Palmer Luckey Leaves Facebook | Hacker News Reader

Palmer Luckey Leaves Facebook

techcrunch.com

213 pointspetergatsby191 comments

The TechCrunch write-up almost exclusively focuses on the "Nimble America" thing. I'm sure that didn't help his standing at Facebook, but he's been doing other things besides that failed Reddit campaign. Some more context in the Ars Technica writeup (I hadn't remembered how much he was on the hook for the Zenimax charges):

https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2017/03/oculus-co-founder-pal...

> Luckey did appear briefly at a January trial in which id Software owner Zenimax Media accused Oculus of misappropriating trade secrets. While Oculus was cleared of the worst of those charges, the company was found liable for $300 million for various related charges. Luckey himself was personally found liable for $50 million in damages.

Between those two and the fact that he is in possession of FU money, it feels pretty inevitable.

I'm guessing the fact that Oculus is a distant third in VR market share (without even considering headsets such as Cardboard and Gear VR, which would put it even further behind) didn't help.

Oculus is a company, not a product. The Gear VR is a product made by Oculus in collaboration with Samsung.

You're probably thinking of the Oculus Rift, which is another product made by Oculus (or Facebook, if you prefer, now that they've bought Oculus, the company).

What was Nimble America anyway, and why the outrage?

The Daily Beast article isn't much help, talking about Pepe the Frog and "shitposting", with the banner picture, presumably the most egregious example they could publish, being Hillary's face with the caption "Too Big to Jail". Partisan, sure, but well within the realm of normal politics these days.

Some political campaigning group that intended to take online memes and run them as actual political billboards. The outrage was because it was pro-Trump.

There was also outrage within /r/The_Donald as well, because it sounded like a scam and people suspected one of the mods of trying to do a money grab.

> The outrage was because it was pro-Trump.

Or because someone managed to find a way to make American political dialogue even dumber.

As far as I understood it, it was a non-profit that Luckey funded to help promote Donald Trump's presidential campaign. It was seemingly going to do so through memes, though it never recognizably progressed beyond its initial promotion. It was derided from both sides; it was first posted for a sort of crowdfunding campaign to /r/The_Donald where it was lambasted as "astroturfing" and a corporate attempt to profit off of their community. The VR and tech community at large (which tends to lean left and anti-Trump) didn't think much of it until it was revealed that Luckey was providing the funding for it, at which point a great deal of his already waning community support dropped out from under him.

The internet outrage professionals need there daily quota of clicks and its a slow news day.

Shitposting in real life.

Essentially taking comments you might find on /r/The_Donald and posting them on real life billboards.

What is a shitpost?

I think I can get the idea. But could you provide an example from him?

It's just a term referring to a shitty post.

More "worthless" than "shitty".

Some people call posting humorous nonsense on Facebook or Twitter as "shitposting" as well. Doesn't add anything, but can be amusing in small doses.

A shitpost is hard to classify, but it is usually an off-topic post intended to derail, hijack, circlejerk, or otherwise spam a conversation.

I don't have any examples of Palmer shitposting, because his scheme never really got off the ground. A generic example of a shitpost would be if say, someone posted in this thread this image: http://i.imgur.com/QoZHVLs.jpg and demanded that we only post spiderman memes, instead of talking about the intended topic.

All of the examples you've been given are hilariously wrong. 'Shitposting' is a play on the idea that people with non-pc views are 'shitlords.' It grew out of groups like "Shit Reddit Says" and "Shit 4chan Says" that meant to police language on those sites. tl;dr A "shitpost" is a post that's not politically correct.

Shitposting is just making terrible posts. That could be posting lame stuff, making the same sort of post that is always made on those sites, or just being a nuisance spamming.

Just like the way pepe the frog changed. The connotations around shitposting changed.

Noooo. The term shitposting significantly predates SRS. Please see the Know Your Meme entry on it for more info.

No. Shitposting is making terrible posts. Low quality, dumb low effort, etc...

As you can see from your replies, it has more than one definition depending on where on the internet you are.

Let's remember that this is a 24 year old guy worth half a billion dollars. Young and immature leads to expected behavior. Young, immature AND rich leads to this.

I know people expect more from their corporate leaders, but this shouldn't really be surprising to anyone given the context

I got big into VR partly because of him, enamored by an interview of him my girl friend pointed me to in 2013. He was young, enthusiastic, idealistic, relatable to me.

Well, as the years wear on he, and oculus itself, has established more of itself from the hacker/open source vision. They’ve made enemies along the way, and many of the reasons people hate him/Oculus I disagree with.

It’s an infant field, they need to fund games to even having reasonable games. Making games have become increasingly expensive. Sure there’s a place for indie devs, but those games don’t draw the mainstreamers VR needs to take off like I, and many others need.

That being said, the things I’ve heard and seen from him make me think he does emobdy the gamergate “tech bro” (and I do use that as a pejorative) make my stomach churn. That I can’t really forgive, and don’t want to support.

The privacy aspects of a Facebook (or google for that matter) owning VR, and getting access to what we physically look at for advertising, is such a gold mine. Totally terrifying. That’s one reason my next system will likely be something like the Vive, inspite of me finding Oculus far more polished and fun to have.

EDIT: Interestingly enough I asked him specifically on an AMA if he planned on staying at Oculus, his answer was an emphatic yes: https://www.reddit.com/r/pcmasterrace/comments/40ea0x/i_am_p...

Can you elaborate on why/how did you find Oculus more polished?

Note : I have a Vive, which I bought after researching both (so I might be biased)

Yup, for having tried both, the Vive is far superior to the Oculus.

