skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
>I wanted something built exclusively for the extreme requirements of gaming, and I feel this acquisition is going to distract the Oculus team from that. Facebook has no experience whatsoever in that domain

com'n, VR FPV in FarmVille would be an experience to die for :)
IMO Facebook just bought $2 Million of R&D and a whole lot of bad PR for 1000x the going price. Doesn't seem like such a hot deal.

Also I'm wondering what the investors do to FB's stock watching them throw cash away like this.
He has my respect. Facebook needs to be shunned by anyone with a brain, until they are a footnote in Internet history. Their privacy violations are unforgivable.

Really disappointed in the Occulus Rift board right now. I guess money overrides any sort of values.
My god, the tinfoil on HN has become unbearable. Are you even listening to yourself?
The only sensible interpretation of this is that Facebook is looking at this as a hail-mary diversification. They've got trouble monetizing and they know it. Having an actual hardware wing, in something new that might be on the verge of finally becoming big is a smart move.

Though if I had to fathom a plan, if Facebook buys some telepresence/robotics people then I'd say they might be thinking about how you could monetize global telepresence via virtual reality. Gaming is one app for the Oculus, but it's got an unknown market dimension. Whereas something like that - you could sell it to everyone, and they would actually pay for it.
What would it take to replace Oculus? 
It's very clear from the backlash that there is a significant market for a community-centered independent virtual reality company. So what would it take to go from idea to product, and which parts of the community involvement are most important?

I have most of the skills to make a prototype on my own, now I'm trying to gage how crazy it is to devote a significant amount of my tim to a project like this.
Why no use of SMB networks? Always puzzled me.
Or Blizzard. They have an actual virtual world already. I can easily see WoW fans who already sit at a PC and buy special hardware for their games to flock to VR tech.
Hey, it’s Jason. OMG. Can you do me a favor? DON’T eat these health foods
Nobody did. Well, besides this guy http://www.reddit.com/r/oculus/comments/1wf6mg/so_no_way_to_...
If we see a virtual facebook before a virtual fps I'm going to pull my hair out.
Who couldn't think of a hundred applications you could apply Oculus to any product out there? That's why people get so excited about it!

My point is that its unfair to compare the acquisitions listed above to Oculus simply because it of sticker-price or being so high profile. Oculus is a consumer device, a market that Facebook has tried numerous times and ran screaming from numerous times. Can they do it right? I'm sure they can. Is Oculus the right choice to start? Not my call. But is Oculus a web service? No. Does Oculus, company or product, relate at all to Facebook's product line? Not really. Did Instagram and Parse? Yes. Full stop.
This is a big step in the direction of data collection. Imagine gaming with the goggles on and FB is tracking your eye movement, monitoring your heart rate and how you react to certain visuals. Say you are playing DeadSpace or some other jumpy game and they see that when you get "scared" your heart beat becomes abnormal. They could then use that data to insert an ad for a local heart specialist or some fancy new heart medication. I'm not against new tech but people should always be informed on what data is being collected and most of the time that is not the case.
> Who profits most from cultivating this image? The startup founder or the VC?

I hate these kinds of arguments, as though there were some evil man looking to exploit people for his own gains.

As you know, startups are pass or fail (in 99% of situations). It is in the VC's best interest to put you into the pass category. If it were better to not work 100% on your startup 24/7 then it would also be in the VC's better interest to not recommend that to you. The VC doesnt somehow earn more money because you worked more on your startup. Furthermore, if doing that actually hurt your startup, the VC would be doing himself a disservice recommending it to you because it would mean that you would more likely fail and thus earn the VC nothing.
"if Google was the buyer, there would be much more positive comments here."

The HN reaction to Google's acquisition of Nest makes me think the comments would be equally negative.

I'd be hard-pressed to think of a buyer that WOULDN'T lead to negative reactions on HN...

Apple: they'll make it iDevice-only, and also it will disappear for a year if not longer until Apple feels it's good and ready

Microsoft: they'll screw it up

Etc...
We are already partially taxed by inflation. I think about 1% per year. Minimum wage should be matched to inflation and living costs.

Obviously it could cycle out of control if the amount of money printed wasn't regulated. But it could be a decent method to cut no-value-add industries (IRS, accounting).

Job mobility could be higher if you didn't have to file with the government every time you got hired. So the worker would have more leverage over the employer if they did not keep wages sufficient.

Additionally, there are many untaxed workers right now that we would then be taxing if inflationary or single tax was used. Ex, waiters, other tipped jobs, sketchy corner store that only take cash, illegal immigrants who work under the table
I'm wondering, what's John Carmack take on this, he quit idSoftware to join Oculus, which was very open by that time. He always was proponent of openness... right now from a laik perspective it looks it was mistake to leave id.
They could make VR services for person-to-person communication. Be in the room with someone a thousand miles away, rake in cash for in-world ads and purchases... it could essentially become a future iteration of facebook (for when VR catches up to mobile).

