skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
I also think that the technologies will eventually merge, but due to current physical limitations in display technology I am not convinced that this is imminent. I'd guesstimate it at 15+ years. Adding and subtracting to incoming light, and doing it so that you can convincingly blend the two (allowing you to convincingly overpaint something that is bright in the real world with something that is dark in your virtual space while also allowing you to overpaint something that is dark in the real world with something that is bright in virtual space) is a difficult problem to solve. Probably some sort of hybrid LCD/AMOLED tech could do it.. but I haven't even heard of prototypes for this yet.
Now this kinda sucks because oculus + minecraft is pretty much the metaverse.
Could you elaborate on this a little bit? I've never encountered this before.
Couldnt agree more! I'd I'm kind of fed up with the constant exposure... Really looked forward to oculus vr not anymore though.
Would love this info as well. I love Go and I'm still looking for a good book to buy for it.
It's likely a mixture of genetics, hormones, and social factors. What's interesting to me is that homosexuality can be found in hundreds/thousands of animal species from high-order mammals to cephalopods. Whether or not being gay is a choice or is genetic or whatever else, it's clearly natural.

[1] - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_animals_displaying_homo...
This is exactly what Gregg Steinhafel
(Chairman, President, and CEO of Target) discovered the hard way back in 2010.

http://consumerist.com/2010/08/05/target-ceo-explains-suppor...
I was going to say the same thing. At GDC last week, the general feeling was that Sony's tech was more than competitive and seemingly much closer to an actual consumer product than anything from Oculus.

Fear makes people do unexpected things.
I haven't actually interacted with the MIT curriculum in years, so I might be missing the point, but I was looking at the syllabus for 6.170 Spring 2013: http://ocw.mit.edu/courses/electrical-engineering-and-comput...

I guess it would be true that 6.005 is the "main" software engineering course now, not 6.170.
Did Oculus raise more money after the Kickstarter or did these guys own 100% of the equity?
How's doing what he loves "selling out"?
If a crowd funding website that was completely bitcoin based would it be able to avoid all SEC regulations? If there are regulations in the future is there a liability to creating this now?
Just acquired for $2 Billion and doesn't even have a Facebook account
Web-based scientific computing using CoffeeScript (like SciPy/NumPy/Matlab...)
Facebook is also faux-social. Seeing pictures of your friends checking into places and doing stuff is very different from being there, doing stuff with them.

Multiplayer games were one of the first faux-social online activities. In a weird way, it feels like a good fit to me if Facebook is in this to create an online gaming platform.
edit: To clarify, it was from reading this, which I originally read as 1 month, until I read the tweet.
"Heh, from Carmack's twitter 1m ago: https://twitter.com/ID_AA_Carmack/status/448629403740692481"

ah.. 1 minute?
I thought there was 1 month old tweet that mentioned FB (and obviously overlooked)
They're all cofounders/involved in Gophercon, here are linkedin profiles:

https://www.linkedin.com/in/brianketelsen

http://www.linkedin.com/in/erikstmartin

Can't find for William Kennedy, so here's his blog: http://www.goinggo.net/
How about a guy who donates to people who are homophobic bigots and who make being homophobic bigots a central part of their schtick? Like this guy, who Eich donated money to (it's on OpenSecrets): http://www.tommcclintock.com/press-releases/mcclintock-calle...

There's a pattern here. This issue is one that's important to Eich. I will certainly judge him on that and judge those who empower him and there's absolutely nothing fascist about exercising my freedom of association.
They reduced Google Drive pricing about a fortnight ago - 100GB for $1.99/month, 1TB for $9.99/month.
Don't get me wrong. I'm disappointed in Oculus too, and I'd be even more disappointed if I'd actually invested in them.

I'm just saying that people need to learn the hard lesson that when they're "investing" in something like Kickstarter they're not actually "investing" in the general sense. They're making a donation with little or no string attached, at best it's a "you give us money and we send you some doodad in the mail" investment.

So they're effectively donating money with no string attached.

