6 ms·

Stock price aside, I am not sure how facebook is cool to me. It is a complete blank. Google is doing exciting and important things like building self-driving A

by kiba 14y ago

Stock price aside, I am not sure how facebook is cool to me. It is a complete blank. Google is doing exciting and important things like building self-driving AI, google glasses, google fiber and android. However, I don't really consider Google + by itself, "cool".

rayiner 14y ago
I don't know if it's cool to you, but it's been amazing for me. My family is from Bangladesh, I grew up in DC, went to college in Atlanta and grad school in Chicago. I have family in Australia, Canada, and Germany. Facebook lets me see the cute pictures my aunt posts of my baby cousins in Australia, and easily share Romney gaffes with my college friends in Atlanta. It's way cooler for me than, say, a self-driving car (I live in the city and have no need for one).
- chunkyslink 14y ago
  Well the things you describe as good about Facebook could be replaced with say email or Google Plus and you would still get to do all those things. Google are doing a lot of things that can't be replaced with competing services. What would you replace self-driving AI, google glasses and google fiber with? I think Google are in a different league altogether than Facebook which is just a glorified noticeboard.
  - _pius 14y ago
    Well the things you describe as good about Facebook could be replaced with say Email or Google Plus and you would still get to do all those things .... Facebook is just a glorified noticeboard. What would you replace self-driving AI, google glasses and google fiber with? Taxis, AR iPhone apps, and DSL? Ridiculous, yes, but no more so than saying Facebook could just be replaced by e-mail. Heck, you could even claim that e-mail itself is "just a glorified noticeboard" or a fancy version of the Postal Service. You can glibly disparage nearly any innovation this way if you want.
    - optymizer 14y ago
      are you seriously saying a photo-sharing site is at the same level of innovation as a driverless car? EHLO!
      - _pius 14y ago
        No. I am saying that Facebook is nothing to sneeze at. It it were so easy to invent Facebook, you would've invented Facebook.
        samstave 14y ago
        >if it were so easy to invent Facebook, you would've invented Facebook. The only problem I have with a comment like this is that there were millions of factors and pieces to the puzzle of creating Facebook, that this is a ridiculous over simplification of how it came to be. Luck, timing, market condition, state of competition etc... Zuck is the luckiest person alive to have been in the place he was when he was - its not like he simply invented everything required to make Facebook from zilch. Friendster and MySpace verified the market, zuck had a great twist on that and a million other thing fell into place. Not to say it was simple and non-trivial, but that comment just has way too much bravado and ego and is just plain stupid. He did a great job, but there is nobody else who should be using that line in any other context.
        sigkill 14y ago
        I see that you've read this. http://www.amazon.com/The-Drunkards-Walk-Randomness-Rules/dp/0375424040 http://www.amazon.com/The-Drunkards-Walk-Randomness-Rules/dp... It's not rare for people to attribute success only to them self and failure to market conditions.
        wutbrodo 14y ago
        You don't need to have read that book to know what should be obvious to anyone given more than a second of thought.
- jseliger 14y ago
  It's way cooler for me than, say, a self-driving car (I live in the city and have no need for one). To be fair, a self-driving taxi may revolutionize urban life by making short taxi trips FAR less expensive and at least moderately more convenient. If self-driving cars become commonplace, city life should also be safer for pedestrians and cyclists.
  - obituary_latte 14y ago
    Not to mention reduced carbon emissions if all said cars were, say, electric. I kept thinking of _The Fifth Element_ while reading your comment. Except instead of flying cars, HOV lanes packed tightly together carrying thousands of passengers traveling safely at 90 MPH. Saving emissions, being efficient. I can see it happening.
  - jarek 14y ago
    I don't really think "revolutionize" is the right word to use here. Lots of people live urban lives while interacting with taxis twice a year, on their birthday and on NYE or similar occasions. Free energy forever might revolutionize things. Cheaper and easier to find taxis will be a small improvement.