If nothing else they could follow the original plan and sell a standalone rift for a profit.
I see your point. But if this is a viable idea, the competitors with similar solution will appear eventually, which would sort of remove the single point of failure. On the other hand if this fails, nobody will try to get there a nasty backdoor.

Moreover compared to the current state when almost nobody uses gpg because it doesn't work with their favourite cloud provider, this approach would provide a nice alternative.
Presumably that having the resources (servers and infrastructure, devs, designers, researchers, business connections, data, etc) available at the parent company is a bigger incentive than running things yourself (even if you have the financial means to do so).
Last I heard (couple months ago) it was used for a couple or three pieces of functionality only.

Based on my experience with it (master incredibly stale, not recommended, and the recommended "development" brittle and buggy), that's not surprising at all...
Well, "iPad Air" text in an underwater scene has more unfortunate resonance with a story about an airliner crashing into the ocean than just the "ocean" connection.

In a print newspaper, this is the kind of association of advertiser and story that would have been actively avoided by a human (and which, from what I've heard -- though I have no direct experience -- advertisers would be irate about and even cancel accounts over if it wasn't avoided.)
The Real Problem with Leggings Ban for Middle School Girls: Specific Targets
He's too busy talking to Ferrari dealers, hopefully.
VR is bigger than gaming, bigger than sports or interactive drama or pornography. It's an alternative world that can be built from the ground up, that will allow us to experiment with new forms of embodiment and society. The whole process involves experimenting with, and shedding certain aspects of, one's identity. And Facebook wants to cast our identities in stone - and god help those who maintain pseudonyms.

This great team of hackers got wealth in exchange for their dream. It's a shame; they could have kept the dream and sold their product instead.
I imagine Facebook can arrange that.
It is really astonishing the amount of anti-Facebook hate in this thread.

Yes, this isn't part of Facebook's core competency. They still bought it. Could it mean Facebook is attempting to diversify?

How about lets wait and see what happens before we vilify the Oculus founders.
Sleeping at work
Well, not the best news.

Valve has a strong prototype, so they're also in the game, and they will take this technology in the right direction if Oculus drops the ball.
Yes, I have the Oculus DK1 and I will start looking at the Sony's Morpheus concept from now on. Especially when Sony's track record this year has been amazing in every sector. I really love them getting back in business. I love honest technology companies which deliver best products with no strings attached. Facebook is not one of them.
The Ford GT (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ford_gt) is a better example than the GT500 as well.

I've heard it explained that halo cars help create brand loyalty with an instinctual response similar to "My dad can beat up your dad" fights on the schoolyard.
His take is a nice slice of that 2 billion dollar pie.
Wiling to bet he'll wait a few days until the buzz settles down and then announce that he's leaving to pursue other work without a mention of why.
Jumping into bed with Sony because of the Facebook deal is like jumping into bed with Typhoid Mary because Courtney Love turned you down.
Let me know how that works out for you when the IRS wants to know how you bought that house, car, and boat with all the money you never reported. When the IRS shows up at your door and your answer is "hahaha sorry, it's all untraceable and anonymous, you can't know how much i own!", I'm sure they'll throw their hands up and walk away in defeat.
Show HN: websites and hosts monitoring service
Crud apps my man, ones where the framework did all the IO for you.
You could say the Facebook aquisition... took it down a Notch!

(Sorry, had to do it. I accept the inevitable downvotes as long as I make one person smile)
>>I doubt the issue is Facebook 'creeping [him] out'

I think that's very much the issue.

Seriously, "virtual reality" and "Facebook" are two things I don't want to think about in the same context. The former is an extremely promising piece of technology that can change the way people work, talk and play. The latter is a gigantic online advertising engine. Put them together and there's only one direction virtual reality can go: a new way to advertise to Facebook users (once they "bring virtual reality to everyone" of course. /eyeroll ).
And that mod is incredible, too. Standing in the Minecraft world in VR while it's snowing is pretty gorgeous.
Yes, having open-source software is a requirement in this case, but it's hardly the whole story.
This is the most terrifyingly awesome technology acquisition I've ever seen. Facebook chat in two years: put on a headset and get teleported to a room in a virtual world where you can talk to your friends' avatars. Skype and Google+ Hangouts suddenly seem very 20th century.