So if you donated money to the company thinking they were going to do X and they actually do Y they can and will fuck you over if they think they can make more money doing Y than they can doing X, accounting for all the alienation from their existing customers from doing not doing X.

So please everyone, if you want to invest in something and you want to have the expectations of an investor make sure you're actually investing, not just donating.
Yesterday, they loved the guy. Say what you will about the deal, but Facebook has generated a lot of negativity in a lot of people. Not only did the Kickstarted future of VR sell out, they sold to Facebook. That subreddit has interpreted it as follows:

The dream is real, take my money! (during Kickstarter)

Shatter the dream.

Take a dump on the scattered pieces.

They are not happy.
I'd be surprised if the Sony news had anything to do with this. These sorts of acquisitions don't happen overnight, they've likely been talking for months, doing due diligence and other research into the deal.
I am pretty sure Jeri Ellsworth (AWESOME) had worked with Valve and is now working on a somewhat competing platform to Oculus. Perhaps they could use some attention in light of this?
http://venturebeat.com/2014/02/02/technical-illusions-aims-f...
Except you're face is going to be covered with virtual reality junk, and all it does is display something a normal monitor or TV can. Reading your facial expressions requires nothing more than a webcam. And the whole thing I think is just a gimmick that doesn't add much value (both VR and facial expressions.) Additionally video game characters look really creepy when they try to do facial expressions.
I think most of us really wanted Oculus to be an insanely great technology, not Facebook's "diversification strategy".
We could have used (and contributed momentum to!) already existing, open source Linux-based components wrapped up in an existing mobile OS which has already been deployed and shown working on several nice devices and is extremely capable, allowing you to do essentially whatever you can do on a computer (Maemo/Meego/Tizen/Sailfish family). In basically whatever language you want. Because, it IS a computer using a real computer OS which, for those who want it, allows all the control that a Linux computer allows to the user, not just a crummy sandbox.

And also there would not be such fundamental performance issues to iron out for several years before the platform became remotely suitable for human consumption.

And we wouldn't be pointlessly fighting a two-front battle, not only against iOS and Android etc., but also against every other concurrent attempt to bring a real, uncrippled open source, stack to mobile phones.

But... nah... we have plenty of time... let's build an entire NEW, NIH-based operating system!

And make sure that every function absolutely must be performed inside a web browser, and depends on Javascript, but with lots of ad hoc new APIs that are not otherwise applicable. Then we can work furiously to make it perform. And everyone who wants to touch our platform is required to deal with the incredible annoying pain of current Javascript web app development every time they want to write anything at all, forever.

Welcome to the future, now you must rewrite every capability in Javascript (one of the worst languages everyone has to use) even when there are already high-quality implementations in other languages. We don't want those here.

Because we don't just think Javascript is handy due to browsers already supporting it, as a matter of historical accident. We could have used literally anything. We actually sat down and decided there wasn't one single better language than Javascript to write a mobile OS in, and to require everyone to use to access our platform. Not even languages which have been used forever to make OSes, and mobile OSes. Not even a system which would allow choice of languages. Only Javascript. Only our new app API that we just came up with.

But give us a few years to implement acceptable FPS as a "feature" on our phone operating system targeted at weak hardware.
I am looking forward to Carmack writing php.

Oh wait, did I say php? I meant hack. On the hhvm.

CAN'T WAIT.
As long as Sony's VR headsets are tied to the PS4 they're probably going to have difficulty competing directly against the consumer Rift. If the example of Facebook and WhatsApp is anything to go by, it seems more likely that Oculus said, "sorry, we're not interested in being acquired ... wait, how much money?"
I think there's a big difference that comes down to motivation. Somebody who tries to get a Nazi elected wants, at some level, for me to die. Thus, I cannot trust them to treat me well.

Similarly, somebody who tries to get a gay marriage ban passed thinks that consenting adults should be prevented from marrying, and since there are no good rational reasons to do that (it's possible that there are some, but none have ever been presented to me, and there has been opportunity) then it indicates not only a prejudice against homosexuals, but a willingness to interfere in their lives. Again, they can't be trusted to treat homosexuals well in other contexts where they might have power.

