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Man, what has HAPPENED to this place? I'm the biggest curmudgeon in the room, I'll have six feet of dirt on my face before I agree to use this daily, but damn,

Man, what has HAPPENED to this place? I'm the biggest curmudgeon in the room, I'll have six feet of dirt on my face before I agree to use this daily, but damn, folks, this IS cool. Everyone complains about boring stagnating consumer tech, locked-down hardware, and Mark Zuckerberg making a real go at personally stalking every single person on the planet - this is the _exact opposite of that_. This is high-end, incredibly weird, deeply niche hardware running open-source software. Yes, it costs a lot - that's the cost of not making another shitty piece of spyware-laden consumer bullshit. You're not gonna buy it? Cool, I get it. But my god, not everything has to appeal to the whole fucking market. That kind of thinking is why every damn car on the road is exactly the same shitty crossover as every other one. George, David, this is rad. Kudos for building it, kudos for selling it, and good luck to you and your team - I sincerely hope you succeed, because the world needs more of your kind of weird.

kanetw 5y ago
Thank you!
gfodor 5y ago
Yep, agree 100%. Few hackers remain on hacker news.
- echelon 5y ago
  > Few hackers remain on hacker news. I don't think that's true at all. Think of all the people who are simply choosing not to post. And the nearly unlimited supply of "Show HN" hackery we see on a daily basis.
necrotic_comp 5y ago
Agreed 100%. I saw this and immediately fell in love. This is incredible and I'm super stoked to see how it comes out.
georgewsinger 5y ago
Thank you for the kind words. Even if VR computers aren't for everyone, we promise to keep things weird.
- roughly 5y ago
  So one thing that may help the sales pitch to the hacker demographic here - I think we've all seen a bunch of promising hardware companies come and go. I know you guys are going to survive for the next century, but if you made a point of being extremely open with the hardware design, especially around the compute module, I think that would make a difference in people's value calculations. The closer you can make this to "I can buy commodity hardware and make it work with this headset", the better the value proposition becomes, because it means that I have something I can upgrade and work with over time, even after you all get so fantastically wealthy from building these that you retire to Bali and forget all this tawdry capitalism stuff.
  - mtsr 5y ago
    Indeed, but maybe the NUC-included-model is important for the margin? Although from the price difference between the models that might not even be the case.
    - roughly 5y ago
      I'm not talking about going full "BYOC" - I think they should still sell the whole kit - but I think it'd make it easier to see the long-term value proposition if I know I _can_ build my own compute module in the future - that I'm not wholly reliant on their corporate solvency to use the hardware going forward. Effectively, they've got an all-in-one computer with a really novel/interesting display, and the issue with many all-in-one computers is that the computer guts usually age faster and less gracefully than the displays. They're showing the compute part as modular, but that's not useful if the company isn't around in ~3 years unless I can build my own.
    - kanetw 5y ago
      The NUC is actually a bit subsidized compared to the tethered version.
2OEH8eoCRo0 5y ago
Exactly. I often look at vintage tech and lament how boring everything is now. Will anybody look back on our modern devices in 30 years? We are surrounded daily by utterly soulless slabs chained to walled-garden ecosystems.
dang 5y ago
The top 10+ subthreads are all positive - I think I had to go all the way to #18 to find a negative one. You may be falling prey to the contrarian dynamic: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&sort=byDate&type=comment&query=%22contrarian%20dynamic%22%20objection%20by:dang https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&sor...
- roughly 5y ago
  You may well be right - and, to the point of your explanations about the dynamic, the sentiment definitely seems to have shifted - which is great!
  - dang 5y ago
    Thanks for the kind reply—I always brace myself when posting like that!
- vbuterin 5y ago
  When I visited this thread 2h ago, the top subthread was negative. Definitely some kind of weird dynamic going on...
  - octopoc 5y ago
    This might be because it's easier to write a quick putdown than a thoughtful comment, so the first comments tend to be the quick putdowns. Thankfully the more thoughtful comments rise to the top, but that takes time.
    - dang 5y ago
      That's exactly the contrarian dynamic—your description is spot on! It's an artifact of the commenting process, not a representative sample of the community, and it happens in many threads. Maybe most threads. https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&sort=byDate&type=comment&query=%22contrarian%20dynamic%22%20objection%20by:dang https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&sor...
deleted 5y ago
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- deleted 5y ago
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eichin 5y ago
Yeah - as an ancient software geek I don't want it, but I definitely want someone to build it, especially in the open source space.

