Everyone on HN is talking about Magic Leap again.

I don’t understand screen technology but have been saying for years that something is wrong at Magic Leap.

Why? Because at a time when their glasses didn’t work, they acquired a cyber security company with 20 people. It made no sense.

At the time, I asked some relevant people why an AR company needed so much cyber.

They told me that Magic Leap had some special need - so secret they couldn’t discuss it - that required inventing a whole new security paradigm. As far as I can tell, they had a whole team writing linux kernel modules for security mumbo jumbo. They probably reinvented iptables, but who knows.

I’m CEO of a startup myself (robusta.dev for Kubernetes monitoring and troubleshooting) and can’t fathom what Magic Leap management was thinking. Even if you have billions of dollars in extra cash, you don’t burn that money on writing kernel security modules when your core product is fatally broken.

You have too much cash? Fine, open two competing labs in different parts of the world to work on your display technology. Do whatever you want with the money, as long as it decreases the number one risk to your business. Hint: it’s not cybersecurity.

So yeah, I’m not surprised by what happened to Magic Leap. The signs were all there as far back as 2016.