Month: May 2018

Google made big news at their developers conference with the introduction of a big AI initiative called Duplex

It feels like the response has fallen into two camps:

1. The ethical implications of this technology and has Google thought it through and do they have the DNA to consider all the unintended consequences.
2. This is a potential breakthrough in AI amd will usher in a new wave of innovation.

I guess I don’t share either sentiment.

I do believe Google will consider and address the ethical implications because they will either want to from the inside or will have to due to external pressure (ie regulatory or competitive alternate products).

But this product demo that created such a stir is a bit of a yawner for me from a user perspective. It reminds me of those apps that allow you to send a fax from a smartphone. It’s duct tape for old Infrastructure

Instead I would rather see Google use it’s financial and engineering might to get everyone online and connected in a decentralized way via API so office hours, reservations, communications arent addressed thru computers pretending to be humans.

But my real issue is this feels like vaporware to me. Time will tell if my Spidey sense is correct but right now I’m getting that this demo is just going to remain a demo for a long long time.

Lots of stuff happening with Spark portfolio companies over the last few weeks. 

Stack Overflow for Teams launches and available today

Discord teams up with Microsoft Xbox

CTRL-Labs (brain machine interface) hardware and SDK coming later this year

Investing in Rarebits

Oculus Go Cuts the VR Cord 

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*while Oculus is now owned by Facebook, I still consider them in the family :) 

Been thinking about my blog here on Tumblr since I posted about Kottke.org yesterday. 

I’ve been writing down words, sharing thoughts, music and photos for 11 years on this Tumblelog, powered by Tumblr. 

Tumblr ran independently for 7 years or so and then was acquired by Yahoo about 4 years ago. 

Yahoo was then acquired by AOL which is owned by Verizon. 

Verizon then combined AOL and Yahoo and called that newly combined entity Oath. 

I looked up the definition of the word oath:

It means a solemn promise

So what is that solemn promise Verizon is making to it’s customers. 

Are they making a promise to Tumblr and this community? 

I really hope it does but they recently sold Flickr to Smugmug which makes me feel like they aren’t investing in their current products and current customers. 

And it’s not a great sign when a CEO doesn’t use their own products*

So I don’t know what I’m going to do with this blog. I’ll let you know when I do. 

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*harsh but true.