I am certainly biased, despite having huge issues with Oculus. My experience is Vive demos and second hand.

Setup was just placing cameras on a desk. I don't need external headphones. Store is curated, which is good and bad. I like trusting games won't give me nausea, or turn off people to VR. In my experience all it takes is one experience for some people to continue repeating "VR causes nausea" for literally 1+ year. My boss is this person, and it's hard to get him to try rift again.

Touch, and seeing my fingers closely mirrored in VR, I find extremely polished and wonderful. Grabbing the first object in VR made me laugh in excitement, first time I did that since seeing Tuscany in CV1.

From most reviews the Oculus is very plug and play whereas the Vive takes a couple of hours to get all setup and calibrated correctly.

Oculus doesn't have room scale, and just got touch recently. It's easier to setup something with half the functionality.

Oculus certainly has some room scale. I use it fine in my 12x12 room. It's otherwise better than the Vive in a lot of ways. Asw, atw, screen door, audio, comfort, clarity across the fov, controllers, apps. The bigger room scale is about the only thing the Vive does better.

Oculus needs 3 tracking devices for room scale, and is still smaller and buggier. Games are required to be designed for 180 degrees instead of 360 like the vive. Vive is also getting wireless headset support this quarter (TPcast).

Oculus poured far too much money into paying off developers for exclusive titles than trying to compete on technology, and as far as I can tell are falling further behind.

I've read that the wireless options are coming tonRift as well. Why wouldn't they? Oculus just doesn't talk as much publicly. 360 tracking works for me with three sensors. The Rift is less expensive than Vive now too.

It seems like you are cherry picking your facts, which indicates you have technology religion. So no point discussing with you.

I have both....you cherry picked yours too. There is a large difference in experience, and I'm just endlessly annoyed Rift hasn't delivered on their promises, and buy exclusives vs develop tech. I'd say I'm a fair weather fan of either tbh.

I'm sure I came across as more argumentative than I meant to be.

> Vive takes a couple of hours to get all setup and calibrated correctly.

More like 20 minutes.

I'm not the OP, but I have both the Oculus and the Vive and, to me, the Vive is a much better experience. For me, the big issue is that, while the Rift is a bit easier to set up (but not by much), the tracking is just not good enough to get that immersive experience. As soon as you lose tracking once, it throws the whole thing out the window. The Vive's tracking is pretty flawless. The Rift, on the other hand, is finicky and, if you even attempt the room scale setup with touch, you'll feel like someone trying to mess with an analog TV antenna.

With the Rift, I'm initially impressed with it (resolution is better, headset is lighter, etc) but then constantly reminded that this is new tech. With the Vive, it's clunkier and more pixelated (not by much) but I forget completely about all of it when I'm deeply immersed in a game.

You've got room scale setup with 3 cameras? Note that there were huge problems with the software a couple of releases ago that were recently resolved. Tracking is really smooth and solid right now for me personally on Oculus.

Tracking might be "resolved" but man three usb3 cameras + the usb3 for the headset, is a hard sell on a lot of systems. Most people who are successfully running 3+ camera roomscale deployments have at least one if not two extra usb3 cards in their machine.

They just made a big mistake going with camera tracking, the lighthouse solution just seems much more scalable.

I actually think the opposite. Camera based tracking is the future and the Lighthouse stuff whilst good right now is going to something of a dead end. In the future we're going to be using inside-out tracked headsets which will be highly reliant on camera tech. Even more so for a workable general use AR glasses solution. So perhaps more fiddly to setup now hurting consumer adoption but better in the long term?

Not the OP either but I use both extensively at work and haven't paid my own money so subject to less bias in that sense. I've also had a fair run at everything from Cardboard to the Hololens over the last couple of years.

Once setup I find the tracking similar. The main advantage of the Vive is the ability to track a larger space. Outside of arcades this is a bit of a non-issue currently as most users don't have that much space. A lot of users also don't tend to walk around that much or at least more tentatively due to the tether.

The Touch controllers are much better ergonomically and offer more input options. But they are also less non-gamer friendly. The Vive wand suffers from being enormous with badly placed buttons.

Headset wise the Rift is a clear winner right now. It's lighter, has a much better harness and the integrated headphones remove a lot of the faff factor putting it on. Vive is releasing kits that address some of this later in the year.

Store wise Oculus does a better job of surfacing products that will meet consumer expectations. Mostly because there are less hobby projects clogging it up and the exclusive content so far has been good. Then you can still head over to Steam, itch and others to explore more questionable variety.

> Interestingly enough I asked him specifically on an AMA if he planned on staying at Oculus, his answer was an emphatic yes

A year ago he said "I don't have plans to do anything else, so no real lamentations!", that seems like less than emphatic yes to me.

VR is anything but an "infant" field. Maybe today's incarnation, maybe amongst consumers.

But the idea of "gloves and goggles" goes back a long way - with its first real implementation happening by Ivan Sutherland ("Sword of Damocles" and the lesser known "Twinkle Box" for tracking in the late 1960s), then later work done in the 1980s and 90s by NASA, VPL Research, and Jarod Lanier, among others (which started the first VR wave).

If you have an interest in VR now, and you haven't already, you owe it to yourself to check out the history of this fascinating, if still nascent and buggy, field.

Horizon: Colonizing Cyberspace is an informative (and nostalgic!) overview of the field in the early 90s.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VuZonQVN4uw

My high school senior English class research paper was on VR ... in 1993. Lanier featured heavily as he was one of the "public faces" of the technology back then, with all of the high-dollar stuff coming out of JPL.

I remember buying a Nintendo Powerglove in college and hooking it up to the parallel printer port on a '486 just so we could use it to move around a couch in a virtual room on the screen (in REND386 if I'm remembering things correctly; it's been 21 years).

