You didn't expect the application you developed called "Skynet" that has an eye of sauron as it's logo to be used by the military? Sorry, I don't believe you.
I only made a prototype of the torment nexus as illustrative satire, I didn't think someone would actually ship it to production! All satire is dual use.
Part of the reason we're seeing objectionable government action now is because we militarized law enforcement tasks and equipment in the post-9/11 era.
I would expect any invading forces would need to be surveilled by planes or satellites, or perhaps drones, since they would immediately destroy something like flock cameras.
What’s more likely is that an aspiring dictator illegally uses the military for domestic police operations, then military and police use is the same thing.
I don't think the author is suggesting we shouldn't build useful things. He's saying to the people who built the military system that they shouldn't be doing that.
It's the last step that's the problem, not the people who built all the things they stand on. Otherwise we'd be suggesting that no one build a database engine or a digital camera or a computer ever again in case they're used to build evil tech.
Generally, yes. Most telemetry systems in software are not producing enough actionable insight to justify the privacy invasion. Spying on your customers on an opt-out basis just in case you one day come up with a use for that data is a widespread practice but clearly unethical, and leaves you (or whoever acquires your employer) in the position of being tempted to use the data for worse things than just deciding what bugs and features to prioritize.
Yes. Telemetry is anti-social at best, authoritarian at worst. We have built industries on "the user won't tell us what they want so we have to spy on them so we can build what they want" and then instead of building what they want, building the thing that extracts the most money out of their users (probably not what the user wanted!)
I don't think the article is saying don't build a payload-agnostic telemetry engine. The specific examples cited are that it's probably legitimate to have a vehicle registration database (with the caveat that even that could be abused), but not a database of sexual orientations or religious affiliations.
I think there's a distinction between creating generic info-gathering technology that helps them gather their own data from their own users, and you gathering data that the government can then ask (force) you to hand over.
Keeping it within game dev, I will say that telemetry and bug report tooling looks really cool. Big fan of it grabbing build info directly from the session that the user was playing. Feeling kinda inspired to build something similar for the studio I work at now.
Do you actually object to countries having standing armies with ranged area weaponry?
This isn't what the article is talking about at all. It never says don't build military technology. It says don't build things like a database of who in the country is and isn't gay and what religion everyone practices, for fear a future bigoted administration might use it to target those people. If your government is turning howitzers on you, that's less a police state and more a civil war.
I don't know what you do against that, but it's a different situation. There is precedent in the US with the Army being used to round up and forcibly displace native populations, but that really seems to be the kind of thing that requires a political solution, not prevention of any possibility. If we didn't have an Army at all, then secession would have succeeded, there would still be chattel slavery, and one of the hostile European colonial powers likely would have simply conquered the west itself and killed all the natives anyway.
All technology can be weaponized. It can also be de-weaponized.
One of my favorite late-night thought experiments, is "what would it take to turn an AK47 or an AR15 into a water pump?" .. the possibilities are endless. "How could a tank be turned into a bicycle factory?", another great one worth the effort to think about.
The only difference between peaceful technology and a weapon is the intention of the user. The very real spiritual intention.
De-weaponization starts with the human being. Those who think weapons are necessary must always take lesser priority than those who invent technology to make the lives of their fellow human beings better. There are so many examples of the tool-makers winning harder and at greater scale than the bomb-manufacturer. We wouldn't be here now if the balance was the other way - our world is however threatened by having this scale weighed heavily, by those who think murder is the solution to anything.
It's a spirit thing. Not spiritu-al, a spirit thing. What is the spirit of the designer? If they want to help humanity, it will be difficult technology to weaponize (although not impossible). It will be easy to de-weaponize, also.
We need to focus more on the spirit of help, and less on hurt.
Imagine if those F35 mounting pylons were used to drop field-portable water-purification systems directly where they are needed most.
Imagine if they could be used to drop a copy of archive.org, anywhere in the world, in any language.
Imagine if those ships were being used to bring power to the villages that need it most. Instead of glide bombs, we have glide libraries. Instead of cluster munitions, we instead drop cluster medical kits!
Oh, the glory to be had by those who would do this - the allies in the poor and weak of the world to be found! Imagine this happening, changing the intention from hate and fear, to respect and love.
All it takes is the spirit, a bit of imagination, and any and all technology can be de-weaponized.
It is the warrior narcissist who stands in the way of this. Disarm them too - smash their mirror: Drop books, not bombs!
> Imagine if those F35 mounting pylons were used to drop field-portable water-purification systems directly where they are needed most.
Except we can (and do!) accomplish that with much simpler airplanes. The staggering costs and complexities of an F35 (the thrust:weight, maneuverability, and stealth) don't make sense for any "peaceful" application.
I believe the point is that doing supply drops with C130s and C17s is vastly more efficient than any hackjob you could do with F35s, both in terms of throughput and cost.
With that in mind, if you were to say the US should spend more on cargo planes and humanitarian aid drops and less on fighters like F35s and starting unnecessary conflicts around the globe, I'm totally with you.
The F35's are already there, they are highly effective means of delivery in emergency conditions, they can get there faster than a C130, why not de-weaponize them and use them to drop high tech water desalination devices on the beaches of Gaza?
Why not? Because there are too many in power who think that their identity is more valuable than human life. That power is perpetuated by the tip of the spear that is the F35.
So, not only do we _take that power from them by turning the F35 into a Real Peace Machine™_, we do it with haste in order to address the current immense crimes the warrior narcissists have already committed.
