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Of all the tech companies, Meta is the most ruthless and shameless. You'd have to be a total fool to trust Zuck, especially Zuck who put billions into AR for no

Of all the tech companies, Meta is the most ruthless and shameless. You'd have to be a total fool to trust Zuck, especially Zuck who put billions into AR for not much return and now billions into AI to create lackluster lagging models.

tomrod 1y ago
I'd trust Zuck if I had a signed, airtight agreement for a large amount of money he paid into an escrow account for something I owned or was transferring ownership. He's very close to peak homo economicus. (EDIT: this next point is wrong, the oral history I heard referred to Winklevoss pops, not Zuckerberg, and I misremembered) Which makes sense, given his father is deep in actuarial services.
- cyanydeez 1y ago
  "If I were rich, I'd trust other rich people"
  - tomrod 1y ago
    Not what I said. I said if legal machinery were in place, I'd be willing. I would not trust someone simply because we both have significant personal assets.
    - cyanydeez 1y ago
      Have you noticed how legal machinery seems less effective the more money you have?
- lotsofpulp 1y ago
  Zuckerberg’s dad is/was a dentist. Not that the claim makes any sense even if he were an actuary.
  - tomrod 1y ago
    Oh man, talk about getting my wires crossed. The Winklevoss' twins dad is the actuary!
efficax 1y ago
trust what? gimme that 14 billion and i don’t care what you do
strict9 1y ago
Off base when considering the likes of Palantir and many others. Not a fan of the person or many of Meta's business practices. But Meta has given a lot back with Llama and PyTorch, among many other open source contributions. Which others in the space are not doing.
- whiplash451 1y ago
  Just because you give a lot does not mean you don't take a lot.
- __MatrixMan__ 1y ago
  React made quite a mess of the web just so we couldn't browse with JavaScript disabled, thereby allowing Facebook to track us through those like buttons that popped up everywhere. Are there hidden barbs in llama and pytorch too? I'm not close enough to them to know.
  - fkyoureadthedoc 1y ago
    It was probably inevitable even without React. Easier to serve the same JSON to my web application and iPhone/android apps, Teams bot, etc.
  - fhd2 1y ago
    Not a fan of Facebook or React (though React Native is IMHO the one eyed among the blind for cross platform mobile development), but I think that's a bit far fetched. I do think Facebook has (or had?) genuinely an engineering culture that wants to give something back.
    - strict9 1y ago
      This is true. I've been to several conferences where FB sent engineers to talk about their open source projects or how they used a particular language or framework. I remember the conflicted feeling of strongly disliking their products and leadership but liking their contributions. Same energy but more intense in both directions many years later.
eru 1y ago
> Of all the tech companies, Meta is the most ruthless and shameless. Have you seen Oracle?
- LargeWu 1y ago
  Not sure if this is true any more, but they used to make a majority of their revenue by suing their own customers.
  - evanelias 1y ago
    I get that people hate Oracle for a variety of reasons, but this is just such a ridiculous assertion. They've been one of the largest tech companies for multiple decades. Do you honestly believe that a majority of their revenue came from legal settlements from suing their own customers, at any time in their history? Do you have a citation for this claim? I mean if the company is as absurdly litigious as you're saying, it stands to reason that you wouldn't make unsubstantiated claims about them in a public forum, right?
    - lcnPylGDnU4H9OF 1y ago
      I'd guess it's something to do with Oracle's licensing policies. My understanding is they'd audit businesses who used their software and bill them an additional fee for violations. Maybe it's not strictly legal settlements but it's plausible that they made more money from these fees than from their regular fees at some point and even ongoing today. (That also lines up with jokes I've heard about them hiring more lawyers than software developers given someone's gotta do the audits.)
      - evanelias 1y ago
        No, I do not believe it is even remotely plausible that they have ever made a majority of their revenue from licensing violation fees, especially today, when their total annual revenue is over $57 billion. Oracle is an enormous company. I'm in my 40s, and literally every non-startup I've worked for in my career has been an Oracle customer, across multiple product lines. They're a 48-year-old company with more than 150,000 employees. To be absolutely clear, I'm not expressing an opinion here on Oracle or its licensing and auditing practices. I'm just responding to the wild claims about revenue from lawsuits or license violations. Oracle stock has been publicly-traded for nearly four decades, so there's plenty of data available from their earnings statements. If these claims were even remotely based in reality, it would be easy to cite a source.
lesuorac 1y ago
> especially Zuck who put billions into AR for not much return While, it's indisputable about the current state of AR/VR. Zuck has a large exetensial risk to Microsoft/Apple/Google. If those companies want to revoke access to Meta's apps (ex [1]) they can and Zuck is in trouble. At one point Google was trying to compete with FaceBook with Google+ and while that didn't work, it's still a large business risk. Putting billions into trying to get a moat for your product seems like prudent business sense when you're raking in hundreds of billions. [1]: https://techcrunch.com/2019/02/01/facebook-google-scandal/ https://techcrunch.com/2019/02/01/facebook-google-scandal/
patapong 1y ago
> create lackluster lagging models But also for a long time the best available open-weights models on the market - this investment has done a lot to kickstart open AI research, which I am grateful for no matter the reasons.
iamnotagenius 1y ago
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tomrod 1y ago