Anybody else remember the Amiga-based "Dactyl Nightmare" game where you stood in a pod with a goggles helmet on?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v6t69mp0ZhE

>He was young (still is) enthusiastic, idealistic, relatable to me.

I would not describe him as idealistic or relatable. He's a self-identified Trump supporter/donator[0] and definitely has some alt-right leanings. Regardless of your politics, I think it's fair to say that someone with his political leanings is not considered "relatable" by a decent portion of Americans.

[0]: http://www.theverge.com/2016/9/23/13025422/palmer-luckey-ocu...

I completely agree. My meaning was he seemed like that to me in 2013, and many others for that matter.

Also he is still young.

It's very odd in 2017 that so many people are being socially disqualified because their political ideology doesn't align with San Francisco's.

Fortunately, that's not what's happening.

Eh, with Trump I have to disagree. He has shown time and time again that he is a petty, egotistical sicophant with little regard for humanity in general. He's a documented liar and swindler. I have a hard time giving his supporters the benefit of the doubt and I am certain ly no San Francisco liberal.

OP specifically said "relatable to me" so the feelings of others aren't particularly relevant and even if they were, enough Americans had a pro-Trump stance that Trump was elected president. I'm assuming your reason for not describing him as "idealistic" is his pro-Trump stance, in which case I'd say he has ideals and is therefore idealistic, his ideals simply don't match yours.

I'm no Trump fan but I think your points are biased and irrelevant.

Try not to forget that Trump got 46% of the popular vote, to Hillary's 48%. And don't fool yourself, those numbers are comparable.

Oh, a Trump supporter, you say. Well, I'm glad you told us, because now I know the right opinion to have about him.

Considering that Trump won, it seems supporting Trump is plenty relatable to many Americans (approximately half). It's 50/50 either way.

I got a Rift over a Vive partially because I knew him, or at least knew of him, on the benheck forums back when we were all kids trying to make our own portable consoles. I was always impressed by his work ethic and designs. Enthusiastic, idealistic, and relatable were perfect ways to describe him back then as well.

I miss those forums. My portable GameCube never got finished

I don't think a rich 24 year old kid, doing something that was widely considered an attack against the Establishment, is something that is highly unusual or bad.

It doesn't seem fair to forever conflate Palmer with Trump or assume that he completely agrees with him. Maybe his tactics and philosophy are flawed, but I don't think his intentions are. Everyone's so quick to judge, demonize and forever cast people as bad.

He admitted to funding trolling memes to support the current President of the United States? He has to go away forever now, and we all have to pretend not to like him?

I definitely agree people deserve second chances and make mistakes. Especially people who are young and have more money than they are accustomed to having.

At the same time, it is really, really hard to look upon this charitably when he was screwing with something with such high stakes. I get that 24-year-old kids don't take much seriously, but for goodness sake don't use your money for political purposes without thinking it through.

Heck, having millions of dollars makes me dislike him kind of like how people don't like Hillary for being successful and having millions. At least Hillary took her position seriously and attempted to look like she was trying to do the right thing, vs Palmer's 'shitpost 4 days, memes r life' bullshit.

> it is really, really hard to look upon this charitably when he was screwing with something with such high stakes

Putting up a childish billboard of questionable strategic value promoting a candidate for president is "screwing with something with such high stakes?" Hyperbole?

2016 revealed just how thin skinned, conspiratorial and fatalistic the tech community is. Hence the drop in participation around here.

> I get that 24-year-old kids don't take much seriously, but for goodness sake don't use your money for political purposes without thinking it through.

Hmmm. Let's look at a slightly different statistic:

> In the U.S. army, something like 75%-80% of newly-commissioned Second Lieutenants are promoted to First Lieutenant (around age 25)

-- http://history.stackexchange.com/questions/7812/why-have-off...

What does a 2nd Lt do?

> Typically the entry-level rank for most Commissioned Officers. Leads platoon-size elements consisting of the platoon SGT and two or more squads (16 to 44 Soldiers).

And shortly will be promoted to 1st Lt...

> A seasoned lieutenant with 18 to 24 months service. Leads more specialized weapons platoons and indirect fire computation centers. As a senior Lieutenant, they are often selected to be the Executive Officer of a company-sized unit (110 to 140 personnel).

Oh. Leads 16-44 soldiers into combat, and shortly will be commanding 110-140 soldiers...

I would like to submit that letting a 24-year old off on account of immaturity is wrong and ignores their clear agency and capability.

I believe becoming a commissioned US Army officer involves passing a selection process.

You would think having $2 billion dropped on one's head by Facebook would too.

It's a selection process for technology, patents, and marketing, not for the person.

The choices a 2LT needs to make -- while having life and death consequences -- are also pretty limited and they've generally spent 3 years at West Point (or 1 year at Sandhurst, etc) being extensively taught how to make those decisions.

Oh yes, quite so.

But the cold truth is that a 2LT is an adult, given adult choices, and adult consequences.

Mr. Luckey is identical in this regard, and if, by the time you're 23, you're not capable of sober decisions- then that is what courts call incompetent to stand trial.

Many examples from contemporary and historical sources could be cited to support my argument: I selected the most sobering difference.

As I remarked above to the grandparent poster, Mr. Luckey should not be exculpated based on age alone - if at all. He was working towards setting up a propaganda group to serve extremist interests.

Palmer did nothing wrong. Nothing at all. He's totally free, in the United States, to hate on whatever candidate he wants and fund political cartoons against them.

> It doesn't seem fair to forever conflate Palmer with Trump

It happened about six months ago. That's a lot shorter than "forever". Even in Silicon Valley time...