    - takluyver 14y ago
      I think you miss the point of 'revolutionising'. It's not about making a couple of trips a year a bit cheaper. It's revolutionary if taxis become cheap enough that lots of people stop owning their own car. Or even if two car families become one car families.
      - jarek 14y ago
        By that measure carsharing and decent transit is revolutionizing urban life today.
      - rprasad 14y ago
        People already do that by moving into the city, esp. NY, SF, and CHI. (People moving to LA buy more cars...) Taxis are disproportionately located in cities because that is where they make the most money (largest customer base). Making taxi rides cheaper would cut into their earnings, and would result in a corresponding loss of taxis until profit margins are restored.
- Jaigus 14y ago
  I think the UI is cool but sending pictures around doesn't sound "amazing" to me. Besides the fact that you could have still traded pictures via the web without Facebook, a self-driving car AI is on the fringe and can be applied to society in some pretty cool (at least to me) ways that can still make your life easier even though you live in the city.(better trains for one) Maybe I'm just starting to get old, and the idea of certain elements from all those cheesy movies about the future I watched as a young kid coming true just isn't as "cool" as it used to be.
- hyperbovine 14y ago
  I think the point is that dozens of other tools online let you do those things. Name somebody else making a serious go at autocars, AR glasses or cheap fiber.
  - taligent 14y ago
    Please. You act as though Google is doing something revolutionary. It isn't. Everyone from universities to BMW and Mercedes are working on self driving cars, Google Glasses aren't AR and better attempts have been made previously and as for cheap fibre well countless countries have in reality what Google is just talking about. In many respects Google is like Apple - taking existing ideas and making them more polished.
    - drgath 14y ago
      "Revolutionary" is such a subjective term. Very, very few ideas are actually novel. In fact, dreaming them up is usually easier than pulling them off, so give Apple & Google some credit. While they aren't inventing the future from scratch, they certainly deserve credit for bringing the future into the present. Multi-touch interfaces and tablets have been around for years and the ideas for them even longer (see: Star Trek), but no one has been able to figure out how to successfully pull it off and popularize it. Apple did. Automated cars have been the future since the Jetsons, and we're going to see it become a reality in the next decade, thanks to Google. We've been talking about "digital libraries" and having the world's knowledge at your fingertips for the last 100 years. Wikipedia figured that one out. The future is (mostly) already laid out, the roads just need to be paved to get everyone there. That is what Apple & Google are doing, along with some others. Edit: Just realized we actually used to have (dumb) automated cars. They were called horses.
    - ANH 14y ago
      Perhaps what the parent was getting at is that other companies seem more risk averse. Google isn't afraid to fail in public. I can't remember the last truly exciting thing I heard about from BMW or Mercedes that was being tested in the real marketplace. Rear facing cameras in the bumper? A car that parallel parks itself? A 650 BHP V12? I throw your "please" back at you.
mahyarm 14y ago
Facebook is cool like email, SMS & IM is 'cool'. It's a relatively simple, but foundational piece of software.
- Jaigus 14y ago
  Yes, that type of "cool". Facebook the idea is also pretty cool, but to me, the "coolness" of an AI operated vehicle is simply on another order of magnitude.
untog 14y ago
Does cool matter? For a start, everyone has different definitions of cool- I assure you that plenty of people do not think that Google Glasses are cool, they think they're a nerdy toy. Luckily, us HNers are nerdier than average... But Facebook isn't cool, no. It's too established now, in the same way that Gmail isn't cool. However, they're both indispensable services for huge, huge numbers of people.
franzus 14y ago
Cool or not cool is not the question. The problem is that FB feels like some shady scam to me. It's all about extracting personal information and make you click on pixel cows.

