Because you've failed to make a distinction between gender and gender roles. The former is inherent (if not always matching sex), the latter is socially constructed.
I don't associate functional, rugged workwear with "shitty and cheap" myself. Having gone through a workwear phase, I know exactly how expensive quality functional clothing can be.
> The tech works extremely well at making me feel sick.
But you realize this is a you problem, right? Outside the handful of people who get motion sick with VR, the tech is rock solid. Everyone who tries an Index is blown away by how immersive the experience is.
> VR chat is about as interesting as second life, and any metaverse that follows will follow the same path.
You couldn't be more wrong. There's a reason Facebook rebranded to Meta, and Microsoft just purchased Activision with designs on their own metaverse. Big players are putting serious money behind this, and I like those odds.
"Sick" is definitely a relative term. I've given literally thousands of demos to people--some of which were pretty janky, back in the early days--and I've yet to see anyone throw up from VR.
There is a very small minority of people who put on the headset and immediately can't stand it. I've seen maybe 2 or 3 people in the last 6 years, so it's definitely less than 1%.
Depending on content, I've seen about 50% of women and 25% of men experience mild discomfort after using the headset for about 30 minutes. Studies on simulator sickness include that in "feeling sick".
My current project is not able to use every single sim-sickness mitigating strategy available, due to the sort of source data we're using (a lot of flat, 360 imagery in a multi-user tour-like scenario), but even there, we've only had 1 out of 100 people express actual feelings of nausea after using the headset. If people report any discomfort at all, it's on their first time, after they've not heeded our warning to limit their first interaction to 30 minutes, and then they only mention feeling a little light headed.
People report feelings of nausea after playing 1st-person shooter video games on large screen monitors or watching shaky action movies at movie theaters. This is not a problem unique to VR.
The study was designed to find factors that correlate with VR sickness, and as such, only studied 83 people, all "highly stressed", and showed shaking videos as their methodology. I think it would be a statistical mistake to generalize from this study.
Anecdotal, but a lot of people seem to be able to get over their VR motion sickness. I personally did by just playing the janky Rocket Mode in Richie's Plank Experience a lot. Same goes for heights in VR, at first it's terrifying but if you repeatedly expose yourself to it it loses its effect. There's also a story of a VR dev who built a demo to get rid of his motion sickness, it involved just repeatedly dropping his POV from a height and then looping back to the top. Granted, some people will probably never get rid of their motion sickness for whatever reason but I think those will be in the small minority.
To me it sounds similar to all the reports of motion sickness (or worse effects) from playing Doom back in the day. I also suspect most people who do suffer from it can get used to it over time.
OTOH, considering how many people keep having motion sickness in cars (especially when not driving and reading and whatnot), perhaps for some people the issues remain.
Zuck rebranded because Facebook has a bad rep.
Microsoft bought AB for their IP and lib, I don’t believe they do any VR stuff. They do online gaming well and will be very successful with Xbox.
I don’t think we will be seeing competitive esports in VR, as we don’t see competitive Wii Bowling as an esport.
> Does Amazon provide company phones or just install an MDM profile on your personal phone?
> Microsoft does the latter, so it wouldn't surprise me if Amazon does likewise.
Not true (source: current MSFT employee). More detailed explanation below, as neither former nor latter describes MSFT accurately.
So, for most teams and positions (there are many exceptions), you don't get a dedicated work phone. So yeah, if you want to access work stuff on a mobile device, you need to install MSFT MDM on your personal phone, and they will, allegedly, be able to control stuff on it (depending on the device itself and how MDM is configured).
However, there are no requirements to do it. You can simply not install any work-related stuff on your phone, so you won't need an MDM. I simply don't access any work resources on my personal phone. If I need to do work, i open my work laptop. If they want me to use work apps on mobile and be accessible, they should provide a company phone for this.
There have been zero conflicts around it on my end, even after multiple years of working there on multiple different teams. Not once have I even got an implied request from anyone (managers, colleagues, etc.) to be accessible on mobile (except for when I am on-call, but for that, they just need my phone number, not any specific apps installed on my phone, and everyone knows it) or any questions about it. Everyone is totally cool with people not being glued to their work apps on their phones on their own free time.
But you are correct, those who choose to use work apps have to give MDM permissions to their personal devices or buy a dedicated device for that (exceptions apply, because there are some teams that provide dedicated work phones). However, unless it is required for the job to be able to use work apps on your mobile device, I think it is fair if they don't provide a work phone. Makes it easier for me to not check on any work stuff during the weekend.
Yes, you're correct, and I didn't mean to imply that MSFT forces employees to install their MDM on personal devices. It was optional for me as well, with a large full-disclosure prompt stating that they can remotely wipe your device if you proceed with mobile setup.
I'd give anything to work remote here. My partner and I have discussed buying a small 'ranch' on the other side of the cascades as a 'weekend home' and downsizing to a small studio here on weekdays. We figure the two combined would be about what we pay in rent each month now, if not a little more, but at least we'd be able to escape on weekends. We love pnw, but hate having to live in the most crowded part of it for the sole purpose of making our commute tolerable.
Unfortunately, I'm receiving scans of everything that comes to my mailbox, including mail destined for the previous tenant that is still addressed to my apartment.