I've always found Facebook's stock to be a ridiculously risky long-term investment since their entire growth plan is predicated on monetizing an already established customer base, where a single event that causes people to switch en masse to a more private/secure social network would destroy the company. After today's acquisition I no longer think this.
Am I way off in thinking Zuck wants to make Oculus Facebook's response to Google Glass?
i HOPE this just gives Oculus more money, engineering talent, and breathing room to make the great product that Carmack and co. are dreaming of.

I fear that something will go wrong and this will change the trajectory for the worse. I don't see the fit here. However there are a lot of smart people on both sides of the deal and I like to assume that they know what they are doing.
It's great to see some people maintain their integrity even while others are selling out.
Reading the comments, it's truly shocking how FB isn't the cool kid anymore.

And I see this trend more and more with my friends (average users who just leave FB or are inactive.)

Do you share this feeling regarding FB ?
Similarly, there is already DarkCoin, which can do anonymous(ish) payments via DarkSend. Whitepaper:

http://www.darkcoin.io/downloads/DarkcoinWhitepaper.pdf

Unlike ZeroCoin, it has actually been built.
Does this mean that any JavaScript code can determine the client's local IP addresses? Then it can be used for identification, I think browsers should let the users white-list the sites which are allowed to use WebRTC.
I said this on the other thread, but this is the most terrifyingly awesome technology acquisition I've ever seen. Facebook chat in two years: put on a headset and get teleported to a room in a virtual world where you can talk to your friends' avatars. Skype and Google+ Hangouts suddenly seem very 20th century.

I've always found Facebook's stock to be a ridiculously risky long-term investment since their entire growth plan is predicated on monetizing an already established customer base, where a single event that causes people to switch en masse to a more private/secure social network would destroy the company. After today's acquisition I no longer think this.
I cannot imagine how Carmack is excited about this
My hopes now rely on the Chinese copycats. I hope they are able to duplicate an Occulus without Facebook when it comes out.
Show HN: fnHouse: Where Web Handlers Get Their Jollies
Right, but from what I last heard, Jeb has been the maintainer with full creative control of Minecraft.
I would say that at the very least, we should give Carmack the benefit of the doubt. He has proven to be a visionary and able to execute on all manner of awesome tech for many years.

If he leaves shortly after this acquisition, then we know something is amiss. If he stays, then it should be for a very valid reason - i.e. that they can probably do much more inside of FB than outside.

Keep in mind he was independently wealthy before, so it's likely that he wasn't as tempted by money as say the founders were (assuming that they weren't independently wealthy - which I don't know if they are).
Agreed, I worked for MSN.com for a while, and any ad placement like that is not your random, average ‘served from doubleclick’ style ad. It’s premium, and planned, human controlled.
Ask HN: Ideas – getting eyes, minds, and hearts.
I'm incredibly frustrated with Open Source Software and Social Media as of late.

I've always been a huge fan of both in the past, but that was mostly as a consumer, not so much a contributor. I've started open sourcing and offering up some of my own projects for the world to use and frankly, the world is about to kill my love of both of these mediums.

Getting eyes on your project is hard enough, getting those eyes to understand what you're doing is even harder, getting those people who like it to help promote it to click a button, black magic.

The worst part however has to be the critics, I don't mean the people that offer up alternatives or point out flaws, they're welcome and applauded. I'm talking about the people that bring nothing to the table beyond forcing your content to the bottom ensuring those that MIGHT want to see it never will (/r/programming isn't even worth the effort of posting to). No feedback, no critiques, no nothing... just ensuring your idea dies in a pit.

So I'm here to ask the HN collective for feedback, anecdotes, etc.
http://www.polygon.com/2014/3/25/5547584/facebook-buys-oculu...

> Mojang's Notch was more direct in a tweet. "We were in talks about maybe bringing a version of Minecraft to Oculus," he said. "I just cancelled that deal. Facebook creeps me out."

> We reached out for further comment, and he clarified his position. "Well, VR has huge potential in many fields, including social. I can see why Facebook would want to get in to this," he told Polygon. "As a game developer, however, I don't ever want to get stuck trying to target a platform not focused on games. People have made this mistake before."
The company PG co-founded that was acquired by Yahoo (giving PG the money to eventually become a VC) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Viaweb
> They (Oculus) now have many many more times the resources at their disposal than before to make countless imaginative projects.

Their new owner has more resources available (minus the payout to the old owners). Whether those resources will be allocated to those working on Oculus projects is another mater, as is whether any of the goals/priorities of Oculus projects will remain the same.
Indeed, nice to see Notch take a stand and provide some sliver of redemption today for the thousands of nerds (myself included) upset about the Oculus Facebook deal today.

I can't imagine the Oculus team ever reaching their fundraising goal if backers knew the founders were going to sellout before ever reaching the vision they shared to get people to back it in the first place.

