minthd

>> Samsung clearly do not share that opinion, and justifiably so.

And Samsung would be wrong.If Google hasn't decide to add Samsung to android, it's very likely that Samsung would be in somewhat similar fate to that of microsoft. But Google did share it with them , and they did make lots of money, and probably still do.

Sure they would want more, and more control, etc. And android is a tough business. But still Open Android was a great thing for Samsung.

As for Apple behaving better towards their partners - it's hard to tell , because they target a different customer segment than android so the dynamic is different.

But if you look at every big company - MS, Amazon, Wireless carriers - commoditizing a complement is a very common technique.

Is there any way for this technology to do multi-material or multi-color prints ? how ?

sorry , forgot to add source: http://www.alternet.org/story/146686/why_planting_farms_in_s...

Let's not forget algae. Solazyme is already producing various food components for food companies, from algae, in highly efficient and dense factories, and at a competitive price.And i think with time it might be a cheap carbohydrates source.

And those food components are much better than natural components - because you can tailor the exact chemical composition of them.

And with technologies like molecular gastronomy, or making great meat substitutes out of protein(like beyond meat), food components could become the basis for a lot of food variety.

Two major , expensive costs - the factory, the equipment, land,etc.very expensive - but maybe this can be solved. maybe.

But there's also the required energy:

"just to meet a year's U.S. wheat production with vertical farming would, for lighting alone, require EIGHT TIMES as much electricity as all U.S. utilities generate in an entire year"

>> only long term winner in them is Google, and other companies are now highly aware of this.

Actually Samsung did very well on android, probably much better than if Google hasn't shared android with them.

Ass for small companies working on their ecosystems(app authors, youtube creators, site owners),those are decent ecosystems, and generally Google is not worse than any other large ecosystem owner.

>> and ever since then, no other venture/product coming out of google has reached even a fraction of that revenue.

That's not true. They started with search ads, expanded successfully to various types of display ads, and now their video business(youtube) and the android app store making 15% of Google's revenues.

>> the rest seems like a PhD playground with not a lot of accountability

Maybe public(i.e wall street) accountability isn't the correct model for long term r&d.But technology wise, they do seem to get lots of work done, often in areas with few/no strong competitors, on problems that will be worth lots of and with time that could mean lots of revenue.And i don't know of a better way to judge the commercial value of long term r&d.

You forgot the most important parts: they also have a dedicated pattern recognition engine, and they claim everything is very low power.

Let's wait and see if it's true. I remember their Galileo chip was indeed low-power.

But if the future is uncertain and filled with automation , isn't the correct response - to work hard and earn a lot (or even bet on a startup) , live cheap, and save a lot ?

>> I find that number too high to be true. 10 or 20%, maybe; 40%

The 40% came from a study at oxford, which i think was a bit conservative , because it didn't take into account the possibility of creative jobs being automated.

>> I have no doubt we can create more office-based bullshit roles

Sure we can. But will we ? i'm not so sure.

>> but that is economically challenging unless we rethink how money is created and distributed.

If that happens , a lot of things would change, for both directions - more jobs and less jobs.

>> Again, this will not be touched by automation.

Automation is the less powerful technology working on healthcare. But if you can detect diseases very early , and have very effective , side-effect free and long-term treatments , healthcare will become more efficient.

Or let's talk about limited mobility(your example) - a leading cause is severe arthritis. But maybe we can cure that ?

>> home-births

Maybe we'll see growth there.But i would guess it's not that big of job provider. and even for home births, there's telemedicine and remote continuous monitoring , i think in use today - saving work.

Looking at current uk employment numbers[1] , it seems that healthcare , education accommodation and food services count as 23% of the economy.

But :

1. Will they grow under new conditions ?

These sectors historically didn't enjoy more productivity due to technology. Economists called this "baumol's disease". But this is changing. We're seeing higher education and maybe some lower education being automated. In japan we saw a robotic hotel, there's plenty of efforts to automate the food industry(both making and serving food), and in healthcare we're on the way to become much more effective at a fast rate with many(hundreds of genetic treatments in clinical trials,great improvements in targeted cancer therapies, artificial pancreases and continuous glucose monitoring are on the way to solve diabetes , etc ,etc) .

2. How much more can they grow ? Will said growth be enough to stop job decline in other sectors ?

All those sectors grew due to stuff like cheap credit, degree inflation, more expandable income, growing country budgets, etc.

But will those conditions continue to be true in a world with a lot of unemployment in other sectors - much more than we saw in the past ?

Also - all those three sectors are 23% of the economy. We're talking about 40% of jobs at risk due to automation in 20 years. So those sectors would have to double/triple themselves to compensate. Is this realistic ?

[1]http://www.ons.gov.uk/ons/rel/bus-register/business-register...

What's the difference for you , between leasing and buying ?

So how big of a business this could be for Google ?

Why are mechanical solutions more reliable than a servo ? Aren't mechanical and moving parts less reliable than electronics , in general ?

Some time ago i talked with a machine designer - and he told me that the industry is moving away from complex mechanical contraptions , into microcontrolers coupled with smart motors(servo - either linear or rotary) which allow exact controlled positioning.

Probably the arduino - with the open source libraries and such.

Why aren't academics just hosting in the cloud ?

Your platform is definitely interesting,and there's a lot of value locked in academic algorithms , but isn't the fact that most academics haven't offered algorithms via the cloud(it's not terribly complicated), hint to some other barriers ? And how do you plan to remove those barriers ?

When we look at figure-1(levelized PPA), we see steady price reductions until mid-2013 , and than none. That is probably due to soft costs starting to dominate.

So since the cost drivers changing - why does it make sense to model future price on old cost drivers ?

>> If you think they're much better at spending money than you are, this is a great opportunity. If you don't, it isn't.

It's not that one-dimensional . Their company does have resources that enable them to do things you and others cannot do.

>> small, separate entities makes it easier to tackle new opportunities (which start small) that wouldn't move the needle for Google - as per Christensen.

They would still need to move the needle for alphabet.

3-days free trial isn't freemium.

Maybe, if you can allow it and you care enough for security , the best thing is to use a framework designed for security like Scala lift.

That way, everything is built in.

curation. create you own corner of the net.

>>> Neural net ... "I dunno, it feels like it's an ostrich"

I don't think this applies to deep-learning. Because with deep learning , the lower layers will will say "this has long neck", "this has legs" , etc... and that will help the higher layers to to understand "it's an ostrich".

You're right , the tech isn't hard. For example there's this arduino hobby project , a swimming robot snake:

http://www.instructables.com/id/Make-a-swimming-Robo-Snake/

Maybe it's the wrong area to attack in that market , because people really like to test couches. Maybe the key it either find a good way to test couches virtually(how ??) ,or some social model that lets people test couches at homes of other people(maybe something like airbnb for showrooms), or create a technology or business model to help showrooms somehow, etc.

>> Changing this fundamental assumption would be a major breakage, and much much more effort.

That's non of the concern of the unlicensed spectrum.The LTE-LAA guys should do their work and come prepared for what is common in the unlicensed world. Not the other way around.

And open competitiveness is key in the unlicensed band.

Is there some similar (but a higher level) tool for computer vision ? one that you don't need much computer vision knowledge to build useful things ?

That's a big of an exaggeration.It's surely not the main motivation here.

Being a SAS databse provider won't be very meaningful business for Google.On the other hand, we know from large efforts and common sense, that Google really wants faster cheaper internet access to all.