Polygon reports CastAR is no more.
CastAR is the brainchild of renaissance woman [Jeri Ellsworth], who was hired by Valve to work on what would eventually become SteamVR. Valve let [Jeri] go, but allowed her to take her invention with her. [Jeri] founded a new company, Technical Illusions, with [Rick Johnson] and over the past few years the CastAR has appeared everywhere from Maker Faires to venues better focused towards innovative technologies.
In 2013, Technical Illusions got its start with a hugely successful Kickstarter, netting just north of one million dollars. This success drew the attention of investors and eventually led to a funding round of $15 million. With this success, Technical Illusions decided to refund the backers of its Kickstarter.
We’ve taken a look a CastAR in the past, and it’s something you can only experience first-hand. Unlike the Oculus, Google Cardboard, or any of the other VR plays companies are coming out with, CastAR is an augmented reality system that puts computer-generated objects in a real, physical setting. Any comparison between CastAR and a VR system is incomplete; these are entirely different systems with entirely different use cases. Think of it as the ultimate table top game, or the coolest D&D game you could possibly imagine.
The article content is augment-only. We don’t see everything.
A real shame. I was looking forward to this promising tech coming to market. While I did feel this this was even more niche than VR (which in itself seems to be declining again) it still has a place
I don’t think augmented reality is niche at all. Just look at how much people keep their faces peeled to their cellphones these days. If it’s ever perfected then I think people will flock to it in order to take back their lives from that little screen they can’t see reality through.
By perfecting of course I mean shrinking it down to the point that it just looks and feels like a stylish pair of glasses. That’s a pretty tall order. I am not entirely sure it is even possible. But if it is… niche will be the last word we think of in describing it!
It’s especially sad to not see this tech get unleashed on the world this year, I backed the kickstarter as a dev and got one of the ~60 kits they put out there before VC snapped them up. The thing works and has huge potential, I developed about 20 unit test experiences for it with varying degrees of polish/completeness. including a table-top, 3D version missile command, 1:1 scale lego simulator, luner-lander 3D, and some pretty trippy particle effects and line animations. I hope someday commercial AR hardware will available and good enough to bring my creations to life as commercial products, meanwhile my AR work has gotten me a career in the games/VR industry at a AAA studio, and some great friends in the small community that formed around the castar kickstarter, forums and IRC. It’s been a trip guys. Best of luck to castAR staffers, rick and jeri, you guys are years ahead of your time, and you can’t keep a good idea down, there’s nobody I’ve shown my dev glasses to that weren’t simply blown away.
SD.
Gaming is one of those fields that gives a glimmer of what real-life AR could be. The movies are another.
I’d like to see a phone’s camera used for AR. When wearing a phone as a pair of VR goggles the camera can display what is in the room so you’re not totally blind to the real world; people can approach you and you can interact with them.
But perhaps because it’s AR you insert a SnapChat filter over their face so it looks like they’re vomiting a rainbow. Use it for people you don’t like.
Problem with camera-mediated AR, where everything is seen through a screen, is that the eye can’t change focus on the scene. You need real life, and real light, for that. Perhaps in the future somebody will bounce a laser through the eye’s lens and figure out what you’re trying to focus on. Til then it’s a medium-sized stumbling block.
That’s assuming anyone wants AR. I don’t see the attraction myself. It’s more limited than VR because there’s no “black”, everything’s overlaid on the scene. Which means it’s limited to a sort-of HUD on real life. And who needs one? Between glancing at my phone or watch, and a sophisticated brain from millions of years’ evolution, there’s nothing I need constantly displaying in front of me. I already know where I’m going and what’s happening, and can access my phone easily enough when I need to.
Pure VR, OTOH, sounds like lots of fun just for games. And perhaps a few other niches, but mostly entertainment. Just need to put people into a big, safe space. Something like a padded warehouse. Or, better, give up on the idea of walking round VR, and fly everywhere using finger gestures or a joypad. Walking’s enough of a pain that we domesticated horses, no need to bring it with us to our future techno-verse.
