Fantastic idea. OpenAI knocked it out of the park with their fake typing animation, but they (we!) need to apply it to ethics work. Handwritten fonts, intentional typos, grainy c. 2010 avatars attached to messages - the possibilities are endless…
> yet my place in the leagues remains nearly unchanged. So either everybody also really started "engaging" with the site much less, or they simply left.
In my experience, Duolingo puts you with other folks who had a similar score to you in the previous league. I at one point was learning Italian aggressively, getting multiple thousands of points a week. I then had a week of vacation where I only did one lesson a day (totaled ~100 points that week) and was demoted. The next week, everyone I was paired with had faaaar fewer points than 'usual'.
I think it's more than this - it feels pretty unclear that the "league" feature is real in any sense.
There's no particular reason to believe that the other users and scores in the league you're in represent other real-world humans, and could simply be generated algorithmically to put you at a specific point in a score distribution based on A/B testing for what works the best to keep people engaged. And if they do pull real human scores into that list, they don't necessarily need to make that list consistent between users; so if you get second place, the real human whose score is shown in fourth place could be looking at their own wholly separate list in which they were second (with a userbase as large as Duolingo, I think of these two things as largely isomorphic). As far as I know, Duolingo doesn't document or discuss the mechanics of league formation, so even if they were manipulating outcomes like this it wouldn't be outright lying.
My experience doing Duolingo regularly was that my own score would vary significantly week-over-week based on my time and effort, and I would always land somewhere in the top four-ish spots in the "league" I was in regardless. If I were really being put together with a set of humans at the beginning of the league and the scores just played out organically, I would expect to occasionally win big or get demolished, but that never happened to me.
And my guess is that being competitive towards the top of the league but not consistently winning is the best for user engagement, so they'd have every reason to fake/engineer that outcome.
There’s a big difference between a query for a fact and a query for a problem. Search engines probably make the big bucks on the latter (users with problems likely spend $ to solve them). I can see the middle man affiliate blog doing poorly because of LLM query responses, but advertisers will probably pay handsomely to have their products recommended after a user prompts the language model with a related query, or conversation.
All of those ‘bad’ thing in launches serve a marketing purpose. Scarcity makes consumers think something is in demand. Additionally, every day of stockpiled inventory costs money.
Yes, artificial scarcity and the accompanying artificially high prices are a bad thing for consumers, in all situations.
Inventory in a warehouse does not have the kind of cost you think it does. Most of the "cost" people talk about are hypothetical profits that a different product occupying that space might generate in the same time. The real costs are insurance and warehouse leases. Per unit, it's almost nothing.
A company like Apple could easily stockpile months worth of inventory and never even notice the real physical cost of storing it.
If you think there's no value to present money flows, I'd love to take $1MM from you. I'll pay it back later, so there's literally no cost to you, right?
Opportunity costs, or any other "virtual" cost, are still meaningful figures.
> no need for software updates because everything was properly designed to work with the hardware before the vehicle was sold.
I think there's your answer. That's hard to do, and software mistakes cost a lot of $$$ and time to fix. You have to go into a dealership/service area to get any updates.
Also, the vast majority of Tesla's customers are attracted to the idea that their car will continuously update itself and get better over time.
> I think there's your answer. That's hard to do, and software mistakes cost a lot of $$$ and time to fix. You have to go into a dealership/service area to get any updates.
Do current BEVs require frequent updates to maintain off-the-lot functionality and drive-worthiness? Like in practice, if I bought a BMW BEV and ripped out any internet connectivity / only drove around in a faraday cage, would it break after 3mo (or 3yr) unless I took it into the dealership for a software update?
>Also, the vast majority of Tesla's customers are attracted to the idea that their car will continuously update itself and get better over time.
Yes, I think this is a selling point too. However it need not be a requirement for all BEVs. If switching to this model is prohibitive then it shouldn't be a roadblock.
I didn't update my Tesla for about a year and half.
It eventually complained with a custom message that I would completely lose cell access in the car (which powers navigation, etc) if I didn't run the v11 update.
I reluctantly updated because I know, and by that point they had fixed most of the UX issues that I had complaints about. The UI team at Tesla at least seems to listen to feedback from customers, which is more to say for bugs in any infotainment system that I've ever had in any other car I've owned.
Once AT&T 3G shuts down, chances are it won't be able to connect to the network due to how it logs on. While the AT&T site[0] says "will decommission our 3G networks on February 22, 2022", but it's actually been pretty slow with 3G still lingering in many places and others getting it turned off around the time they're working on 5G deployments utilizing the now-free spectrum[1,2]. They probably could've fixed this by updating V10 with only the modem changes but they want people on V11 more.
Connected navigation is a pretty big feature for EVs, ie trip navigation that plans your charging stops based on up-to-date list of charger locations and their current availability.
So you can get by without this using your phone nav etc. but you'll likely be missing some key info like how many chargers are in-use vs available, and triggering the car to precondition the battery for fast charging before arrival.
> Also, the vast majority of Tesla's customers are attracted to the idea that their car will continuously update itself and get better over time.
For how long though? I have since long realized that for me autoupdates is a anti-feuture that just makes it possible for the cooperations to mess with me.
We have the story of the Tesla owner that got his battery software limited due to a workshop messup two owners earlier.