I find the implied "boys will be boys" and "people make mistakes" quite unsavory.

Should he be cast out form society? No, but I sure won't support him until I see evidence he disagrees with the most disturbing things associated with Trump: sexism, racism, etc.

We need to hold people accountable instead of making execuses for them.

Do you also believe anybody who was in favour of the Clinton campaign needs to provide evidence they disagree with silencing sexual assault victims? Because that's definitely a disturbing thing "associated" with her.

Otherwise I feel like you're more interested in partisan political posturing than actually holding people accountable.

(for the record, I despise both Clinton and Trump, but had I been a US voter rather than a UK bystander, I'd've held my nose and voted Clinton on the expectation of that being the lesser of the available evils)

I think directly speaking about sexual assault coupled with many accusations is more damning, and supporters just not caring.

Same with racism against people form Mexico / middle east. Sadly comes down to a matter of scale, at least for me.

This sort of stuff should ruin someone running for president, somehow it didn't matter here.

Hillary wasn't campaigning on a platform of silencing sexual assault victims, but Trump was campaigning on a platform of xenophobia and dog whistles.

All these "phobia" labels get applied to people who just want others to obey the laws. Even intelligent tech minded people just don't seem to understand this.

You do you realize sometimes these people getting elected actually write or enforce the laws? Perhaps even change them, by lets say reducing the number of refugees being taken in.

But to get to the heart of your point "enforcing laws" Legality is in no way equivalent Morality. People use terms like "enforcing laws" as a sort of dog whistle to imply we should not and are not going to be listening to minority voices.

Boys that have friendly relationships with people like Milo Yiannopoulos gives me the impressions that they have other reasons than finding "stupid memes" fun.

I think that the kind of people that surrounds you also tells something more of the person in question. And it's not only the figure of Yiannopoulos that is questionable in this particularly case....

I don't care if Larry Ellison donates to Trump.

I care if he solicits money from a group of virulent internet racists though.

Why? Wouldn't you rather Ellison spend virulent internet racists' money, then spend Java licensee's money?

Why choose a headset (or any product) due to one person who clearly doesn't represent the company and who the company distanced themselves from and have apparently now fired?

So that the person in question doesn't get any of your money

I'm actually doubtful it has much to do with politics, if at all.

Dude is a world-class weirdo and an extremely bad communicator. So was Zuck, but he took media training and got..decent at it. Palmer didn't and hasn't, and there you go.

> extremely bad communicator

I don't know, some mistakes were made, but he was also pretty throughout in his Reddit AMAs. I think he does deserve some credit for that.

Reddit is not real life. If you could gain the communication, leadership, and political skills necessary for an executive position at a company like Facebook by posting on Reddit, then their meeting rooms would smell a whole lot worse.

In general, if you run a product or company it is a bad idea to get political. You instantly create 50% detractors when you need to always win about 60% support. Hold off politics activism until you have fuck you money.

In most cases politics is a waste of time, change the world via the market and products and focus on your own success. Don't degrade your work by getting into politics, it is merely a divisive system today. Politics suck and they are past the point of grass roots influencing anything, only money works [1][2].

Palmer, like many other 20-somethings, got caught up in it. Political activism peaks around 27-30 ish, Usually by 30 you realize it is all bullshit and a waste of time other than voting and giving money to causes you believe in or that you think should win, quietly, on your own without sharing with the world your beliefs because others have differing beliefs.

[1] https://act.represent.us/sign/the-problem

[2] http://www.bbc.com/news/blogs-echochambers-27074746

Hm ... given Oculus' continued hegemony in the market place, and the high reward of supporting the United States' winning administration in the global marketplace, couldn't he just as easily not.... done anything?

Like there are still devs on Oculus, Trump won, every one with clout that supported him is now in power, and I personally had no idea

uhm yah he's probably got a lucrative VR contract signed up w/ DARPA, I think this is all show

> Oculus' continued hegemony in the market place

I don't know what you're on about? Despite billions of money thrown at it by Zucks, the Vive outsells the Oculus 2:1, the PSVR outsells it by 3:1, the Gear VR outsells it by 18:1. [1]. There are still devs on Oculus (dozens of them!), but everybody sane develops on SteamVR from what I hear...

Palmer is smart to take his cash and run while he can.

[1] http://www.mcvuk.com/news/read/6-3m-vr-headsets-were-shipped...

Wow! Alright

> Facebook, which acquired the VR company almost exactly three years ago today.

Perhaps Palmer is able to 100% cash out all his stocks/RSUs today so he's out to do something else?

He should set up a VR company

Fairly sure FB would have made it worth his while to sign a non-compete.

Pretty sure non-competes are illegal in California.

For employees. There are absolutely noncompetes in California for people who sell their businesses.

http://codes.findlaw.com/ca/business-and-professions-code/bp...

Question: If you're a rank and file employee who has exercised options, and are therefore a (very small) shareholder, does this apply to you?

IANAL, but the plain text of the statute says:

"For the purposes of this section, “owner of a business entity” means ... or any owner of capital stock, in the case of a business entity that is a corporation.

For the purposes of this section, “ownership interest” means ... or a capital stockholder, in the case of a business entity that is a corporation."

So it certainly seems possible. Note that you would have to "sell or otherwise dispos[e] of all of his or her ownership interest in the business entity" in order for this code to apply. So it sounds like it may be possible for a company to include a non-compete in an offer to buy back your shares.

Again IANAL and this is not legal advice.

Fun facts: Though non-competes are generally unenforceable in California, there are exceptions when you sell your business, so the details of this particular case may be interesting.

Like Otto?