” there’s nothing I need constantly displaying in front of me. I already know where I’m going and what’s happening, and can access my phone easily enough when I need to. ”
If I don’t know where I’m going (e.g. driving a car in a new location), it might be nice to have a faint arrow in the “head up display” pointing out the changes in direction.
I think it would be very handy for maintenance techs, surgeons, and the like.
Seems much more convenient to have the instructions on a HUD than to keep flipping back to a manual. You could even add real measurements for some applications. e.g. patient’s pulse, car/boiler exhaust O2 while tuning, etc.
Also, Pokemon ;)
But the future is now. :)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_cmPFsBOquk
Ren, how could you say this. That is very narrow visioned for you. Ar could show the names of everyone in a room. It could show an accident happening before your eyes could see it and send a warning. Info can be displayed about where to drive as your driving and if accidents are ahead of you. It could literally show the green line to drive while your driving it without having to take your eyes away from the road making it safer to drive. The applications are almost unlimited. You just need to open your mind to the possibilities.
“It’s more limited than VR because there’s no “black””
Here’s a free idea: Use two LCD displays; one RGB to display the (transparent) image, and another monochrome LCD behind it to provide a “mask” or “alpha channel”. Problum solved?
@Ren – How unimaginative!
There is nothing I need either beyond air, food & water, clothes and a safe place to sleep at night. I’m glad our ancestors and contemporaries have looked beyond just what they NEED and created all of this!
Every day I study flash cards on my phone. On week days I go for a walk on my lunch break and do it then. I’m staring at the phone while I walk down the side walk. I’m not oblivious, I choose not-so-busy sidewalks, look up at every road crossing and am always listening for people coming. Still, If I had a screen built into glasses that I could also look up and see through.. that would be a bit safer and I could enjoy more of the scenery around me.
Other things I want to do…
– Watch Netflix or YouTube while mowing the lawn or shoveling snow.
– See traffic updates, directions or even the name of the song I am listening to while driving without taking my eyes off the road. (ok, that one I might get without glasses using a projection onto the windshield)
– A thousand things I have yet to think of……
Greenaum one use case, beyond vomiting rainbows, is to have a very large display for work and play. An enormous virtual desktop that doesn’t block you out of the world. You can see your hands on the keyboard, can see when someone approaches and interact with them. YouTube video on your left, email on the right, spreadsheet in the middle, and talking with the person next to you.
So a world traveler need only carry a phone, Bluetooth keyboard and mouse, and head strap and he can get things done on an airplane. Of note, laptops and tablets have been restricted on certain airlines coming from certain locations this year. Augmented desktop would bypass that restriction.
The roadblock you mention is a valid one but I consider this a product worth pursuing.
Greenaum I’m thinking about what you said is a roadblock. Why is this not an issue for VR?
I think I’d rather just be looking through a very transparent LCD or a clear lens with images projected onto it. Using a digital camera and an opaque display would introduce delay and reduce the resolution of what one can see.
Declining ? I’ve never seen this much VR software being produced many things are about.
To me it FEELS like 3d printers are declining. I enjoyed the earlier days when I first read about then-new ideas like multiple heads, dissolving filaments for supports, acetone smoothing, etc… I remember first seeing a Delta and thinking WTF is that, an inverted Martian WoTW tripod?
I remember daydreaming about building a printer and thinking about a rotating bed. I thought it might be easier to build since servos make rotational position easy. At the time building a linear axis scared me and this idea could eliminate one of them. I also thought it might make smoother curves al-be-it at the expense of less-sharp corners. I wondered about a hybrid system for smooth curves and sharp corners. Then… I read a HaD article about a printer with Polar kinematics!
Now all the news seems to read more like Consumer Reports. It’s all reviews of new commercial printers and RepRap is a rarely heard term. To me it FEELS like a decline. But.. it’s not. It’s just the next step in development and getting printers into the hands of “the norms”.
Maybe that is what is happening with VR? If it is in the process of moving from the world of Kickstarter and individual homebrew hacks and into the wider world it might look like it is in decline from a certain viewpoint.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hype_cycle
Everything is a niche until the tech catches up and becomes usefull.
