Magic Leap raises $827M in Series C • Hacker News Board

Re: Magic Leap raises $827M in Series C

#111

Post by ohitsdom » Thu, Dec 10, 2015, 2:43 AM UTC

TeMPOraL wrote: post #45

teej wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Along these lines - is there an example of a technology company that succeeded after raising so much money without proving their product in the market?

Screw the market. Personally, I don't care if this even sells (to make the general population buy it, they'll have to invent most silly possible applications imaginable). The question is - does it really work as advertised? Both Magic Leap and HoloLens look way beyond the state-of-the-art, I'm still not convinced that what they show us isn't just plain marketing fabrication.

Their first (older) video was clearly marketing fluff. That may be their long-term vision, but I'm skeptical they are anywhere close. Even if they had the capable display, code & computing power for a game in a dynamic environment like that would be incredibly challenging.

The second video (newer) though looked legit. Simpler interactions, and the disclaimer was pretty explicit.

Re: Magic Leap raises $827M in Series C

#112

Post by ohitsdom » Thu, Dec 10, 2015, 2:57 AM UTC

josephpmay wrote: post #57

emcq wrote: post #27

It's easy to think of reasons why this isn't a sound investment. However, here are some thoughts why this may be sensible: * This is largely Google's investment to cover possible future success of Facebook's Occulus or Microsoft's Hololens. * They could have valuable non-tangible patents or employees. This is way past the "acquihire" funding levels, but perhaps the technology itself is valuable. Perhaps they get arou…

As I compete with Magic Leap, I'm probably in a pretty good position to answer this question. The main reason why ML is able to attract this level of investment is that their technology is literally decades ahead of what anybody else has. I haven't had the opportunity to try their headset out, but I know some people who have, and I haven't heard a single bad thing about it. The closest metaphor I can think of is seei…

> haven't had the opportunity to try their headset out, but I know some people who have

It's easy to say technology is decades ahead when you haven't even tried it. Rumor/second-hand retellings can be very powerful. I'm really excited to see this tech, but I'm also really skeptical.

Re: Magic Leap raises $827M in Series C

#113

Post by ljw1001 » Thu, Dec 10, 2015, 3:26 AM UTC

An $800,000,000 investment in an unknown company called Magic Leap shows that some people have no sense of irony

Re: Magic Leap raises $827M in Series C

#114

Post by joelg » Thu, Dec 10, 2015, 3:35 AM UTC

kafkaesq wrote: post #110

Glaciers are melting; forests are burning; coral reefs are blanching; ocean levels are rising, water tables are dropping. The ecosystems that sustain our food supply chains are collapsing; those that aren't collapsing, are being poisoned; and the tiny niches relatively immune from these threats are being bought by hedge funds and private equity firms. Our education system is being gutted; so are our retirement plans.…

You could have said the same thing about the black plague and the printing press in the 14th century...

Re: Magic Leap raises $827M in Series C

#115

Post by meta_pseudo » Thu, Dec 10, 2015, 3:36 AM UTC

kafkaesq wrote: post #110

Glaciers are melting; forests are burning; coral reefs are blanching; ocean levels are rising, water tables are dropping. The ecosystems that sustain our food supply chains are collapsing; those that aren't collapsing, are being poisoned; and the tiny niches relatively immune from these threats are being bought by hedge funds and private equity firms. Our education system is being gutted; so are our retirement plans.…

In that case I would also like to hear your opinions about stock market :D, in all seriousness there are people and companies who are trying to tackle some of the problems you mentioned and getting funded. Look on the positive side, tools and research by these guys can be used in education and medicine!

I understand most of focus in on the entertainment market but we can't blame particular set of people for that happening, magic leap is essentially promising something we have been looking forward to from so many years(since we saw stuff in sci-fi movies)!

