The True Magic of Magic Leap, and Other Comments from Readers

Here’s a look at what people have been saying about MIT Technology Review stories over the past week. Some comments have been upvoted or prominently liked by other readers, while others have been selected by the editors. Comments have been lightly edited. 

“Life Logging Is Dead. Long Live Life Logging?“

The usefulness of data is in the mining and action, not the collecting. I suspect, in most instances, the volume of data being collected is not being usefully analyzed, at which point it simply becomes compulsive behavior.—Mike Rightmire 

“Who Approved the Genetically Engineered Foods Coming to Your Plate? No One.“

The current regulatory system is absurd. Instead of regulating the technique used to make a genome change, it should consider the type of change—e.g. deletions, copy number changes, near-relative insertions, or unrelated insertions. It doesn’t matter whether a transgene is inserted by traditional crossbreeding, viral transmission, or CRISPR. What matters is the change.—lfstevens

“The Curious Link Between the Fly-By Anomaly and the ‘Impossible’ EmDrive Thruster“

Why wait for the “theorists” to prove the existence of something practical and repeatable? Wait, and we will not get there as egos flair. An engineer discovered this but the “special ones” are still debating how.—Theo Alonge 

“Magic Leap Has a Headset, but Its Technology Is Still Mysterious“

Maybe its magic is raising over a billion dollars from investors?—Rino Mardo 

“Why Intel’s Job Cuts May Be Just the Beginning“

The PC market may be sleepy, but has anyone gone shopping for a new automobile lately? Almost every vehicle sports a center console display that would make the space shuttle blush. From here you have a Wi-Fi hotspot, vehicle entertainment center, GPS-based navigational system, and more. Looks like a mobile PC to me. Twenty-five years ago consumers were suspicious of a single CPU controlling a vehicle ignition, but nowadays we see CPUs everywhere in cars. All chip vendors should be competing for these markets (as well as all the others).—neilrieck 

Sad, so sad. As an ex-Intelier myself, the only time employees were faced with this threat (of losing jobs) was way back in the mid-80s, but it was averted at the last minute. We managed to hang around with the same employees intact. Now it has become a reality. It was through sheer genius management strategy and focus that the original senior management got us through (like Gordon Moore, Noyce, Barrett), but the newer management, it seems, is taking a short-cut, short-sighted, bottom-line-only approach.—Deezul Yusof