kanetw 5y ago

Thank you!

gfodor 5y ago

Yep, agree 100%. Few hackers remain on hacker news.

echelon 5y ago
> Few hackers remain on hacker news. I don't think that's true at all. Think of all the people who are simply choosing not to post. And the nearly unlimited supply of "Show HN" hackery we see on a daily basis.

necrotic_comp 5y ago

Agreed 100%. I saw this and immediately fell in love. This is incredible and I'm super stoked to see how it comes out.

georgewsinger 5y ago

Thank you for the kind words. Even if VR computers aren't for everyone, we promise to keep things weird.

roughly 5y ago
So one thing that may help the sales pitch to the hacker demographic here - I think we've all seen a bunch of promising hardware companies come and go. I know you guys are going to survive for the next century, but if you made a point of being extremely open with the hardware design, especially around the compute module, I think that would make a difference in people's value calculations. The closer you can make this to "I can buy commodity hardware and make it work with this headset", the better the value proposition becomes, because it means that I have something I can upgrade and work with over time, even after you all get so fantastically wealthy from building these that you retire to Bali and forget all this tawdry capitalism stuff.
- mtsr 5y ago
  Indeed, but maybe the NUC-included-model is important for the margin? Although from the price difference between the models that might not even be the case.
  - roughly 5y ago
    I'm not talking about going full "BYOC" - I think they should still sell the whole kit - but I think it'd make it easier to see the long-term value proposition if I know I _can_ build my own compute module in the future - that I'm not wholly reliant on their corporate solvency to use the hardware going forward. Effectively, they've got an all-in-one computer with a really novel/interesting display, and the issue with many all-in-one computers is that the computer guts usually age faster and less gracefully than the displays. They're showing the compute part as modular, but that's not useful if the company isn't around in ~3 years unless I can build my own.
  - kanetw 5y ago
    The NUC is actually a bit subsidized compared to the tethered version.

2OEH8eoCRo0 5y ago

Exactly. I often look at vintage tech and lament how boring everything is now. Will anybody look back on our modern devices in 30 years? We are surrounded daily by utterly soulless slabs chained to walled-garden ecosystems.

dang 5y ago

The top 10+ subthreads are all positive - I think I had to go all the way to #18 to find a negative one. You may be falling prey to the contrarian dynamic: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&sort=byDate&type=comment&query=%22contrarian%20dynamic%22%20objection%20by:dang https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&sor...

roughly 5y ago
You may well be right - and, to the point of your explanations about the dynamic, the sentiment definitely seems to have shifted - which is great!
- dang 5y ago
  Thanks for the kind reply—I always brace myself when posting like that!
vbuterin 5y ago
When I visited this thread 2h ago, the top subthread was negative. Definitely some kind of weird dynamic going on...
- octopoc 5y ago
  This might be because it's easier to write a quick putdown than a thoughtful comment, so the first comments tend to be the quick putdowns. Thankfully the more thoughtful comments rise to the top, but that takes time.
  - dang 5y ago
    That's exactly the contrarian dynamic—your description is spot on! It's an artifact of the commenting process, not a representative sample of the community, and it happens in many threads. Maybe most threads. https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&sort=byDate&type=comment&query=%22contrarian%20dynamic%22%20objection%20by:dang https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&sor...

deleted 5y ago

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deleted 5y ago
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eichin 5y ago

Yeah - as an ancient software geek I don't want it, but I definitely want someone to build it, especially in the open source space.