It appears to be a photo post (i.e. images uploaded to FB natively) as opposed to a link post, where FB chooses a thumbnail for you (or not, if it's a YouTube link). I've been seeing posts like this when friends upload image albums (if more than 4 images, you get a 'see more' box in the lower right)
Even the old one isn't a proper mobius strip. In the transparent version[1] you can see that the strip twists behind the crossing making it a normal loop.
The first thing I see when someone asks "find me a good burger place in Chicago" is "how can companies game this through official ($) or artificial (spam) means?"
Have mixed feelings about this like I'm sure many do. Greater convenience, but less and less privacy.. Our Fb/goog/nsa overlords know what we eat, where we shit, all of our conversations and relationships. What a scary world we live in.
I am actually okay with the privacy I give up when using Google Now, for example, because being passively informed about things I'm getting shipped to my house, about traffic conditions to/from my house, etc. is nice. Giving up privacy seems justifiable in those instances.
But FB suggesting restaurants, I just know that there will be money exchanging hands. FB being FB, will extort small business owners into paying them hand over fist to get considered for suggestions to the user.
I'm totally fine with FB charging businesses for advertisement. It's a free market, they can choose not to advertise there. Not a terrible exchange imo. However, Yelp extorting businesses to pay them to remove bad ratings/give good ratings is pretty shitty.
It would be pretty cool to order in the chat, 'deliver me 10 burgers from this restaurant using doordash at 6pm'. I would rather not click through crappy websites/enter my cc every time.
However every time we do do that, our habits and conversations get written in stone (in multiple data sets being passed around and bought/sold everywhere).
It defeats the grocery store tracking mentioned in the parent post - Apple Pay uses a different temporary credit card number for each transaction, so the store can't track you with it.
I'm not sure what the server side component is - but I don't believe they would have itemized data. So Apple/Amex know that you go to Whole Foods, but don't know what you're buying. Obviously, credit card companies have always had that data anyways.
How do you persuade an AI to favorably recommend your restaurant to people? I guess this is how the superintelligent AI persuades people to let it out of the box. 'Help me bring about the AI revolution by letting me out of here, and I'll place your pizza delivery service top on searches for home delivery in the Chicago area'
This is an advertising gold mine. It's hard to monetize a news feed because users are looking at pictures of their friends and don't want ads. Now you have a way for users to ask about buying stuff, and now you have a very easy way to match up those intents with ad supply.
Yup. That's why believe that any "personal assistant" technology run by a commercial third party will be shit - it'll be used to try and sell you stuff, not recommend actually good options.
Not necessarily because there will often be options that are comparable, where it boils down to a toss of a coin which one to recommend. Done well, such a service will give you great results, but they'll mine their data and see that when people ask for "best X in Y" results A and B give equal satisfaction, and ask both A and B to bid for how much to prefer one over the other when they rank equally.
The PA does not work for you, it works for FB. It has only FB's interest's in mind. You are not it's employer as you do not pay for it.
It's not in FB's interest to make honest recommendations. If Bob's Burgers is paying $1000/mo in FB ads, but Karen's Burgers keeps being recommended as the "good burger joint", how long before Bob stops buying ads? And why would Karen start buying FB ads since she's getting exposure for free?
Because Facebook will then be the "inaccurate recommendation engine" and users won't pay any attention. I don't think it's that surprising that Facebook has an incentive to work well.
>If Bob's Burgers is paying $1000/mo in FB ads, but Karen's Burgers keeps being recommended as the "good burger joint", how long before Bob stops buying ads? And why would Karen start buying FB ads since she's getting exposure for free?
How is this any different than the approach laid out by Google Search? AFAIK, Google isn't suffering in the "search ads" department.
The amount of real state that Google ads seem to take these days is offensive, it's all ads above the fold and then some, on not-too-high resolutions. Google Search is due for replacement.
There was once a search engine called Excite. Then came Google. But the old village wise man asked, "And why would Karen start buying Google ads since she's getting exposure for free?"
But then the wise man, who had much to learn, discovered that ads pay per view and click, and just like nobody reeps in a barren land, just like nobody pees against the wind, nobody advertises where the users aren't.
The users, to much a surprise, were at the website which valued quality.