Somebody who fights against carbon emission restrictions isn't doing it because they want the planet to die. Instead, they have examined the information and come to a different conclusion. You might say it's the wrong conclusion, and I'd completely agree with that, but that is ultimately a failure of brainpower rather than of motivations. They presumably have good reasons for why they act that way, which means they can be reasoned with. That makes it much more feasible to deal with them, and ultimately makes them much less harmful.
Instagram is cheap and creepy.
Yes, I have heard that saying. It's a rather stupid one, because sometimes the tools are to blame, even when in the hands of the best expert there is.
Upset About Facebook Buying Oculus? Support CastAR
The reason for the accredited-investor regulation was to prevent people from putting all of their wealth into risky investments they know nothing about and being left destitute.

People on HN are pretty smart, but it's not representative of the entire population.

People get scammed by ridiculously obvious scams. Do you really think they have the ability to invest in a start-up in an intelligent way?
Zuckerberg offered Oculus $1.5 billion three months ago
Does anyone believe anything that this man child says? Seriously. Anyone?
I didn't think Bryan O'Sullivan would be Hack-ing PHP, either.
I don't think that would work. It would seriously diminish the possibility of kickstarter-based companies ever raising crowd funded funding.
What a crazy idea, that it's somehow "fascist" to criticize a company based on the political activities of their CEO, but I can only assume "not fascist" to restrict the rights of minorities.
For fuck's sake will you FB hating fanboys stop crying for a moment and realize that this is what makes VR legit. This. Is. An. Enormous. Opportunity.

It's like the moment when I was teaching a game design course and I realized that all the students already used Dropbox. I though I was the only one who knew about Dropbox.

If you want VR, then you should be happy. This just made VR real.
Ah, ok. That makes a lot of sense.
Absolutely. A permanent fix for this would be useful.
I am happy to vouch for William who has been driving the Miami meet ups. He knows his Go and is able to deconstruct rather tricky subjects and present them in a way that's easy to understand. You should check out his blog to see what I mean. Better yet, if you are in Miami, come to the meet-up.
They did a $75M round recently and have been hiring like crazy.
And next week Facebook buys Valve. Computers are ruined forever.
Yup, no way I'm buying Oculus Rift now, or developing for it.
Serious question - why would he need any more money? And how certain would that have been?

I can't imagine anyone who hasn't been deep into "FU money" for a while actually choosing "perhaps far more than 2 billion later" over "2 billion now".
What I instantly thought of shared experiences with the game recording features of the PS4, or even ghosting along other players in real time. Its the type of tech that could take the competitive gaming community to whole new levels of enjoyment and participation.

But yes second life applications... I don't see it at all.
nice detective work. LinkedIn probably covers most of what you need to know. We're also behind projects like Skynet and SkyDNS. I've been using Go in high volume production applications since 2010.
I find it hard to believe you don't know that the parties of the 1860's and the parties of today aren't quite the same, but here's a primer:

http://www.livescience.com/34241-democratic-republican-parti...

So, sometime between the 1860s and 1936, the (Democratic)
party of small government became the party of big
government, and the (Republican) party of big government
became rhetorically committed to curbing federal power.

Add on the Republican Party's Southern Strategy of the 60's and 70's, and it's pretty clear which of the two parties a KKK member would choose today. If the Southern Strategy isn't familiar, I'll let Ronald Reagan's Campaign Manager sum it up:

You start out in 1954 by saying, “Nigger, nigger, nigger.”
By 1968 you can’t say “nigger”—that hurts you, backfires.
So you say stuff like, uh, forced busing, states’ rights,
and all that stuff, and you’re getting so abstract. Now,
you’re talking about cutting taxes, and all these things
you’re talking about are totally economic things and a
byproduct of them is, blacks get hurt worse than whites.…
“We want to cut this,” is much more abstract than even the
busing thing, uh, and a hell of a lot more abstract than
“Nigger, nigger.”

http://www.thenation.com/article/170841/exclusive-lee-atwate...
You don't get to define what the word "hacker" means, though.
I know it's a bit of a libertarian viewpoint but it is not the government's job to be my nanny. If I wish to throw all of my money down the toilet on some hopeless start-up I should be allowed to do so.
Even back before the Xbox One was announced people were digging up Microsoft patents on things like eliminating interference between "video headsets" and wireless controllers being used in close proximity. Thats a pretty late stage problem to be solving.