Spend a billion dollars to make these devices, de-commission the F35's from the task of bomb dropping, paint it pink and turn off its stealth, and have them drop the cluster medical kits immediately.
Oh, of course this is a fantasy, but what means of peace didn't start out as a fantasy, eh kids?
The point is not just to turn the F35's into peace-making devices - but to remove their potential future use by warrior narcissists to commit more heinous crimes against humanity.
Two factors: save the children. Stop the warrior narcissists from further atrocities.
Full-scale de-weaponization of everything. No exceptions.
The transport airplanes are also there. Aid has been dropped from them to Gaza and some of it killed people and it was generally a drop in the bucket compared to aid entering via land. Instead of fantasizing about F35s which are a very expensive way of delivering incredibly small amounts of things we should fantasize about getting more trucks to deliver stuff where it's cheap and massive amounts. That's a lot more tractable and achievable. We can also fantasize about what peace looks like and it doesn't look like dropping things from F-35s, that's generally what you do when you gave up on peace (which holds for both bombs and supplies).
Since the "ceasefire" about 21,000 tons of medical aid has entered Gaza. The amount of water already delivered is also immense and if you were to replace/complement this with desalinization you need to build a proper desalinization plant or repair the one that was already there. Let's fantasize about what more is needed and working with the different parties to get there. An F-35 can carry about 10 tons. So you'd need 2000 sorties to deliver a similar amount under the most ideal conditions each sortie costing something like $100K. A C-130 about 20 tons and has about x3-5 less operational cost per hour. It's not just about carry capacity it's about systems to deliver them (like parachutes or whatnot) which a C-130 is already fitted with. So for air delivery of stuff (which is ridiculously low volume and expensive) the C-130 is the preferred choice between the two. We also happen to have an inventory of things on pallets that are ready for C-130s. It's still not a great choice anyways. A commercial truck can carry 40 tons and operating costs would be something like $100 and the trucks are also already there and moving. If we need to get more of those that's what we should work on (and for all those options you need to work with the people on the ground and in the region. The problem isn't capacity/capability it's the politics and the situation on the ground.
If we're fantasizing maybe start with Lennon's "Imagine no religion" ;)
Religions are just a subset of that identity. Warrior narcissists will subjugate any human organization to build their mirror - religion, government, media - anything.
Sure, we can discuss the logistics. We, the peace-makers, should be smashing the mirror no matter what it takes. For me, that is efficiently represented by the de-weaponization of all the things, not just the F35.
But, still. Use the F35 to drop cluster medical kits. That'd cost a pittance and it would make far more peace than the million dollar GRU or glide kit.
> Use the F35 to drop cluster medical kits. That'd cost a pittance
Your "pittance" and mine must be very different.
If you were performing this function on behalf of any charity you would be prosecuted for this type of grossly, objectively inefficient resource allocation.
> The F35's are already there, they are highly effective means of delivery in emergency conditions, they can get there faster than a C130
Do you have any idea what you are talking about? Operating and maintenance expenses dominate all aircraft expenditures - "already there" is completely false. Putting these aircraft in the boneyard and writing off the R&D expenses is the only logical answer to "peaceful use."
An F-35 can get somewhere "quickly" when it's ferried there by a fleet of tankers and logistic support - but at that point, you just fly the C-130 directly to where it is needed.
No single day makes the difference in any of the situations you've proposed, and no operation to get a payload-laden F-35 anywhere it needs to be is organized in a day.
> Spend a billion dollars to make these devices, de-commission the F35's from the task of bomb dropping, paint it pink and turn off its stealth, and have them drop the cluster medical kits immediately.
There's no expense that justifies keeping these aircraft in operation for any peaceful purpose. Basically every modern cargo or passenger aircraft is better at the tasks you're describing and can do it cheaper.
Taxation is inherently backed by violence, so it's amazing how you can casually just suggest "spend a billion dollars" and not see the cognitive dissonance you're spewing.
Accomplishing all of this random humanitarian shit costs money (a proxy for human labor output), money comes from somewhere, and it isn't going to be given to your causes voluntarily.
>There's no expense that justifies keeping these aircraft in operation for any peaceful purpose.
Ah, yes there is: the expense of the children with severed limbs dying every single minute under the rubble that was placed upon them by the very F35's you worship.
If it was "efficient" and "cost effective" to use the F35 to murder tens of thousands, its even more efficient and cost effective - and urgent - to de-weaponize them and use them to drop cluster medical kits.
>humanitarian shit
Listen, warrior narcissist, I'm sick of your shit. Smash your own mirror.
We paint the F35's pink to make amends for the murder they have caused.
> the expense of the children with severed limbs dying every single minute under the rubble that was placed upon them by the very F35's you worship.
Now you are standing on the graves of hypothetical children? Expense is real: you suggested an extremely poor way to allocate finite resources. More hypothetical children could be helped by putting the F-35s in the boneyard and using conventional cargo planes, so by your own twisted logic, are you not part of the problem?
> If it was "efficient" and "cost effective" to use the F35 to murder tens of thousands
Ignoring the emotional component: even pro-military detractors of the F-35 program argue that it isn't cost effective or efficient to use the F-35 for what it was actually designed to do. Hence why the F-16 keeps getting new avionics, engines, payloads, etc.
