Heat, Ronin and the Ocean's series are the trinity of heist movies. "For me the sun rises and sets with her, man."
For any Heat fans reading this comment, Michael Mann co-wrote a novel, Heat 2, that focuses on his character, and the entire time I was reading it I imagined it being Val the entire time. It's very good - a worthy follow-up.
And yet I'm left wondering why the investors had such a bad reaction to its launch? Early signs point to this being a technological marvel, and despite the price tag I think it'll have useful applications in businesses with deeper IT budgets. You won't give one to everyone on the floor, but there's likely a case to having a small set of these.
It reminds me of the "Neural SubNet" from Deus Ex.
If you are referring to the stock price, I'd guess there was a lot of run up anticipating an unknown great announcement. Once it was announced, the "fear of missing out premium" went away and the stock went down just a bit.
The other factor is probably the the high price made everyone realize Apple is really targeting devs and early adopters. They aren't ready to sell one of these to every person who owns an iphone...at least not yet. So regardless of how promising the technology is, they probably won't start making money from it until some point in the future.
This is the “Vision Pro”. I suspect they’ll come out with a lower priced “Vision” in the future that is missing some of the features but allows people to gain access to the product ecosystem.
Apple might also simply release this model Vision Pro as the Vision in a few years when they release the next Vision Pro generation, something like they’ve done in other product lines.
Because the Oculus Rift was demoed in 2012, and in the more than 10 years since then, there has been not even an ounce of indication of a mainstream adoption of anything VR or AR related. Actually, more than that, the last company that massively invested in it, with bottomless pockets, has nothing to show for it beside failure and looks ridicule.
It seems insane that CEOs of the world's biggest companies don't seem to understand the very simple fact that nobody wants to wear a fucking headset all day long.
Indeed. I bought a Valve Index and it's great. But other than Half-Life: Alyx there hasn't been any other AAA titles that target VR it's all Beat Sabre level niche games that are fun for a few goes then get old (for me at least).
As you allude to there is no killer app for VR after a decade. Maybe the "Apple factor" might bring some more devs and some fresh ideas but at the price point its at you're still at the "the market is too small" for most companies to ivents in.
It isn’t about wearing it all day long. It’ll have a set of applications, just like the the phone and tablet and laptop have sets of applications, with some overlap.
The difference here from Meta is that Apple isn’t selling a dystopian future where we all spend our time in a meta verse with a “fucking headset all day long” - they are explicitly showing it as in use for certain applications as part of - rather than replacing - reality.
There is a really compelling use case for VR that is under-exploited due to low resolution and heat output of various non-apple headsets:
Driving video games.
Driving in VR is 1000% times better than on a 2D screen, you can actually judge breaking distances, and you feel like you're actually going through the corner.
I don't know about the absolute numbers but my general sense is that the market for harder core flying and driving and other simulators has actually declined at least as a proportion of the absolute market in the past 10 to 20 years.
Adoption sometimes takes that long, we just always forget the predecessors to the devices that made it big (eg the worldwide success of mobile phones was not overnight, and was limited to business people and the rich at first).
There's nothing especially valuable about a technological marvel. Applications matter. Applications people pay for, or can be served ads alongside. That market is untested.
Everything about this seems an in-home thing. Certainly the announcement didn't suggest otherwise--including Disney's presence.
So more VR than AR? Not walking around with magic fashionable glasses that tell you things? I can imagine interesting aspects of AR but I'm not sure this gets to the starting line. (Other than maybe a developer platform)
I think the pitch is in-home and in-office (eventually this will be the same thing for more people). People might use it on a flight or commute but I don’t see the key pitch being anything like walking the street getting AR map directions etc.
From the flight/commuting perspective it seems very appealing because it lacks the ergonomic issues of other devices, but the battery life is a bit of an issue.
Power bricks are pretty cheap and easy to carry. And many flights have USB charging plugs. I reckon they'll have more or larger power bricks as an up-sell.
