Is Carmack still working on Oculus?
I posted the video somewhere else in the thread and I think there is an not-so-active submission of the video on HN here:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29032872
But the man is sharp and straight to the point and I just love listening to his insight.
I have lost a lot of respect for Carmack with how nonchalant he's been towards working with somebody as dubious as Zuckerberg
when you least expect it you will be in a meeting about business management crap, it's very hard to keep that at bay.
I don't regret doing my own thing, but sometimes I'd like to work for my company instead of running it.
Back to Carmack - if I were Carmack, had the intelligence and experience Carmack does, along with the money and connections Carmack has - I would simply find somebody not as slimy as Zuckerberg to work on VR related things with, it's as simple as that. I'm sure there are several others who would be happy to fund him if he reached out.
Do you think otherwise?
As is every other fb employee.
From that tech dream perspective, which I assume they both share, the Facebook way of making money while chasing those dreams is just circumstantial details. For both of them. I'd expect those two to get along excellently. One of them is now basically renaming his life's work out of admiration for what the other can do, and the other is probably not infinitely immune to flattery.
I wouldn't write someone off simply for working for someone.
Zuckerberg Chan Biohub may satisfy some of your criteria
The problem is, there are only two other companies with the budget, R&D budget to do that. One is apple, who I doubt would let Carmack be free to do what he wants. The other is Microsoft.
At the same time Facebook bet on VR is decade+ long game.
He never struck me one terribly concerned with ethical dilemmas. More the pragmatic kind that wants to work on cool stuff. But I always listen when Carmack talks because no matter his ethics, I find he has exceptional insight.
Also what is it with this idea of "everyone will throw morals into the trash to work at X", it's simply not true, some people DO indeed posess ideals and the integrity to go with them.
I mean the way people talk about Zuck, you'd think he's a mass murderer. But I'm not sure what he actually did other than brag about having passwords back in college and making ruthless business decisions.
No, he openly offered personally identifying information. Bit different.
Facebook has been successfully used for, and did not feel the need to intervene in, orchestrating genocide in other countries, IIRC - and this is before his secret meetings with aforementioned administration. Something something if it can happen somewhere it can happen where you are.
There are many other things, but those are the first to come to mind that would make me want to have absolutely nothing to do with him. Do you not care about other humans and civil society? If so, Zuck may be for you, but not I.
> I don't think there's anyone who I would outright refuse to work with just based on their negative public reputation.
Many successful SWE's and hiring managers have publicly and anonymously discussed not wanting to work with or hire previous Facebook devs based on morals and ethics of business, not even mentioning Zuck. Are they just trying to virtue signal and act woke? I don't know.
So like every other large company then.
"We connected people together and it turned out 1% of them are assholes"
> Are they just trying to virtue signal and act woke? I don't know.
Yes, is signalling your virtues and acting .. "aware of what is going on, or well-informed, especially in racial and other social justice issues"... bad?
If it harms others, then yes. Just yesterday I read about lawsuit where white male was fired to hire two females. Which is a direct consequence of diversity virtue signaling.
Also as you're talking about humans, probably use "man" and "women", otherwise you sound like... someone who would complain about people being woke.
In the best case he’s just ridiculously naive, in the worst case…
You and I may not like him or use his website, but it seems that it is enough for someone like Carmack to continue working there for longer and the users who still detest him and his website to continue to have an account and use it regardless.
From a business standpoint, he is still winning. Every time someone uses his services or he is talked about, he wins.
For many people, the way (most) people talk about someone (i.e. their tone, not specific details) is the primary signal used to determine their own general tone/opinion about that person.
A few other common reasons someone may not like Zuck: 1. He's rich 2. He's at the top of a hugely profitable company (and profitable companies are generally disliked) 3. FB has absorbed a lot of the advertising spend, at the expense of traditional media (whose tone sets the tone for many people, pt 1)
In no way are they pumping out ever more opinion pieces rather than actual news, to pander to which ever "side" they "support"
if Facebook was editorialized, then yes, it would be the leading cause of x, y & z. Facebook is a reflection of society. How do I find out about some nefarious actor on facebook? through news, its pretty rare that I am organically exposed to that stuff.
Take Tide pods, that was a total moral panic driven by American TV. The "death bird" panic was driven by UK daytime tv. It got to the point that my Kid's school was showing the image to my kids, saying that it was ok and that its not a problem, and that you were never going to die, all the while having an expression of repressed fear.
Facebook is a Social Phased lock Loop. You have to engage with the extreme content for it to continually be shown to you.
I dislike Facebook, they have made some strategic failures. However this _obsession_ with facebook absolves everyone else, which is both the point and the risk of this stupidity.
I think our core disagreement is the pernicious impact of the engagement algorithm. It’s not hard to fall into extreme content: you just have to engage with something adjacent to something adjacent to something adjacent to it. “Slippery slope” is finally a meaningful phrase.
I have difficulty with this. It reminds me very much of the argument against video games, or "driller thriller" which lead to video censorship. Don't get me wrong, the availability of it is disturbing. However I would counter that it takes a person who is vulnerable for that to work on (ie take someone who is "center ground" and walk them to an extreme) its not an instant process. Again, we as wider society need to be better at spotting and supporting these types of people and equipping them with either a benign purpose, or the critical thinking skills to avoid extremist holes.
Where I do think we might agree is age restrictions. I don't think children should be on any type of social media that can host images or posts long term. (I suspect chat is less risk, so long as its timeboxed and has reasonable parental support.) Anyone less than 18 shouldn't be on facebook/snap/insta/tiktok at all, I don't think
Even independently of Facebook/Meta, yes.