I mean, with limited resources sure, but in your example if we use F35s to drop these supplies we can only drop half or a quarter as much as the supplies. Then we will also need spend a time, money, and resources into maintaining the F35 instead of using those to create and distribute more helpful resources. Its horribly ineffecient and you want to help, you gotta use your resources wisely instead of dropping water pumps from F35 because its cool and already there, Im sure the people in the area would rather 12 hours and get 50 water pumps instead. Then you could also drop in people to help install the water pumps( or doctors if we talking medical supplies). There is a finite amount of time and resources, we shouldnt be wasting them just to make a point.
a) use the fastest means possible to save the human lives that were smashed into obvious by <insert weapons system here>, and
b) de-weaponize all the things - take the mirror from the warrior narcissist immediately - and "paint those F35's pink" (its a metaphor, relax) - disable their stealth, and have them and their pilots serve the human beings whose lives they have spent years obliterating, as amends to the rest of the human species whose lives they are making utterly miserable with their actions ...
But yeah, your ideas are cool too. I'm waxing philosophical because we all know, the bombs are going to continue to drop, no matter what we peace-makers say and do on HN ..
While I would much rather see medical kits distributed to Gaza today than bombs, this could (and should) be accomplished not by converting F35s.
Dismantle the F35s, and drop supplies with a C130 or other military transport capable of airdrop, which will be VASTLY more cost/fuel efficient, thus allowing you to do a lot more of it than you ever could with a fleet of F35s.
Which I'm 95% certain is exactly what the other folks you're arguing with are suggesting.
Dismantle the F35's: sure. Once the victims they created are safe.
But if the F35's were used to murder, they can be used to rescue, too. So do that as fast as possible.
In fact, turning the F35's into medical-supply dropping devices immediately would have another very, very important impact: it would be making amends for all the death and calamity their warrior narcissist pilots, who have spent their lives learning to murder efficiently, have been causing.
We paint the F35's pink to make amends for the murder they have caused.
> In fact, turning the F35's into medical-supply dropping devices immediately
In your scenario, how many people are dying as a result of the carbon impact of this foolish waste of fuel and other resources as opposed to using the right tool for the job?
> you can't possibly be saying XYZ...rant about XYZ, among other things
No, obviously that's not what they're saying. There must be some reasonable interpretation then, right? Let's look at the chat thread and see what we can find.
> be very cautious about evil uses of seemingly safe technology when developing initial capabilities
>> that's super hard since most things can be repurposed
>>> (your other comment) it's actually easy though, just look at how we could repurpose these death machines
The subtext to their answer is going an entire opposite direction to your rant. People are saying that turning anything into a killing machine is easy, and their comment is saying that doing so is sometimes Pareto-suboptimal, and so wildly so that no semi-rational-at-least-a-little-bit-sometimes military is going to bother trying to weaponize your silicone basting brush or what have you.
They're not saying that you should mass-murder people, as you, yourself speculated.
All of this random F-35 shit is completely missing the point. The F-35 isn't "there" - no aircraft is "there" because the costs to operate them far eclipse their acquisition costs, always.
If you said "scrap the F-35s, spend money on humanitarian purposes" - you'd have a cogent (albeit naive) point. "Use one of the most expensive per-flight-hour aircraft in the world to do a mission it can't do and wasn't built for" is not intelligent.
Roughly, just considering fuel: the F-35 burns ~10,000 lbs/hr of JP-8 and can haul just 18,000 lbs of relatively small/multiple payloads. A 747 burns ~20,000 lbs/hr and can haul over 300,000 lbs of palletized loads. See the issue?
We paint the F35's pink to make amends for the murder they have caused.
You know, amends. One of those spiritual concepts you can't eat, since you don't know what salad is and you're too busy serving yourself lines off The Mirror™ you made from some billet somewhere ...
"Spiritual" concepts don't feed people, and the dumb idea you've suggested actually harms people more than whatever abstract/intangible spiritual victory you're achieving.
With this incorrect vehicle, you cannot move as much food, desalination equipment, or whatever other nonsense you think will help. You are suggesting something that will objectively result in fewer resources being given to those in need - why would anyone donate to your cause?
Is the propaganda victory of "making amends" somehow worth the lives of the people you want to "help?"
Yes, it is the refrain of the warrior narcissist, a heinous human mental virus condition, which can see no value in human life worth more than to simply build a bigger mirror for them to stare and admire their own identity at the cost of so much human life.
> Those who think weapons are necessary must always take lesser priority than those who invent technology to make the lives of their fellow human beings better.
And then a group that prioritizes weapons over human-life-improving-tools kills the group that prioritizes life and takes your resources.
This is like the larger group version of suicide by cop.
We've been playing this game for as long as human beings have existed.
There have always been a greater group of humans which de-weaponize (make peace) than those who make war. Always. The evidence is very clear: there are far, far, far more humans in the world not-killing each other than there are, killing each other.
>And then a group that prioritizes weapons over human-life-improving-tools kills the group that prioritizes life and takes your resources
Only for as long as those who make peace, don't pay attention to the prioritization of weapons - and that group of warrior narcissists whose identity is more important than human life must never be allowed to be bigger than the group who make peace - as is happening today at a pace far too great - because otherwise, we all die.
>We've been playing this game for as long as human beings have existed.
Yes, humans have been making peace at far greater scale than those limited few who make war. You just don't see them because a) you have your own warrior narcissist mirror obscuring your view, and b) those people are not narcissists, and are living human lives instead of primping their warrior narcissist identities...
> There have always been a greater group of humans which de-weaponize (make peace) than those who make war. Always.