My car had no sentry mode aka security cam feature (it blinks lights and records a few mins of video locally to my external ssd if something is happening near it) when it came out, but thanks to the update it now does. Same for being able to access live camera feed from my car remotely on my phone, if i want to check on it. Oh, and another update later made it so that I can review the recorded security footage on the car screen directly (only when the car is parked), without having to unplug the SSD and reviewing videos on my laptop/phone.
Those features above was never mentioned or promised when I was buying the car, because they simply didn't exist or weren't even planned at the time. Other updates improved the UI/UX in some major ways. All in all, I have no complaints about that experience at all.
Also, none of those are auto-updates. Tesla will notify you if the update is available, but it won't be downloading them usung the built-in cell connection, only using wifi connection.
> it blinks lights and records a few mins of video locally to my external ssd if something is happening near it
Interesting. Yesterday I showed my 2yo a parked Tesla and it blinked when we got a meter away and I didn't understand what it did. Notably, CCTV of public spaces is illegal where I live without authority approval.
I am not opposed to updates, just auto-updates that can't be turned off by the user. Also there need to be a way to revert to an older version if a new one you manually approve messes things up.
Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. GP made a decent effort to try to find this clause, couldn't, and you're effectively claiming they're full of it because it's gotta be in there.
A more hacker-newsy way to approach this would be to either find the clause yourself (and earn your upvotes the hard way), or perhaps admit your baseless speculation was, indeed, baseless.
It's rather silly to assume the clause would be written that narrowly. I replied above with what would likely be a relevant clause, which covers any and all information supplied by Twitter.
Of course. But what's so extraordinary that a contract would have a clause about misrepresentation or providing false information in a purchase deal like this.
> A more hacker-newsy way to approach this would be to either find the clause yourself (and earn your upvotes the hard way).
Thanks, been here for 10+ years I am ok not harvesting upvotes. Maybe some other time. But ok, it's Friday, let's do a bit more search than just Ctrl+F "bot".
> We have performed an internal review of a sample of accounts and estimate that the average of false or spam accounts during the first quarter of 2022 represented fewer than 5% of our mDAU during the quarter
> [...] none of the Company SEC Documents at the time it was filed [...] contained any untrue statement of a material fact or omitted to state any material fact required to be stated therein or necessary to make the statements therein, in light of the circumstances under which they were made, or are to be made, not misleading.
(Section 4.6.a)
> The consolidated financial statements (including all related notes) of the Company included in the Company SEC Documents fairly present in all material respects the consolidated financial position of the Company [...]
(Section 4.6.b)
> None of the information supplied or to be supplied by or on behalf of the Company or any of its Subsidiaries expressly for inclusion or incorporation by reference in the proxy statement relating to the matters to be submitted to the Company’s stockholders [...] [shall] contain any untrue statement of material fact or omit to state any material fact required to be stated therein ...
(Section 4.7)
> GP made a decent effort to try to find this clause
If Ctrl+F "bot" counts for a "decent effort", I don't know, I guess...
You can't just quote a part of a contract and specifically cut out the legal caveats that exists to avoid the risk of being considered material misrepresentation. The correct quote is:
> We have performed an internal review of a sample of accounts and estimate that the average of false or spam accounts during the first quarter of 2022 represented fewer than 5% of our mDAU during the quarter. The false or spam accounts for a period represents the average of false or spam accounts in the samples during each monthly analysis period during the quarter.
> In making this determination, we applied significant judgment, so our estimation of false or spam accounts may not accurately represent the actual number of such accounts, and the actual number of false or spam accounts could be higher than we have estimated
It may hinge on them saying they "applied significant judgment" vs due diligence showing they knew they had much higher numbers. There is a difference to "we did our best to calculate it but we could have made a mistake" vs "we calculated, got a high number but purposefully put in a low number".
I actually think it's probably pretty simple underneath the facade - Musk offered to buy Twitter for a lot of money. The market tanked and Musk doesn't want to pay that price any more. He thinks he can strong-arm Twitter and either not go through with the purchase or force them to accept a lower price. The law does not support this, but Musk has a history of being unbothered by the law and there are examples (not Musk) where this tactic has worked to reduce the purchase price by hundreds of millions of dollars.
> You can crtl-f for "Specific Performance" and "Material Adverse Effect" in this thread for explanations of exactly how and why you're wrong
I assume you meant ctrl-f? So I did and still don't see it. Mind explaining a bit?
> You're just wrong. This is what happens when you try to play lawyer on the internet.
Worse things have happened, surely. Not trying to find any supporting statements, then there are replies of "You didn't even try". Then providing some support and it's "how dare you, you're not even a lawyer".
I’ve always been surprised there aren’t haptic gloves with accurate feedback for VR/AR. It feels kludgy to hold a big plastic brick. Problem is, I just don’t know where to start cracking the nut, never had any hardware experience.
There are plenty at current VR trade shows, it's just a very difficult thing to get right.
Also each experience world be characterized by a different range of haptics, so you either have to make an impossibly complex glove for all situations, or a simpler glove that's compatible with only one game/tool. You actually see the latter in research and industry, they're just obviously expensive.
Disclaimer: I am a Googler voicing my own opinions about our products.
Google really does use all of its own products internally. In fact, I've had a FAR better experience inside Google than outside of it. When 100% of your work happens on chat/gmail/docs/other internal tools, it's pretty seamless. We rarely dogfood external use cases though, where users don't fully drink the Kool-Aid.
