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0 pointsachow13d ago0 comments

Google seems to have made an official post on Reddit describing the feature set in detail:

https://www.reddit.com/r/Android/comments/1tb8xls/introducin...

[Edit]

And, the feature set references the 'AI mouse pointer' from this Deepmind blog..

https://deepmind.google/blog/ai-pointer/

0 comments

Wiggling the mouse is what people do involuntarily when the computer isn’t working right. They are setting themselves up for Gemini to be the uninvited Clippy, except this will send everything you are working on to Google to harvest data from.

dhosek13d ago

Oh my goodness, the use cases are so… badly conceived:

> If a friend sends you a picture on your phone and you need to email it from your laptop, the file is just there — no need to email it to yourself.

So are there really people who will email a photo to themselves from their phone to… send the photo in an email?

Interesting to note that there is no mention of processor or operating system in that post. I’m guessing that it’s Android in a laptop form factor which I suppose might be something that some people would want, but I’m not one of them.

array_key_first13d ago

Getting files on and off of a phone is shockingly hard. Shockingly. It's even worse on an iPhone, if you don't have a mac. To get my photos from my iPhone to my PC, I had to first upload them to iCloud and then download them again. My phone and computer are, like, a foot away from each other but I had to send the photos across the country to some server and back just to look at them.

olsondv13d ago

It’s a poor example. Recently, I did have to email myself photos taken with my phone to access them on my laptop. Would be nice if they were automatically synced. It’s work phone and laptop so I could have gone through OneDrive or Box but just as inconvenient as email.

HarHarVeryFunny13d ago

They should have just said "USE it on your laptop", not email it.

I all the time use my phone as a camera (esp. for coin photography) than e-mail the photos to myself as the most convenient way to get them on my desktop where I can edit them with GIMP etc.

unholiness13d ago

I just open photos.google.com and grab them. No need to fiddle on my phone.

When on wifi, the photo backup upload starts immediately. If it doesn't (possibly due to your settings, this used to be my issue) you can manually open the photos app and tap the backup now button.

varenc13d ago

Looks like their Reddit post has a formatting error?

   ...as computing shifts from operating systems [to intelligence systems](TKTK)...

`[text](link)` is the syntax used to create a link. But since `TKTK` isn't a valid URI, it doesn't render a link. My guess is TKTK is placeholder and they were supposed to fill it in before posting on reddit... but forgot?

edit: hah, maybe someone from Google saw my comment. This has now been fixed and TKTK replaced with https://www.reddit.com/r/Android/comments/1tb83gy/making_and...

vages13d ago

TKTK is a common placeholder for something that should be filled in: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/To_come_(publishing)

entropicdrifter13d ago

Looks like the link got fixed.

I'm really enjoying reddit just completely roasting the entire concept in the comments.

sunaookami13d ago

Posting an official announcement of an AI-powered laptop on Reddit were the users there tend to have a hard Anti-AI stance is certainly something.

WarmWash13d ago

I haven't been around reddit much for a few years, but in the past at least, /r/android was one of the best tech communities on the internet. It was even better than the iPhone subs for iPhone discussion.

I mean if you think about it, the type of person to own an android phone and care enough about phones to join a community is pretty much guaranteed to only be a tech geek.

somebehemoth13d ago

AI mouse pointer is definitely not something I wanted to think about today. A recent HN post implored vibe coders not to modify the mouse pointer and now we get this from Google.

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