What are you talking about? We're in the most peaceful period in human history by every objective measure and we spend almost a trillion dollars annually on defense. "Always" is objectively incorrect by basically every measure you use.
> Only for as long as those who make peace, don't pay attention to the prioritization of weapons - and that group of warrior narcissists whose identity is more important than human life must never be allowed to be bigger than the group who make peace - as is happening today at a pace far too great - because otherwise, we all die.
Word salad.
> Yes, humans have been making peace at far greater scale than those limited few who make war. You just don't see them because a) you have your own warrior narcissist mirror obscuring your view, and b) those people are not narcissists, and are living human lives instead of primping their warrior narcissist identities...
Other comments have pointed out this: how are you going to stop the "warrior narcissist" if you disarmed/de-weaponized the peace-makers? Even if de-weaponize after you erase all the current "warrior narcissists", how will you prevent new ones from rising up and re-weaponizing? Surely, you know that war is not the default state, so this isn't a theoretical.
Also, I think your description of "warrior narcissists" as a shallow description of the spirit of these people. You mentioned something about "identity" in later comments, and I cannot help but wonder what do you mean by that. I don't think Putin's main motive is his self-image, nor do I think Israel's leadership is murdering Palestine's populace to appear heroic.
It would also help to not assume the motives of people criticizing your ideas by presuming them to be "warrior narcissists" themselves. Elevate the discussion, not downgrade it.
I'll always appreciate the spirit of pacifism and collaboration, but your comments seem quixotic, and not in a good way.
The police state exists entirely to maintain its own identity - and thus control - over that of its subjects. It is a warrior - controlling the lives of others or killing them - and it is doing it narcissistically, to maintain its own image of itself.
All current war theaters are the result of a police state and these police states only function because of technology.
The subject is de-weaponization of technology.
First, you separate the technology from the person using it correctly - i.e. not to create a police state.
Then, the person using it incorrectly in a police state.
In this case, the person you don't want to have using technology to murder/do harm/violate the actual human rights of others, is the warrior narcissist.
So, as a technologist, I do not let my technology be used by someone who is only going to use it on others, for actual war-fighting/warrior purposes, for the purposes of protecting or promoting their identity over the life of others.
Because that is what good technology is - something which gives all users, equal rights. An equal, new identity, with each new form of technology.
So, de-weaponization means, disconnecting the user from using technology in destructive ways.
Constructive ways are easier, such as I demonstrated with extreme prejudice, such as the notion of the pink F35, dropping cluster medical supplies, water desalination pods instead of child-maiming fertilizer bombs, or indeed - fertilizer in the right place, with emergency seed-bombs for a 3 month re-supply of the landscape, food-wise, etc.
All current war theaters are the result of a police state and these police states only function because of technology.
These are parables I'm dramatizing, with intent. I do know there is no chance in hell of turning off all the weapons - I for sure know that there is a way to use technology to make sure a police state doesn't happen in the first place. (Because I've been doing exactly that with technology for decades.)
Putin is an identity of someone you don't actually know, but yet, you think you know the warrior narcissism in Putin - but it is actually the identity, not the individual, that I am talking about. I rate Putin among all the other war criminals of the world - they are there, because they have the technological might of their people - or indeed the ignorance of their people in spite of this might, or indeed even collective agreement on scale, to perpetuate that identity.
And lest it not be clear, I find that in order to be a good pacifist, you have to allow for new identity, always. It is the use of technological power to gain mass identity and exploit it for war, which I am specifically calling the playground of the warrior narcissist. Those who would murder to maintain their own identity.
Drop books not bombs, is legitimately the simplest pacifist view I can express. I see far, far more peace to be had in the world with the concept of dropping a complete archive.org gardening section from the pink F35, you know .. "turning the pistol into a pump" ...
>It would also help to not assume the motives of people criticizing your ideas by presuming them to be "warrior narcissists" themselves. Elevate the discussion, not downgrade it.
Apropos quixotic.
You might notice that I am manifesting the very thing I am resisting.
That is by design. For every excuse for murdering 'those people over there', I have and can spot a greedy instance of technological mis-use. There is no longer any good, legitimate reason for war - technologically. It happens, because technologists don't confront the warriors.
So I'm targeting warrior narcissism intentionally, and yes in a way guaranteed to create a cloud of smoke on the horizon, because .. after all .. dang himself, could prove the value of my point by switching me off right now.
What is this word salad? "Spirit?" Intention? Disarm the "warrior narcissist?"
Good luck - this flies in the face of the entirety of human history.
> "what would it take to turn an AK47 or an AR15 into a water pump?"
As someone who has manufactured these from billet: why would you do this? (hence "word salad") Why does one thing at all relate to the other? Why not just manufacture a pump from the same raw resources? Why not both?
> Those who think weapons are necessary must always take lesser priority than those who invent technology to make the lives of their fellow human beings better.
Did the Allies in WWII not "make the lives of their fellow human beings better" using violence? Why didn't they just ask mean old Hitler: "Hey, be nice! Have a good spirit!"? The world has finite resources, inherently making anything often denies those resources (your time, actual materials, etc.) to other causes. "Better" is subjective.
> There are so many examples of the tool-makers winning harder and at greater scale than the bomb-manufacturer.
These organizations are often one in the same.
> We wouldn't be here now if the balance was the other way
The balance is already the other way regardless of your citation-free assertion. You're using the internet to proliferate this tripe - famously a DARPA invention.