by kiba 14y ago

rayiner 14y ago

I don't know if it's cool to you, but it's been amazing for me. My family is from Bangladesh, I grew up in DC, went to college in Atlanta and grad school in Chicago. I have family in Australia, Canada, and Germany. Facebook lets me see the cute pictures my aunt posts of my baby cousins in Australia, and easily share Romney gaffes with my college friends in Atlanta. It's way cooler for me than, say, a self-driving car (I live in the city and have no need for one).

chunkyslink 14y ago
Well the things you describe as good about Facebook could be replaced with say email or Google Plus and you would still get to do all those things. Google are doing a lot of things that can't be replaced with competing services. What would you replace self-driving AI, google glasses and google fiber with? I think Google are in a different league altogether than Facebook which is just a glorified noticeboard.
- _pius 14y ago
  Well the things you describe as good about Facebook could be replaced with say Email or Google Plus and you would still get to do all those things .... Facebook is just a glorified noticeboard. What would you replace self-driving AI, google glasses and google fiber with? Taxis, AR iPhone apps, and DSL? Ridiculous, yes, but no more so than saying Facebook could just be replaced by e-mail. Heck, you could even claim that e-mail itself is "just a glorified noticeboard" or a fancy version of the Postal Service. You can glibly disparage nearly any innovation this way if you want.
  - optymizer 14y ago
    are you seriously saying a photo-sharing site is at the same level of innovation as a driverless car? EHLO!
    - _pius 14y ago
      No. I am saying that Facebook is nothing to sneeze at. It it were so easy to invent Facebook, you would've invented Facebook.
      - samstave 14y ago
        >if it were so easy to invent Facebook, you would've invented Facebook. The only problem I have with a comment like this is that there were millions of factors and pieces to the puzzle of creating Facebook, that this is a ridiculous over simplification of how it came to be. Luck, timing, market condition, state of competition etc... Zuck is the luckiest person alive to have been in the place he was when he was - its not like he simply invented everything required to make Facebook from zilch. Friendster and MySpace verified the market, zuck had a great twist on that and a million other thing fell into place. Not to say it was simple and non-trivial, but that comment just has way too much bravado and ego and is just plain stupid. He did a great job, but there is nobody else who should be using that line in any other context.
        sigkill 14y ago
        I see that you've read this. http://www.amazon.com/The-Drunkards-Walk-Randomness-Rules/dp/0375424040 http://www.amazon.com/The-Drunkards-Walk-Randomness-Rules/dp... It's not rare for people to attribute success only to them self and failure to market conditions.
        wutbrodo 14y ago
        You don't need to have read that book to know what should be obvious to anyone given more than a second of thought.
jseliger 14y ago
It's way cooler for me than, say, a self-driving car (I live in the city and have no need for one). To be fair, a self-driving taxi may revolutionize urban life by making short taxi trips FAR less expensive and at least moderately more convenient. If self-driving cars become commonplace, city life should also be safer for pedestrians and cyclists.
- obituary_latte 14y ago
  Not to mention reduced carbon emissions if all said cars were, say, electric. I kept thinking of _The Fifth Element_ while reading your comment. Except instead of flying cars, HOV lanes packed tightly together carrying thousands of passengers traveling safely at 90 MPH. Saving emissions, being efficient. I can see it happening.
- jarek 14y ago
  I don't really think "revolutionize" is the right word to use here. Lots of people live urban lives while interacting with taxis twice a year, on their birthday and on NYE or similar occasions. Free energy forever might revolutionize things. Cheaper and easier to find taxis will be a small improvement.
  - takluyver 14y ago
    I think you miss the point of 'revolutionising'. It's not about making a couple of trips a year a bit cheaper. It's revolutionary if taxis become cheap enough that lots of people stop owning their own car. Or even if two car families become one car families.
    - jarek 14y ago
      By that measure carsharing and decent transit is revolutionizing urban life today.
    - rprasad 14y ago
      People already do that by moving into the city, esp. NY, SF, and CHI. (People moving to LA buy more cars...) Taxis are disproportionately located in cities because that is where they make the most money (largest customer base). Making taxi rides cheaper would cut into their earnings, and would result in a corresponding loss of taxis until profit margins are restored.
Jaigus 14y ago
I think the UI is cool but sending pictures around doesn't sound "amazing" to me. Besides the fact that you could have still traded pictures via the web without Facebook, a self-driving car AI is on the fringe and can be applied to society in some pretty cool (at least to me) ways that can still make your life easier even though you live in the city.(better trains for one) Maybe I'm just starting to get old, and the idea of certain elements from all those cheesy movies about the future I watched as a young kid coming true just isn't as "cool" as it used to be.
hyperbovine 14y ago
I think the point is that dozens of other tools online let you do those things. Name somebody else making a serious go at autocars, AR glasses or cheap fiber.
- taligent 14y ago
  Please. You act as though Google is doing something revolutionary. It isn't. Everyone from universities to BMW and Mercedes are working on self driving cars, Google Glasses aren't AR and better attempts have been made previously and as for cheap fibre well countless countries have in reality what Google is just talking about. In many respects Google is like Apple - taking existing ideas and making them more polished.
  - drgath 14y ago
    "Revolutionary" is such a subjective term. Very, very few ideas are actually novel. In fact, dreaming them up is usually easier than pulling them off, so give Apple & Google some credit. While they aren't inventing the future from scratch, they certainly deserve credit for bringing the future into the present. Multi-touch interfaces and tablets have been around for years and the ideas for them even longer (see: Star Trek), but no one has been able to figure out how to successfully pull it off and popularize it. Apple did. Automated cars have been the future since the Jetsons, and we're going to see it become a reality in the next decade, thanks to Google. We've been talking about "digital libraries" and having the world's knowledge at your fingertips for the last 100 years. Wikipedia figured that one out. The future is (mostly) already laid out, the roads just need to be paved to get everyone there. That is what Apple & Google are doing, along with some others. Edit: Just realized we actually used to have (dumb) automated cars. They were called horses.
  - ANH 14y ago
    Perhaps what the parent was getting at is that other companies seem more risk averse. Google isn't afraid to fail in public. I can't remember the last truly exciting thing I heard about from BMW or Mercedes that was being tested in the real marketplace. Rear facing cameras in the bumper? A car that parallel parks itself? A 650 BHP V12? I throw your "please" back at you.

mahyarm 14y ago

Facebook is cool like email, SMS & IM is 'cool'. It's a relatively simple, but foundational piece of software.

Jaigus 14y ago
Yes, that type of "cool". Facebook the idea is also pretty cool, but to me, the "coolness" of an AI operated vehicle is simply on another order of magnitude.

untog 14y ago

Does cool matter? For a start, everyone has different definitions of cool- I assure you that plenty of people do not think that Google Glasses are cool, they think they're a nerdy toy. Luckily, us HNers are nerdier than average... But Facebook isn't cool, no. It's too established now, in the same way that Gmail isn't cool. However, they're both indispensable services for huge, huge numbers of people.

franzus 14y ago

Cool or not cool is not the question. The problem is that FB feels like some shady scam to me. It's all about extracting personal information and make you click on pixel cows.