Vrotto

He was on the hook for 50m of damages in the Zenimax lawsuit. I wonder how much that eats away at his worth?

Rumor was he received more than 500m from the original Facebook buyout.

Is he really that "embattled"? Do people really have the energy to keep the outrage going this long?

He almost certainly shed a lot of his supporters with his actions.

It's weird to me that he would attract supporters or detractors. He's not Steve Jobs.

I got the Vive instead of the Rift because I like Vive's room scale tracking better than what Rift offers. I could care less about any of the names or personalities behind it.

Oculus got kickstarted by a lot of backers.

Do you think it takes a Steve Jobs to drum up supporters or detractors?

You clearly don't understand cults of personality. They're not limited to household names.

Enthusiasts are _intense_, and the VR community is still all enthusiasts. At least partially because of the price, but probably also because of the severe lack of high-budget games.

So yeah, the Reddit echo-chamber keeps the hate going long after it would normally die in that kind of community.

Add on the "gamer" subculture as well, and you've got a recipe for holding grudges for decades...

Even before all the politics stuff he was not the best guy to have as the face of the company. His interactions with the community were sometimes pretty bad.

I wonder if he just wasn't happy with his role in the company.

Gizmodo had a regular feature called Palmer Watch stalking him, which ran for 117 days despite the fact that never never made any kind of public statement or appeared anywhere for that time.

> Do people really have the energy to keep the outrage going this long?

If you don't know the answer to that by now...

Lesson of the day: Keep out of politics if you're not on the "correct" side. If he walks away from VR we've all lost something.

I'll live. Hell, I was never big into VR anyway, this could even be good for me.

Or, "if you're a public figure, or plan a public campaign supporting someone who is controversial, don't expect there to be zero criticism of your position because it's somehow sacred".

it's sort of strange that a mainstream candidate with enough support to win the whole election is considered controversial, plenty public figures endorsed hilary and none received the level of backlash that palmer did. max temkin even funded a similarly cringey billboard campaign:

http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2016-09-23-report-oculus-r...

http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2016-10-15-anti-trump-ad-a...

unless we are to enforce a standard of public apoliticism for public figures across the board, uniquely singling out endorsements on one side regardless of wealth doesn't seem like a good way to generate effective discourse

It's too early to say but history might have a different view on this.

I do think Trump is an anomaly. I certainly hope he isn't a trend.

I don't remember seeing and hearing any video tapes of Hillary bragging about sexually assaulting anyone.

Right, just recordings of her bragging and laughing about getting a child rapist off scott-free.

You should fact check your fake news [1] before parroting it, when you try to justify Trump bragging about grabbing women by the pussy without their consent [2] by making a false equivalence. An no, that wasn't just "locker room talk", so don't parrot that line either.

[1] http://www.factcheck.org/2016/06/clintons-1975-rape-case/

[2] http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/read-donald...

Wowee, I looked at your posting history, and all those racist and sexist remarks you've made certainly shed light on where you're coming from and what you believe, and why you follow the people whose lies you parrot. So don't bother trying to defend Trump sexual assaulting women by parroting pizzagate conspiracy theories, either.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9058169

> plenty public figures endorsed hilary and none received the level of backlash

No? You don't recall the decrying of "Hollywood elites" by right wing media and supporters?

> uniquely singling out endorsements on one side regardless of wealth doesn't seem like a good way to generate effective discourse

I am only obligated to commentate on endorsements that I agree or disagree with. I have no "fair time doctrine", and nor should I have to.

>No? You don't recall the decrying of "Hollywood elites" by right wing media and supporters?

This is generalized, and it's not an active campaign of literal harassment to make it difficult for specific individuals to work. For whatever reason, the Right is much less interested in seeing their political enemies suffer than the Left. Perhaps it's because the Right sees the Left as naive, whereas the Left sees the Right as human garbage.

The literal inventor of JavaScript, totally irreplaceable and undeniably the most qualified person for his role, is forced out from Mozilla over a campaign contribution to another mainstream political cause (which also won). He had silently made that contribution 7 years prior, and it was only discovered due to campaign finance disclosure laws. Major sites like OKCupid ran blackouts against Firefox users to punish them for running a browser associated with Brendan Eich. Unlike Luckey, he was not trying to get involved publicly, and only quietly exercises his rights as a citizen.

Now, the guy who "kickstarted" the multi-billion-dollar modern VR revolution is harassed and chased out of his position for committing a slightly-more-public form of heresy against the Silicon Valley dogma.

The "criticisms" are not comparable across the aisle.

Tech sphere: "After Trump's win, we need to get out of our bubble and learn about what others are thinking in America."

What about engaging public figures in your industry who are Trump supporters?

Tech sphere: "Palmer needs to lose his job."

Why does diversity initiatives never seem to care about diversity of political opinions? Isn't a diversity of perspectives one of the reasons for diversity?

Tech sphere: "..."

If you haven't heard anyone address that point, you haven't looked very hard. It's an (IMO) important part of the left-wing philosophy to be intolerant of intolerance:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paradox_of_tolerance

How is funding a pro-Trump non-profit intolerant?

I voted for Bernie in the primary and Hillary in the general, but the hypocrisy of Zuckerberg publishing his travels to rural America like he's a politician while Palmer is pushed out of his company is too much.

It wasn't just "pro-Trump". It was self-proclaimed shitposting:

http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2016/09/22/palmer-luck...

How is that different than a donor giving money to a SuperPAC to display a billboard? Should your employer care what non-profits you give money to?

I'm mostly responding to your "Why does diversity initiatives never seem to care about diversity of political opinions?" question.