On my first trip to most antique Corinth, someone noticed the fine Casio timepiece from my last (Reagan-era -- ca. AUC 2750s, I think -- or do I reckon now from the founding of Christ?) trip. When the watch was seen to "move", I explained the function of the band by analogy to a water clock (a clay vessel with a small aperture near the bottom to let water drain) and compared the water to the (non-visible) battery inside the Casio. I even went into elaborate explanation about the special symbols for numbers which mark the hour and how they are distinct from the symbols for making sounds for speech (e.g. "sure, '1' is rather like 'alpha'...").
Sadly, it was a very clever Greek to whom I explained all this. Slightly irritating were the questions about why it was on my wrist in the first place -- something something WWI. But my heart sank during the debrief when I came to really understand the time-travel problems which were exploited to near extinction by ancient sci-fi authors.
Happily, those (extremely antique) courts found it so much more cost-effective to cut off an advocate when the water drained from a clay vessel than to invest the wealth of the city-state into the production of a -- dare I say 'Byzantine' -- contraption wrought of too much brass and requiring too many servants to operate?
I guess the real lesson here is that while everyone has been conditioned to be distrustful of the Greeks, my personal experience has been that they are pretty solid folk.
But worth noting, in an era of higher inflation and stock buybacks, that probably the relevant metric for investor happiness is real enterprise value (that is, discount market cap by net cash, then adjust for inflation).
By that measure they’re pretty far from the pandemic peak.
Investors look at business potential and might not understand or want to bet on this market yet, it’s very much untested and unproven. If you want to know if it’s any good, likely better to look at tech publications.
I think the demo looked too simple most viewers saw the demo as no big deal. The demo for me was the hand tracking. The labor that went into the product is not reflected in the demo.
Sorta unrelated but I wanted to join in on everyone reflecting on their athletic careers:
I worked at a mid-tier consulting firm as my first job and had an incredible work-life balance. I ran 3-4 times a week and cycled twice a week. I got into triathlons and even completed a 24hr obstacle race challenge where you had to complete a 11km course with ~40 obstacles as many times as possible in 24 hours. I completed it 8 times. I was fit.
A few years later I moved into a top-tier consulting firm and my work-life balance evaporated. (I also picked up a girlfriend along the way.) I'm lucky to get one gym session and one run in a week. I participate in probably only 1 or 2 races a year (instead of the usual 5-7 before I joined). I'm miserable. I only realised in the last few months how important training and being fit is to my identity and that even being successful in a "prestigious" consulting firm is an insufficient salve for the wound. Especially since my "peak" probably lies somewhere in my mid-30s, which are only a few years away for me, I really want to pick up where I left off. I can't wait to find another job now and find that part of myself again.
Nothing is preventing you from finding a new job. Life is not an axis, where doing one thing necessarily takes away from another. Rather it is a polygon, with a number of points equal to the factors important to your existence.
Exactly same here (6-7 hard workouts per week - running, free weights, climbing, weekends spent on long hikes, ski touring etc), but evaporation of workout was mainly due to covid and WFH, and becoming parent (that's a proper black hole for any free time, even if you are unemployed). Also 2 pretty bad injuries last year (wrist and ankle). It got me pretty depressed and I am not yet out of woods completely.
If you find these kind of passions in life, corporate work world is just necessary evil distraction to get money to actually live and do what you want. Which I am fine with, but around me I see very few people with similar passions in their lives.
One dangerous thing I noticed - with diminishing number of trainings, my mindset also changed a bit. Getting motivation for workouts got harder, motivation to push myself a bit is lower. I actually could find more time if I tried harder. At least it goes both ways - increasing frequency brings it back, which is great now since I can run outside in the forest and it gets dark later.