EDIT: Notch seems to have just confirmed the postulation above in his latest blog post:

"I did not chip in ten grand to seed a first investment round to build value for a Facebook acquisition."

http://notch.net/2014/03/virtual-reality-is-going-to-change-...
I can understand shying away from any direct integration with Oculus itself from now on, but that doesn't explain why a game dev wouldn't want to still add VR support in at least a platform-agnostic way. I'm under the impression that there's an effort to create a standardized API for capturing head tracking data, anyway.
At this point the only way to grow their user numbers significantly is to get more people connected to the internet. The question is whether it's something they seriously think they can do or just an attempt to convince Wall Street they have growth potential.
This is not newsworthy. If you hit the refresh button enough times on upsetting news stories I am sure you will find a somewhat offensive ad every now and then.
Well instead of mobile games they may leverage the large console and desktop gamers out there and add FB accounts to those circles. Besides it may be a new revenue.

One kind of social events is gaming with friends. It's nice to compete with friends and show to your network what you and your friends are up to.

Undoubtedly at some point virtual reality is going to become the next "smartphone". Rift is a giant headset but in a decade or two it will get so small that we can enjoy virtual reality at home like we enjoy using a smartphone.

This feels more and more like getting your virtual character in SIMs to play virtual reality game.
> I can't see a single positive thing coming out from a non gaming company buying a game focused company (and an extremely promising one at that).

You mean like Microsoft acquiring Bungie in 2000? Gaming (at the time) wasn't one of Microsofts core competencies.
Apptentive launches a mobile app "Love Index"
We use Clojure (I'm informed that Lips-with-a-capital-L might mean something different than that, in which case I apologize for my lack of purity and bad nomenclature.)
Okay, let me play devil's advocate:

Perhaps Facebook are thinking "What's the one thing that could truly set us apart from all other social media sites, and place a prohibitively high barrier to entry on this otherwise very easy to enter field?", and perhaps the conclusion they've reached is to take social media to the next level, and have it simulate life in virtual reality.

Perhaps Facebook are going to aim to have a FacebookVR some time in the future, where you can meet up with other avatars 'in person' in their virtual reality community?

... Or perhaps this is just a sleazy cash in where they think they can recapture the video-game-enamoured youth market by shoving Facebook into every Oculus Rift game.
>I'd note that Facebook was one of the only companies NOT conspiring to deflate the wages of half of the people that visit this site

If you're referring to the fact that it was reported yesterday that Facebook refused to participate in the "no poaching" agreement between Apple, Google, and other companies, it is worth noting that Facebook's CEO is involved in a totally different, and probably much more permanent and far-reaching strategy for suppressing engineer salaries:

http://gawker.com/mark-zuckerbergs-self-serving-immigration-...
Yeah maybe its a market issue. I live in a major metropolitan market and local DJs who almost never produce makes more money than that.

Granted a specific market + genre combo can only support a handful of these "regionally famous" DJs, but that's probably just market self regulation.
I'm pretty sure this sums up what Facebook is going to do with Oculus: "Imagine sharing not just moments with your friends online, but entire experiences and adventures."

Yep, it's farked for good now. I'm heartbroken beyond words right now. I was so excited for the future of VR by an indie, open company. But no... I suppose we'll have to settle with Morpheus.

I am, in one word: upset.
April 1st is still many days away... "Teh Carmack" is up there with the least likely people I'd imaging being employed by Facebook.
presents strong evidence that this language is gendered.
We've since stopped saying that people must "love"
programming

Could someone expand on this point and explain how the "love programming" phrasing is gendered?
I wonder what is the development approach from both companies. For example, I remember Steve Jobs saying Apple's approach was to start from what they wanted to provide to the user rather than developing a technology and then figure out how to make a product out of it.

From the statement from Oculus VR, they are not clear what experiences they really want to provide.

Right now it is very difficult to see what is this same vision that both companies claim to have.
And you are positive he still has all that money? I wouldn't assume anything these days. There are plenty of people who are worth millions who stick around someplace they don't want to be to be worth tens or hundreds of millions.

Money is a real thing, no matter how awesome Carmack is (he's an idol of mine as well), it certainly can play a role in decisions.
Me too, I am sure he didn't expected anything like this :(
I think he is saying the types of companies that use Java are typically big enterprise shops. And it's true that in general they don't have proper career paths for people who want to stay developers. Basically these kind of companies like to treat developers as a commodity.

Developers aren't a commodity and good developers don't want to be treated as a commodity. In the java world this means good developers don't stick around.

Companies that hire Clojure developers are frequently much more progressive about it (because if they weren't they wouldn't be using a language like clojure)