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SimulaVR Has Been Subpoenaed by Meta Platforms, Inc

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Re: SimulaVR Has Been Subpoenaed by Meta Platforms, Inc

#361

Post by jessaustin »

vkou wrote: post #130
dtech wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In the US legal system a non-government entity can force any 3rd party to spend time and money for their benefit? That seems pretty weird.

Yes, that's what a subpoena is. And it can be done in pretty much any legal system. If you're on trial for murder, and your alibi is 'I was at work', you're going to need your boss to come in to testify on your behalf. If he doesn't feel like it, the court will compel him to show up and testify, on his time, and on his expense, under penalty of prejury. This is a good thing.

If I was at work when the murder occurred, two or three discussions between police and my boss and coworkers would prevent a murder trial in the first place. Prosecutors don't like defendants with solid alibis.

Probably FTC has already done equivalent investigation, which calls the subpoena described in TFA further into question.

Re: SimulaVR Has Been Subpoenaed by Meta Platforms, Inc

#362

Post by tannhauser23 »

hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #352

As someone who is not a lawyer, my question is what are the potential response avenues to a subpoena like this. That is, Meta has essentially demanded a ton of work from SimulaVR, for free. I very much agree with Simula's response of "We can't afford stuff like this". So, realistically, what are Simula's options? I imagine a "fuck off" response won't go over well with the court. Can they give some cursory information…

This kind of subpoena is boilerplate. No one actually expects SimulaVR to provide all this information or to show up for a deposition.

This is actually how it will go down:

SimulaVR-Lawyer: Hey Meta-lawyer, I got your subpoena. We're a tiny company and this is overbroad. What do you guys actually want?

Meta-lawyer: Totally understand. Can we get a declaration from your founder about what your company is trying to do, who their competitors are, and few info about your financials? If you have pitch decks for investors, we'd love to get that as well.

SimulaVR-Lawyer: That seems doable but can the financials be filed under seal and attorney-eyes-only?

Meta-lawyer: Yeah that makes sense.

SimulaVR-Lawyer: Lemme talk to the founders and follow up with you. Let's talk later about what the declaration will look like.

Meta-lawyer: Thank you - appreciate it, and looking forward to hearing back soon.

Re: SimulaVR Has Been Subpoenaed by Meta Platforms, Inc

#363

Post by benreesman »

weego wrote: post #324
benreesman wrote: post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There really isn't any way to confirm or refute that kind of argument. What would happen if regulation or social norms or whatever prevented big tech companies from existing? I don't know and (frankly) you don't either. I use emacs a dozen plus hours a day, and GNU wouldn't exist if RMS hadn't been bullied at the lunch room in the MIT AI Lab. Would the world be a better or worse place if he didn't have a personal jih…

I'm kind of confused but maybe it's my age. My career ran parallel to the birth of open source and it was explicitly a reaction against megacorps behavior and practices. The participation in it part is newer, they were initially very hostile (I was warned any number of times aligning strategies against oss projects incase it was 'detrimental to my career')

The thing about reading GNU mailing lists is that they're so, I don't know, intimate or something. They're freely available for anyone to read, but community members talk so openly on them that you feel like you're wire-tapping someone's living room.

I've had enough professional stuff on the line to need to pay attention to GNU over the years even though it always creeped me out a little bit, and I don't see how anyone can read them without concluding that Stallman feeling personally slighted was the reason he went on the crusade, and the software freedom thing was a reasonably comfortable paintjob.

He got picked last for Symbolics, the LMI people didn't really want him around either but were getting clobbered on defense contracts so they kind of couldn't turn down his code (he's a great hacker), and the rest is sort of history until Linus comes along right?

Re: SimulaVR Has Been Subpoenaed by Meta Platforms, Inc

#364

Post by benreesman »

danra wrote: post #310
benreesman wrote: post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There really isn't any way to confirm or refute that kind of argument. What would happen if regulation or social norms or whatever prevented big tech companies from existing? I don't know and (frankly) you don't either. I use emacs a dozen plus hours a day, and GNU wouldn't exist if RMS hadn't been bullied at the lunch room in the MIT AI Lab. Would the world be a better or worse place if he didn't have a personal jih…

Of course, but you don't know either. So your argument that these (or equivalent) contributions wouldn't exist without the megacorps doesn't hold.

It's dramatically easier to prove to a reasonable observer that Kubernetes got lifted off the ground by a bunch of folks on Google payroll than it is to prove that some GNU diehard would have inevitably sold that (silly) idea to like a zillion people if only Google didn't beat them to it.

I make these sort of observations with a certain regret: I was a kid already pushing the limits on a DOS-type machine when you could first get Slackware media: the GNU userspace has been home since before I ever woke up next to a girl.

But it's kinda over now. LLVM vs. GCC is a desperate rearguard action, the Rust people have broken the mindshare monopoly on shared libraries that was insulating `glibc` from it's better (`musl` in almost every case is better), old-timers like me are me are a bit attached to emacs and bash, but neovim and fish are pretty fucking good.

