The Bridge

I'm also Facebook free.

I think Facebook have officially jumped the shark on this one, and will progress into a downward spiral that will hopefully end in the extermination of Facebook, and a selling-off of Oculus.

Tim Stone

@AshleyNunn Blame Shog for not just giving us a flag definition that included "random nonsense"

Or at least, I can dream, no?

@TimStone I agree; VLQ is an understatement for some of this crap

@BenBrocka Oculus?

10:02 PM

22 mins ago, by Ben Brocka

Facebook to acquire Oculus VR for $2 billion http://sbn.to/OX8iHt

Tweeted by Polygon on March 25, 2014 at 9:37 PM

Ded

@Unionhawk Oh, great.

@Unionhawk Facebook does have a lot of resources.

Arperum

@GnomeSlice They are going to murder it dead.

@Arperum How do you know?

@GnomeSlice A VR device developed by Facebook. I see no scenarios where that ends well.

Arperum

10:04 PM

8 secs ago, by Unionhawk

@GnomeSlice A VR device developed by Facebook. I see no scenarios where that ends well.

I'm willing to be proven wrong

But I doubt I will be in this case

@GnomeSlice Oculus didn't seem to need additional resources to ship to customers

Michael Frank

@Unionhawk They could be acquiring it because they know it'll take off. Not necessarily to integrate it into Facebook.

@MichaelFrank If it takes off they're going to monetize the fuck out of it. If it doesn't, they're going to kill it dead.

@MichaelFrank That would be my guess.

10:05 PM

Either way, we lose.

We can only hope in the FCC/antitrust commission making up some excuse why the acquisition cannot proceed I guess.

In this case it'd be the FTC I believe

(FCC handles cable mergers and whatnot)

@badp Not gonna happen.

@Unionhawk Fuck that, I was hoping this was just satire

> According to a press release from Facebook, the company plans to expand the Oculus Rift headset's applications beyond gaming to broader fields such as media and entertainment, communications and education.

> "Mobile is the platform of today, and now we're also getting ready for the platforms of tomorrow," said Facebook founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg. "Oculus has the chance to create the most social platform ever, and change the way we work, play and communicate."

3

10:09 PM

@MadScientist It sounds like it, doesn't it?

The first thing I did w- wait, what if this is an early april fools joke?

Arperum

@Unionhawk Yup. Dead. For sure.

So we'll get a gigantic "Like" button that'll poke us in the eye in the Oculus Rift or some bullshit like that. I was rather optimistic about the Oculus Rift, but I really hate Facebook.

Noipe,it's real.

zeus damn it.

I blame everyone.

They want it to be more than a gaming peripheral, but really, at that point, they're making Facebook Glass

@Unionhawk It'd be roughly as antisocial as Facebook, after all

I wonder what Valve will make of this indeed.

They seemed willing to marry Oculus a couple months ago

10:13 PM

And VR is not about fucking social whatever bullshit, gaming is where it will show by far the most utility for a long while.

I really do hope this changes.

inb4 Facebook forces you to connect via a facebook account and then sells information about you gaming and then steals your firrst born

@Wipqozn To be fair, that's not what happened to Instagram or WhatsApp either.

@FEichinger No.Stop. This is a circlejerk area only.

But I don't want a crowdfunded project controlled by Facebook.

10:15 PM

EVE Valkyrie looks pretty nice, and it seems that everyone that ever tried that stuff out on the OR was extremely positive about the whole thing. What the hell does Facebook have to do this for now?

@MadScientist I'm still curious if this is part of some plan for a Google Glass analogue for Facebook.

I mean, that's the only thing I can think of that would use this tech in any way somewhat related to Facebook.

@FEichinger I don't think FB has any kind of plan beyond simply buying up anything that looks like it might be dangerous to them in the future

VR was a big topic recently, and they decided that they want to get in.

unfortunately my millihitler reader does not support animated gifs

Also now that I look at it I'm likely to have gotten the swastika wrong

The Facebook angle really sounds like all this virtual bullshit you heard in the early days of the internet. There's a reason a website is still far more efficient than navigating in 3D in a virtual village/mall/whatever.

oh well. I'll take my half hour off

10:19 PM

@badp mods can't get suspended

@MadScientist yes. I'm choosing to do something else for 30 minutes.

hichris123

rofl. You got flaged @badp?

@badp Man, good guy @badp, apparently did something someone flagged so is going to self-appoint himself a suspension.

2

Considering he posted a swastika, that flag was perfectly justified.

Fluttershy

@Wipqozn Who else would he self-appoint a thing?

10:26 PM

@FEichinger I don't thnk posting a swastika is flag worthy at all.

In fact If I was paying attention I'd decline such a flag.

Doorknob

So that's why I got a flag bubble with 0 in it

Well, at least not in the context of what he was doing.

Jason Berkan

@Wipqozn Consider where @FEichinger is from.

Doorknob

We were in talks about maybe bringing a version of Minecraft to Oculus. I just cancelled that deal. Facebook creeps me out.

Tweeted by notch on March 25, 2014 at 10:25 PM

3

10:27 PM

If he was just spamming swatisksa that might be different.

@JasonBerkan Right, germany. Illegal.

Forgot about that.

Still don't think it's flag worthy,but I understand why you would think so.

@Wipqozn Nope, not always.

@BenBrocka That's just silly

@BenBrocka DAMMIT FACEBOOK.

Now, I didn't flag it myself (partially because context), but it's certainly a valid reason to flag that.

@BenBrocka ... Good job, Oculus VR. Now you made notch look good.

