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John Carmack pushes out unlocked OS for defunct Oculus Go headset

arstechnica.com

11–20 of 316 posts

Re: John Carmack pushes out unlocked OS for defunct Oculus Go headset

#11
post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The sub-heading of your link says: > Carmack says he's transitioning to the role of "consulting CTO" at Oculus. So he can still be called CTO.

But that was also 2 years ago. I assumed by this time they'd have found a permanent CTO? Maybe not.

Why would the role of consulting CTO be non-permanent? It just implies a part-time approach.

Re: John Carmack pushes out unlocked OS for defunct Oculus Go headset

#13

> allowing for a randomly discovered shrink wrapped headset twenty years from now to be able to update to the final software version, long after over-the-air update servers have been shut down. This resonates so much with me. Each time I setup a new device that requires an Internet connection, I think about how we can enjoy booting 30 years old retro computers and how the next generation will not be able to do the sa…

This is why I still try so hard to buy physical copies of games, and if there is a GOTY Edition, to have the DLC be on-disk, as opposed to being a bunch of download vouchers.

I wanna be able to play the freaking game in ten years without worrying about whether the game/console's online service is still available to do some mandatory authentication or version check.

Re: John Carmack pushes out unlocked OS for defunct Oculus Go headset

#14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But that was also 2 years ago. I assumed by this time they'd have found a permanent CTO? Maybe not.

Why would the role of consulting CTO be non-permanent? It just implies a part-time approach.

Consulting CTO just isn't an arrangement I hear about very often. I'm surprised part-time (if that's what it is) CTO-ing works out long-term for a tech company.

Re: John Carmack pushes out unlocked OS for defunct Oculus Go headset

#15

> allowing for a randomly discovered shrink wrapped headset twenty years from now to be able to update to the final software version, long after over-the-air update servers have been shut down. This resonates so much with me. Each time I setup a new device that requires an Internet connection, I think about how we can enjoy booting 30 years old retro computers and how the next generation will not be able to do the sa…

It's pretty likely they will; they'll just have to crack them first. Pretty much everyone does it with retro consoles today, since CDs are inconvenient and expensive for the core audience of that wants to play video games and DRM is always breakable. It'll probably be easier though, because it almost assuredly won't require you to take out a soldering iron, like you have to with most legacy consoles.

As systems get more complex, cracking/emulating them gets more effort.

We already see this in old stuff. DOS games run great in dosbox, because the IBM PC was pretty simple. Same with the gameboy, snes, etc.

When you get to more modern things like Windows 98 games, PS3 games, xbox360 games... Most of those are much harder to emulate/crack/archive. They have more complex copy protection schemes, interact more deeply with their OS and hardware, and emulating them is generally more effort.

The next gen of stuff will interact with closed source now-defunct servers. Re-implementing those servers is very much possible... but a massive amount of effort. Effort that won't happen for most products ever.

Re: John Carmack pushes out unlocked OS for defunct Oculus Go headset

#17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why would the role of consulting CTO be non-permanent? It just implies a part-time approach.

Consulting CTO just isn't an arrangement I hear about very often. I'm surprised part-time (if that's what it is) CTO-ing works out long-term for a tech company.

Maybe it means "full time, but I reserve the right to not be CTO at a time of my choosing."

Re: John Carmack pushes out unlocked OS for defunct Oculus Go headset

#18
post #5

> allowing for a randomly discovered shrink wrapped headset twenty years from now to be able to update to the final software version, long after over-the-air update servers have been shut down. This resonates so much with me. Each time I setup a new device that requires an Internet connection, I think about how we can enjoy booting 30 years old retro computers and how the next generation will not be able to do the sa…

The same is true of some of the best work being done on the web, such as the NYTimes interactive infographics. Because they are so JS-heavy, and reliant on CI/CD pipelines for deployment, on custom CMSes, there is no way to archive them in the way that static pages containing just text and images can be archived on the Wayback Machine. Heck, even Flash projects from 15 years ago still run fine when compiled on Ruffle…

Huh? JS can be cached and preserved just like anything else. Even the (presumably JSON or CSV) data could be cached, though I don't know if the Wayback Machine follows API endpoints by default

Re: John Carmack pushes out unlocked OS for defunct Oculus Go headset

#19
post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Consulting CTO just isn't an arrangement I hear about very often. I'm surprised part-time (if that's what it is) CTO-ing works out long-term for a tech company.

Maybe it means "full time, but I reserve the right to not be CTO at a time of my choosing."

Well that just sounds like most US jobs (i.e. at-will employment).

And if the point is that you're clarifying with your employer that you're looking for an exit (even if it's not immediate) it probably means the employer (and maybe you are helping) is interviewing for your replacement with the goal of eventually finding it. Hence my curiosity that it's been 2 years and they haven't got a new CTO.

Re: John Carmack pushes out unlocked OS for defunct Oculus Go headset

#20

Imagining that future is about people wearing VR devices on their head (even as minimal as a pair of glasses) is hard to grasp. "In their head" would be a different matter but that is not what the current technology is focusing on (apart from Neuralink). Edit: not propagating for any such vision the future! just noticing that wearing stuff on head would be clunky and impractical for true immersion.

Leave it to the advertising-surveillance industrial complex to explore every possible route to inject outrage into subjects' brains (whether they want want it or not).
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