I'm saying that it's legitimate for diversity initives to not support all political positions in the name of diversity. Yes, it's a paradox, but it's not something that hasn't been addressed.

And, yes, the Trump ticket was intolerant. You can make the argument solely on the grounds of the anti-muslim rhetoric, not to mention his running mate's public views on gay rights.

>Yes, it's a paradox, but it's not something that hasn't been addressed.

It's quite the paradox, as you'll see:

>You can make the argument solely on the grounds of the anti-muslim rhetoric, not to mention his running mate's public views on gay rights.

"One incredible Gallup report from 2009 found that 0 percent of British Muslims viewed homosexual acts as morally acceptable."

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/03/28/magazine/can-a-former-isl...

A lot of Trump voters probably don't want more Muslims immigrating into the US. Are you saying that can't even be discussed, despite the fact that Muslims don't approve of homosexuality, even in Britain?

Or what about the Muslims in the US who hold Sharia law above US law and don't want free speech? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PfmywzjdtRM

Are Americans intolerant for questioning if we should have more of that intolerance?

Should we not let Muslims into this country "solely on the grounds of" their "public views on gay rights"? I mean my god, should a Muslim be allowed to work at Facebook's London office based on their homophobic beliefs?

Please be more open minded in the future.

It's a left-wing value that you can, and should, separate the person and what they believe from their actions.

If anyone were to suggest that we should ban Trump supporters from immigrating to my country, I would be very opposed to that. I would also be opposed to denying those people the ability to hold public office, or receive services, etc., based on their beliefs.

So it's fine to be a Muslim. But if a person wants to use public forums to push Sharia law, which includes the subjugation of women and punishment of gays, I support removing their access to those forums. What goes on in that person's head, or what they discuss in the privacy of their homes/email/etc., is none of my business, no matter how odious I find it. But if those beliefs start impacting the public and are discriminatory, then the hammer comes down.

You see it as hypocrisy to condemn specific actions without also condemning affiliated people. I see those as separate things, so you can have a different policy for each. You can't punish people for something you think they believe should be done, but that they haven't actually done or incited others to do themselves.

Trump and Pence have both taken substantive actions against Muslims and gays, not based on what those populations actually did, but based on what they believe or who they are. If a Muslim campaigned for and legislated in accordance with Sharia law, I would condemn them in exactly the same way (but more strongly).

But I will not condemn every Muslim a priori even though I completely disagree with their beliefs.

> Please be more open minded in the future.

Please be less condecending in the future.

Anyone seeing this as having any connection to the VR industry as a whole is completely ignorant on the subject. Palmer has repeatedly shown himself to be a toxic liability to the brand, and this was inevitable to anyone who follows Oculus.

a neat hobby project that got noticed and picked up by Carmack

How insulting to Palmer, Mark Bolas, the Institute for Creative Technologies, and the wider virtual reality academic community.

> He's not an engineer or a programmer, and has had nothing to do with the design of the consumer product. He was just in the right place at the right time with a neat hobby project that got noticed and picked up by Carmack.

You're belittling founders. Not all founders have to be programmers or designers.

"He was just in the right place at the right time with a neat hobby project that got noticed and picked up by Carmack."

eye roll Really? He's accomplished more than most of the folks on this site. I really really hate the "They weren't an engineer therefore they're just background noise" mentality. A startup is a team. Everyone from executives to the doc writers are important, often in very intangible ways.

What did Luckey contribute? The first seed of the idea? A proof of concept [0]? I haven't followed it very closely, but it seems to me that Carmack is the one that not only had the technical skills at the early stage and did a lot of evangelizing for the young technology even before he joined Oculus, his name was also a major factor in bringing in other talent and investment. I don't think Oculus would have been close to where they are today without Carmack, I've yet to read about any crucial contributions by Luckey. Right place at the right time does sound accurate.

And of course companies need more than engineers, Steve jobs wasn't and engineer and his importance for Apple can hardly be overstated.

[0] https://youtu.be/kw-DlWwlXHo?t=169

Why would John Carmack -- who revolutionized graphics processing and led development of a frikkin rocket ship, mind you -- waste his time with Luckey if Luckey didn't bring anything to the table?

He built the first physical prototypes, he formed a team, and he hustled to make it happen. That's everything.

There's no way Carmack would've done it without Palmer. There's no way Iribe would've done it without Palmer. But I think Palmer would've kept trying til it was done even if none of those guys got on board.

Not sure how much he has in terms of liquid cash, but according to wikipedia his net worth is $730 million

He'll be fine.

Nothing in the entire article answered WHY he left. So it was because of the Trump thing?... Because that's stupid reason. Mark Zuckerberg who is the actual CEO of facebook is getting bad press on a daily basis and for much worse reasons than Palmer Luckey. Nobody outside of the tech community even knows who Palmer Luckey is but because he funded some trump trolls he gets ousted from the company he started??...something just doesn't sound right. Seems like a power play is happening behind the scenes and this is just an excuse

I give it 12 months before John Carmack leaves, too.

While not directly talking about Palmer, I'm not surprised that Oculus is having these sorts of troubles (co-founder leaving/lawsuit).

Being the first-movers in the VR space, or in the current wave of actually viable VR products, it'd be surprised if they turn out to be the dominant force in the space

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First-mover_advantage#Resoluti...

Curious how this will affect Oculus, if much at all.

In the long run, I don’t think Oculus is good for the industry. Their room scale tracking hardware is inadequate, and their exclusive titles are dividing a fledgling market. I say this as a Vive owner and enthusiast. This along with the lawsuit… maybe it’s for the best.

There wouldn't be any or many great VR titles if it wasn't for some initial investment. That is a chance for developers to actually make some money.

