Some of us have been following this for a while, and know it's got some very smart minds behind it's publicly deep pockets.
Lots of people on this thread who are just scanning the article and reacting, without doing their own research, so those of us who have are happy to share some of it here.

This is slashdot though, so we'll still get the uneducated making authoritative statements and assumptions, and the rest of slashdot trying to push what real discussion that can be had.

Well we already have light blocking tech, from LCD wristwatches through to active shutter glasses, however they probably have a trade-off between how much they can block vs the relevant component size/power. So they can probably block a percentage of light, meaning if you comb through the demos you will still be able to see through such areas to a degree. How much impact this has on the experience I won't hazard a guess, however. I know that there's a ton of different visual tricks and techniques with our current rendering systems that can make many otherwise glaring issues negligible.

This.
Yeah, they've given no public demos.
They have given demos however, to very reputable people in the industry.
It's a different approach to other companies that are trying to get funding, but certainly seems to be working well for them.
Of course, we won't know for sure till we actually try it ourselves, but that's true of just about any product.
It seems to me that any further information they provided wouldn't mean much to their target consumers, and would both shorten their lead in whatever tech they're developing, and open the avenue on further speculation as to what they should be providing (as opposed to what they are working on actually providing) and other criticism that they don't need (assuming they got in their own NDA'd specialists for such criticism already, which is a given)
However they've promised nothing specific, and none of us (I assume) have given them any money, so I can't see anything to criticise. Meanwhile, trusted people in the industry have said it's awesome (and not professional reviewers trying to get ad revenue), and that's enough for me until I get to try it myself.

That's not so tricky. You blind a person by putting too much energy (via light/radiation) into their retinal cells. Staring at the sun and lasers can do this. Ensuring your projection device doesn't have enough power to do this isn't too difficult.
There could potentially be "long term use damage" but this kind of damage is a temporary type that heals over time (though can take over a year for bad cases) And this is most likely something the user would notice as it occurred, with plenty of time to rectify.

tldr; No point worrying about it blinding you unless you're a pre-certification product tester.

Except you can mod your clippy to be dressed only in revealing underwear......

So how do the hardcore VR geeks find out which county they need to break the law in?

I tend to agree, I only wear sunnies because of the sun, not to look good. I buy the cheap ones :)
But I do wear them because they do something for me: polarise and block out that nasty Aussie sunlight.
I don't think the HTC Vive is remotely sexy. It's also not terribly comfortable. The image quality has plenty of room for improvement. You're tethered by an invisible cable to an invisible computer, it's a pain in the arse, but I wear that too, when I want to lose myself in tilt brush, or shoot some zombies in my house, or whatever.

Consumers may have been conditioned by corporations to consider glasses core "fashion accessories" But that has absolutely zero relevance to this discussion. We're talking here about functional devices. And glasses as functional devices we don't have any superior methods for even in concept as far as I know.

So yeah, eyes are beautiful, don't cover them if you want to look your best. On that note, lose your clothing also for the same reason.
However.... Magic Leap (and related products) aren't about fashion, they're about function.

People say this a lot, but I still wear sunglasses whenever I'm outside, and I see a lot of other people doing the same. None of us afaik are raging against it, although irises that have dynamic built in polarization and light filtering would be nice.
Glasses are the most accepted method of modifying your vision, be it sun, near/far sighted or night vision.
To people posting comments like the above, feel free to complete your assertion by letting us know what vision products should be if not worn over your eyes..... or just stfu, you're not adding anything at all.
Previous "glasses" have failed, such as google glass. Many concept products fail, regardless of if they are glasses. Many glasses products succeed, such as, well, this'll be a long list that goes from HTC Vive through to Oakleys, and probably further. Claiming Google Glasses failed because they were glasses is borderline imbecilic - there's a whole hell of a lot more to it than that. Google "google glass failure" you'll learn a little bit.
Perhaps you're right though, the global eyewear market isn't that big: https://www.statista.com/stati... (excerpt: In 2013, the market value of the global eyewear market amounted to 90.3 billion U.S. dollars.)

Just realised I'm replying to an AC, usually wouldn't bother, but now I've written it....

But if you keep the lights on how will you be protected from the terrible secret of space?

I totally expect one of the first "unofficial" apps for it will be just that: Naked Mode: Everyone around you appears naked. Over time as the big data set gets more and more complete and invasive, it'll be smart enough to figure out what someone would actually look like nekkid also, which will probably be a downgrade, so that line of development ended.

So android play - It's also the permission manager for android apps right? It needs to have location permission before it can pass your location safely to third party apps you've installed and authorised. And this is a bad thing why? Because google gets your location? Until someone can demonstrate to me that google is using this location information to my detriment, why should I care? I certainly don't want to hand top level location trust to unknown third party vendors on a case by case basis - that sounds like a problem to me. I guess it's time to switch to apple! /s

This is the best summary. My ex-girlfriend never listened to an "entire" sentence before replying. I need to start dating dolphins.

Actually, most companies buying this kind of work are paying thousands. Some are paying tens of thousands. But for those you need to prepend a few months of meetings to the 30m of dev time to justify it :)

Clearly, about 180 years ago, some smartarse troll built a steam engine capable of broadcasting a signal at HD164595 and we're just now getting the echo.

Well played.

I thought in a tesla you are officially supposed to have your hands on the steering wheel still? Can't do that while looking through the glovebox and cleaning the dashboard.... That's why he's not suing Tesla, because he has no case. I mean seriously, when I buy new tech that costs $100 I follow the instructions, and if I don't and it behaves in an unexpected way, I'm not surprised. When spending more by a factor of hundreds, on emerging tech, I think I'd be a little more careful, perhaps heed the warnings and guidelines, etc...