Meta is evolving in interesting ways. The Oculus Rift line was huge for modelling artists and designers who worked with engineers (the ones I knew anyway). Now they revived Threads but interestingly it's marketed as "Threads by Instagram", because Facebook as a brands is somewhat tarnished, and Meta is a punchline, but Instagram is still popular and well-liked.
My prediction for the Metaverse is, and I'm just another idiot on the internet, that they're trying to make it into a play AND work platform, where people might do online meetings in VR, spend online money with Metacoin to buy real world stuff, then also spend leisure time playing in the Metaverse.
The way Amazon have consumers who are also products (and sometimes also Amazon workers), the vision for Meta might be that one day people could live their whole lives on the Metaverse and be this worker/consumer/product in one fell swoop. I wouldn't want that, but I can see how this might be their line of thinking.
Now they're researching a time machine to try to create a conundrum where Musk simultaneously buys Twitter, runs it to the ground, but then in the past re-buys it from himself after he runs it to the ground.
Sitting in a shitty room and not being able to go outside is torture enough for most. Remember how we all went a bit wonky in the head during lockdown? Like that, but for a lifetime.
Old fashioned as I am, in my head Facebook is still an online forum/social network/social gaming site like MySpace, Orkut, Friendster and that ilk. And Google is a search engine. But you're right. Of course they're new media.
Here's my veeery slight pushback, Youtube doesn't seem to be that profitable for Alphabet and Facebook is pushing the Metaverse because they think they might need a turn left and start selling hard products (like VR headsets) to keep engagement. Media is tough business.
I think you're both on the same side of things but had a comm glitch on the word "fresh". You think of fresh as being totally unprocessed, Wols think of fresh as being minimally processed (I believe they count whole grains, legumes, and dried vegetables as fresh)
But they're dried grapes and mostly without added sugar. We shouldn't need to live in a world where raisins are sold "now with less sugar". Humans spent hundreds of years cultivating eating grapes to be as sweet as they are...
More of a social democrat actually, although of course any purism of philosophy in economy is naive and can hardly be translated into the real world. Mind you, I'm not an economist, I just take part in it as a producer and consumer. I was just reading Adair Turner's articles on how financial growth might in fact take rent on the real economy rather than deliver economic value, what is called "unproductive financialization", I think you might be interested in reading around this idea.
I'm also against the military dictatorship installed by the United States anywhere outside of the United States, but we're talking about China and right now we're going into whataboutism territory and I'm going to disengage. Have a nice day!
You say libs, but I'm not a liberal. I'm very pro regulations, what Lemmy would say "a leftist".
But, you see, I also believe in democracy. It's slow, but it's a noble idea where citizens are able to decide who governs over the country, and have a say in policy shaping. I personally like being able to vote and go on protests. If the people of Taiwan want to vote, let them vote. It's their lives.
Batteries, energy, computer vision, deep learning, and crash safety. I'm most excited about better and better virtual human body models reflecting actual human sizes (male, female, adult, children, obese, average sized...) being released for testing, instead of the old default-male crash dummy.
Having said all that, I only use my car on holidays. I bike to work and prefer to take long distance trains for work related trips. So, yeah, fuck cars and fuck ever expanding roads. Streets are for humans, not for cars and parking.
My mother was a journalist, her heyday was in the 80s-early 00s, she covered the Israeli-Palestinian conflict as well as the wars in the former Yugoslavia. We had a long phone call last weekend where we ended up talking about Twitter, the online service that changed journalism. I explained to her that the current owner put a foot in his mouth and was forced to buy it at a higher price than the initial valuation while grumbling that it was not turning profit, she guffawed at this. She said, "When has the media ever made profit??"
The only difference between old media and new online media is that online media also sell user data to make more revenue (along with old time subscription models and selling ad spaces), and even with this they're still not making profit.
Older companies are not stifling innovation the way you think they're doing, in fact, I think there are fascinating research being done these days. As for the fact that their CEOs are not on Twitter, isn't that a good thing? Would you want the CEO of a company to tweet something idiotic at 4 in the morning, wreaking havoc on stock prices and driving the company into firefighting mode, detracting energy from other parts of work?
I don't disagree with you that old-world car companies have corrupt practices, but this is not why Tesla is so popular. Tesla is popular because they make luxury cars that feel fun and because Elon used to be so ebullient and good at PR.
As for Tesla being better, how? The company is just as corrupt and their R&D into self driving cars is a bit behind competitors
No, I don't mind you asking. When it comes to talking about race relations in Europe and systemic racism against black people in the US, especially in the US she's of the view that Obama became president = racism solved, this she relates to how many Uyghur people are "actually in power", like black people in the US. I still see a systemic problem.
Another one is when we talk about Taiwan. I'm of the view that a country is made up of land, people, and government, and the people should have a say in who governs them. She thinks Taiwan (and Hongkong) belongs to China because it has always historically belonged to China. Thing is, we both live and work in Germany, but I don't think she knows which parts of Europe used to historically belong to this or that other kingdom that are now divided into different countries.
The Sam Vimes' Theory of Socio-Economic Unfairness! Can we be friends? XD