GNU and free software in general are no longer superior by virtue of Sun Microsystems leaning too hard into the JVM: they've got to work for it now, and they're getting their asses kicked.

Re: SimulaVR Has Been Subpoenaed by Meta Platforms, Inc

#365

Post by nonplus »

Karrot_Kream wrote: post #318
Kiro wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you're giving HN too much credit. Threads involving certain topics (e.g. big tech) are completely overrun with snark and hate that I don't see much of the relentless curiosity you're talking about.

Yeah it's definitely been making me pull my engagement back on HN. It even motivated me to get onto Twitter lol. At some point I want to read something a bit more stimulating than Tech Nextdoor. I originally came here from Digg and Slashdot because I enjoyed talking with other engineers and founders in the weeds, but I think the HN crowd has drifted far away from that start. That said the conversation quality here on…

Yeah I have a mental denylist of HN terms at this point where I just avoid reading hn comments. In contrast to some topics where I can't wait to see discussion, those still exist, but these days (I say that like it's new, but it's been like this a while) they are fewer.

Re: SimulaVR Has Been Subpoenaed by Meta Platforms, Inc

#366

Post by ece »

danielmarkbruce wrote: post #265

Meta is allowed to defend themselves against lawsuits. SimulaVR is a startup in the space. They have a shot in VR, or at least believe they do. SimulaVR a great example for Meta to use to defend themselves against a stupid lawsuit. The FTC shouldn't be bringing this case. VR is still up for grabs. Defining the relevant market as the "dedicated fitness virtual reality app market" is questionable, and the idea it "prov…

> VR is still up for grabs

Curious statement, considering the FTC is trying to preserve competition in the space. Excite and Altavista weren't trying to buy up the biggest websites around at the time.

Re: SimulaVR Has Been Subpoenaed by Meta Platforms, Inc

#367

Post by Eisenstein »

towaway15463 wrote: post #360
Eisenstein wrote: post #349

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I love VR, but it is terrible for things like watching movies. Imagine sitting on your couch and putting on a movie. How often do you do that? If it is more often than 'once in a while', are you actually sitting and watching it intently the entire timee? Are you eating, or drinking anything, or petting your cat or dog, or snuggling on the couch with your SO or kids? You can't do that with a VR headset on because you…

Well, I do watch movies with others in VR on a fairly regular basis and it’s great. Could be better, headsets need to be more comfortable and pass through has room for improvement but both of those things are on the very near horizon. Look at the cambria demos, they’re already doing mixed reality by blending the room with the experience. No reason that can’t be used to put your couch, coffee table and SO in the virtu…

Sure, it has use cases, but the fact is that something like a phone, or a tablet, or a TV can be used and not used within a fraction of a second as required. Putting on a headset is like going to a movie theater -- it is fine for occasions but it isn't something I can see people wanting to do regularly.

Re: SimulaVR Has Been Subpoenaed by Meta Platforms, Inc

#368

Post by georgewsinger »

chaostheory wrote: post #351
majormajor wrote: post #199

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"We don't think they're competent enough to be a competitor" is a bad way to judge whether you're competing with someone. It's like Apple laughing at the IBM PC.

Looking at the new videos related to the upcoming Quest Pro that will be announced next week, the simulavr guys are dead wrong. https://www.reddit.com/r/AR_MR_XR/comments/xwjzni/meta_quest...

What you're seeing: a Meta headset tethered to a laptop over WiFi running Immersed.

What you're not seeing: a standalone VR headset running a VR Desktop OS natively with bleeding edge pixel density (i.e., like the Simula One).

We understand that Meta has some cool tools in its app store which can be used to get a feel for VR computing. But analogously, you could also purchase word processors for early gaming consoles too: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AtariWriter

Our view is that dedicated VR computing devices are what the market actually needs.

Re: SimulaVR Has Been Subpoenaed by Meta Platforms, Inc

#369

Post by [deleted] »

haneefmubarak wrote: post #348
jolmg wrote: post #327

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I understand that Meta needs to prove they're not a monopoly, and apparently the way to do that is through other companies laying their cards on the table, but my goodness would I feel uncomfortable giving core business plans, outlooks, and associated data to a huge (and arguably unethical) company like Meta. This seems too considerate to Meta. IMO, part of Meta's intention is to hurt SimulaVR. It wouldn't be by ac…

IANAL, but it came from a court because it's a court order. Failing to respond would be contempt of court - an imprison able offense. AIUI, the reason that courts order cooperation for this sort of thing is that every party deserves the right in court to defend themselves as best as is possible. If in order to defend themselves they require information that they cannot present themselves but that someone else can (sa…

[deleted]

Re: SimulaVR Has Been Subpoenaed by Meta Platforms, Inc

#370

Post by pid_0 »

danielmarkbruce wrote: post #265

Meta is allowed to defend themselves against lawsuits. SimulaVR is a startup in the space. They have a shot in VR, or at least believe they do. SimulaVR a great example for Meta to use to defend themselves against a stupid lawsuit. The FTC shouldn't be bringing this case. VR is still up for grabs. Defining the relevant market as the "dedicated fitness virtual reality app market" is questionable, and the idea it "prov…

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