Patch Notes #030 — Facebook Buys the Future's Face

Facebook bought Oculus for $2 billion and the internet is having feelings. Oculus was a Kickstarter! 9,500 people backed a scrappy VR dream and it just became a Facebook subsidiary. Backers got a t-shirt, Facebook gets the metaverse. Notch cancelled Minecraft-for-Oculus in protest within hours. The gamer in me is betrayed; the guy who watched the WhatsApp deal last month just adds a row to the spreadsheet. Zuck is buying every possible future: messaging, photos, now faces-with-screens-on-them.

Also this week: Microsoft shipped Office for iPad. Satya’s been CEO for seven weeks and Office is on a rival’s platform after four years of waiting. New era confirmed.

YC Demo Day was Tuesday. Recaps say the batch is heavy on delivery, drones, and “Uber for X.” Persistence is apparently a moat.

TIL: WebGL exists and I can render 3D in a browser. Spent Sunday spinning a badly-lit cube. The cube spins. The future is a badly-lit cube and I made it.