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Oculus' Palmer Luckey funds white-supremacist/misogynistic/anti-lgbt harassment group
- Thread starter jon bones
- Start date
Brat-Sampson
Member
Guys I'm wearing socks with sandals at home. Did I fail at life ?
Depends, do you also have hundreds of millions of dollars?
"I'm going to protest this rich parasite who cheats the system, and hurts the livelihood of the lower classes and is a corrupt warmonger by openly supporting a candidate who also happens to be a rich parasite who cheats the system, hurts the livelihood of the lower classes and is a corrupt warmonger, while also being an open racist"
Hey, nice plan guy!
Jesus, some of these people have to be frickin trolling at this point. Its the only explanation i can think of, its like i've been taking crazy pills and just have not realized it.
These kinds of people allying with Trump...a lot of them come from backgrounds you don't expect of the kind of person to not have basic common sense to get where they are. So how exactly does it get to the point where they are supporting some crazy person like this? Because he is on TV a lot? Because he had some fake reality TV show? Because he is an open racist and these folks are attracted to that?
Regardless of the reason, its.....i just don't feel confident in the human race when i see things like this.
Hey, nice plan guy!
Jesus, some of these people have to be frickin trolling at this point. Its the only explanation i can think of, its like i've been taking crazy pills and just have not realized it.
These kinds of people allying with Trump...a lot of them come from backgrounds you don't expect of the kind of person to not have basic common sense to get where they are. So how exactly does it get to the point where they are supporting some crazy person like this? Because he is on TV a lot? Because he had some fake reality TV show? Because he is an open racist and these folks are attracted to that?
Regardless of the reason, its.....i just don't feel confident in the human race when i see things like this.
this guy are sick
Member
I imagine this is not the publicity zuckerburg would like to be attached to on the same day he announced a massive humanitarian project. Real bad timing on luckey's end, there'll probably be significant fallout from this.
I don't wish specific ills towards those individuals, but as someone else who is also personally vested in VR from a business stand point, I very much disagree with the vast majority of their company stances on VR development. It's hard not to be relieved that a company that is doing VR wrong from my perspective is stumbling.
I really wouldn't be surprised if he's gone after this.
I hope he is gone after this.
EventHorizon
Member
The alt-right is where the white supremacist ended up. Excuse the language but this famous Lee Atwater quote, a Ronald Reagan advisor, explains part of that evolution.
Lee Atwater said:
GillianSeed79
Member
It'd be amazing if the reason why Oculus touch controls are still MIA is because Valve stopped sharing VR tech info with Oculus during its development. It would expose Palmer as the charlatan he probably is. As it stands, PSVR and Vive will be my only headsets.
That *would* be amazing. Yeah, PSVR and Vive are my only options now.
Iztok Mravlja
Banned
Which policies are you reffering too? Because I mainly don't like the walled garden / closed off nature of Oculus VR, but don't know about other things they could be doing better.
I'm still hoping this turns out to be a hoax of some sort. VR really didn't need this.
Azure Dream
Member
No, I've tried Touch, it does work, for what it's worth.
Gemüsepizza
Member
Now reported by The Guardian:
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2016/sep/23/oculus-rift-vr-palmer-luckey-trump-shitposts
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2016/sep/23/oculus-rift-vr-palmer-luckey-trump-shitposts
BocoDragon
or, How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Realize This Assgrab is Delicious
I think it's a good point that the alt-right are a loose coalition of diverse interests, some of whom are certainly as crudely racist as they come.
Is the "real" weight of the movement the actual crude "white = right" racists? I'm not under that impression, but I could be wrong. I'd have called that element the "traditional right", as opposed to the alt-right. But I'm amenable to data that shows otherwise.
Personally I am speaking about the Milo/Gamergate/Reddit/4chan side of things. I have the impression (rightly or wrongly) that they are the bulk of what we've come to call the "alt-right". And that is who I am talking about when I describe the alt-right. And I think their position, while misguided, comes from a reaction against the recent cultural landscape. A landscape that has seen the great strides in social justice petetuated via the internet over the last ~5 years, an era of marginalized voices speaking out and making us aware of how we should behave to fix things, but reacts in opposition against it.
