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Comment by cm2012 | Hacker News Reader

cm2012

With all of their secrecy, you have no idea if they're being unethical or not. Their marketing materials are certainly nothing near reality.

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You're being completely disingenuous.

Magic Leap is a glorified toy. It is not going to affect your life.

I’d agree otherwise, but the article mentions that Magic Leap is bidding for a $500M military contract.

Putting these toy lenses on soldiers can get people killed — both the fighters themselves as well as civilians are at risk from these digital goggles that block 86% of incoming light unless the AR graphics can do something really, really useful in the battlefield.

I doubt it's for the battlefield. More likely for planning, where you'd have a briefing with several people around a tabletop projection of the ground scene and AR tanks and characters moving around.

FTA: “for use with troops in the field (as opposed to training).”

Not quite clear either way. You could still be right, but the implication seems to be otherwise.

Until they start faking results to the DoD, the analogy falls completely flat

I wonder what legal repercussions one would be open to for faking results to DoD.

If the F35 is an example, I’d say a trillion dollar, ten year contract?

The Theranos board is looking for work and just the right people to move such a deal forward :)

Seems like you're moving the goalposts though: the original question was whether Magic Leap is "unethical," not how much damage they could do by being unethical. Releasing much-hyped, highly-produced, and very compelling marketing content while knowing your company can't possibly deliver on it certainly meets my bar for unethical.

It's certainly not as bad as Theranos, sure - but bilking consumers (or investors) can still be unethical too. If your bar for a company acting unethical requires literally killing people, you'll be overlooking a lot of bad behavior...

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