[dead]
John Carmack's arguments against building a custom XR OS at Meta
491–500 of 675 posts
Re: John Carmack's arguments against building a custom XR OS at Meta
#492The problem when working for Meta is that if you do a good job, you've helped make the world worse... so the real heroes are the people wasting money and reducing efficiency If you're at all competent, go work somewhere else
One of the better "service to humanity" opportunities for software engineers is to join a company like Meta or TikTok and perform awfully for as long as you can.
I think a better service to humanity is to excel at your job even if you end up at a socially corrosive org like Meta or Tiktok but donate a decent chunk of your paycheck to effective altruist charities that save lives.
Re: John Carmack's arguments against building a custom XR OS at Meta
#493> they also got me reported to HR by the manager of the XROS effort for supposedly making his team members feel bad This is madness. The safe space culture has really gone too far.
Reading between the lines, it sounds like he got reported for giving a lot of what might kindly be described as unsolicited advice. The guy left Meta ages ago, but he apparently still can't let this one go. If you're in the middle of trying to write a new operating system, then it's probably not helpful to have John Carmack standing over you repeatedly telling you that you shouldn't be doing it. In this case Carmack…
When a veteran tells you something and is passionate about it, maybe it is worth listening or at least dealing with internally. At the end, he left anyway even if the project didn't fail and Meta remains wealthy but largely mediocre in terms of the products it delivers while relying heavily on startup acquisition and large spending. Pretty sure most people who work there only do so for premium rent-seeking.
None of it surprising if this is a signal of how they operate.
Re: John Carmack's arguments against building a custom XR OS at Meta
#494Earlier quoted context omitted.
In terms of (2), I wonder if it's even possible to write a driver without such a document. In the end, the vendor is on the foot for the driver for major platforms (let's assume Linux) - if they can write a Linux driver without a similar spec to this doc, then the doc probably doesn't need to exist since the business wins from hobbyist drivers will be low. If they can't though, then it's just a matter of formatting a…
Didn't all the asahi Linux Mac m1 drivers essentially get reverse engineered with little to no support from apple and no public docs? If I'm remembering correctly then I guess it's possible with enough effort and reverse engineering skills
It was reverse engineered from a driver. With no driver and purely some PCIE device registers mapped into memory you might as well be trying to guess lottery numbers.
Re: John Carmack's arguments against building a custom XR OS at Meta
#495Earlier quoted context omitted.
One of the better "service to humanity" opportunities for software engineers is to join a company like Meta or TikTok and perform awfully for as long as you can.
I think a better service to humanity is to excel at your job even if you end up at a socially corrosive org like Meta or Tiktok but donate a decent chunk of your paycheck to effective altruist charities that save lives.
A better service to humanity yet is taking that money and spending it on whatever is valuable to yourself, thus providing more people with the opportunity to sustainably work for a living. Capitalism and all that.
Re: John Carmack's arguments against building a custom XR OS at Meta
#496[deleted]
Re: John Carmack's arguments against building a custom XR OS at Meta
#497The problem when working for Meta is that if you do a good job, you've helped make the world worse... so the real heroes are the people wasting money and reducing efficiency If you're at all competent, go work somewhere else
But Meta’s connecting the world… by keeping them inside doomscrolling.
Re: John Carmack's arguments against building a custom XR OS at Meta
#498Earlier quoted context omitted.
Carmack says he can't post the actual discussion, but clearly you have access to it - can you post it?
Even if that didn't violate NDAs & etc, that would be super rude. You realize that, right?
Yes, of course. The point of my heavy-handed post was to try to find out what is actually going on here. Does this person have any insider info? Or are they (as many are in the discussion, and as I suspect is the case here too - but I am going only on the balance of probabilities!) just using this as an opportunity to relate this to their own grievances, so they can discuss those?
We've only got one side of this particular story, we don't know what happened from the other person's point of view, we don't know what form this HR complaint took - or any of the other details. We can bet, just as I did in my last paragraph, but in my view the odds are more questionable and the topic more likely end up as unproductive venting. Any good comments will get lost.
Still, it's also true that the link is just there as a starting point for discussion, and the discussion can take any forms that the readership would find interesting.
Re: John Carmack's arguments against building a custom XR OS at Meta
#499Earlier quoted context omitted.
"It wasn't all bad. They built the Autobahn"
Few more years and they would've finished Polarbanen. The northern Norway railroad connecting Trondheim to Tromsø, far inside the Arctic Circle. Giving us $50 trains to Tromsø instead of $500 planes. But my enthusiasm diminished after learning that they worked thousands people to death.
> Giving us $50 trains to Tromsø instead of $500 planes.
It's only $50 if the government pays for the rest of the ticket. $50 per passenger won't even cover track maintenance. Source: My ass, but I still think I'm right.
Re: John Carmack's arguments against building a custom XR OS at Meta
#500I'd love to hear John's more detailed take on TempleOS