> Imagine if those F35 mounting pylons were used to drop field-portable water-purification systems directly where they are needed most.
Why is a high-performance stealth aircraft required for this? Why does one thing have anything to do with the other? What peaceful purpose does stealth capability serve?
> Imagine if those ships were being used to bring power to the villages that need it most.
With what? Words? Precisely how do you non-violently disarm someone who is willing and demonstrated to use violence to prevent you from disarming them?
Again, the world's resources are finite, and control of these resources inherently requires violence.
Your ability to spread these "ideas" are rooted in violence: taxation, freedom generally. Freedom isn't free, and the price is paid in blood.
There's a real problem with governments that invade other countries and attack civilians, and we're in a particularly hot time right now. That gives many current examples, though: should Ukraine prioritize manufacturing water pumps? Or do they mostly need weapons to fight back in the war?
I get that folks don't like war. I hate war. I've seen much more evidence that deterrence produces peace more readily than disarmament. On the flip side, more destructive weapons may be used more rarely, but they kill more people when they are used.
I'm not sure what the optimal approach is, but it almost certainly requires nations to arm themselves in case they are attacked. "Provide for the common defense" was not specified idly.
Ukraine should prioritize making peaceful relationships, as should the Russians and Americans and British - and the rest of the world should be making sure they do so.
That they have not made that priority, choosing instead to prioritize their nations' collective warrior narcissist identities rather than valuing the human life of each, is why those nations are on the brink of destroying each other.
Warrior narcissism is infectious and contagious and insidious. You can see it at an individual scale and you can see it at nation scales, too. The solution is to smash the mirror: deny any and all of the identities involved their right to their own identities, until they see, underneath it all, the true value of human life.
There is no American/Russian/Ukrainian/British identity worth more than the human lives in each state. There is no Israeli/Palestinian identity worth more than the human lives in either state.
The fact that one identity is held as more valuable/important/special than the other, is what gives each the justification (not right) to murder the other.
If the rest of the world had shunned the Russians and the Ukrainians and the British and the Americans at equivalent levels until their identities were no longer of any perceived value, the conflict would not have perpetuated. The fact that Russians clung to the identities of the Russian-speaking humans in the Donbas, the fact that Ukraine nationalist identity took higher priority over respect for human life, the fact that Americans gloat over their own cultural identity of warriors, as do the Brits - is why we have the conflict.
>I've seen much more evidence that deterrence produces peace more readily than disarmament.
Bullshit. Deterrence did not stop a single human life being murdered in any of the current conflicts. "Deterrence" is just warrior narcissist speak for "I've got my mirror, it's bigger than <theirs>, and that is all that matters".
> Ukraine should prioritize making peaceful relationships
Ok, let's steel man this thing. Russia is not going to be peaceful regardless of your idealism - this isn't a disputable fact. Now, how does Ukraine "prioritize making peaceful relationships?"
Specifically, what concrete actions should Ukraine take to prevent violent incursion by an outside actor? No word salad: if you are the benevolent dictator of Ukraine today, what do you do? Counting on third parties to "shun" is out, it's not an effective option (and it arguably already happened with sanctions, but still.)
> Deterrence did not stop a single human life being murdered in any of the current conflicts.
What would Ukraine look like absent any donated war materiel from third parties? Why does Russia not own Kiev in that scenario?
"Prioritize making peaceful relationships" is entirely unhelpful along the lines of saying "Do the work". The way you're writing so dismissively of other people's analysis of this topic demands that you provide something far more specific than you are. As it is, you're writing seems completely divorced from reality.
What words did I seemingly misunderstand or misuse? I'll wait. Where does the dictionary come into this discussion?
> It is the unknown human peace-makers who have made it possible for you to sit in your chair and type such hate spew.
Is DARPA full of "human peace-makers?" Is calling someone a "warrior narcissist" not "hate spew?" Genuinely curious here how you split this.
> I'd do it to make one less murder weapon in the world
Why would someone who has weapons let you? What power do you have specifically? Remember: you can't use violence (and I'd argue that extends to basically every means of sanctions - including your "shunning" garbage.)
> Did you carve that billet for profit - did it feed you?
Yes. Now what?
> Because de-weaponization is more important than your identity.
OK but how does that involve AR-15s and AK-47s? Why do I need to take a manufactured object and somehow Rube Goldberg it into something else instead of just melting it down? And at that point, the raw resources should've just been used for that purpose and there's no point in mentioning rifles.
> Because it is there
Again with it is "there." No, it is not "there." Does it just operate itself for free?
> hey learn each others language!
Ok: what happens when two nations speak the same language but declare war? Does war just magically go away because of linguists? Why the fuck does spoken language in 2026 have anything to do with political ideals here? LLMs exist, Google Translate has existed for decades: clearly this arbitrary "speak the language" nonsense is not helping.
> Your identity is not worth more than life.
I'm not going to stop, now what? What are you going to do?
I could say the same thing of you for this very comment. And you have just joined in the fighting and the othering in the finest and noblest tradition. Textbook.
So you're in the camp that would rather murder than learn another language, then?
"Nice identity there. Be a pity if someone smashed it."
The only real enemy is the warrior narcissist, whose identity means more to them than another human life. Try not to look too hard into that mirror, it will consume you.
There is no world where the globe-spanning, petroleum based colonialist empire that produces F35 is going to somehow, out of the goodness of it's oil-pumping heart go swords to plowshares.
