really innovate on cinema. IMHO.

Having said that, Asians are the least of the discriminated against of all the non-Caucasian races.

My sense would be they are just implying that HN is overwhelmingly white, which wouldn’t be surprising.

Seems like a situation where Harvard is damned if it does and damned if it doesn’t.

I wouldn't be surprised if this results in more investments outside of Silicon Valley, in new rising American cities and countries in Asia mainly and some in South America, Europe, and Africa.

I'm praying the money ended up under one of my couch pillows.