Part of the reason these devices are so delayed is because Oculus wasn't ready to tackle those problems when Zuckerberg bought them. Oculus, when they were an indie company, saw themselves as cogs in a greater VR economy, where other indie companies would solve other problems. Steam would be the unifying store front for VR deployment, Oculus would be the VR headset company, and other companies like Sixense would fill the controller void.
When Zuckerberg bought Oculus, they were set up as a company that was doing VR Headset development primarily. Zuckerberg wanted to turn them into a VR system company. They would solve headset VR problems, and storefront and ecosystem vr problems, and controller input problems, all in one. Oculus has had to rapidly expand to meet the demands of this kind of development.
By contrast, valve was already set up to tackle these problems. They already had a division working on controller design. They already had headset research. They already had an ecosystem developed. Oculus was a tiny company that got a ton of cash and then had to play catch up to Valve when Valve was already knee deep in development of all these things.
On a technical level, Oculus uses an outside-in positional tracking system. This has a number of occlusion problems that Valve's very novel and honestly revolutionary lighthouse system does not, because lighthouse operates on an inside-out tracking perspective. Much of the design of Touch is dedicated to solving long standing occlusion issues that outside-in positional tracking has to the best of their abilities. Hence the constellation rings, which surround your hand. In addition to playing catch up to Valve, they also had to solve for an occlusion problem that valve's tracking system does not have.
the_batman
Banned
always knew there was something off about this guy.
Generations don't monolithically rebel against ideologies because generations aren't monolithic entities. The idea that the same subset of people who were criticizing the illegal invasion of a sovereign nation under false pretenses would automatically also support white nationalism under a different historical dispensation because counter-culture is bizarre historical fiction. White resentment existed during the Bush era. White resentment also existed long, long before the Bush era. This isn't a thing that "middle Reddit America" has invented because of the internet and "dominant liberalism"; it's something they've inherited. The only difference is that white resentment now has a public speaking voice and viable candidate for the most powerful office in the world. You are only now discovering it for the first time - ironically, because of the internet - and mistaking an ever-present undercurrent of American life for a modern innovation. In reality, this shit is old.
I disagree with the way they are funding titles at the expense of them appearing on other platforms.
I disagree with their unwillingness to open their platform to other headsets.
I disagree with their avoidance of adopting a universal API.
I disagree with the way they've sidelined Linux and OSX support.
I disagree with the way they handled Revive, even though they've relaxed their stance.
I disagree with their rhetoric against standing experiences they preach about.
I disagree with the types of "big" games they've been funding - third party games played with Xbox controllers that don't really take advantage of the benefits of VR.
I disagree with how they launched without a motion controller solution, fragmenting the market.
I have basically disagreed with the entire launch of their platform.
With that said, there hasn't been any VR company that's gotten it all correct thus far, except for OSVR. I love everything OSVR is doing. I also really like what Google is doing with cardboard, and especially where they're taking with DayDream. I like a lot of what Valve does with with SteamVR and would love them to take up OSVR a bit more seriously, and I can resolve PSVR because it operates mainly in the realm of consoles, and I'm pretty confident it'll work with SteamVR eventually as well, at least unofficially. But of all the big VR entities out there, Oculus has disappointed me the most.
Trump is disgusting, the alt-right is disgusting, Luckey seems to have disgusting views. And yet, despite all of this, Trump has a realistic chance of becoming the next president.
Point being, a lot of people seem to support this kind of bullshit and FB firing Luckey because of this could easily be framed as "Oculus founder fired because he supports Trump", which likely wouldn't go over well either.
maquiladora
Member
Gemüsepizza;217826129 said:
Good. This needs widespread exposure.
He's 24, he may have worked in VR before but he was only 20 when the Kickstarter launched and made one prototype before this at 18. The guy physically is unable to pre-date Sony's work by virtue of the fact that he wasn't alive long enough!
He didn't steal Sony's work but he used existing ideas to create a more affordable and marketable version. That's perfectly fine but he's just another person who has pushed VR forward, he's not a pioneer in anything but pushing VR to the forefront of tech circles.
Anyway, being a very intelligent and successful person never quite stopped someone from being nuts. See: McAfee. This is disappointing but not a shock.
