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A Facebook job posting indicates the company is looking to design its own system-on-a-chip or Application Specific Integrated Circuit (ASIC):
Facebook Inc. is building a team to design its own semiconductors, adding to a trend among technology companies to supply themselves and lower their dependence on chipmakers such as Intel Corp. and Qualcomm Inc., according to job listings and people familiar with the matter.
The social media company is seeking to hire a manager to build an "end-to-end SoC/ASIC, firmware and driver development organization," according to a job listing on its corporate website, indicating the effort is still in its early stages.
The Menlo Park, California-based company would join other technology giants tackling the massive effort to develop chips. In 2010, Apple Inc. started shipping its own chips and now uses them across many of its major product lines. Alphabet Inc.'s Google has developed its own artificial intelligence chip as well.
Also at TechCrunch and The Verge.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by VLM on Thursday April 19 2018, @01:52PM (1 child)
Those are kinda code-words or dog-whistles for mobile phone hardware although why they woudn't just re-brand some crappy android phone with a custom ROM making it "The Facebook Phone". Probably call it the "f-Phone" because that doesn't sound awkward or anything. "Hello fellow consumer drones, did you buy a new FacePhone yet?"
Going more extreme, you could make something like the Star Trek TNG communicator badge today and give it some Alexa type voice interface (which FB AFAIK does not have...) and link the Big Brother communicator badge to facebook for even more privacy scandals and weird corpgov monitoring and tracking. Its interesting that in left-wing Trek world, dystopia was always presented as Conan the Barbarian and never somewhat more realistic 1984/BNW/Facebook. I'm just saying a Trek communicator badge would be cool, but a Facebook-linked badge would be awful on so many levels.
Hmm. Seems obvious you could link some high res cameras like cop body cams but slightly better and use some processing power to select what would be stereotypical FB pixs from the immense stream of data, then bluetooth connect to the phone to upload privacy violations to Big Brother. I mean, if you're in the business of pix not audio it seems obvious if you could put an Amazon Echo into a star trek badge you could put a cop body cam into a ... cop body cam housing ... and then upload more crap to FB.
The other interpretation is FB is dying as can be seen in the engagement number trends and dying companies often try crazy stuff in desperation. So this is like Polaroid, in its death, trying to sell instant photos that have a sticker backing (remember those?). Its not going to turn the company around but they're kinda obligated to try anything, everything, in their death throes.
(Score: 5, Funny) by DannyB on Thursday April 19 2018, @03:47PM
I can't wait for the Facebook Home device!
Me: Okay, Facebook
FBHome: (tweedle beep)
Me: What is the weather like today?
FBHome: 72 degrees and sunny. I can see that your neighbor half a block down is taking advantage of the nice weather to grill burgers outside.
Me: Okay, Facebook
FBHome: (tweedle beep)
Me: Which restaurant should we eat at?
FBHome: Your neighbor across the street and 2 houses down likes Flying Unicorn, but spends more money there than they can afford. Let me know if you would like to know how much. But your neighbor 2 blocks over got thrown out of there because of extremely embarrassing intoxicated behavior. I have video clips available if you are interested.
Me: Okay, Facebook
FBHome: (tweedle beep)
Me: Please give me directions to the restaurant.
FBHome: Okay, while you are driving would you like to know about the traffic ticket your back yard neighbor got last week?
The lower I set my standards the more accomplishments I have.