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Magic Leap Alleges Workers Stole Its Secrets
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- aresant 10y ago"Magic Leap filed late Thursday in federal court after the two workers, Gary Bradski and Adrian Kaehler, sued the company for wrongful termination earlier this week." Both of these guys are listed as Vice President's - Kaehler as VP Special Projects - and Bradski as VP of Advanced technology, that's no small deal. More info of the allegations in a NY Times article (1) (1) http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/2016/05/27/business/ap-us-artificial-reality-legal-tussle.html http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/2016/05/27/business/ap-us-ar...
- rsp1984 10y agoThis is particularly interesting since Gary Bradski is also a Co-Founder of Industrial Perception Inc., a robotics company that Google acquired in 2013. Reportedly Bradski walked away from Google right after the deal to join early Magic Leap, leaving lots of cash on the table and Google stock unvested.
- bgalbraith 10y agoBradski is also the creator of OpenCV, an industry standard computer vision library.
- Q6T46nT668w6i3m 10y agoAdrian Kaehler is also a major contributor to OpenCV.
- dj_doh 10y agoThat's enough for me to side with these two guys. I think Magic Leap is not that magical after all.
- thesystemis 10y agoHe wrote the Learning OpenCV book but I'm not sure it's accurate to say he created openCV... It was created by intel internally (by a ton of folks like Vadim Pisarevsky) and later open sourced. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OpenCV https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OpenCV
- starb 10y agoNo, it is accurate. He was at Intel when it was created, and meeting notes suggest that he had been leading the project. https://github.com/Itseez/opencv/wiki/Meeting_notes https://github.com/Itseez/opencv/wiki/Meeting_notes
- Retric 10y agoLeading a project inside a company != creating the thing.
- TotallyHuman 10y agoSure it is! What else would it be? It was conceived by immaculate conception?
- thesystemis 10y agothanks! -- I didn't know the history. these notes are from 2008 (long after opencv was open sourced) but it's clear from his linkedin page that he was a part of the founding team at intel.
- errantspark 10y agoI'm curious to see if this will result in the general public getting some info to suggest that Magic Leap isn't vaporware.
- bitewhite 10y agoIt'a hard to believe they'd have $1.4 bn in funding without giving some tech demonstrations o their investors.
- errantspark 10y agoTheranos and whatever that ultrasonic charging one was both come to mind.
- pat_space 10y agouBeam (http://liesandstartuppr.blogspot.mx/ http://liesandstartuppr.blogspot.mx/)
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- jonathankoren 10y agoClickle raised a bunch of money from high profile people, and it was nothing but vapor.
- elmar 10y agoYou probably are referring to Clinkle https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clinkle https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clinkle HBO's 'Silicon Valley' Tackles an Uncomfortable Topic http://fortune.com/2016/05/22/silicon-valley-confronts-mistakes/ http://fortune.com/2016/05/22/silicon-valley-confronts-mista...
- gfosco 10y agoJust this week at the Twilio Signal conference they announced a partnership and that 10 devs from the Twilio community will be of the first group to build on their SDK... When asked if next year it would be more widely available, he said he would adapt a cheshire cat grin and say maybe... JeffL the CEO of Twilio said he's seen it and it is amazing. http://www.engadget.com/2016/05/25/magic-leap-partners-with-messaging-startup-twilio/ http://www.engadget.com/2016/05/25/magic-leap-partners-with-...
- lowglow 10y agoThis is the first time I've seen someone refer to this tech as "artificial reality" -- interesting!
- alaskamiller 10y agoOld school term from the 60's. Here's a book about it. http://www.amazon.com/Artificial-Reality-2nd-Myron-Krueger/dp/0201522608 http://www.amazon.com/Artificial-Reality-2nd-Myron-Krueger/d...
- xsmasher 10y agoCompanies like to use nonstandard terms so they can claim that they are "the only ones working in the artificial reality space."
- mattbush 10y agoIs "artificial reality" a term that AR/VR companies are actually starting to throw around, or is possible that the term arose out of reporters mistakenly thinking "AR" stands for stands for "artificial reality" and not "augmented reality"?
- corpthrowaray 10y agoWhat's with 'Artificial Reality' ?
- rblatz 10y agoTrying to muck up the short hand for Virtual Reality and Augmented Reality.
- cptl 10y agohttp://uploadvr.com/magic-leap-alleges-former-executives-misused-trade-secrets/ http://uploadvr.com/magic-leap-alleges-former-executives-mis... contains a copy of the actual filing: http://cdn.uploadvr.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/complaintmagicleap.pdf http://cdn.uploadvr.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/complaint...
- uptown 10y agoHas Magic Leap shared any public timeline for when they might launch something to market?
- Q6T46nT668w6i3m 10y agoNo
- Roritharr 10y agoHas there been some suggested Roadmap when we can expect some unveiling? It's fun to see that people can get sued over unannounced tech, but I'd really like to know what we are talking about here.
- NDizzle 10y agoMaybe I should have done on record somewhere sooner, but this is exactly what I expected out of secretive companies like this. Raise a bunch of money, produce nothing of substance, then have some kind of lawsuit action bring in some dough. I'm not sure what the end goal is, but if we ever have a single product from this company I'll be surprised.
- okket 10y agoI guess "artificial reality" refers to this? https://vimeo.com/166807261 https://vimeo.com/166807261
- rl3 10y agoThat's one of the better dystopian visions of the future I've seen.
- dominotw 10y agoI don't want to move my hands, legs or any other part of my body so much. I watch stuff on my phone because I am too lazy to watch on TV . This stuff seems like so much work, do you really want to move pieces of puzzle when you can just flick your thumb.
- dzhiurgis 10y agoYeah but you still need to time travel to 70s using a bus to spend your points on groceries...