VR and AR have the same problem even though VR is closer to becoming common.
When we get small vr headset with good tracking and good software and the prices dropp then vr will be much more common.
The same with AR when the tech get good enough it will be usefull. looking at your living room and get to se the soffa that you want to buy in the rigth size and dimensions, is usefull if you want to order online.
Can the thech do that today, no it cant it is getting closer but it is not good enogh just yet.
That’s a shame. I was really curious to see what they would come up with. They seemed to be thinking about this type of technology in different ways than most.
It’s half an article because it doesn’t mention why they’re folding – or where the other $14M went…
My wild guess is that they have underestimated how difficult it will be to bring another game console (their effort on self-contained glasses/games) to the market and burned their cash on that, instead of getting the already working PC compatible version of those glasses out of the door and on the market ASAP. That technology had a huge potential, especially in multi-user VR – think a portable multi-user CAVE with capabilities that even multi-million setups from the likes of BARCO and Cyviz couldn’t match – most can handle 2 simultaneous users maximum.
Then likely when their investor saw that after years of R&D, cool demos and what not they were not any closer to recouping their investment, they decided to pull the plug and not fund them anymore, killing the company.
A pity :( I do hope they manage to sell the tech and at least walk off without debts. Fingers crossed for everyone involved.
And re $14 million – well, considering they had 80 staff, office to pay rent for and 4 years to spend it over, $14 million is not that much. It looks like a huge number but divide it by the number of staffers and 48 months and you will see that they were pretty much scraping the bottom of the barrel every month, because there was a lot of expensive hardware R&D to pay too, office rent & upkeep, necessary travel, taxes, health insurance, etc.
Nobody was buying a new Ferrari or house from that money for sure.
Castar is/was a better idea with more current uses than any of the big guys have for their silly goggles. Linking their VR world to feedback and limiting sickness inducing latency are just not problems they are apparently capable of fixing right now. Even for those that claim they have, its a solution searching for a problem, and on ewith apparently few people willing to make content for.
Fully developed Castar could have been a graceful and helpful solution.
Jeri’s never wrong.
http://imgur.com/40ySuIp
God dam it.
About 6 years ago wal-mart was selling little kids projectors they were $30 each. So I got 4 of them. I sold 3 of them, And when I went back I tried my best to get some more once I saw how small the projectors were and they had no more any ware I tried to get 1 or 2 of the ones I sold but they would not give them back to me.
I ended up using the one that I had for a little media system with the Raspberry pi when it fist came out for work for me.
One of the guys I was working with wanted it Badly. So I sold it.
I wish That I never sold it. I ended up selling it for $300.
It really looked nice No pictures of it. sorry.
It was put in a portable hard drive case that fit on top of a 18v dewalt battery. It would last for 3 days of 8 hrs of work with playing MP3s. and when they had the chance they would watch moves on the walls when they were working.
It also had 4 meters of led lighting on it so it could light up the room. the light would be like a 40 watt fluorescent light.
It only lasted for 5 hours but that was more then anuff time.
The companies we were working for would no longer put lights in any of the rooms so I came up with these lights.
I made about 10 of them and sold them to the guys with just the light and a USB charger for there phones.
The batteries were the company’s so we did not have to spend any money on batteries.
And now you see these types of lights all over the place.
I should of got it patented like every one was telling me. But I’m stumped in that area.
Now Im trying to find the specks for the little screen that are in the “night spy googles”. I have 2 of them now.
And the same for the kids tablet LCD from vtech N Leap frog LCDs these things are about $2-$5 at the used stores.
and have easy connections and 3″ and 5″ screens. And a not to bad res.
If any one has info on these it would be great. I would even make the time to properly put it on here for every one else.
Great job on those glasses. It would be nice to know the price. I didnt have the time to go threw there site. maybe later.
Must go for now.
Perry needs some grammar and spelling classes. I feel dumber after reading that.
Hi there Perry here again.