Also remember that Microsoft and Facebook have a pretty strong working relationship. This could be Facebook taking Oculus off the market in exchange for a bigger cut of ad revenues on Facebook search.
In the UK, civil partnerships were introduced for same-sex couples, which gave AFAIK the exact same legal rights and tax benefits as heterosexual marriage. However, campaigners for gay marriage said this was not good enough so the Prime Minister eventually pushed through a vote for gay marriage. So it seems the issue wasn't really about legal rights, that just comes along for the ride, it was more about using the word "marriage".

Similar thing when it comes to marriage ceremonies. Why lobby the state to try and force a religious institution to hold a same-sex marriage ceremony when the teachings of that religion are clearly against same-sex relationships? Can't we accept that in the diversity of opinions out there, some are like chalk and cheese? They simply don't go together so why force the issue and make everybody unhappy?

What I find interesting about this last point is that campaigners only focus on the Christian religion. It seems nobody wants to try and force mosques and synagogues to perform same-sex marriage ceremonies. Why is that?
and the headline has changed again...

it was "18 months ago Oculus did one of history's smartest rounds $2.4M for a 0.0% stake (wsj.com)
> The reason for the accredited-investor regulation was to prevent people from putting all of their wealth into risky investments they know nothing about and being left destitute.

Perhaps limit the amount that can be invested without accreditation?
Why would I need to boycott something I have no use for in the first place?
Today's March 25. That's when that tweet was posted. FYI. ;-)
Nobody becomes destitute after funding a failed Kickstarter project because the amounts are small. That doesn't need to change. Limits could be in place. What needs to go is the $1,000,000 threshold for getting any equity at all.
No, There used to be 3 difference BTC denominated securities exchanges, Havelock, BitFunder, and some other one I can remember the name of. They were mostly based out of Canada then some regulators forced two of them to close and Havelock moved to a country in central America to avoid the same fate.
Anecdotal data point; I just informed my girlfriend of this deal. My girlfriend, who knows of Oculus as "that virtual reality thing you were talking about." She also uses FB. Her response, verbatim; "that's not good."
Gutted. Oculus just turned into Orwell's telescreen. Hope the board enjoy their 30 pieces of silver.
Already exists. It's called Second Life.
Yeah, Facebook is one of the few major tech companies who can buy Oculus and let them operate independently, since they don't have a stake in anything much related to gaming or VR. This means they are one of the companies least likely to screw with the Oculus vision, and I see that as a very good thing for virtual reality.
1. The face-reading parts would be inside and part of the virtual-reality junk. (And, helpfully, would also enhance eye-tracking.)

2. Modern graphics technology has all it needs to generate realistic expressions on characters. Modern video-game characters instead look creepy because they're replaying a small pre-made library of expressions that don't usually fit the situation very well. If the character's face just mimicked the tension in the muscles of your own face moment-to-moment, this problem would disappear.

3. The argument that facial expressions (or body-language in general) doesn't add value is refuted explicitly by the fact that people prefer meeting in person, to meeting over video-chat, to speaking over the phone, to having a text conversation. The only thing each rung of that ladder adds to the previous is body-language-based interaction.

But these are all beside the greater point: the feeling of being in the same room with someone is necessary for the emotional regulation of your relationship with them. Skype doesn't give you that. VR, eventually, can.
They're not really comparable; Clojure protocols are a more flexible (runtime-extensible, for instance) notion of a (non-hierarchical) interface, and records / deftypes are just straight-up Java classes, with records having in addition nice map-style access to members.