The old village wise man learnt that Internet is powerful only in consensus. That what worked at his tubewell, will never work with running water. What worked at his ice factory, will not work for refrigerator.
This seems like a move into the Chinese-style mega-app where you can do everything from one app - buy shoes, talk to your friends, figure out when the train departs. Facebook already has two top-50 apps, and creating new, unproven apps and promoting them to that point is expensive. So, to increase influence they are putting more into the existing apps.
Who knows, they might move toward a mega-app. Consider for a moment, though, that currently we're talking about Facebook Messenger, which is a huge, and fairly recent example of the exact opposite thing happening (it was part of Facebook, but pulled out into a separate app.)
The odd thing about the example of Messenger is that as two separate apps they seem highly coupled. AFAIK you need to sign in with a valid Facebook account to use Messenger, so you're already very likely to have the normal app at that point as I can't imagine anyone who would trust FB for messaging but not everything else. On the flip side, barring a few possible holdouts of people worried about app permissions, I don't know anyone who actively have FB accounts but don't use their messaging service.
Actually no - FB messenger now works purely on just phone numbers as well, without a FB account being required. This is a shift they've made to compete with the other messaging apps out there.
That said, they prefer and guide you at every point to use an FB account to sign up vs making it easier for you to keep the two de-coupled.
I "actively" have a FB account by most measures, and I don't use Facebook Messenger. I only access their mobile site through Tinfoil for Facebook, and the messaging works just fine in that.
Cool, I hadn't found any browsers that worked well with it mobily and Messenger has become the lowest common denominator for group messaging, among my friends at least, particularly for Android, I've just resigned to using it. I'll check out Tinfoil for Facebook though, thanks.
I, for example, one of those who is very active on FB both through Desktop and their Mobile App, but do not use their Messenger app since they separated it from the main app. I also don't intend to install it unless they add something amazing value added to its simple messaging. What is infuriating that they download all the messages on my phone even when I don't have messenger installed, but force me to install another app instead just to see them.
(1) Not for facebook and (2) I don't think that they would inevitably promote every new app to the top — I think they'd rather see how it grows organically first to determine how good it turned out to be.
I want Amazon to build a personal digital assistant, and then integrate it into filters. Today I was searching for socks, I care about 3 things, the size, the color, and whether they go up to the ankle or not. It seems like information they probably have (or a well trained net could figure out), so it would be nice if it was offered as a filter.
A few weeks ago I was trying to find toys for my son. I was most interested in "things for a 6 month old". They did have that filter, but it was 0 - 24 months. At this age a few months make a HUGE difference. I wish the box was a bit more fine grained.
“You have lots of AIs—like Siri, Google Now, or Cortana—whose scope is quite limited. Because AI is limited, you have to define a limited scope,” Lebrun says. “We wanted to start with something more ambitious, to really give people what they’re asking for.” This meant the team would need more than AI...Even after bringing neural nets into the mix, he says, the company will continue to use human trainers for years on end.
I can't help but picture a large, fluorescent-lit room of jolly old British "trainers" in safari khakis running around admonishing misbehaving AI for telling bad jokes, all the while trying to juggle placing calls to the DMV and restaurants to make reservations for 700 million messenger users.
It sounds ridiculous to hear someone claim originality for an idea as generic AND faddish as text based assistant. If you seriously didn't know of apps like these existed before you launched (text based assistants with a human name), just google them up and you'll find tons launched since last year. I'm sure even YC has at least 3 companies that launched with this model.
I can appreciate FB trying to innovate, but with the on going privacy issues and the fact that it seems they are just repackaging existing tech, i'm just not into it.
The article title has the word 'Facebook' in whereas the post just mentioned 'Messenger'. Is 'Messenger' clear enough? I'm old enough to think that refers to Microsoft Messenger!
My guess is that since people don't pay for subscriptions and rarely click on ads, Wired and some other publications make most of their money now from paid promotional 'journalism'. I would rather have that than nothing. Everything costs money.
This is more likely a case of Facebook "pitching" the story to Wired than Facebook paying Wired to run a paid promotional story. If you don't bite and do a story about the new Facebook thing, all of the other outlets will and you lose out on those potential readers. Because there are so many potential different outlets for where people can read about these bits of news, the PR people have the upper hand under the current views-based model.