Sorry But not feeling so good. and my hands don’t work as good as they use to.
And the same as my head. Thank you thow. No offence taken.
To be fair he did indicate that he works in the construction industry. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Jeri and Co should get together with OSIC and create a new world!!
Well, to bad for CastAR.
On the flip side, Jerry must be up to something awesome and completely different once again.
I can hardly wait to see what it is this time. Keep us in the loop!
Yeah. Probably raising a bunch of money, burning through it, and failing again.
A bigger warehouse full of pinball machines and 20 meter Etcha Sketches?
Yeah, I kinda got the feeling that was why Valve had so many cuts of that round of employees. Sounds like they are still stuck in late 90s tech company culture. Still it was funny to watch them all get a wake up call that filthy lucre was running out and as the great Ray Stantz said about the private sector, “they expect results”.
I like(d) Jeri back in the day until I read more about how it all came about and then the sheer vitriol she let loose on the very assholes that had supported her, put her in my “nope pile”. Her on the Make: circuit is like the Tiffany concerts at the malls-just a name to keep Sunglass Hut open ;)
Mike, Loser: +1
Do you have any links about “the sheer vitriol she let loose on the very assholes that had supported her”?
there was a time when 15 million was a lot of money. I’d be curious to know how much investment money went into ‘classic’ tech development back in the day, like Atari, C64, ZX-spectrum etc. etc. compared to what goes on now (adjusted for inflation). I just can’t understand how a group of supposedly intelligent and technically savvy people can get this amount of money and come up with absolute diddly squat. Just lock yourself in the lab or shed or whatever and don’t come out until you’ve finished it, that’s how it used to get done.
Yep I agree and that is WITH a prototype that was dev’ed on Valve’s (those capitalist misogynists lmao) dime. I guess it is lucky that Rubin is coming out with a new phone or else he would be a little more where the hell is my money. I can only guess there was some ‘pets.com’ action around there or they realized that people play tabletop games to get together and use their own imagination to picture castles, monsters, and treasure.
Hell, they would have been better off making a vodka and hiring a celebrity endorser or even starting a medical maryj grow-op that is automated. I guess the respectable thing was they did fill their original backer orders, but it is kinda vaporware unless you are a dev.
The classic model like you mention was more corporate, for lack of a better term. Angel backers were only taken to bail a company out, not so much as a start up. Don’t get me wrong, there were exceptions to the rule, but the old “less cooks in the kitchen” meant better profit margins. Things got slightly messy when Asian companies were trying to land a foothold and battle out for market share (but that is because they were following our business model so it was tit for tat what we had done over there lol). Those days it was all KLOC and squishing sprites and coming up with proprietary and secure encryption for those systems. These days it seems to be generating hype, buying out start ups, and re-coloring sprites for classic games to be ported into the app arena. Folks are better off re-skinning bejeweled for the 12,00th time, generating facebook/google/youtube ad revenue, and then paying the fine for infringement and declaring bankruptcy and retiring at 28 on the millions they hid in hard assets under their in-laws names ;) Or spend hours scouring their schematics and code for any similarity to sue a much more successful company (Yeah, fuck apple). It is a bit of a mess unless you have a personal interest you develop and then bring to market. At least that is what I experienced in my short time dealing with it.
Either way, 15mill is nothing to sneeze at. Hopefully Rubin at least got the patents to the junk just to keep someone else from trying lol. I mean the cable company starts emailing me days before my bill is even due and ceremoniously sends my next bill 2 hours after I pay the first (so they are technically hitting me for something not due for 2 months and only $80 at that lol) so I imagine some folks are a little more proactive about recovery than others.
why are you rambling nonsense?
What part didn’t make sense to you, Jeri?
Article says they are still trying to sell the tech. So something might still come from it. Who knows maybe the one that buys it will also use it. Or maybe Google buys it – and it’s dead, but a lot of money was made.
I wonder how the Japanese like it, is it something for nintendo?
This was the Only VR type of Project I was looking forward too, Facebokulous and All the other trash seemed less than interesting.
