This seems petty. Basically he's annoyed that a commercial entity made a video based on published research rather than an academic group.

As far as I can tell the blog post does a good job of citing sources - they go over and above what a commercial entity is required to disclose (I.e. nothing). No good deed goes unpunished.

I thought the whole point of academia was to do research for the benefit of society. Research is published so that society can make use of it. Not to give academics "thunder".

If you don't want anyone to read your papers there's a simple solution: don't publish them.

Petty? He's accusing them of fraud, and if he's right then yeah we should all be disappointed in Eon's deceptive marketing.

Fully simulating a drosophila has been a high goal for a very long time and great claims require great proof, but Eon has been stingy with the details (and no this blog post does not reveal much beyond chaining together lots of impressive sounding words).

Imagine the skepticism on HN if someone declared they invented AGI. Similar level claim.

Look at it from Ken's perspective though. He's one of the few people who have moved this field forward by solving very hard problems over decades.

Now a startup comes in and publishes a cool video that claims to solve a big chunk of what he wants to do / contribute to over the rest of his career, like "hey that was easy!".

He says the video is very misleading, and that's just a fact.

It's hard to see for someone outside of this how insulting that can feel to someone in his position, and that's why it can come across as petty.

Also, your summary of his criticism isn't quite right, read it more carefully. It would apply equally if an academic group had done that. It's more a case of academic standards for communication meeting silicon valley bluster.

good morning sir, great hustling, Mumbai style