- freyir 10y agoHere's another: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=w8J5BWL8oJY https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=w8J5BWL8oJY
- Negative1 10y agoStandard retaliatory tactic so they can tell investors the ex-employees are actually the bad apples and of course not the company. The impression I get is that the only secret ML actually has is that they are years away from showing anything to validate their worth (by which point many competitors will have shown their cards and removed the 'magic' from the leap).
- funkyy 10y agoYeah, they just can make a deal - drop the case in exchange for former employees silence about whats going on in the company...
- bcheung 10y agoIsn't it "augmented reality"?
- pmastela 10y agoMagic Leap's main product might be more than meets the eye. According to Quartz [1], there's probably more far-fetching tech that Magic Leap is working on that involves "deep learning techniques utilizing robotics," and Bradski's and Kaehler's termination forced their hand to divulge even the least bit of information. Maybe "artificial reality" is not a misnomer and the $4.5bn valuation is not just the AR. [1] http://qz.com/694660/looks-like-magic-leap-is-working-on-another-mysterious-buzzword-technology/ http://qz.com/694660/looks-like-magic-leap-is-working-on-ano...
- nbb 10y agoAnd maybe I have the secret to cold fusion open in a text file in front of me. Are you looking for an investment opportunity?
- pat_space 10y agoam i allowed to say "lmao!" on hn?
- askafriend 10y agoI hope you've learned your lesson.
- freyir 10y agoDeep learning and robotics qualify as far fetched tech? Anyone with a laptop and one of a dozen open-source frameworks can get started with deep learning today. Rendering a 3D object that blends in real time with a person's perspective of their physical environment and beaming it directly into their retina seems far more far fetched. Perhaps the deep learning using robotics is simply related to this larger task, for example controlling the projecting element to account for retina movement or something similar.
- fishanz 10y agoI'm interested in this but the article itself is a bit of a joke and I couldn't find any external links on it for anything more in-depth. :/
- skc 10y agoThe reluctance for people to be skeptical of anything to do with Magic Leap is strange to me. How is their product not rightly described as vapor ware? I feel like I've been hearing about how amazing it is for ages and still...nothing. Stories like this aren't helping me change my mind either.
- dominotw 10y agoI am not even sure what ' deep learning techniques utilizing robotics' even means.
- blazespin 10y agoWhat does that have to do with Magic Leap?
- dominotw 10y agoThe lawsuit alleges the duo's duplicity involved "some deep learning techniques utilizing robotics." from nytimes article
- nl 10y agoWell there is http://googleresearch.blogspot.com.au/2016/03/deep-learning-for-robots-learning-from.html http://googleresearch.blogspot.com.au/2016/03/deep-learning-... Presumably that's not the secret thing since it's directly from the Google Research Blog.
- Fricken 10y agoGauging off their patents, they've got so much bleeding edge shit to pack into their device that I'm not expecting a consumer ready product from Magic Leap in less than 5 years. I'm just going to have to get used to people throwing around the 'vapourware' accusation in every Magic Leap thread I stumble across for some time to come.
- Retric 10y agoThere are patents for perpetual motion machines. Building something is hard, describing a vague idea is easy.
- zekevermillion 10y agoBig deal. Employers always allege trade secrets theft in any dispute with their serf...I mean, employees.
- blazespin 10y agoArtificial Reality... I like that term. A blend of augmented reality and virtual reality. To bad it's AR though
- elij 10y agoAV? https://blogs.intel.com/evangelists/2016/04/26/the-case-for-augmented-virtuality/ https://blogs.intel.com/evangelists/2016/04/26/the-case-for-...
- perseusprime11 10y agoI see this as a defensive move to show their investors why they are late to launch.
- ChuckMcM 10y agoI don't know if ML's tech is vapor or real, but I have a lot of respect for anyone who can get Larry Page to give them half a billion in cash. That right there is some seriously convincing talking.
- freyir 10y agoHow much savings does the typical American family have to invest? It's around $1,000 (actually less). This investment would be a bit like a typical family investing $17 dollars in something. Or if you're going by the typical total net worth of an American (around $45k), it be like investing $800. I'm sure he's is not in the habit of frivously making bad investments, but a $500M investment has the financial impact to Larry Page that purchasing a computer has to the typical American. Except that that computer purchase will probably affect the money left over to pay for bills, food, rent/mortgage, sending kids to college, etc. so really the financial impact on Larry is much, much less. If they create something that convinces the average family to shell out $800, I'll be impressed.
- syngrog66 10y agofair point. I'd add that if a person has $10+ billion, already (or whatever his net worth is), then you can afford to risk blowing a few billion, here and there, on things which might turn into a loss. On the upside, he'd be better off and humanity would be better off. On the downside even if his bet failed and he and therefore the Page estate got reduced to a mere, say, $100 million in net wealth he and his children could still live out pretty good lives. In other words, it might not have been as hard to convince him as one might think. "Gee, I can invest a big amount in a Theranos/MagicLeap/SpaceX or I can put it into the next random/fad-ish social/pic/buzz/RailsCRUD/BigData/leadgen/TODO/PM/cloud/viral/app startup. Hmmm, choices."
- ChuckMcM 10y agoWell in this case it is the company's money, and lots of people within the company are "competing" for funding of their projects. Of course there is the reverse NIH effect which is that any technology invented outside of the company seems more impressive to leadership than technology created inside the company.
- khattam 10y agoThe vapors are leaking. I had some hope in them because I thought Google were not idiotic enough to acquire them. Now I don't trust Google as much.
- LogicFailsMe 10y agoI interviewed with these guys and got an informal offer. I declined because of the number of hoops I'd have to jump through to see a demo of it in action. I learned my lesson about that sort of thing during the first dotcom boom.