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by skc 3680 days ago
The reluctance for people to be skeptical of anything to do with Magic Leap is strange to me.

How is their product not rightly described as vapor ware? I feel like I've been hearing about how amazing it is for ages and still...nothing.

Stories like this aren't helping me change my mind either.

3 comments

I am not even sure what ' deep learning techniques utilizing robotics' even means.
Well there is http://googleresearch.blogspot.com.au/2016/03/deep-learning-...

Presumably that's not the secret thing since it's directly from the Google Research Blog.

What does that have to do with Magic Leap?
The lawsuit alleges the duo's duplicity involved "some deep learning techniques utilizing robotics."

from nytimes article

Gauging off their patents, they've got so much bleeding edge shit to pack into their device that I'm not expecting a consumer ready product from Magic Leap in less than 5 years. I'm just going to have to get used to people throwing around the 'vapourware' accusation in every Magic Leap thread I stumble across for some time to come.
There are patents for perpetual motion machines. Building something is hard, describing a vague idea is easy.
> The reluctance for people to be skeptical of anything to do with Magic Leap is strange to me.

The propensity for people speaking for others trust channels is strange to me, but people still do it. Selling ones own beliefs on the coat tails of others beliefs probably isn't the best way to hard sell skepticism in a brand. That said, I'm more skeptical of Magic Leap's intent than yours, given I trust them about as far as I can throw a whale.

I applied for a job at Magic Leap. I applied for a cloud architect position, because I believe this technology is far more dangerous and insidious than we can begin to imagine. In fact, I believe it could be used to alter people's ability to perceive reality in a way that is life altering to the person wearing the device. I also think that other humans will use that altered realty to control each other.

This device should be impeccably secure, open, and transparent. The reality is that it will be full of security holes, closed source and geared toward profitability of the brands that makes them.

Augmenting one's vision without a new form of software security is going to be a really bad idea. A person in a crosswalk could be made to disappear for the occupants of a car. Drawing a gun in a man's hand could cause a police officer to shoot him.

Subject matter as disturbing as this leads to dissonance in humans, as we have a hard time understanding/simulating all the ramifications at the outset. Dissonance from that misunderstanding leads to confusion and polarization. Polarization leads to endless arguing and rationalizing. And, nothing gets done in the meantime, other than the few people running the company getting richer on all the people gobbling up their products because they think they have to have them because everyone else does too. (I rationlize this is an observation, but it's still pretty blame-y). And, the worse part is, none of them will be really thinking about how bad guys can make really bad things happen when you can change what people see with a piece of code.

As for the job, well, I found their HR process error prone, the rhetoric about the technology disingenuous, and their lack of proper scheduling worrying. Busting meetings is not a great start to hiring people, or securing advanced technology from ill doers.

  Augmenting one's vision without a new form of software security is going to be a really bad idea. A person in a crosswalk could be made to disappear for the occupants of a car. Drawing a gun in a man's hand could cause a police officer to shoot him.
That is a cool scenario I've never thought through before. Interesting - thanks!
No problem. Remember, you just think you are you because this reality has really good security.