EventHorizon
Member
Nice informative post, but I don't get this part. Doesn't Vive have the same occlusion tracking problems. Their sensors have to see the lighthouse just like Oculus's camera has to see the LEDs. The occlusion problem is still there.
Kneejerk teens and young adult(or older) males who fancy themselves the ones who have the right to shut down women talking about better representation in media and games, people of color talking about better representation in general, such as it is...we have the term "SJW" coined as a major general slur against literally anyone who seems to be for literally anything approaching such notions.
To be fair, i don't think literally every person in that crowd is an actual racist, or someone who hates progress or are even against progressive values. i do think there are a portion of those individuals apart of that kneejerk reaction who think that some of the male shaming and types of claims of sexism and such are going too far in the opposite direction in regards to extremism and so they end up on the same side as those who call others 'feminazis'.
Its unfortunately a very complicated issue, made even more confusing by the fact that many of these 'alt right' 'anti PC' people also fancy themselves atheists or anti conformist views, which makes their actual positions on these types of things even harder to pin down.
Meatyhooks
Neo Member
Tread of the year 2016
We will all wake up tomorrow and this will just be a bad dream.
This 100%. BocoDragon, your characterization of the alt-right is woefully mistaken.
How are VR sales in general? Seems Luckey did quite well for himself on such a niche product.
Oculus recommends dual forward facing cameras for their optimal setup:
The reason they recommend a forward facing setup is because of feasibility - outside-in positional tracking needs to communicate the beacons (cameras) to the host PC, while inside-out positional tracking done by lighthouse does not need to communicate between the beacons and host PC (the lighthouse beacons are dumb). This means the cameras for Oculus Touch need to be relatively close to the PC because of USB length.
For this reason, they need the controller to be visible from both front and back. This is also how their headset is designed - the headset has sensors on the back to track it when you turn around. The Vive works by setting two lighthouse beacons at a distance pointing down to cover the entire room. You don't need to surround your hand because you're not expected to be tracked from only one perspective. The Vive doesn't have photo sensors on the back of it's headset, because when you turn around, you're expected to be tracked by the opposite camera.
Oculus' tracking solution uses dual cameras for stereoscopic cues to enhance tracking from a forward facing position over a single camera, but still have more occlusion issues than two independent and separate lighthouse beacons.
BocoDragon
or, How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Realize This Assgrab is Delicious
Yeah sure, conservatism is old. Liberalism is also old. An old story about people pushing to make society a better place and people saying "no, stop".
But I have made the case here that millennial conservatives (basically, alt-right conservatives) do not carry the same same assumptions as traditional conservatives, so to attack them knee-jerk with old paradigms is both incorrect and also enables them, because their core viewpoints aren't being confronted. Their straw men are being defeated, not their true position, and so they aren't being accurately confronted.
Millennial conversatives are not the same as conservatives of previous eras. They have inherited progressive strides in culture that they have internalized whether they know it or not, and it works to shield them from tired old criticisms of conservatism, whether liberals know this or not.
For a lot of them (not all) "of course ethnicities are equal" or "of course genders are equal". If anything these assumptions make equality-seeking efforts more absurd in their mind, because that war is "won". So to attack them for being racist or sexist only fuels them, because at their core, they already know sexes or races are equally capable, and what they're really saying is they're tired of people policing language, representation and politics in order to make the world safe for minorities, women, etc.
I wondered when we, collectively, would become stupid enough for memes and one liners to actually have any power to sway us for real.....I think I am the stupid one. We have always been stupid enough to fall for it.
Don't know about the dominant liberalism but I do know that the powers that be, be it in Europe or in the States have no clue about how to reach the millennials. We the Indigo/Gen X/Alpha/Gamma/Beta//first millennials/whatever you wanna call us born in the 70s don't have a clue. I doubt they themselves have a clue. What I do know is that I do believe is that we can liken this to a 4chan thread. Nothing of value gained, nothing of value lost, a good time was had and that was enough.
That I can recognize. That is basically every generation. Tired of the previous pointing their finger at them.
