Palmer Luckey (previously) the alt-right financier who was made a billionaire by Mark Zuckerberg's decision to acquire his VR startup Oculus, is now running a Peter-Thiel-backed surveillance startup called Anduril Industries, which has won a contract to contribute to Project Maven, the Pentagon's controversial AI-for-drones system (Google's involvement in Project Maven sparked an employee uprising that ended with the relevant executives leaving the company and the contract being allowed to lapse).
Palmer Luckey, the guy who founded Oculus, sold it to Facebook, and then used the money to fund racist, far-right meme creation in the 2016 election cycle is now running a Peter-Thiel-backed startup to build surveillance technology that could be part of Donald Trump's border wall.
Palmer Luckey is the founder of virtual reality tech firm Oculus, which was bought by Facebook for $2 billion. With a portion of his huge pile of Oculus cash, Luckey is funding a pro-Donald Trump "shitposting" tactical team that churns out racist, sexist, hatey anti-Hillary Clinton memes and works to make them go viral. — Read the rest
Forbes Magazine just released its annual list of billionaires, of which there are currently 2,781 still alive across the world. And yes, that's a record — up 25 people from the previous record established 2021, plus one Taylor Swift! The number of people valued at over $100 billion has also increased by 14, which also surpasses previous records. — Read the rest
Some defense contractor made a virtual reality helmet that will allow you to be shot in the head as penises rain down from the sky and an unimaginable number of dancing "Ally McBeal" babies laugh at you in eerie unison.
I can not wait to be mugged walking to virtual Amazon. — Read the rest
Former Trump strategist Stephen K. Bannon and GOP moneyman Elliot Broidy join a list of Trump pardon grantees that includes Paul Manafort and Roger Stone.
Here is the full list from the White House, which is reproduced below in full. — Read the rest
This prototype Sony PlayStation, the result of a failed Sony and Nintendo collaboration in the early 1990s, sold Friday for $360,000 in a live online auction. Background here. While Oculus VR founder Palmer Luckey was thought to have made the winning bid, the winner was actually Greg McLemore who made a fortune in the first dotcom gold rush as founder of Pets.com — Read the rest
Why exactly is Facebook helping to fund CPAC, to the tune of about $120,000 in cash and in-kind contributions?
— Read the rest
Oculus co-founder Palmer Luckey was exposed last week backing a pro-Trump "meme factory" that churns out Nazi-themed images and anti-Hillary Clinton propaganda—then spotted at a Trump rally wearing one of the nativist candidate's T-shirts. He at first walked back his involvement, but Luckey now has the backing of top colleagues at the Facebook-owned virtual reality startup. — Read the rest
In May, Facebook division Oculus broke its longstanding promise not to use DRM to limit its customers' choices, deploying a system that prevented Oculus customers from porting the software they'd purchased to run on non-Oculus hardware.
As recently as 5 months ago, Oculus founder Palmer Luckey was promising his customers that they could play the software they bought from the Oculus store on "whatever they want," guaranteeing that the company wouldn't shut down apps that let customers move their purchased software to non-Oculus hardware. — Read the rest
Ballparked at $350 by its creators, the consumer version of the Oculus Rift VR headset will in fact be $599. The sticker shock led the company's CEO to do an apologetic AMA on Reddit, where he explained the circumstances and why the earlier price suggestion was made. — Read the rest