I haven't used Typed Clojure, so I can't speak to that, but if you want to do type-level programming Clojure is probably not your weapon of choice.
agree, especially if none of the technology could be patented. I'm assuming it can't be patented, since there has been previous attempts in VR & Sony is working on their own.
Yes, but as long as the way you pick that price is reasonable at estimating fair market value and consistently applied that shouldn't be a big issue.
Lobby carmack to push open source on this one.
Tedious: Yes. It thinks it is a platform. It thinks users care about its architecture, which is over-engineered. It has it's own package manager. It is tedious.

Slow: Buy a new computer. With memory. Sheesh.

Unusable: Well, it can be used. But it is a travesty of a GUI. A GUI should offer only valid operations. Eclipse lets, nay offers, nay presents on a silver platter just a click away the opportunity to do senseless destructive things. Thousands of them for every one sensible right thing you can do. It is my nominee for Least Discoverable Human Interface.

"Apart from that, Mrs. Lincoln, how was the play?"

I use Eclipse. I don't find Android Studio to be materially better. I am constantly offended by Eclipse being the most rule-breaking in-a-bad-way GUI ever. If it didn't have great refactoring (that works about 80% of the way when Android XML files are involved) and pretty good code completion and documentation pop-ups I would be more motivated to replace it.
I couldn't find the answer but did come across this interesting historical take on software patents.

http://www.nytimes.com/1994/02/24/business/microsoft-loses-c...

> The Patents and Trademark Office, which began issuing software patents only a decade ago, has been accused of having inadequate expertise in software to judge what is truly novel.

Nice to know nothing has changed in a decade.
Valve would have been ideal in terms of 'companies who have lots of money and not a lot of people to justify their spending to', but I imagine that $2Bn is outside their price range. Last I heard they were working on their own VR though.
I thought that a big effect of the InstaBook deal was that FB got access to every image on the site, after an opt-out period, to use in advertisements as they please.
The cellphone market pushing displays forward was only one ingredient. Cellphones don't have low-latency, low-persistence displays, and they don't have the kind of specialized optics needed for a VR headset, and they don't do low-latency high-precision orientation/position tracking.
You mentioned a key part of your moral defense:

I've never said I was against the various domestic
partnership rules that allow equal insurance, tax breaks
and other benefits to committed partners.

That's where you and Eich differ. By donating to the Prop-8 campaign, he was directly supporting state-sponsored discrimination. It goes past personal beliefs when you take steps to strip others of their rights.
Agreed: not to mention that the y-axis is labeled "More Capacity" but is actually "Greater Capacity per Dollar".

Here's a more traditional chart with a roughly y=x trendline:

http://snag.gy/bNTiJ.jpg
Oldest patent I see that looks like it could be for MS-DOS is #4,779,187, "Method and operating system for executing programs in a multi-mode microprocessor", which was issued in October 1988. That wouldn't apply to DOS 2.0, of course.

The bigger concern would be copyright. That might be a fairly plausible argument for why FreeDOS developers shouldn't be reading this source. Though realistically the odds that Microsoft would actually pursue such a case are remote at best.
My palms got sweaty just reading the hotmail portion. I think someone could make a really great horror book that is just a collection of stories like this. I know it would give me nightmares.
That isn't part of the language, that's part of the standard library. Just the same as java, which has a standard hashing function, AND hash table/map.

Ultimately, where does the language end, and the standard library begin? Whats the real difference? Yeah, so C++ and Java don't have built in syntax for hash tables. That's it?
AWS Urges Devs To Scrub Secret Keys From GitHub
Would they really have offered equity though? I don't know.
It'd probably still be an RTS and likely never become popular. There might never have been a second Halo.
Family names listings on Facebook
Thanks! I know I could have sleuthed myself, but I was curious if anyone knew them personally and could offer more than Google.
> put on a headset and get teleported to a room in a virtual world where you can talk to your friends' avatars.

Uhm...No thanks. Second life has already been tried.

Why does this idea keep coming up? It sucks every.single.time.
Holy shit, John Carmack works for Facebook. I can't believe this.
Cactus for Mac deploys to S3. http://cactusformac.com/