Don't know about the dominant liberalism but I do know that the powers that be, be it in Europe or in the States have no clue about how to reach the millennials. We the Indigo/Gen X/Alpha/Gamma/Beta//first millennials/whatever you wanna call us born in the 70s don't have a clue. I doubt they themselves have a clue. What I do know is that I do believe is that we can liken this to a 4chan thread. Nothing of value gained, nothing of value lost, a good time was had and that was enough.
That I can recognize. That is basically every generation. Tired of the previous pointing their finger at them.
Haha no.
It's just the latest tactic to try to keep minorities and women in their place. If anything it is the opposite. They've seen society start to accept that the cards were stacked in white men's favour for too long and something had to give.
They don't see women and minorities as equal. Just look at Trump rhetoric and how it mirrors the alt right. It specifically dehumanizes those who dare to upset the historical status quo of white=right.
They reject the notion of equality and see everyone being given the same treatment as an affront to them. The scales being tipped to balance still means that many people see unfairness, rightly or wrongly.
So no, the alt right are not some self aware group who think that everyone is equal. They see themselves as being done down because others are being given the leg up they deserve. It's the wrong response to a legitimate concern. The US is a country where hard work pays off, but some of those who had the clearest path towards reward see competition as being oppressed. The likes of the MRA movement and the alt-right are typical of this unhappiness with progressive politics not because of being told how to think, but because they think that they're being affected by it.
And then of course you have pure and simple racists and sexists who hate the idea of acknowledging anyone as equal to them.
There are many people who support Trump who do so for legitimate reasons who are disenfranchised with the political scene. The alt right however are politically savvy, they simply are a modern version of an age old problem: bigotry masked under the veil of legitimate political issues.
kinoki
Illness is the doctor to whom we pay most heed; to kindness, to knowledge, we make promise only; pain we obey.
He's a kid. Hopefully he'll grow wise in time. This will, at least, put some needed spotlight on his more stupid choices in life.
BocoDragon
or, How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Realize This Assgrab is Delicious
I'm not going to go point by point, as it's late where I am.
What I will say is that your view is a possibly reasonable view of the consequence of the alt right.
It does not describe why people actually get into the alt right, or how they see themselves.
Heckler456
Banned
24 years old with 700 million in the bank and people working for you ain't a kid no more. He should be smart enough at this point, but he ain't. He's just another asshole, if not worse.
The argument that openly racist and sexist millennial conservatives who espouse an openly racist and sexist platform because they aren't really racist and sexist, but are actually so post-racist and post-sexist that they can respond to (wholly justifiable) charges of racism and sexism with something like Nietzschean laughter is delusional in a world where actually existing racism and sexism are real things that harm real people. Someone is claiming to be colorblind while dropping N-bombs and you are actually believing them. They're racist, bro. They're not beyond that.
kitchenmotors
Banned
The sad thing is, no, this person is not kidding.
At least these threads bring the crazies to light so people can hit the ignore button.
EventHorizon
Member
He's rich. He doesn't have to grow up. His experiences will be different and will likely reinforce his beliefs. After all, it's easy to advocate "everybody for themselves" when you are winning. His view of the government and 'others' will always be that they are in his way, preventing him from doing important work or living the life he wishes to live.
BocoDragon
or, How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Realize This Assgrab is Delicious
Accepting the simple answer of "they're just racists" isn't going to do anything good. It serves to make us feel better about saying "fuck em", but doesn't address their place in culture and how to combat them at all.
The alt-right is like people who are against polio vaccines because there's no polio in the world.
Their position is thus: "Who needs progressive action against racism when I already know all races are equally capable?..... only complaining nanny ideologues, that's who."
AHA-Lambda
Member
well I certainly ain't getting an oculus or gear vr now
Oh, I completely agree. I meant this more in a general sense of "Oh, I'm the CEO of a large, publicly facing company owned by Facebook. I should probably keep politics to myself or at the very least not spout vitriol." Seems like a good general rule.
EventHorizon
Member
What are we supposed to do? Pretend they are not racist? All that's going to do is what Trump is doing now, which is to create an environment where they feel their beliefs are validated. The benefit to society was not that these people didn't exist. They have always been there. It's that they didn't act out or feel comfortable spreading their beliefs to others. Now it's become a point of pride to them to criticize not acting like jerks...umm I mean politically correct. This kind of backlash attacks that belief.
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