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Facebook Dives into Home Device Market with Video Chat Product Named 'Portal', Report Says (cheddar.com)
An anonymous reader shares a report: Facebook is about to jump into the consumer hardware business in a big way with a video chat device named "Portal," which will put it in direct competition with Amazon's hugely popular line of Echo voice-controlled devices, Cheddar has learned. The device is designed to work in the home and represents Facebook's first serious foray into selling consumer hardware, people familiar with the matter said. Rather than position the device as a smart assistant akin to Amazon's Echo speakers, Facebook intends to pitch Portal as a way for families and friends to stay connected through video chatting and other social features. Facebook plans a formal product introduction in early May at its annual developer conference and hopes to ship the device in the second half of 2018.
Hopefully..
Or maybe J. K. Simmons on random rants about lemons.
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Yep! And if Portal won't give me the ability to teleport-- I refuse to use it!
A mickey mouse me-too product is hardly entering the hardware business in "a big way".
...and how is this different from...a phone stand? it's kind of hard to see demand for hardware that has the same function as a stand for your smartphone.
What would be 1 thing that I can do on this that I cannot currently do on my phone?
Do you think this will be as successful as the Facebook phone? I mean, it's got a screen on it and you can use it to talk to your friends, you know, those hundreds of "friends" that you've never met?
Debate is a form of harassment. Do not question my truth.
...if it offers you cake.
Care killed the cat, but satisfaction brought it back.
The lead in says ..
"The device is designed to work in the home and represents Facebook's first serious foray into selling consumer hardware, people familiar with the matter said."
So, people already forgot their ill-fated entry into the smart phone market?
Anyone using a facebook phone these days?
ok facebook, what did John eat for breakfast? ok facebook, tell Marry that I had a toast with PJ! ...just can't wait ....
Any home with this device should come with a yard sign like security systems so that those of us who care can politely decline to enter such domasiles or at least restrict conversation.
The only company I hate more than Facebook is Google.
#APK2020
Make America HOSTS Again
So, an always-on audio / video device connected to Facebook's servers. What could go wrong? Let's see: "Portal will be equipped with a wide-angle lens that is capable of recognizing individual faces and associating them with their Facebook accounts". Thanks, but I'll pass...
If construction was anything like programming, an incorrectly fitted lock would bring down the entire building...
The simplest and best answer to more intrusion in my personal life and data gathering.
It is in "direct competition" with Echo, but "not positioned as a smart assistant". This Cheddar guy is an expert analyst.
Just think of the entirely new type of ransomware we'll get out of this! Super job, facebork! ;)
Anons need not reply. Questions end with a question mark.
"Facebook's first serious foray into selling consumer hardware" um what about the Rift?
My sig doesn't address Anons, sigs aren't visible to them.
They should call it the Big Brother Secret Eye AI mega ad-bot 9000.
People use mobile phones, tablets, laptops, even smart TVs to use Facebook. Guess what, they're all capable of video chat.
Seriously, what is the point in a device like this in 2018 ?
You mean like what I can already do with my phone, a big screen smart tv and/or apple tv or chromecast?
Their two most useful apps are messenger (for people you don't chat with a lot but occasionally do) and party planning (which has the network benefit that it's easy for everyone). Both are missing plenty of basic features. Messenger and the FB app are both getting more and more aggressive and turning into bloatware with annoying over-signalling. Given this trend, there is no way anyone sane would want one of these things, even if there were no security concerns.
Anybody have any links on defeating face recognition systems
yup, a small bit of tape. ...put over the camera.
Does not help, of course: unless you never go out in public, there are thousands of cameras you don't control.
My suggestion: find somebody who sort of looks like you. Take a lot of photos of them. Sign up for all the social media sites and post the photos of that other person as your profile picture, and send them to all the social media sites and tag them as you, while simultaneously untagging all the photos that actually ARE photos of you.
Meanwhile, set up a social media site under somebody else's name, and fill that social media site with photos tagged as you.
Except it's even weirder than what you're suggesting.
1984's telescreens were something that (ok, it's been a long time since I read it) was forced upon the people.
And what I used to think of as a "modern" way this stuff should work (OMG, how could I have been so wrong) is that people would accept this junk into their homes in exchange for a small payment.
But in real life, what ended up happening is that people are paying money to buy these ad machines from Amazon, Apple, Google, and now Facebook. You don't get paid to watch ads; you pay to get ads.
Imagine the corporate meeting. There's this one absolute nutcase, and he's saying "We can sell these Portals or Alexas or whatever" and someone else says "but it obviously has a value of less than zero to the user; there's no way people will buy them." And the nutcase is all "no, you're wrong and you have no idea how incredibly stupid and self-loathing people are" and the other guy is all "hey, maybe I'm an optimist about people, but we're talking about basic selfishness here. You can count on selfishness, can't you?" and the nutcase is all "muahahaha!" and then goes into a soliloquy about how he's going to get people to vote for Trump. Then the other guy is all "that was no soliloquy, I HEARD YOU!! And no, people would never vote for Trump, because like I said, even if they're kind of stupid, at least they're selfish."
And here we are. People will pay you money to make their life worse. People will pay for ads. Holy fuck.
So it's $499USD for a screen with a video camera that it would seem only lets you use Facebook and Facebook video chat.
Why would I bother paying another $499 for a single-use device like that when I could just use my phone, tablet, laptop or PC to do the same thing (but would also let me use other protocols such as Skype, Google Hangouts etc...). Even if I didn't have one of these I could buy an Android tablet for cheaper that as I said could use for lots of other things.
I can even suggest some design for it
https://www.nexusmods.com/Images/101/1600249-1424905320.jpg