Yeah Vive is still better in large rooms, but the Rift beats it on most other fronts, such as controllers, image quality, atw and asw, comfort, and of course apps.

I haven't tried the Oculus Rift, but I do own the Note 4 Gear VR, and recently tried the Vive. I felt the Vive was clearly inferior, with a much closer and much more obvious and shallow feeling of depth to it, what felt like a worse field of view, and just more primitive VR games.

I was severely disappointed, considering how great the reviews of Steam VR games were, how much I looked forward to finally trying them out, and how primitive and demo-like the Gear VR games and apps were. It felt like the Gear VR games set a relatively low bar that the Vive should easily exceed, but sadly the games for the Vive were even worse.

If the Rift is actually better than the Gear VR, as I have expectation it is, then the Vive must be really awful in comparison.

It is nice that the Vive tracks you as you walk around your room, but that doesn't make up for the poor game quality and other issues I mentioned.

Overall, though, I think VR as a whole has a very, very long way to go. I was stunned and blown away when I first tried the Gear VR, but that sense of amazement wore off after a few weeks, and after that all the fun was in letting other people try it and vicariously enjoy their amazement. That lasted a few months, and ever since my Gear VR has been gathering dust, as it's just too much of a hassle to use, especially for long periods of time, when it gets too uncomfortable.

The main problem, though, is that all the games and apps are way too primitive, and all feel like bare-bones demos. If any of them were great, all the hassle and discomfort would be worth it, but they're really not.. at least not after the novelty has worn off.

I wish him the best - he jump started this entire industry, which was for a long time in the realm of scifi. Go and read his IAMAs on Reddit: he's clearly passionate and knowledgeable about VR. I hope he finds a proper outlet for his talents, now that he has the resources to do whatever he wants.

Interestingly https://www.reddit.com/user/palmerluckey shows no posts for almost a year.

In my experience, innovators hate big companies. The culture and people there are all selfish, self involved, trying to "beat the game" by maximizing their RSUs, piggy backing on other people's work.

I'm not sure how I feel about this - ambivalent, I guess - pretty much how I felt after the FB acquisition.

I was a KS supporter - but I had followed Luckey for a while before on the MTBS3D forums, when he was just playing around, modding classic HMDs - mixing up the parts. He was one of only a handful of people that I could see who still played around with VR in that mid-to-late 1990s way. At the time, I thought that if there were anybody who could bring back VR, it was him.

I've played with DIY "homebrew" VR off and on since the mid-90s. I have a collection of old HMDs and other gear from the era. I've modded a powerglove, and at one time hooked it up to my Amiga and messed around with AMOS3D for fun with it. Later, Rend386...in short, I was disappointed to see VR die - so when the Kickstarter was announced, I was - to put it mildly - stoked.

That KS was the first one I backed (and not the last!) - I had high hopes, especially because Luckey had made a huge deal out of there being Linux support. With the FB deal, that was dropped, and that's when for me at least, the gilding rubbed off revealing a more base interior to the whole thing. Still, I had hoped that it would all lead somewhere.

In a way, I guess it did. More people than ever before got to play around with VR and such, and experience it all in ways that in the mid-90s I could only dream about (the tech just didn't exist at a price any normal person could afford). It was, though, a disappointment to hear that people were still having the same usage problems with this new tech that were the bane of VR back then.

Now it seems that once again, interest is waning. The hardware is still way too expensive for most people to come on board. People are still skeptical about what it is, whether it really works, or worried about side effects and other problems. Others simply don't understand the concept of immersion - or if they do, they can't seem to grasp why that would be such a great thing (I find it odd that some can't understand the idea of being -inside- a virtual world - a world of make believe, a world of dreams? One would think that would be something everyone would be gung-ho about, but I guess not).

Then to find out Palmer's true side, which - at least to me - wasn't apparent before; conservative, a seeming "I've got mine" attitude (and I don't begrudge his newfound wealth - in fact, I kinda proud for him on that mark), and bro-dude, let's support our favorite cheeto-in-chief...

And then the whole Zenimax thing.

For me, his reputation has been horribly tarnished. I'm glad he gave the whole VR thing another boost, but at the same time, it looks likely that this is the last great "hoorah" for the technology, and it will likely never get another chance again - at least not in the "gloves and goggles" classic form we've come to associate the term "VR" with.

Perhaps that's for the best.

> It was, though, a disappointment to hear that people were still having the same usage problems with this new tech that were the bane of VR back then.

Could you elaborate on this?

I also remember the short lived VR craze of the mid 1990s. As a kid back then, I remember trying some kind of 3d tennis game in an arcade, which was like $3 to play. What turned me off from it was a weird realization that I much prefer playing sports in real life with the bonus of not feeling nauseated and seeing cross-eyed after wards. Thus, I would love to see this modern incarnation of VR applied to something more than just games...

Politics takes up a lot of time and I don't think creatives should get involved. Atleast not voluntarily.

I completely support and forgive Palmer Luckey. I hope for the world's sake that he goes on to do more great things.

There are truly bad people in the world. People who deserve to be hated. Palmer Luckey is very far from being one of them. If you're still piling on Palmer Luckey, you're a real piece of shit human being.

ooof. that sucks.

Kinda makes sense. Between the odd political stuff, the lawsuit where he was partially blamed, and the general poor PR at times.

I don't find it takes much energy to consider him a horrible person.

e: Downvoting because you disagree is not a proper use for your downvote button.

Unrelated to this thread, I was just thinking to myself a few minutes ago "2015 me would be very surprised at how mad i've been able to bee for this long". So I would be more surprised if people weren't still outraged.

