Facebook Hires Google 'Moonshot' Exec For R&D (usatoday.com) 49
An anonymous reader writes: Facebook on Wednesday said it has hired Regina Dugan to head a search-and-product-development group considered vital to Facebook's 10-year technology road map. In the past, Dugan helped shape such Google initiatives as Project Tango, Project Ara, and smart fabrics wired with electronics. Dugan will lead Building 8, a new group "focused on building new hardware products to advance our mission of connecting the world," Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg said in a comment posted on his Facebook profile today. Zuckerberg's 10-year vision for the company relies on major technological breakthroughs on three main fronts: artificial intelligence, augmented and virtual reality, and bringing Internet access to the 4 billion or so people who don't have it. "I'm excited to have Regina apply DARPA-style breakthrough development at the intersection of science and products to our mission," Zuckerberg said. "This method is characterized by aggressive, fixed timelines, extensive use of partnerships with universities, small and large businesses, and clear objectives for shipping products at scale."
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It's insulting to compare this software wankery to the Moonshot.
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The moonshot of the US was as much computers and software as anything else. Think floating point precision - the hardware developments largely came from the need to meet software demands that exceeded existing capability. They are directly connected, and just because x86 hides that doesn't change anything before.
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you missed the point
hype about intentions without substance (Score:2)
degeneration of media can be measured when they parrots the company press release like the intentions(merely alleged ones at that) instead of achievements. no caveats, not doubts, no questions.
USA Today, meh (Score:2)
Disconnection (Score:1)
More and more I'm becoming disconnected from Facebook. Getting old or not caring about idiotic posts sharing and ads?
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Re: Ara is dead (Score:2)
Perplexity by complexity.
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What are the prospects for the direct neural interface prosthetic arm for simians?
Hire to appease the SJWs (Score:1)
No matter how much this gets talked up, this is as much about appeasing the SJWs as anything else. We constantly hear how there aren't enough women in these positions, and that's the real reason for this hire. Notice that the article talks about past positions held by Dugan but not her actual achievements. This is about diversity and making the SJWs happy, not about improving Facebook.
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And in today's list of "things straight white men in tech never have to worry about," we have entry #285: You never have to worry that either you're being promoted or hired because of your gender/orientation/ethnicity, or that others will think that's the reason for your promotion/hiring.
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And in today's list of "things straight white men in tech never have to worry about," we have entry #285: You never have to worry that either you're being promoted or hired because of your gender/orientation/ethnicity, or that others will think that's the reason for your promotion/hiring.
Congratulations, you just won the stupid statement of the day award, and it's only 0400! Now, I don't need a hanky or anything, but it is absolutely true that if a white man is promoted, some of the non-white and non-male employees in the office will speculate that he got the promotion due to his whiteness and/or maleness. Hell, it may even be true, that's not the point at all; the point is, your assertion would be laughable if I weren't just sitting here, shaking my head.
White males may suffer less from pr
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Things you constantly have to put up with if you are a white male.and are not allowed to speak about
1. Insults about your race
2. Insults about your gender
3.. Suggestions that you only got the promotion through white/male privilege and not the long hours of work, innovation and risks you took
4. watching women who have done nothing worthwhile being promoted because they claim to be oppressed... despite being the most spoiled and privileged creatures to ever walk the face of the Earth.
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Self-replicating, self-healing cell towers (Score:2)
Step 2: (not needed, existing hardware works)
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Step 3: fight the invasion of mutant cell towers
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Was obvious from day one that she wouldn't last lo (Score:2)
It was obvious from day one that she wouldn't last long. Google is a hyper-competitive place with _many_ of its own ambitious, type-A people fighting for opportunities. This is an extremely difficult environment for an outsider. Adult supervision in the form of the new CFO didn't help either.
Execs don't matter that much (Score:5, Insightful)
Everywhere I have worked, it is the everyday engineers, Programmers and regular hard-worker guys who develop the things that add value to a company. Execs are just there to soak up the money at the top so we don't get too cocky down below.
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IMO, the best managers or execs are the ones who do two things:
* Set a clear direction for the company, so that everyone in the organization understands exactly where they need to go and what they need to do to get there.
* Enable workers to do their job without them having to overly worry about money, politics, regulations, or other distractions.
I know it's popular to hate on execs, but without good leadership and a smart strategy, a company is ultimately doomed, regardless of the quality of its work force.
Stop using "moonshot" (Score:3)
I really wish folks would stop using "moonshot" or anything related as a metaphor for an open-ended research project leading to an unknown answer. Getting to the moon wasn't *easy* - which is why the world can still be broken down into nations that use metric, and nations that have walked on the moon - but ultimately it was a straightforward ballistics problem.
Re:Stop using "moonshot" (Score:5, Funny)
I didn't know that Myanmar or Liberia have walked on the moon. Very interesting.
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Yeah, I mean it's not rocket science.
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but ultimately it was a straightforward ballistics problem.
So "straightforward" that is known as the 3-body problem and was, for a long time, considered one of the big open problems in Mathematics. But hey, who's counting?
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Facebook's Technology (Score:2)
Zuckerberg's 10-year vision for the company relies on major technological breakthroughs on three main fronts: artificial intelligence, augmented and virtual reality, and bringing Internet access to the 4 billion or so people who don't have it.
And cat videos... lots and lots of cat videos.
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They have one of the worlds experts on computer vision (Yann LeCun). They own a VR company (Oculus Rift). They hired Vladimir Vapnik (co-creator of Vapnik–Chervonenkis theory; google it). They have been doing lots of stuff in free internet (internet.org, Aries, Facebook Zero, etc.).
There is lots of 'stuff' there for them to work with. I just doubt that they have the management or business capabilities to make their company a technology leader (as opposed to buying). I am not convinced that Dugan
Problem (Score:2)
"VP of chucking shit at the wall and hoping something sticks" doesn't exactly roll off the tongue easily, does it?
Hubris (Score:2)
Zuckerberg's 10-year vision for the company relies on major technological breakthroughs on three main fronts: artificial intelligence, augmented and virtual reality, and bringing Internet access to the 4 billion or so people who don't have it. "I'm excited to have Regina apply DARPA-style breakthrough development at the intersection of science and products to our mission," Zuckerberg said.
At the end of the day, FB is a cat photo sharing service that scrapes user data and personal info.
Zuckerberg trying to sound like Kennedy in 1961 is ridiculous with these DARPA and "moonshot" references.