I’m sad to hear this news. I got an early look at the hardware in 2015 and I really enjoyed it. Virtual reality feels too closed off to me. This was unobtrusive enough I could see myself sitting around a table with friends normally and enjoying games (think Catan) will added digital elements. It felt like the system was already very close to that.
How can they have had a working system back then and have nothing to offer the market now? I wasted my time reading the article and learned nothing with regard to the core issues, not even speculation. Surely there is more information available from former insiders?
Usually it’s the difference between prototype that might be comfortable for a developer and getting the cost and production and design for a really big audience. You also need to have enough software to make the unit worthwhile; it may be the chicken v egg; it happened at Steam, so maybe other companies were also hesitant.
It’s a shame. I really liked the idea and thought it was one of the best means of managing the concept.
Jeri will probably talk about it more after the pain has eased up. It can take a while – like a death in the family, especially when it involves livelihoods and friendships.
They could have been huge just shipping it as it was bundled with derived FOSS software such as Warzone 2100.
I got to demo their set in New York some years back. I immediately went home and backed the kickstarter because i like it, and her, so much. When the VCs started moving in though, I expected that even if it ever shipped, I would never be getting one. VCs don’t make products. They make attractive targets for big companies to sustain their returns against a high failure ratio. This is doubly so in hardware.
I had really wanted to start writing solid-works and blender plugins for it for a while there but the SDK never materialized for my backer level.
Bummer, I was still looking forward to this, it was so light and it would have been a great tabletop system.
Combine these with a haptic feedback suit, and you can play in the Oasis. I guess we have to wait even longer for this technology to be perfected.
Sadly called in 2 years ago on EEVblog :( http://www.eevblog.com/forum/crowd-funded-projects/castar-launched-on-kickstarter/msg823220/#msg823220
It was DEAD the moment VC got involved (Rubin no less), and its only purpose was to appeal real to potential sucke^^^buyers by artificially bloating the company with stupid expenses. Thus 70 employees (for a company with no product and zero revenue!!!) and fancy office in most expensive corner of US. Rubin counted on Google buying him out due to Magic Leap scam.
I only hope Jeri wasnt an idiot and paid herself proper SV >$200K salary those last 2 years instead of eating ramen and dreaming of options.
Yeah, when they refunded my kickstarter i was thinking the same thing. They had a “prototype” that was mass producible and good enough for the kickstarter peoples. Should have shipped it! I actually felt abandoned from that. We pitched in the money to get it off the ground. That attracted VC money so they dumped us. Ouch.
I still don’t understand why -after a succesful kickstarter campaign- frugal growth was abandoned? Sell some glasses, use the profit for more parts, sell some more glasses? Or is the economy more a permissioned one?
The dogma of economy of scale puts too much power in the hands of the investors.
The more money the less risk.
I’m sure Jeri could state it better, but at $1M you are hoping for a profit and you may very well make a profit. But at $15M you have deep enough pockets that manufacturing setbacks won’t wipe out your profits. This is new tech and when you manufacture new tech you are much more likely to make a misstep.
Yeah, I know, this is Jeri. But with a big team effort you have more places to fail.
More money less risk only applies if you keep the scope of the project/company constant. Which basically noone ever does.
Usually what happens is that people hire more people than they can manage, promise more growth than makes sense, shoot for ‘perfect’ product instead of ‘working fine’ and end up with way more risk than necessary.
Refunding backers when they had shippable hardware was a huge signal of this being a possible problem.
at $1M you are forced to ship something, at $15M you stop everything you were doing and start making yourself look desirable for acquisition.
Or you stop everything and start over a few times. Or ‘pivot’.
Been there. Got the $10M. Took my lovely parting gifts and left after the new CEO that came with the $ got Bright Shiny Object Disease. VC’s came and took the money back shortly thereafter.
There seem to be certain markets where you seem to have to be pretty big to attract the attention of all the “partners” that you need to be successful. “Content” developers especially. Nintendo Switch sold 1.2M units in the first two months in the US. If you’re basically the compatible with others (my perception of the VR Headset market in general), you might get away with a small subset, and attracting the rest will follow on afterward. But if you’re doing something significantly different (AR instead of VR), then you have to get all your ducks lined up yourself.