My French language classes, typically held in person after work, moved to online and over Zoom. Initially, we tried Google Meet and found it laggy and that we would often drop out. Then we moved to Zoom and it has been a much better experience. The interface is more intuitive, has a few more features and somehow the quality has improved and the connection is much smoother. I care deeply about my privacy, but I'm lucky that we don't discuss anything sensitive in our classes such that the security issues and the lack of encryption would become a big deal.
We're a Gsuite shop, so we've been using Meet since before WFH.
It's fine, not great, but the connection seems stable and we have not experienced issues with conferences. Zoom is all that plus much more intuitive and easier to use. The entire Zoom experience is great from start to finish, built in background replacement is a really big draw along with the full tile layout (Meet got tiles two weeks ago).
I would also say that Discord video has been great too. It's only downside is that you can only be in a session on one device. That is an extremely annoying limitation as I prefer to be mobile on my phone headset and present or stream on the computer.
Exactly what we've found with our GSuite and Google Meet. Works fine with 8-12 people on a call. Useable by technically adept people, but we've had to talk clients through the interface sometimes. (From today- client: "How do I share my screen" me: "click the [share screen] text in the bottom right" client: "Oh, yeah. Of course.")
(If you want background replacement enough, OBS and VirtualCam lets you do it... I did it for a gag the other week to put myself inside a Russian nuclear powerplant control room for standup. It's not something I'd recommend telling anybody who's then gonna ask you to help them set it up though...)
I don't understand this though. I use both Google Meet and Zoom. On both platforms there are people who don't know how to use basic features labeled by buttons with descriptive text, and I don't even blame them because in a meeting when everyone's listening to you it's easy to have "brain farts" like this. On Zoom there's even the additional issue of "joining computer audio" even. I think this has more to do with people's personalities (perhaps triggering a form of stage fright) than the software.
Thanks for giving this overview! Are you using the web version or the Zoom app?
(I suspect many people on HN are using the web version because Zoom pushes their app aggressively and in an abusive way, which immediately makes the more paranoid among us decide that they don't want it. And I've heard that the installed version is great while the web version is not.)
Last time I tried, the web version of Zoom required you to create an account (even when using Chromium and the trick of canceling the download twice to make it show the web version link). The app, on the other hand, does not require creating an account.
Thats true and the only annoyance I have with Zoom is that its bad for screen sharing. To much of jitter and its terrible for sharing code screens. Microsoft Teams is much better most likely cause its P2P I guess.
I wrote the UI and my friend did the backend. One key point for me personally is doing privacy right. No identifiable data in logs etc. Tricky cause there will always be an element of "trust us".
Next weekend I hope to implement the experimental e2ee feature in WebRTC. Only for chrome so far, but maybe it'll take off for all browsers.
A few years ago, back when uBlock Origin was just uBlock, gorhill (it's sole developer at the time) entrusted the uBlock development to what was supposed to be a community effort. Instead a single developer took over and essentially did nothing with the extension except place donation links to himself in the extension and on the website.
It didn't take long until gorhill himself noticed and decided to pick development back up - under the new name of uBlock Origin. To this date uBlock has barely seen any development while uBlock Origin is actively maintained.
Will.i.am's failures and eccentricity (for example https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Prv5q84-Ebg) are far more well known than his successes. I'm surprised he was able to raise so much money.
Interesting. Does anyone here actually use the dial, or know someone that does? Otherwise, it doesn't look like a compelling upgrade to my Surface Book (1) though. Even though I paid an arm a leg for it, I've grown to love it over time. Glad they are providing both 13" and 15" options though.
The one on my MBP 2014 is definitely superior, but I don't mind it. Gets the job done, and I found it precise enough to work on corporate presentations, a place where neurotic detail reigns.
Though HB says: "We will stay the same", I'm sure practically everyone knows that that won't be the case. IGN, the go-to place to get sponsored reviews of AAA games.
For any Heat fans reading this comment, Michael Mann co-wrote a novel, Heat 2, that focuses on his character, and the entire time I was reading it I imagined it being Val the entire time. It's very good - a worthy follow-up.