Their Alpha* work from DeepMind is actually quite good and has a good track record. LLM/Gemini - yeah, what you said, I wouldn't trust a word their team says.
I will point out that Physics and Chemistry are awarded by the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences while the Peace Prize is awarded by a separate Norwegian committee, so it is plausible that one would be more respectable than the other. Literature is a completely different institution as is Physiology/Medicine.
The Peace prize and Literature prizes have far more questionable winners in my view than the Physics and Chemistry ones.
Economics wasn't added until the 1970s, and has had some extremely suspect winners.
For now, this is not so much about being "respectable", as about the prizes given in the Sciences are not so bound to ideology or politics.
AlphaFold/AlphaProteo is genuinely a major breakthrough in biochemistry. Now if they start to hand out prices in Physics, say, based on it's importance in promoting some specific ideological agenda, then I would be wary. (For instance if they give the price in Physics for "making the the field of Physics more relatable to transwomen in the Middle East".
Some people see it as obvious that hard science and politics have glaring differences that makes the meaningfulness of an award for being very good at one or the other very different.
The Nobel committee picks candidates for all the prizes, and the final decisions are split up over four different institutions.
The only argument I could see along these lines would be favoring the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences in particular, but that would mean that chemistry, physics, and economics count but medicine doesn't count. And that's just confusing.
Aside from the fact you're conflating two very different things comparing this to Gemini, what exactly is the problem with the Gemini?
Specifically just that the release was a bit awkward and had some problems? I've found the latest model releases to be very good compared to other frontier models.
Probably a reference to when Google was widely perceived to rush out the first Gemini release, neglecting to mention it did lots of weird racist stuff.
A Nobel physicist that couldn't do basic arithmetic would definitely raise my eyebrows, but even taking your analogy at face value Gemini was not marketed as fast food slop. Google can't be trusted to hype products in a reliable way, regardless of their technical details.
It's trendy for accomplished people to talk down about themselves as a way to sound cute. It's similar to software developers who like to say "I don't know what I'm doing, I just Google and Stackoverflow all day." It has a certain charm to it, and certainly there are some people for whom it's true, but overall it's just a misguided attempt at being modest but ultimately a horribly misleading statement.
"Do not worry about your difficulties in mathematics, I assure you that mine are greater" - Albert Einstein
From a quick glance it looks like they are setting up for people to write apps for this specific OS. Surprised, thought they would try and be android app compatible.
The Mate 70 is shipping with it… as indicated in the article?
Obviously wiki pages are not 100% always up to date or even correct, which you should know considering you’ve been on the internet for at least seven years…
i did this for some time. I'm probably due to again as I check my phone often. Apple watch does have standalone navigation which is a win. It got annoying not being able to do things sometimes, such as checking a groupme etc.
Cheaper phones have a way higher value/$ ratio. Instead of financializing expensive phones the market should encourage cheaper phones through increased demand.
You don't need to go for the cheapest phone, but I find the midrange, around $300-$400, to be the sweet spot. Sure, you could opt for something more expensive, but unless you have a specific need, the benefits won't be that noticeable. I'd rather put that extra money toward upgrading a PC instead. I chose a midrange Samsung for its practical customization options over stock Android, plus it comes with 4 promised updates. While it's not as long as the 7 years of updates from a Pixel, realistically, the battery will likely swell like a pillow before it even hits the 7th year anyway.
IME even mid tier phones won't have more than a year or so of security updates left, unless you buy them new. And even then it's often only 18-24 months. We should insist that companies support their phones longer or unlock and completely open source them at the EOL.
We’re likely talking about a small subset of users for whom open sourcing or similar efforts would be worthwhile. The bigger issue these days is that phones aren't designed to last. We've seen this trend ever since batteries became non-removable, and I doubt EU regulations will make a significant difference. Most users either dispose of their phones when they stop working or trade them in for a newer model. This is especially common with premium phones, while mid-range models might only fetch you $10 on a trade-in if you’re lucky.
Some companies do better in this regard. For example, Samsung provides four major updates, whereas the last mid-range Motorola I owned only gave me one. By the time I receive the fourth update on my current phone, I'll probably be dealing with bigger issues, like the battery not holding a charge—or worse. I wish phones were more serviceable, but that’s just not the case. Still, at mid-range prices, I’m fine with replacing it when it’s on its last legs.
If you're inclined, though, most Android phones allow you to unlock the bootloader and tinker with the software as much as you want.
I'm not saying all phones should be cheap. The market for premium phones has and will continue to exist. And who's to say finding ways to reduce the cost to produce phones isn't innovation?
I find that markets that are financialized where the price of the good is obfuscated are less efficient. This is because efficient markets rely on price discovery. Healthcare is an excellent example of this.
I buy cheap phones for projects so have experienced exactly this. If you go on any prepaid WISP site and look at their device selection ordered by lowest price there's always an asterisk and the quoted price is based on some kind of contract.
Typically the $1000+ premium phone market is for unlocked phones sold directly from the manufacturer.
The locked phones are usually sub $250 and have some kind of finacial gimmick to get the sticker price lower. Often it will be some carrier specific model name. Just sort by price low to high and you'll find them.
ATT, Verizon, and Tmobile are selling many many expensive phones, locked, on 24 momth payment plans, literally hundreds of possible configurations of dozens of models.
I used to buy $200 Android phones. I never had one last more than 18 months. I'm talking dead, not just annoyingly slow. I now have a 3.5 year old iPhone that I expect to get at least another 1.5 years out of. $200/yr compared to $133/yr but I'm generating less waste and getting a better overall experience the entire time I own the phone. For me it was absolutely worth it.
I bet you weren't buying midrange Motorolas. I bought a Moto G for $179 (forgot the model: may have been G1/G2, and that may have been promo pricing for an unlocked phone) and used it for close to 5 years. I only stopped using it because the camera quality was showing it's age relative to the flagships of the day.
You must be doing something wrong. I bought a few cheap mototola and xiaomi android phones over the years and they've lasted years and continue to work to this day.
As you are probably aware, popular phones like the iPhone 15 and Samsung Galaxy S24 (#1 and #2 in the USA) are in that range, costing $700 and $1300 for the 'basic' models.
That’s because subsidized plans don’t encourage shopping for the lowest price. Consumers just see free phone and optimize to buy the most expensive free phone available.
Sure, let’s just ignore the disastrous adware, bloatware etc that also “subsidize” these cheaper phones, to say nothing of the actual capabilities or user experience of said devices.
No such crap on Motorola phones. Posting from a five years old Moto One Vision. It's... a smartphone. It has a decent CPU, screen, camera, storage, NFC, etc. I couldn't say what's missing.
The only thing I'd get excited about in a new phone is a faster CPU.
I just have a hard time justifying things like this when the apple watch + iphone work so well. But i'm sure at some point the apple experience will get worse and push people to other OS like windows is
Remember the context of my quip is in reply to "I don't see the value in the ring, just buy a $1200 watch and phone combo and make sure you charge your watch while you're out living your life, not when you're asleep."
Still seems pretty clear as to why someone would find value in the ring. Another poster says he charges his ring while he showers. It's that quick. I'm not knocking smart-*, just reacting to the dismissive "why would anyone want this" attitude of GP.