►

10:42 PM

Today's Listening

@Yuki It'll prob come to PS4 VR

@GnomeSlice soundcloud.com/groovemaster303/take-flight-feat-jredd

@BenBrocka WAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAT

IT HAS BEEN THIRTY MINUTES AND TODAY IS STILL TERRIBLE

WOW

10:51 PM

However, today is now slightly less terrible

@Krazer This is great

@Krazer This reminds me of Chaoz Fantasy

Fluttershy

With Facebook on Oculus Rift, you will get to stand in a virtual room filled with your old high school friends that you don't like anymore

Tweeted by KazHiraiCEO on March 25, 2014 at 10:23 PM

CEO Mark Zuckerberg: "Oculus has the chance to create the most social platform ever"

Hmmm

@GnomeSlice then: soundcloud.com/alexander-joseph-leduc/8-bit-electronic-metal

@RedRiderX exactly

10:56 PM

@Krazer c-jeff.com/album/preschtale

@RedRiderX yup. Not for games. It's dead, Jim

@badp A lot of people are going to have "tax offences" used against them, because this is almost impossible to comply with.

All praise Sony VR

I hope Carmack defects to Sony or Valve or something

@BenBrocka I was thinking the same thing.

HELP ME SONY, YOU ARE MY ONLY HOPE

@BenBrocka I doubt it.

10:57 PM

John Carmack is currently a facebook employee. That's just wrong man

He's probably raging hard about this, but he would not do a petty "I'm out, bitches." now.

@FEichinger It is going to be very hard to comply with this, yes.

Not impossible however

@FEichinger I don't really see why not. Not like it's going to hurt his resume or anything

You need to track the market value of every bitcoin you have obtained, because of this:

> If the fair market value of property received in exchange for virtual currency exceeds the taxpayer’s adjusted basis of the virtual currency, the taxpayer has taxable gain. The taxpayer has a loss if the fair market value of the property received is less than the adjusted basis of the virtual currency. See Publication 544, Sales and Other Dispositions of Assets, for information about the tax treatment of sales and exchanges, such as whether a loss is deductible.

@FEichinger I mean, in the United States, you're technically supposed to keep track of your online purchases, and pay sales tax on them at tax time (unless the headquarters of the online shop is in the same state, then tax is applied automatically). There's already a lot of stuff that's hard to comply with.

11:00 PM

@Unionhawk Nonsense, that is pretty easy to comply with, because you have receipts and a stable currency to calculate this off.

But Bitcoin fluctuates like mad.

And for almost all (physical goods) transactions is first converted into $ anyway.

@GnomeSlice soundcloud.com/piceon/pice-europa

@FEichinger That's because bitcoin is not a real currency anyway - which is what the IRS is saying.

@BenBrocka It could hurt his reputation as an executive.

@Krazer I like PICE. Most of his music is free on bandcamp 8bitpice.bandcamp.com

@BenBrocka He probably doesn't want to be there.

11:01 PM

@badp Yes, but my point is that that adds in another layer that makes this very hard to keep track of it all.

I gained access to a entire box of chocolate Peeps

@FEichinger He's a CTO not a, you know, "business type"

I have now learned to fear myself

@BenBrocka If you keep plugging the Sony VR system, you'll get me to pull an @OrigamiRobot and hate it out of principle and I would really hate that.

@RedRiderX how did you obtain access to such a specimen?

11:02 PM

I'm out for now

@FEichinger Do you honestly think the IRS gives a care how hard this is to comply with?

He joined Oculus because he gave a fuck about it, not because it was money in the bank

@Krazer I know peeps

@Unionhawk No, but this makes it very easy to come up with bullshit charges against someone, just to detain them.

Think Dotcom.

Oh, and btw this notice is retroactive

> Will taxpayers be subject to penalties for having treated a virtual currency transaction in a manner that is inconsistent with this notice prior to March 25, 2014?

> Taxpayers may be subject to penalties for failure to comply with tax laws. For example, underpayments attributable to virtual currency transactions may be subject to penalties, such as accuracy-related penalties under section 6662. In addition, failure to timely or correctly report virtual currency transactions when required to do so may be subject to information reporting penalties under section 6721 and 6722. However, penalty relief may be available to taxpayers and persons required to file an information return who are able to establish that the underpayment or failure to properly file

I mean, that's a non-answer if I ever saw one, but that's what they imply - and if you don't like it you can go to court.

11:05 PM

This is decidedly, comparatively less fucked up than the rest of U.S. Tax Code, so, I mean

@badp Wait, so there's no grandfather clause?

@Yuki no.

@Yuki From what I understand (at least from the perspective of the IRS) this is not a bunch of new rules, but how the rules have always applied to bitcoin

so it's retroactive

@badp So people can be penalized for not obeying that a law that didn't exist yet and had no way of knowing would apply?

@Yuki Not a new law.

It's probably going to court, yeah.

11:07 PM

@FEichinger Ah.

Bitcoin only ever called itself a currency. As far as the IRS is concerned, it was always just property.

In light of the #OculusRift news, the Xbox One team is pulling an all-nighter. They've already got a prototype made. http://t.co/Hyi8fFkB9q

Tweeted by PCMag on March 25, 2014 at 10:59 PM

bwahaha

Michael Frank

@BenBrocka do you have a non-twitter shortened link? Can't access twitter at work.

Ullallulloo

@MichaelFrank It's this.

Michael Frank

@Ullallulloo Thanks! :D

That's hilarious.

Q: How do I respawn the Ender Dragon when not running a server?

11:32 PM

> "Some interesting physical effects would destroy it" summarizes the answers to a large percentage of the questions submitted to this blog.

Lazers

1

When my brother and I were playing on LAN for one of my worlds we defeated the ender dragon and wanted to refight it. I looked at a few online helps but they only tell me how to do it on a server.

minecraft

@badp Why was I thinking "countertop" was shorthand for some complicated scientific device?

@Yuki I had to google the word myself.