I mean, of all the many folks displaying cluster-b disorders on this site, you're quite expressive of certain trends. You're unable to look past your own identity within the hegemonic order to understand how absolutely out of touch with the material world your positions are.
Congratulations or outdoing so many other folks here in expressing the most radically contradictory and simultaneously un-self-aware positions.
>What happens if I already know the language of the people I have conflict with? What's the next cheat code?
Lived there for a while? Eaten their food? Done your best to improve conditions in their lives?
>What are you "smashing" them with? Feelings?
Its a metaphor, a kind of an advanced thought where you create an analog of something - an idea - and smash it. Exactly the opposite of smashing actual childrens' limbs, and always a better choice to make instead of you know, dropping bombs.
And after that, the cheat code is, you don't do any more physical harm, because .. you know .. you've expanded your mind well enough that you do actually respect the people you once thought you had to bomb, or else their Bad People would hurt you.
One of the problems for me is that the people I disagree with are the white supremacists who operate the empire.
I know them pretty well. It actually has been quite difficult to extricate my thinking from that culture which raised me and I still struggle to do that work.
I know they are incredibly violent.
Hoping that you could take their firearms manufacturing and get them to shoot flowers isn't just dumb, it's a dangerous misreading of the structure.
F35s aren't going to start dropping aid packages. Thinking they might is dangerously naive because it misses the structural forces that create them in the first place. And further, that kind of "the miliitary could be used for good if we just use the power of our minds to levitate the pentagon" style thinking is what leads folks to develop vicious technology without worrying how it may be used.
The folks with the guns and the empire often hold a belief that the technology that they produce has not underlying system or ethical structure that produced it, so it could be use for "good" just as easily as the violence to which it will enviably be put.
The US liberals and conservatives who hold these views generally think that if we just have more [trans/well-trained] bomber pilots or [black/class-transitioning] billionaires, all the violence in the world could be put in the bottle and chucked into the sea.
When I write that the person who is creating all this text is a fucking nut, this is the kind of thing that I am talking about:
"de-weaponization means, disconnecting the user from using technology in destructive ways".
You can't.
Thinking that you can is dangerous and just hides the problems.
Thinking that somehow the teleology of the technology can be reduced to a single person's motivations for using it is the exact same structure that the folks who are using it for violence think.
It destroys any hope of understanding the social structures that lead to folks using technology for violence.
It's what has led to the IMF, World Bank, and WTO doing so many crimes. It's lynch pin that allows folks in the US to think somehow their thoughts and prayers for how all the tech they produce just needs to be tweaked a bit and somehow that will stop the ecocide of the planet. "Sorry we destroyed your economy and caused massive instability, but you were holding it wrong".
I mean, I have in the past "expanded my mind" to understand that none of the terrible violence inflicted by this empire is necessary- you're right that it is not, but the problem is that anything I do after that is "all in my head".
The material reality, though, is that either we're not doing anything material at that point (which is certainly a kind of narcissism in its own right) or more typically we don't fully understand the deep violence maintained by something such as the US capitalist world order, which is (as far as I can tell) even more narcissistic and violent.
clearly people have a responsibility to sit down and think long and hard and try to rule out as much as possible the negatives of any tech or ideas they share with other people. Or at least give it a cursory thought or find someone with that mindset to tamp those issues down. Absolutely before even considering a funding step or presentation to anyone outside of a very small trusted group. Ideas take fire way too quickly now not to be cautious.
>How do you make sure a police state doesn't happen?
There is no way to be sure, all one person can do most of the time is make a personal effort and hope it is not overwhelmed by storm-trooper ambitions and communist-dictator tactics.
When I look at Flock, it is so sad. It's been 30 full years since I got my early webcams when they were made by Intel and were still expensive business machines intended for teleconferencing over dial-up. Without really needing the internet of course.
It didn't take long before I was using one for observing my fledgling company's parking lot 24/7, and on more than half my CRT monitor you could see every car that drove by on my street, which was almost constant during the daytime. This was 99% of the action compared to visitors who pulled in.
It didn't take that long before I could remotely call in to the cam plugged into the front office PC through dial-up networking in Windows 95, and when I got a smartphone in 2001 I no longer needed a remote laptop most of the time as long as I was OK with the small screen of the flip-phone form factor. Rather than leaving the spare land-line available for calling directly in, alternatively it was also possible to log into an ISP over dial-up from my company, then keep the line tied up so I (or anyone really) could have access over the internet.
When broadband internet came around it made a really big difference since the stream was not as compressed, and motion not nearly as blurry and jerky. It was nice having the choice between a private remote connection to my front office PC over direct dial-up whenever I wanted, as well as enjoying the faster speed of the public internet plenty of the time too.
Anyway it didn't take long to realize that if webcams ever really catch on, then our local law enforcement would be highly interested in what could be done if they could freely observe them like I was doing looking at my own stream. I didn't know anybody else that had a webcam at first, but for protection of my own building all I would have to do is give the law my IP address and they could pick up the stream no differently than I was. They already knew my location and I had an excellent relationship with all the first responders. Naturally nothing was encrypted back then so that wasn't even a consideration, there was really nothing confidential on my stream to begin with.
I really thought about it long and hard and it took quite a while trying to examine all the possibilities. There were a few obvious downsides regarding privacy which needed much further consideration, so I could not in good conscience pull the trigger until that had been justified very deeply.