I sort-of suspect that The Investors went “Everyone else is doing VR. There’s a new xBox, a new nintendo, everyone who plays pokemon go as the AR feature turned off, we don’t have a Killer App, and Google Glass failed too. We give up.”
I wonder if Microsoft had anything to do with the loss of funding? The CastAR would have competed directly with Microsoft’s HoloLens.
+1
This!
Their pathetic resources and money mismanagement would not produce anything to compete with Microsoft. Keep dreaming.
Not even Microsoft is competing with Microsoft. Cast AR is in a different niche and competes with Hololens the way Ducati competes with Ford.
Possibly though in some ways Hololens is kind of a toy in comparison.
Bummer… With all the mixed reality hype all over the spectrum, this was one of the few approaches that seemed to add something useful and interesting instead of something cringeworthy, useless or frightening.
AR and VR have mostly been solutions in search of problems. Never a successful formula.
For me it is about no longer having my neck slaved to a static rectangle on a table, and my right shoulder getting permanently haunched. I’m willing to put up with a lot for freedom of movement.
VR can be useful in visualizing CAD designs and something like CastAR could take that one step farther.
The loss of CastAR is too bad. I heard an interview a few years ago with Jeri on the “embedded.fm” podcast and it sounded really cool. Best wishes to her and her team on future projects.
On a more general note, a few years ago I read two science fiction books by Daniel Suarez, that really had an interesting and compelling view (to me) of how Augmented Reality (AR) could evolve. The books are: “Daemon” and its sequel “FREEDOM(tm)”.
They started with AR glasses, and eventually got to be contact lenses that contained the AR circuitry – while letting you see through them with the augmentation overlaid on the scene.
Why would you wish them well on future projects? All these people do is burn through other people’s money with no actual results.
Those people are called entrepreneurs. They bet their own too in my experience doing 13 startups. (3 successful exits) When my last one was flown into the deck I felt like I had lost a family member. Even though I had left a few months earlier.
So this thing == It’s a Hotdog | Not a Hotdog? How much did that cost?
I had seen Jeri and Amy at Hamvention, and talked a bit about CastAR. I would have loved to see it come to fruition. It would have been nice to obtain the technology and help progress it farther. At least I got the open invite to go our for coffee whenever I am back in Silicon Valley. Jeri, and crew, are like the female versions of Dean Kamen and Elon Musk. This reminds me of how I felt when the AMIGA was no more. 73 de KC8KVA
I’m just glad they refunded their kickstarter backers before they went bankrupt. That kind of ethical behavior makes me likely to back Jeri next time.
Oh, too bad. I was really looking forward to building a simpit with CastAR technology. By using retroreflectors for all lights and MFDs and possibly the gauges if you are lazy you should be able to very quickly build a working simpit.
I think the decision to go standalone was absolutely right as it would have been a nightmare to support all the PC variants and keep latency under control, as well as clumsy due to cabling etc. Something Jeri felt was very important was an instant out-of-the-box experience.
They had developed some interesting features to eliminate the need for the IR beacon – I don’t recall all the details from my chat with her last year but ISTR it involved doing clever stuff with polarisers and different IR wavelengths, Hopefully if it can’t work (yet) as a consumer game platform they can sell the tech into some high-value niche applications to see some fruits of all the work.
No surprise.
I interviewed there a while ago, it was one of the most surreal experiences ever:
First the HR lady refused to proceed unless I told her what my current salary was. I refused, as I always do. She said they cannot proceed if I do not, and I said that that is fine and I am happy to leave. She said no, we can go on. She then tried to get me to sign a very large NDA. I refused, as I always do. She said that without that they cannot demo their technology to me. I said OK, i do not need a demo, if, after interview, both the company and I feel like we match, we can do that then. Ok… she brought her boss, same story with him – salary, NDA, etc… Eventually he said we can proceed to interview.