Re: Magic Leap raises $827M in Series C

#116

Post by deftnerd » Thu, Dec 10, 2015, 3:39 AM UTC

kafkaesq wrote: post #110

Glaciers are melting; forests are burning; coral reefs are blanching; ocean levels are rising, water tables are dropping. The ecosystems that sustain our food supply chains are collapsing; those that aren't collapsing, are being poisoned; and the tiny niches relatively immune from these threats are being bought by hedge funds and private equity firms. Our education system is being gutted; so are our retirement plans.…

Don't underestimate the positive environmental impact that replacing monitors and mobile phone screens might have. If this is successful and high-quality enough, we there would be less stuff manufactured that requires nasty chemicals, less to recycle, and less energy consumption.

Re: Magic Leap raises $827M in Series C

#117

Post by kafkaesq » Thu, Dec 10, 2015, 4:01 AM UTC

deftnerd wrote: post #116

kafkaesq wrote: post #110

Glaciers are melting; forests are burning; coral reefs are blanching; ocean levels are rising, water tables are dropping. The ecosystems that sustain our food supply chains are collapsing; those that aren't collapsing, are being poisoned; and the tiny niches relatively immune from these threats are being bought by hedge funds and private equity firms. Our education system is being gutted; so are our retirement plans.…

Don't underestimate the positive environmental impact that replacing monitors and mobile phone screens might have. If this is successful and high-quality enough, we there would be less stuff manufactured that requires nasty chemicals, less to recycle, and less energy consumption.

Compared to... headsets?

Not sure there's a positive tradeoff in terms of resources. And in terms of chronic physical strain (vision, neck muscles) there may be a negative tradeoff.

Re: Magic Leap raises $827M in Series C

#118

Post by late2part » Thu, Dec 10, 2015, 4:09 AM UTC

zardo wrote: post #86

josephpmay wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As I compete with Magic Leap, I'm probably in a pretty good position to answer this question. The main reason why ML is able to attract this level of investment is that their technology is literally decades ahead of what anybody else has. I haven't had the opportunity to try their headset out, but I know some people who have, and I haven't heard a single bad thing about it. The closest metaphor I can think of is seei…

Neal Stevenson said he thought it was comparable to the change from printers to monitors as a UI.

Neal Stephenson is also paid by them. And he writes fiction. Thoughtful, interesting fiction. I remember when lots of credible people said that the Segway would change life, and whole cities would be built around it.

Where is Segway now?

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Segway_Inc. [2] http://content.time.com/time/business/article/0,8599,186660-... [3] http://www.wired.com/2015/01/well-didnt-work-segway-technolo...

Re: Magic Leap raises $827M in Series C

#119

Post by haydenlee » Thu, Dec 10, 2015, 4:09 AM UTC

rsp1984 wrote: post #70

I've been working on AR and related technologies for almost the last decade and I've been part of the first handful of people working on Google Glass. Bottom line I've seen a lot of promising AR technologies come and go. My personal take on this is that they may indeed have some very good, if not revolutionary, display technology. However : The big, big obstacle to delivering credible AR is latency. Contrary to VR, t…

The 10-15ms motion-to-photon latency is pretty vital in VR too so that users don't get sick.

Re: Magic Leap raises $827M in Series C

#120

Post by kafkaesq » Thu, Dec 10, 2015, 4:09 AM UTC

meta_pseudo wrote: post #115

kafkaesq wrote: post #110

Glaciers are melting; forests are burning; coral reefs are blanching; ocean levels are rising, water tables are dropping. The ecosystems that sustain our food supply chains are collapsing; those that aren't collapsing, are being poisoned; and the tiny niches relatively immune from these threats are being bought by hedge funds and private equity firms. Our education system is being gutted; so are our retirement plans.…

In that case I would also like to hear your opinions about stock market :D, in all seriousness there are people and companies who are trying to tackle some of the problems you mentioned and getting funded. Look on the positive side, tools and research by these guys can be used in education and medicine! I understand most of focus in on the entertainment market but we can't blame particular set of people for that happ…

I'm sure the technology will find practical uses, eventually. It's just that if immersive shoot-em-up games are to be understood as it's main selling point for the foreseeable future (which going by the video, is apparently the takeaway they'd like us to have), then you can count me as decidedly... unenthralled.