I didn't expect to hesitate that long but it really did take more than a year to conclude without a doubt that the negatives outweighed the positives, but that was only in the short run. In the long run the virtually unlimited downsides could only accumulate in excess of the possible upsides, and it was a big unknown how scattered cams could be used to compromise general privacy. Eventually had to realize such a cam network would be more easily used in a predatory way rather than for protection from predators, regardless of who was watching or recording. At significant scale it seemed like it could very well become exponentially dystopian.
No big deal, if you're not capable of thinking of something overwhelmingly positive to base your business on, I understand.
At least I didn't pioneer it, and I assume a lot of other early webcam owners gradually engaged in some of the same thought processes or it would have gotten a lot worse a lot sooner. I sure did talk to a lot of them, as webcams got more popular over time. Most of them were on laptops though and very seldom were aimed at a public space.
There are so many worthwhile things to do which don't amount to spying on Americans.
How do you not consider all Americans spies, given the way our devices work and constantly hoover everything? Perhaps most Americans aren't approached to sell the data they essentially collect 24/7 on everything around them, assuming even just a smart phone (not to mention cars, music, nest-like devices, iot, yadda yadda), but it is one hell of a mesh.
I think that's a good observation because people are really doing it to themselves.
Most of our electronics hasn't been American for quite some time now, so there is that. It really is made in, and for, less freedom & liberty loving countries, with the USA becoming more like collateral damage each decade.
It wasn't really this bad until Facebook came along whose sole mission ended up trying to monopolize PII as much as possible. And if not that at least put billions of dollars to work changing peoples' habits to neglect their own privacy anyway even if they end up on other platforms.
If privacy wasn't so valuable in a fundamental way, they wouldn't have been able to get as rich as they did by monetizing its removal.
It might actually be wise [1] to create a new, slightly less permissioned license for open source wherein the open is defined as anything that isn’t in a kill or surveillance chain or, more broadly, for military use…
That wouldn't be open source. OSI includes the clause "No Discrimination Against Fields of Endeavor"[0] for its definition of open source. Famously, the JSON license[1] has a clause "The Software shall be used for Good, not Evil," so the Free Software Foundation considers it nonfree.[2]
Arguably, any such clauses - similar to attempt for "non commercial" licenses would do more harm than good.
If you actually wanted to respect such a license,you would have to endlessly argue what is dual use technology for example, the same as people argue if advertisements on project website or tangentially related donations make the thing "commercial"?
While at the same time, any "bad guys" will just ignore both.
The idea that a defense manufacturer would be stopped by this is too funny. The code won't be auditable by you so how will you know? Secondly even if you did find out the most you'd get is a payout. Thirdly if you believe that missile aren't running GNU/Linux I have a bridge to sell you.
I've contemplated writing an email to RMS asking him how he feels about the use of GNU software in military and surveillance systems and if he could do it over if he would do things differently to alllow users to put a clause in their OSS licenses that forbid such things.
This line of reason is one I find appealing but somewhat untimely. If I'm grokking the deeper message it's that "limiting licensed use in these creative ways opens the door to potentially evil chicanery" -- i.e. you start limiting licenses to non-police activities and then some corporation goes "great! now that we can do that our licenses now limit usage to only endeavors that boil your firstborn and undermine our competition".
Problem is in era de la grift we've sort of realized that they never needed permission - there's no precedent to set anymore.
Call that "deeper message" A1. He's got arguments A1 and A2, and goes "if P, then A1(P) implies C; and if ¬P, then A2(¬P) implies C; therefore C". But we can just as easily go "if ¬P, then A1(¬P) implies ¬C" (as you did); "and if P, then A2(P) implies ¬C; therefore ¬C". Logical arguments don't let you do this: the arguments are pure rhetoric.
Quite a lot of Richard Stallman's arguments are pure rhetoric, actually. And, I mean, I guess it worked, in that the GPL and FSF ended up being quite influential; but the trouble with building a philosophy on rhetoric is that people start to believe that rhetoric – including you –, and it erodes and replaces the foundations of their beliefs, so it'll all come crashing down sooner or later.
I don't really think we need to engage with the rhetoric on an intellectual level, since it's obviously wrong: far better to read philosophers whose reasoning is sound, or to come up with your own ideas.
Sorry, but you must be way smarter than me or something because that made no sense. Not that I don't understand what that notation is supposed to mean, but that I'm not seeing the connective tissue here. It's also a little weird to come at me based on the 'erosion of my foundation of beliefs', considering how orthogonal that is to the topic of legal precedent and contracts.
For what it's worth, what I do believe is that our system of law was a good idea at one point but is totally ineffectual in the current context - that's my point about an era of grifters. Didn't get that one from stallman, measured that on the eyeball mark I.
This is the first time my poor communication skills have been interpreted as a sign of my superior intelligence. I think I'm ready to become a professional expert consultant!
I was abstracting Richard Stallman's argument to its (il)logical structure: P and ¬P are whether the license restriction is enforceable, etcetera. "Erosion" was talking about people who, seeing free software as a good idea, begin to adhere to Stallmanite orthodoxy (which is, largely, philosophically-unsound): that was not aimed at you, but at Richard Stallman himself (the Ur-Stallmanite, we could say). I saw this as generalising your criticism. I didn't notice you were making a broader point about the law, so this was somewhat of a supercalifragilisticexpialidocious non-sequitur; thanks for clarifying your point.
Why do you want the people risking their lives to protect your freedom to have worse artillery? I don't understand this thinking at all. If my country is going to shoot something, I want them to be able to control what actually gets hit. I swear, people take borderline religious stances on things to the point that they no longer make sense.