Two guys walk into the room – #1: Asian, 50s, #2: White, 30s.
#2 did not say a single word the entire time at all.
#1 looked at my resume, and asked why I thought I was a fit. I said that they called me and spent weeks convincing me to come interview, so that is not a question for me. He asked if I had done any embedded work. I said yes, and a list of my cooler projects was on my resume and website. He looked and said: “this is all crap.” I asked “excuse me?” He said that none of my projects were interesting or useful. I pointed out that my world’s smallest JVM has actually been licensed by a number of companies, indicating that it is useful, and that, uARM, my modular ARM emulator was being used in a few universities to teach courses on architecture. Se said that he doubts this, and even if true it proves nothing.
#1 asked if I was familiar with running linux on very limited hardware. I said that yes, and I had in fact run it on an AVR a while ago. “That is all crap” was his reply.
At this point I was a bit stupefied. Instead of asking me questions, he was just insulting. But ok, perhaps it was a cultural difference, so I persevered.
#1 asks if I had had any experience porting android to any devices. I pointed out that yes, I had ported new versions of android to a number of old devices, and once to a watch that had had no android support previously at all, and besides that I worked in Android at Google. He told me none of that is what they are looking for.
I asked what it is they are looking for, and he said: people who have experience with android porting. I re-explained carefully that what I had just told him is that I had ported android to a number of devices and was quite familiar with the process. He again said that “no, that is not what we need, this is worthless”
#1 asked me if I had ever made changed to android graphics stack. I said that yes, I had, including writing my own implementation of gralloc and HWComposer on a weird 2D accelerator on a weird MIPS chip. He said that yet again no, that is all “crap”
At this point, I had had enough. So when he asked me again (for some reason) why I thought I was a fit, i replied: “well, I clearly see now that I am not. Sorry for wasting your time.”
I got up and left.
Given this sort of interviewing process, I am not at all surprised of the outcome of this company.
That… that is actually pretty impressive that a hiring process can be so bad.
They should have apologized for wasting your time!
You seem to have been much too polite… No reason to extend that curtesy to rude people.
Linux on an AVR?
Was that an AVR32 or something similar?
http://dmitry.gr/index.php?r=05.Projects&proj=07.%20Linux%20on%208bit
That’s brilliant!
Read more Hackaday!
http://hackaday.com/2012/03/28/building-the-worst-linux-pc-ever/
http://hackaday.com/2013/09/21/sending-data-over-bluetooth-low-energy-with-a-cheap-nrf24l01-module/
etc.
But seriously, if I saw only his projects that we’ve covered here, I’d give him the job.
nope, it was an 8-bit ATMega
Almost sounds like whole mission was to appear to be aggressively recruiting heavy hitters, but really try not to hire anybody. Play pretend running a real company while waiting for acquisition.
oh, and I love all of your work!
Wow, just WOW!
Dmitry that’s some very impressive hacking you’ve been up to. I always ask interview candidates about the projects they do for fun (not just a paycheck or getting a degree) and your stuff is pretty gold-star material. Anyone as motivated as you to solve complex technical challenges would very likely be a fantastic hire for a startup.
It’s a bit depressing to think that Jeri Ellsworth and Rick Johnson made the mistake of hiring the “It’s crap” guy; who’s clearly so fucking clueless one assumes he in turn hired a bunch more idiots (and lost out on quality people) and likely contributed at least in part to the whole thing going wrong (although lack of next-round funding was obviously the short-term cause of death)
Man, you really have to be careful who you hire.
Some management will try to upset people to bid down their sense of self-worth (or they are just jerks). And in some rare cases, it is a justified tactic for deflating the ego of inexperienced grads with zero professional experience. However, if they are talking price on the first visit than they are probably too underfunded to finish their project anyway.
Ask yourselves if you want to be around these people 8 hours a day…
Remember you can get money anywhere, and if you don’t believe in the company — chances are no one else will.
The whole NDA thing is a joke, and certainly should be reviewed by a lawyer to protect your future options.