I think there's a difference between being mad, and having formed an opinion about a person. I'm not actively raging about Lickey, but I have formed an impression of him that is unfavorable.

That's a bad HN comment to begin with because of the combo of unsubstantiveness and outrage. We're looking for thoughtful comments here.

Adding the thing about downvotes breaks the HN guidelines in a different way (https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html) so please don't do that either.

We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13998806 and marked it off-topic.

Peter Thiel next?

Probably indicates that VR really is deader than dead. The only people this appeals to are the tech-bros.

I really don't understand the Silicon Valley tech-bros that think VR has any hope. How do they not see the obvious user-experience problems, like motion sickness and limited visibility & resolution, as well as its product liability issues, like always falling down along with running into walls and breaking things? If you think VR is a solution, then we know you're a bad product designer.

The first generation of VR died out because of product-liability issues. Did those fundamental issues get solved? No.

I don't understand people who use the demeaning and sexist term "tech bros" unironically.

Did you know that there are women who like VR? Who code for VR? Who work to create it? Who are on the boards making decisions about its future?

Does your "techbro" bigotry leave room for the women of tech?

It makes me think you're a Gawker commenter who accidentally found their way to a community where you don't belong. I just don't get how this kind of condescending sexism finds its way here.

It's worth pointing out that "Tech bro" is fairly derogatory toward men too.

So, this person's male-specific slurs are sexist against women because it fails to insult them as well?

Hey, we deserve to be insulted just as much as men are. Equality.

I think there are two distinct things you can disagree with in the parent comment. The first is whether the use of the phrase "tech bros" is defensible; the second is whether all the people who are supporting VR are those who can be called (rightly or wrongly) "tech bros". I think you're conflating those.

I've always interpreted the term as being gendered, but not gender-essentialist; there are plenty of women who are "tech bros", because it's referring to a culture and set of ideals derived from gendered spaces like fraternities, but not those spaces themselves; plenty of "tech bros" were not members of a college fraternity, for instance. It is true that the vast majority of tech bros are men, for many reasons relating to society and gender. It's certainly possible that the term could get inaccurate, in which case I at least would favor a different one, but it works for now.

Under that definition, "there exist women who do behavior X which you attribute to tech bros" does not imply "attributing behavior X to tech bros is incorrect".

That leaves the question about whether "tech bros", such as they are, are the only people rooting for VR. I think that's fairly unlikely to be true, and yes, your points seem do rebut that claim. (That said, it's probably worth mentioning somewhere here that while women exist in VR, the industry seems to be biased towards an assumption of men, from various apps placing virtual objects at heights that are difficult for most biological women to reach, to the entire concept being based on a model of 3D visual processing that is more common in biological men: https://qz.com/192874/is-the-oculus-rift-designed-to-be-sexi... Pointing out the obvious truth that VR seems to be male-dominated is not excluding women, and your question about bigotry seems to be attacking the messenger.)

But even if it's misplaced to associate the entire VR industry with "tech bros", I don't think that invalidates the concept of "tech bros" itself.

Finally, I think it's inappropriate to imply that a good-faith participant doesn't belong here.

You're bending over backwards to try to rationalize a sexist term, and digging yourself deeper by then stereotyping fraternities.

Some VR games are really fun and engaging in a way that I never experienced on a screen. As a suggested curriculum towards an informed opinion, get an HTC Vive and play Job Simulator for 1 hour, Arizona Sunshine for 4 hours, and Eagle Flight for 1 hour.

I don't think it matters what headset you get, the best titles are amazing.

I also enjoy the bow and arrow castle defending game in the demos.

Yeah, same reason knife makers went bankrupt. Too many people cutting themselves with their products.

---

You might be right that it might not catch on but I wouldn't call it dead yet.

User-experience is one of the major topics VR research is working on right now (not including research into just "better headsets", which one could argue also is part of making the experience better), so it seems pretty clear everybody is aware of the fact that there are problems to solve.

I think you majorly overstate the liability issues. If that were a big thing it would have exploded by now, but all and all I feel like the original Wii got more bad press over this than VR has. The things you mention are not a big problem in general.

The bigger issue for VR is the question of "What for?". It's still expensive, requires room if you want to do more than sit on a chair, and it's mostly a fancy way of playing games (with some niche examples of other things). That might kill VR, at least when sold to customers.

> User-experience is one of the major topics VR research is working on right now (not including research into just "better headsets", which one could argue also is part of making the experience better), so it seems pretty clear everybody is aware of the fact that there are problems to solve.

But it's a fundamental design problem - the fact that you're handicapping a person's environmental awareness. You could try to recreate the environment in the headset, but then it becomes more AR and less VR. (AR being more viable than VR any day..)

> The bigger issue for VR is the question of "What for?". It's still expensive, requires room if you want to do more than sit on a chair, and it's mostly a fancy way of playing games (with some niche examples of other things). That might kill VR, at least when sold to customers.

The reverse is even more compelling. You could take any VR application and create a standard non-VR version, and it would be more usable. In the end, a non-VR computer experience is so much better than VR. VR is completely unessential.

> it's mostly a fancy way of playing games

You're saying that dismissively, but video gaming is a trillion-dollar industry.

Yes, VR is expensive right now. Every new technology is. If you think issues like motion sickness and running into walls are insurmountable, then I think you haven't been paying attention to the state of the art--there's been a lot of progress made on both of those. Also they're more or less mutually exclusive; motion sickness is mainly an issue with seated VR, not room-scale.

you clearly are not well informed about VR if you think it is dead in the water. Have you even bothered to look at the Playstation VR? It has sold more units than Occulus and Vive combined, and has been out for way way way less time.

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