Have you served? Because I have. Still have friends in the service and they are pretty cheesed that they've been roped into this mess. Go ask a lifer what they really think about Smegsbreath some time - I think it will be enlightening.
I come from a military family - supporting soldiers and the policies of an administration are two different things. The commenter is correct in that our war in Iran has nothing to do with our freedom and everything about pushing the political agenda of a foreign country.
Many wars are simply what you’d expect from violent leaders who realize they can order other people into combat for them. But some wars really are for the greater good. There are definitely militaries that I want to see win, and militaries that I want to see lose.
I realize I don’t have any code that would be of any use to any military. If I did, I don’t see how I could write a license to allow the use of my code by only people I agree with.
You can write whatever you want in a license, including something as vague as “you can only use this code if I agree with your moral stances”. (For expediency, it might be worth enumerating the cases.)
The OSI might disapprove, but you don’t have to listen to them.
The only thing that protects my freedom is active peace-making at levels greater than active war-making.
We are all under a great deal of threat precisely because borderline religious warrior narcissism has taken precedence over emphatic, unstoppable peace-making.
The USA has been bombing people into oblivion "protecting peace", for decades now. Is the world safer now?
No, it very definitely is not.
>Why do you want the people risking their lives ..
I want people risking their lives to make great peace. That is not happening at the scale that it should be.
Instead, the lazy, less noble warrior narcissist, has the world by the nose. The only difference between an utter criminal and a war fighter is a very, very thin line of paper which makes murder in one case illegal and in another case, legal. This paper is tattered and torn and covered in the muck of the victims, held high by the victors to justify their crime.
However, we see today the fallacy of this condition.
If your country is going to shoot something, I want to be damn sure it has done everything ethically, technologically, and administratively possible to have first made peace, at all costs.
That is simply not evident in any of the current world conflicts.
Instead of engaging in foreign cultures, we in the West march in lock-step behind those who have deemed foreign cultures inferior and worthy of nothing but destruction and despair.
I want to see the warrior narcissist who profit from this condition, disarmed and made irrelevant. The only way that happens is if human life takes precedence over human identity.
No humans identity is worth more than another humans life.
Risk your life for true peace this way: Before you murder, abandon yourself!
> Why do you want the people risking their lives to protect your freedom to have worse artillery?
Hi. Veteran here. I protected his freedoms to do just that. You asking this question in that way insults veterans, whether you intended it or not. People using this line of thinking usually only care about veterans when it can win them arguments, and do not care any other time.
> I don't understand this thinking at all
Then, instead of asking questions with inflammatory language, you should humble yourself and ask respectfully so you can understand.
> Why do you want the people risking their lives to protect your freedom to have worse artillery
If better artillery is being built on open source tech then everyone has better artillery. Not just the people "protecting you" but also the people trying to kill those people
I'm going to assume that you're an American, speaking from an Americentric point of view and I'd like to take this as an opportunity to discuss the fact that Hacker News is a website that is available to people around the world. Many of those people are not American citizens and do not have the same relationship with the US military and government that you do.
Only Americans want to defend their country? I'm Swedish, did my military service, and generally agree that I would want our defence forces to have the best weapons available.
This isn't a gotcha or 'try' it's a critique about how US defaultism overwhelms conversations on this site and how it is detrimental to the conversation at hand.
I'm not disputing that one of the links from the comment that gmerc made came from a US military domain, but that's moot. A licence against military use covers every army, not the one you happen to identify with.
As an aside, I'm curious what nationality user gmerc is. If they're the person in the video that they linked to it sounds like they're German?
And this isn't being nitpicky -- it's really important in the context of this discussion. People from certain countries more than others seem to lack this concept of civic hygiene and clam up when the discussion comes up.
We should push past that awkwardness and keep having these discussions about concepts like civic hygiene. It's important.
I doubt this is enforceable. Are you going to sue a government secret program because they used some open source code in a way that violates some weird clause?
Yes, citizens should sue the government when the government takes actions which are grounds for suit. The government sure will come after your money if you do things they say you shouldn't, and what's good for the goose is good for the gander.
You won't know, they'll say it's for national security so licenses don't matter, and then if you keep going they'll make sure your life is a living hell and your bank accounts closed.
I'm begging tech bros to understand that abusive governments _do not care about abusing you_
You seem to be suggesting that it's impossible to successfully sue the federal government, which is provably untrue. Yes the government abuses the rights of its citizens and will vehemently defend itself if challenged, but suit is the one of the more potent peaceful means we have to redress grievances with them.
As this is a civil discussion, being rude is uncalled for. Maybe go for a walk in nature and get your head back on straight.
No one is saying you can't sue the government. You can in fact. What we're saying is you won't get the outcome you desire. The fact that you think they will simply stop production because you sued them is frankly laughably naive. That's not being rude. It's just reality.
On the other hand, it may be worth publicly and unambiguously stating a position even if unenforceable. This seems to be what most modern protest movements are based on. For instance, how many software repos "stand with Ukraine", even though they won't make an impact on frontline military reality?
Ah yes, they're carpet bombing people and indiscriminately killing fighters, adults and children, but they're going to be stopped because... the software they use is two clause GPL.
[1] https://gdcvault.com/play/1012227/Development-Telemetry-in-V...
[2] https://www.army.mil/article/85934/solution_to_weapon_develo...