(when I hire, these documents actually grant more freedom than local laws normally allow)
Too many talented people get caught by this when they first enter the job market, and Facebook/Google/Microsoft are all guilty of churn-and-burn hiring.
Jeri is talented, but should have focused on product development instead of corporate operations.
Others should have listened when Steve Jobs talked about business rot and talent:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TRZAJY23xio
Heck I am still chewing on the graphics work you mention for MIPS. Hope you continue on and land at a place that appreciates your brilliance and hard work (if you haven’t already). Looking at the linux on avr-good stuff chief :)
Sounds like they were mad you knew what you were doing as per hiring and decided to go with nitpicking garbage thru Asian anus#1. Wish you all the best in your future endeavors, Dmitry :)
Thanks for sharing. I sometimes wonder about hiring processes of some of these companies. After going through several where the job requirements were basically “you dev’ed bare metal from the soil” to port apps to Android smdh, I gave up on professionalism or knowledge from the HR dept of what they were actually hiring for. “Must have 20 years experience working with Windows 10” etc lmao.
Heck, while waiting in line for a f-ing Petsmart interview (yes to stack dogfood) the two douchebros in front of me were literally comparing their fake resume referencing companies. I just took that as my mark to leave right then. I feel the same way about a cover letter to work at a loading dock that goes beyond “I need to come here to get money to eat so I can keep coming here…” lol.
Best of luck to us all :)
You were too good, would have made them all look like idiots. Take it as a compliment and hold your head high!
In my experience, HR people are often organisational psychopaths who delight in the reflected authority of the employer.
The best example of one who made the potted plants look smart, was the lady, whom I shall call Clare, because that is her name, who, in a meeting with myself and the CEO, asked if there were any issues with the new employment contract she had provided.
I said yes… there was one thing… the pie chart she had used to show the daily breakdown of my supposed tasks… well… the percentages seemed to add up to 110%….
Real bummer! I was hoping that Jeri would do well in the big time world. But perhaps we will get to see more of her because of this. Maybe she’ll get back on Youtube.
People like her live to burn through other people’s money. Why would you support that?
You obviously do not truly know Jeri Elsworth. Suggest you go back and watch every video she’s in on youtube.
Too bad I think it was a better solution than the main stream projects esp since it solved many of the motion sickness issues that plague VR.
Maybe some company with deep pockets will pick up the IP and finish it and hopefully have open specs so it can be used with open source software.
If something can’t work under Linux or BSD it’s just worthless junk in my book.
That’s a damn shame. I was really hoping for them to make it. Jeri is one of my heroes.
Anyone in europe selling their glasses?
Most people don’t want virtual reality headsets. There are a lot of articles too numerous to mention on the web.
Just google “how many people don’t like virtual reality”.
How, why, and when VR will fail
https://www.pcgamesn.com/how-why-and-when-vr-will-fail
What Americans Really Think About Virtual Reality
https://www.fastcompany.com/3053235/what-americans-really-think-about-virtual-reality
The truth about virtual reality: You don’t need it yet
http://www.businessinsider.com/the-truth-about-virtual-reality-2016-3
Parents with kids would be less social and less aware as to what would be going on with them which would not be safe which is a big reason not to get it. This item is something that also doesn’t make money for the average consumer who does not have time and they would rather pay their mortgage.
That is the real reason why it will fail.
“Bah! Humbug!” jelled Ebenezer Scrooge. He saw the beginning and end of the radio and television. Surely enough he would also survive this abomination they call VR. He remembered that once, in the glorious old times people were very sociable when they still lived in caves.
This is exactly right. The VR/AR scam is designed to sell hardware to the uninformed and to give many marginally talented a chance to be “visionary” (Not Jeri tho’). I attended a VC symposium on VR/AR not one of the people looking for VC could tell me what their product was useful for. They all seemed terrified that their product was already irrelevant. They kept calling themselves labs and studios which is code for “we don’t have a clue”. They were blathering about experiences which is code for “It is cool technology, but useless and maybe even harmful. But you will have fun for 7 or 8 minutes”