Oculus dude Palmer Lucky funds racist pro-Trump hate memes

It blows my mind that people in their teens and 20s are pro-Trump and Republican…

The fact that this kid has more money than he knows what to do with it is the likely draw towards conservatism, since they fight tooth and nail to keep their deep pockets from being taxed, and battle for pro-business legal and tax incentives.

No matter how much pandering and spin they put out to the contrary, the core of the Republican Party principles and supporters are pro-life, Christian evangelicalism, sexual discrimination, xenophobia, and racism.

There are other, and frankly, better ways to say you’re fiscally conservative, or favor states rights, or a hawkish foreign poly than aligning yourself with the negative meaning of declaring you’re Republican.

That being said, nice of him out out himself as one of those “deplorables”.

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Eh, luckily for us, the Vive is miles better, so we can enhance our enjoyment of VR both because we’re using a better system and because it has nothing to do with this jerk.

(By “us” I mean people who hypothetically would own a VR set. I tried a Vive and it’s super cool, but I don’t plan on actually owning one anytime soon.)

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Fuck a duck. I spent such a long time backing Oculus as next stage tech.

Now, I know it’s twattish. sigh I hope Sony’s effort works out.

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Maybe. I don’t think it’ll be a big seller for Sony, it’ll live on the same shelf as their motion controllers and camera. The “interesting and kinda fun but i don’t think i’ll use it much” shelf.

The Vive i have a hunch will be more practical but it’s too early to say how VR will do. There’s no real killer application for it and the cost of entry is way high.

Do they though?

I mean, you say Oculus had terribly broken software on release. I assume you’re referring to the need to use a symlink to move the download directory. Not sure I’d call that terribly broken. To me, terribly broken suggests something like, say, an uninstaller that wipes your entire hard-drive instead of just the Half-Life folder.

Yes, that happened. Then it happened again with the Linux version of Steam 17 years later.

Valve has had plenty of gaffes, some worse than anything Oculus has done, and there’s been no shortage of morally questionable things going on there over the last ten years either.

Everyone is terrible! Yaaay!

This got me thinking about the “fuck everyone” phase I went through right about the time I got out of college (right before W. Clinton was first elected). If it makes any sense that there are (or could be) alt-right types who are consciously against racism and sexism, I think maybe that’s what I was, or was certainly on the way to becoming. I was reading Answer Me! and, while skeptical about the likes of Boyd Rice, not really dismissive of him, either. I was very amused by Lou Reed’s antics in the interviews he did with Lester Bangs around the time of Metal Machine Music (which I was listening to, start to finish, more than once). I had an idea for a play where the performers go out and slap the audience members. I also got interested in the Italian Futurists. Etc., etc., etc. I think the only thing that kept me grounded at all and going full-blown misanthrope was that I had a girlfriend, who nonetheless was growing tired of Ol’ Man Grumpus, and predictably the relationship unraveled. A few months later, I was at work one day, still dwelling on the relationship that had ended, when I realized that most of the people I worked with had a good 15 or 20 years on me. Many or most of them had already been through divorces and anything else that was a lot worse than what I was going through. A big dose of humility, I guess. That’s the point where I feel like my mind began to turn around for the better (coincidentally it’s around the time I started reading Robert Anton Wilson).

There’s a point to this tale (I think). I was so cynical and pessimistic that I would have latched on to something like the Donald Trump campaign, if it had happened back then. Not that I would have admired him, or even agreed with him, but just because “fuck everyone, if they’re so stupid so as propel the likes of him into the White House, then not only do they deserve him, but I’d love to see him get there myself.” I have to wonder if today’s alt-right types couldn’t get their head around the world and their place in it, or these individuals have some kind of soul-damage that I can’t even imagine, or both. While their antics disgust me I can’t help but feel (a nonzero amount of) pity.

Not sure that made a whole lot of sense but I was suddenly compelled to get it out there.

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(Happy Birthday, BTW)

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To be honest, there are so many scams on the right wing side of politics that it’s a safe bet. Even the top candidate is basically running a scam. And in the end, was Oculus anything more than a scam that Facebook fell for?

I hear ya - but I’m a believer - VR could be transformative. Currently I think it might be in the hands of marketing people seeking funds for development, and hence the same as enhanced reality through smartphones - the apotheosis of which we have seen to be one rubbish summer craze chasing toys.

… There’s the left-leaning kind. Actual libertarians. Since Proudhon’s sexism [and racism] was enough to make him un-libertarian, I’m pretty sure Trump’s sexism and racism and anti-immigrant and anti-free-speech and anti-civilian-oversight-of-police policies and general authoritarianism makes him solidly anti-libertarian.

It’s a bit like referring to “meat-eating vegans (is there any other kind?)”

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Here’s an arcive of /u/nimblerichman’s AMA. His posts and account has been deleted.
The aftermath.

Search Reddit for nimblerichman or nimbleamerica for the whole drama

That’s where I am coming from. Open source and Linux support were much of why I paid for a Rift DK1 back when I was employed. The development kits don’t need any invasive software, so I am sure that the retail technically doesn’t either. Facebook are lame and their acquisition of Oculus ruined it for me. The rumors of Palmer’s alleged douchitude are not helping.

30 years ago the same people would have been Stalinists, today they are reactionary fascists. The political details may have changed but what hasn’t is their support for authoritarian extremism.

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I just don’t think I’ve ever met anyone* who self-identified as libertarian and didn’t also love guns, Jesus, and the American flag (in that order) and those are typically things I associate with the right. But perhaps that’s just my ignorance speaking, I certainly wouldn’t claim to be knowledgeable on the subject – nor would I claim Trump is anything other than a sexist, racist, xenophobic, authoritarian lunatic.

*one exception, but I’m pretty sure he’s secretly a robot.

As regards actual use of Rift and VR generally, I will relate a bit of my experience:

Controllers - Special controllers were not a big deal for me. I do have some which work well with my Rift, the Sixense/Razer “Hydra”. They cost me about $50 at the time and are quite nice. They are accurate and responsive, but one needs to make profiles for them in whatever their game of choice is. And I also did a lot of play with my usual mouse and keyboard combination.

Motion sickness - As counterintuitive as this may seem, I think that VR motion sickness is an advantage rather than an obstacle. I was mostly playing in fast, low-gravity combat arenas with lots of movement, including vertically. The reason why the movements induced motion sickness was because those same movements would in meatspace. This is the kind of thing immersive VR excels at! Treating it like a stationary 3D gimmick misses the point. The VR facilitates MORE movement because one can move, look, and shoot all in different directions at the same time, while flying through the air. It is one of the most badass things ever. But it is not a “plug-n-play” experience in that respect, one needs to develop “sea legs”, and like any worthwhile video game skill, that takes time.

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I doubt I can afford robot conversion, but I think it could help solve some of my health issues.

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Maybe that’s an American thing. The first libertarians I met were atheists, and who all thought Christianity was accurately represented in those little pamphlets about young girls going to hell over one stupid decision. As opposed to, you know, Mother Theresa, or any liberal Catholic actively involved in aid work.

(No, I’m not Christian. I just know there’s sometimes a big distance between the practice and the dogma.)

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Well, at least there might be some appropriate backlash going on:

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Aren’t current phone screens high-res enough?

I’d like to know how Steve Mann’s Eyetap, which projects onto the retina, would fare in this application. Maybe you need a matrix of tiny projectors to allow for eye movement, I dunno

He looks like an oversized anthropomorphic turd.