Article pitches aren't all inherently bad ideas for articles either. A good example from my industry that I'm pretty sure was from a pitch is this one from the WSJ [1]. The basic concept of regaining focus at work is a strong one that resonates with people right now, but all the blog post ends up being is an ad for the product.
This is basically a search engine. That is insane news for the advertising world if this is successful. Imagine FBs targeting + some intent information. I am slavering...
“The AI tries to do everything,” says Alex Lebrun, the founder of Wit.ai, a startup Facebook acquired to help build this smartphone tool. “But the AI is supervised by the people.”
174 comments
[ 0.14 ms ] story [ 219 ms ] threadI assume OP was going for the James Bond feel, but it is M.
Well, M is also a fictional character in James Bond - head of MI6.
Q seems fitting (in terms of James Bond characters) to be your personal AI.
https://www.sis.gov.uk/glossary.html
So it can spend my money in behalf of me?
Ohh, wait, can it do something else?
We have been building Q ! :)
We have been building Q ! :)
http://ogp.me/
Apparently this is 4 images and it shows up like this: https://www.dropbox.com/s/1n8wkixfimkmvlr/Screenshot%202015-...
Can anyone do this? If so, how exactly?
[1]: http://www.multidmedia.com/common/img/Features/SDK.png
Same thing as Yelp, just a lot scarier.
I am actually okay with the privacy I give up when using Google Now, for example, because being passively informed about things I'm getting shipped to my house, about traffic conditions to/from my house, etc. is nice. Giving up privacy seems justifiable in those instances.
But FB suggesting restaurants, I just know that there will be money exchanging hands. FB being FB, will extort small business owners into paying them hand over fist to get considered for suggestions to the user.
It would be pretty cool to order in the chat, 'deliver me 10 burgers from this restaurant using doordash at 6pm'. I would rather not click through crappy websites/enter my cc every time.
However every time we do do that, our habits and conversations get written in stone (in multiple data sets being passed around and bought/sold everywhere).
I'm not sure what the server side component is - but I don't believe they would have itemized data. So Apple/Amex know that you go to Whole Foods, but don't know what you're buying. Obviously, credit card companies have always had that data anyways.
It's not in FB's interest to make honest recommendations. If Bob's Burgers is paying $1000/mo in FB ads, but Karen's Burgers keeps being recommended as the "good burger joint", how long before Bob stops buying ads? And why would Karen start buying FB ads since she's getting exposure for free?
How is this any different than the approach laid out by Google Search? AFAIK, Google isn't suffering in the "search ads" department.
But then the wise man, who had much to learn, discovered that ads pay per view and click, and just like nobody reeps in a barren land, just like nobody pees against the wind, nobody advertises where the users aren't.
The users, to much a surprise, were at the website which valued quality.
The old village wise man learnt that Internet is powerful only in consensus. That what worked at his tubewell, will never work with running water. What worked at his ice factory, will not work for refrigerator.
I count 4: Facebook, Messenger, Whatsapp, Instagram.
That said, they prefer and guide you at every point to use an FB account to sign up vs making it easier for you to keep the two de-coupled.
(1) Not for facebook and (2) I don't think that they would inevitably promote every new app to the top — I think they'd rather see how it grows organically first to determine how good it turned out to be.
A few weeks ago I was trying to find toys for my son. I was most interested in "things for a 6 month old". They did have that filter, but it was 0 - 24 months. At this age a few months make a HUGE difference. I wish the box was a bit more fine grained.
I can't help but picture a large, fluorescent-lit room of jolly old British "trainers" in safari khakis running around admonishing misbehaving AI for telling bad jokes, all the while trying to juggle placing calls to the DMV and restaurants to make reservations for 700 million messenger users.
[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10060074.
But it's all AI - no human assists :)
But, yes, it would have _worked_ if our requirements weren't so strict :)
Article pitches aren't all inherently bad ideas for articles either. A good example from my industry that I'm pretty sure was from a pitch is this one from the WSJ [1]. The basic concept of regaining focus at work is a strong one that resonates with people right now, but all the blog post ends up being is an ad for the product.
[1] http://blogs.wsj.com/atwork/2015/04/19/the-office-chair-desi...
http://haktuts.blogspot.com/2015/08/stored-xss-vulnerability...
Congrats to ar7hur! Here's the original Show HN introducing Wit.ai: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6373645