My take on this matter is here and it includes a transcription. I’ll only address the HN comments here (I can’t be arsed to check the Reddit thread.). You know, for my five seconds of rambling.

[HN] That wasn’t prerecorded, but it was rigged. They probably practiced a few times and it confused the AI. Still it’s no excuse. They’ve dropped Apollo-program level money on this and it’s still dumb as a rock. // I’m endless amazed that Meta has a ~2T market cap, yet they can’t build products.

In the hypothesis it’s rigged, it’s even worse: there’s additional malice, but the rigging sucks so much the incompetence is still there.

Also, market cap has nothing to do with overall usefulness to society, so I’m not surprised some dead weight company (YES) has a large MC.

> confused the AI. // I will die on this hill. It isn’t AI. You can’t confuse it.

The comment is just an “ackshyually” but it happens to be correct.

The Kotaku article on this had a really nice final zinger[0]: // > Oh, and here’s Jack Mancuso making a Korean-inspired steak sauce in 2023.

Completely off-topic: I think sauce on steak is blasphemy. Not even chimichurri (less exotic for me than barbecue sauce) - it goes nice on some sausages, but not on steak. That’s a personal take though, it isn’t like anyone needs to agree with it.

[1] Credit where it’s due: doing live demos is hard. Yesterday didn’t feel staged—it looked like the classic “last-minute tweak, unexpected break.” Most builders have been there. I certainly have (I once spent 6 hours at a hackathon and broke the Flask server keying in a last minute change on the steps of the stage before going on).

[2] Live demos are especially hard when you’re selling snake oil.

[3] Live demos being hard isn’t an excuse for cheating.

[4] Despite the Reddit post’s title, I don’t think there’s any reason to believe the AI was a recording or otherwise cheated. (Why would they record two slightly different voice lines for adding the pear?) It just really thought he’d combined the base ingredients.

1: No, no credit because it is not due. “X is hard” is not the same as “you should get credits when you fail X”.

2 and 3: spot on.

4: I wouldn’t be surprised if it was staged, I do not think it’s above Merda Meta to do so, even if I believe it’s simply incompetence due to Hanlon’s Razor.

This does not deter me from possibly buying one. The concept is pretty cool and appealing to those who want a distraction free lifestyle. Even if there’s a screen in front of you at all times, at least you won’t need to hold something in your hands to be able to operate it. That alone is a significant win.

Your money, your problem: you buy what you want.

But my opinion, my problem: I think you’re a sucker, because the quote below is likely spot on:

[note: clipped comment] It’s an ad network with an attached optional pair of glasses. // It’s the platform Zuck always wanted to own but never had the vision beyond ‘it’s an ad platform with some consumer stuff in it’.

Bingo.

I love how they randomly blame the WiFi network, like anyone is going to buy it.

It’s almost certainly a joke. Everyone knows that the demo failed.

Even in the hypothesis it was a joke, the fact they don’t highlight “hey, it’s just a joke, the model failed” right off the bat shows they’re eager to mislead you. And yes, you can use jokes to mislead someone.

[1] So much negativity. // I’m just excited that our industry is lead [HAHAHA] by optimists [HAHAHAHA] and our culture enables our corporations to invest huge sums into taking us forward technologically. [HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA] // Meta could have just done a stock buyback but instead they made a computer that can talk, see, solve problems and paint virtual things into the real world in front of your eyes! [PFFFFFTHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA] // I commend them on attempting a live demo.

Yes, the mocking, gleeful negativity really does make me concerned that this place is becoming Reddit. The fact that the highest upvoted post on this thread is just a link to Reddit isn’t doing much to help me feel better. And I’ve been here for at least a decade, so I don’t think this is the noob illusion.

1: Laughs added by me. Oh wait, he’s serious, let me laugh even harder.

2: What makes “Hacker” News already extremely similar to Reddit is not the “negativity” you’re babbling about. It’s the fact most comments are skibidi in the same ways:

• shallow stuff even a 5yo could come up with. No, wait, “even AI could write this”.
• they’re irrational = fallacious = disgusting. On the same level as “I dun unrrurstand, u think 50 is not 100? Than u think 50 is 0? dats dumb lol lmao”. They get caught on the words instead of the concepts being conveyed by those words, they vomit assumptions and re-eat their own vomit, false dichotomy and genetic fallacy are rampant there.
• “Ackshyually” here, “ackshyually” there… just admit “I’m too much of a moron to understand what would be a meaningful contribution, so I’m vomiting irrelevancies and pretending they’re meaningful”.
• sealioning everywhere. Holy fuck.

There’s no hacker culture in “Hacker” News. It is not made for the curious-minded, exploring some intellectually stimulating topic. It’s made for braindead morons who really want to believe they’re insightful, and since [sarcasm]filthy reality bends to their pristine wishes then they must be insightful, right? [/sarcasm] The only things missing from Reddit are 1) scope (Reddit has more topics to talk about), and 2) “WOW THANKS FOR LE GOLD TO LE EPIC KNEE KIND STRANGER! THE NARWAL BACONS!”

inb4 me being a grumpy fuck doesn’t what I said above true or false.

One important thing to note: demo didn’t fail! (Or, at least not in the way people usually think of)

Yeah. The demo didn’t fail. Suuuuure. And the Moon is made of green cheese.

Kirk Zuck