Latest HoloLens News: Us? Reverse engineer HoloLens? No way, nuh-uh not

Opinion Virtual fact clown Magic Leap didn’t attempt and reverse engineer Microsoft’s HoloLens technology, the upstart said in its lawsuit against Todd Keil, its former leader of security.

In fact, Magic Leap does not even know why it’d five HoloLenses at the first place. It surely did not start their boxes. Well, maybe it opened one. However, it did not reverse engineer it that’s for certain, it merely visually scrutinized, and briefly used it.

What Magic Leap definitely did not do was reject Keil’s recommendation which the goggles have been confiscated and returned to Microsoft.

Keil might have created that recommendation the moment he learned about the supposedly augmented reality cans’ arrival at Magic Leap’s US offices from an internal email, however Magic Leap did not tell its director of international security a senior supervisor was going to retain one of the devices. That did not happen.

Nor did Magic Leap attempt to spy Keil following the incident. It was just “testing the integrity and proper performance of Magic Leap’s security camera system” when the head of IT Eric Akerman installed a camera at Keil’s office.

Sure, it removed the camera when Keil seen it complained. Get this: for some reason, Keil claimed it was an effort to spy on him!

Magic Leap has yet another explanation for Keil’s objection to the camera. It’s because Akerman “was able to demonstrate vulnerabilities in Magic Leap’s security camera system from hacking into the machine with the digital camera” — which reflected badly on Keil.

“Mr Keil might have been angry about Mr Ackerman for exposing a security flaw for which Mr Keil was responsible,” that the lawsuit, registered in Texas this week, ” notes.

Mind reading

Ha, coughing. Why would Keil state such things? Don’t answer: Magic Leap reckons it knows what inspires him and what he’s thinking. In actuality, Magic Leap thinks it knows Todd Keil better than Todd Keil knows himself.

“Mr Keil’s performance in 2017 was so horrified, along with his lack of any feeling of urgency and commitment so evident, that particular co-workers started to wonder if Mr Keil really desired to be resumed,” the lawsuit wistfully indicated in what is a perfectly normal and reasonable assertion to view at a proper legal document. Yes, we are being sarcastic.

“From their perspective, he was just ‘phoning it in’,” the lawsuit claims, although unfortunately forgetting to notice who “they” really are. It has evidence of his state-of-mind: “One instance of Mr Keil’s detachment at 2017 was his failure to offer input in to his 2017 performance review.”

Normally you would provide some credence to a seasoned computer security expert who has held senior positions in the US Departments of State and Homeland Security, who had been a regional security director at Texas Instruments, and whose former boss said he had been “the best security officer that I worked with during my 35-year career.”

Not Magic Leap, though. It insists that this identical guy “recognized his job performance in Magic Leap was typically regarded by his supervisors and co-workers as unsatisfactory.”

Now, Keil hasn’t really said that, but Magic Leap knows he knows and that’s why it put it at a lawsuit.

Keil even suspected being told to report to somebody else lower down the management chain who had just been promoted above him was a demotion. It’s a entire coincidence that this reorganization happened just a few months following the HoloLens incident which didn’t, er, apparently happen.

Deterioration

While this was happening in Keil’s head, Magic Leap was appalled to discover “his performance not only didn’t improve, but instead deteriorated significantly in 2017, as he became more isolated and less committed to the timely implementation of his job duties.”

Keil did not recognize he should just leave and be unsatisfactory elsewhere, says Magic Leap. No, instead, he “chose to take preemptive action and present as a victim of unfair labour practices.”

But this was not the ending for evil Magic Leap, no. Not satisfied with denying that Magic Leap return a rival’s technology when the company was going to do this anyway, not that it received that the hardware, also still smarting from his fanciful demotion, Keil subsequently had the audacity to find a severance package — delay, sorry, “assert frivolous legal claims in an effort to extort millions of dollars.”

And what were those claims? “He’s baselessly claimed that he is the victim of retaliation for raising a variety of problems with his superior.”

That is patently ridiculous because Magic Leap is one of the best, most honest and wholly honest companies you will ever encounter. Yes, we are being sarcastic.

Sure there was a time the girl it hired to tackle sex discrimination, Tannen Campbell, sued the firm for gender discrimination. The situation was settled out of courtroom.

And then there was that incident in which two senior executives, Adrian Kaehler and Gary Bradski, advised the company they needed to make a new, unrelated startup, also were fired, had their stocks and bonuses withdrawn, and were then sued for allegedly stealing trade secrets. The situation was, again, settled out of courtroom.

Magic Leap promised in its previous legal filings which Kaehler and Bradski, like Keil and Campbell, were “disgruntled employees.”

Never dread

It has been a long time since the company was launched and it has yet to launch a product. Only because its CEO stated it would release its revolutionary headset at “ancient 2018” and then appeared on stage in ancient 2018 to state it would be available in spring 2018.

Only because no one outside its Florida headquarters has observed its technologies and anybody that has seen it has been forced to sign an NDA. Only because the firm pretended that movies which it compensated a Hollywood special effects company to create were real demonstrations of its merchandise. Just because there’s been a live presentation of its gizmo.

Just because there’s absolutely no indication of any manufacturing contracts. Just because there’s still no pricing info, or launching info, or in fact any info about its technologies. Just because its CEO continues to discuss his company’s merchandise in the most extraordinarily vague terms and will not discuss any specific information.

Just because of that, there’s absolutely no reason to disbelieve the business when it claims its former security head is lying around the firm trying to reverse engineer a rival’s product.

Yes, we are being sarcastic. We obviously have absolutely no doubt it will release “Magic Leap One” this spring.

Incidentally, Thursday was the first day of spring. That means we have a maximum of three months from now to wait till Magic Leap reveals the world incorrect and produces a revolutionary new piece of technology. How exciting. ®