I'd trust Zuck if I had a signed, airtight agreement for a large amount of money he paid into an escrow account for something I owned or was transferring ownership. He's very close to peak homo economicus. (EDIT: this next point is wrong, the oral history I heard referred to Winklevoss pops, not Zuckerberg, and I misremembered) Which makes sense, given his father is deep in actuarial services.

cyanydeez 1y ago
"If I were rich, I'd trust other rich people"
- tomrod 1y ago
  Not what I said. I said if legal machinery were in place, I'd be willing. I would not trust someone simply because we both have significant personal assets.
  - cyanydeez 1y ago
    Have you noticed how legal machinery seems less effective the more money you have?
lotsofpulp 1y ago
Zuckerberg’s dad is/was a dentist. Not that the claim makes any sense even if he were an actuary.
- tomrod 1y ago
  Oh man, talk about getting my wires crossed. The Winklevoss' twins dad is the actuary!

efficax 1y ago

trust what? gimme that 14 billion and i don’t care what you do

strict9 1y ago

Off base when considering the likes of Palantir and many others. Not a fan of the person or many of Meta's business practices. But Meta has given a lot back with Llama and PyTorch, among many other open source contributions. Which others in the space are not doing.

whiplash451 1y ago
Just because you give a lot does not mean you don't take a lot.
__MatrixMan__ 1y ago
React made quite a mess of the web just so we couldn't browse with JavaScript disabled, thereby allowing Facebook to track us through those like buttons that popped up everywhere. Are there hidden barbs in llama and pytorch too? I'm not close enough to them to know.
- fkyoureadthedoc 1y ago
  It was probably inevitable even without React. Easier to serve the same JSON to my web application and iPhone/android apps, Teams bot, etc.
- fhd2 1y ago
  Not a fan of Facebook or React (though React Native is IMHO the one eyed among the blind for cross platform mobile development), but I think that's a bit far fetched. I do think Facebook has (or had?) genuinely an engineering culture that wants to give something back.
  - strict9 1y ago
    This is true. I've been to several conferences where FB sent engineers to talk about their open source projects or how they used a particular language or framework. I remember the conflicted feeling of strongly disliking their products and leadership but liking their contributions. Same energy but more intense in both directions many years later.

eru 1y ago

> Of all the tech companies, Meta is the most ruthless and shameless. Have you seen Oracle?

LargeWu 1y ago
Not sure if this is true any more, but they used to make a majority of their revenue by suing their own customers.
- evanelias 1y ago
  I get that people hate Oracle for a variety of reasons, but this is just such a ridiculous assertion. They've been one of the largest tech companies for multiple decades. Do you honestly believe that a majority of their revenue came from legal settlements from suing their own customers, at any time in their history? Do you have a citation for this claim? I mean if the company is as absurdly litigious as you're saying, it stands to reason that you wouldn't make unsubstantiated claims about them in a public forum, right?
  - lcnPylGDnU4H9OF 1y ago
    I'd guess it's something to do with Oracle's licensing policies. My understanding is they'd audit businesses who used their software and bill them an additional fee for violations. Maybe it's not strictly legal settlements but it's plausible that they made more money from these fees than from their regular fees at some point and even ongoing today. (That also lines up with jokes I've heard about them hiring more lawyers than software developers given someone's gotta do the audits.)
    - evanelias 1y ago
      No, I do not believe it is even remotely plausible that they have ever made a majority of their revenue from licensing violation fees, especially today, when their total annual revenue is over $57 billion. Oracle is an enormous company. I'm in my 40s, and literally every non-startup I've worked for in my career has been an Oracle customer, across multiple product lines. They're a 48-year-old company with more than 150,000 employees. To be absolutely clear, I'm not expressing an opinion here on Oracle or its licensing and auditing practices. I'm just responding to the wild claims about revenue from lawsuits or license violations. Oracle stock has been publicly-traded for nearly four decades, so there's plenty of data available from their earnings statements. If these claims were even remotely based in reality, it would be easy to cite a source.

lesuorac 1y ago

> especially Zuck who put billions into AR for not much return While, it's indisputable about the current state of AR/VR. Zuck has a large exetensial risk to Microsoft/Apple/Google. If those companies want to revoke access to Meta's apps (ex [1]) they can and Zuck is in trouble. At one point Google was trying to compete with FaceBook with Google+ and while that didn't work, it's still a large business risk. Putting billions into trying to get a moat for your product seems like prudent business sense when you're raking in hundreds of billions. [1]: https://techcrunch.com/2019/02/01/facebook-google-scandal/ https://techcrunch.com/2019/02/01/facebook-google-scandal/

patapong 1y ago

> create lackluster lagging models But also for a long time the best available open-weights models on the market - this investment has done a lot to kickstart open AI research, which I am grateful for no matter the reasons.

iamnotagenius 1y ago

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