I withhold any opinions about Luckey. I've never met the guy and I don't feel it's fair to judge somebody based upon what journalists have decided to write about him. (However, I don't think we'd get along much.)
Besides, there's something better to learn here: the surveillance state will always find willing people to work on technologies that can potentially be used to oppress populations. Luckey is enormously wealthy by world (and HN) standards -- he has "fuck you money" that so many on this board are searching for -- so you can't say he's out building this stuff to pay the bills, to feed his family, et cetera. He's out building this stuff because he is a paladin for this cause, regardless of whether or not you find it detestable.
I'm confused about what's inherently oppressive about making the border more secure. Personally I oppose Trump's stupid wall because it's a useless, wasteful boondoggle, not because having a secure border is inherently bad.
So, you have a border that is not widely perceived to be a very big security problem, and most national security incidents have arisen through other vectors, and you propose redundant, expensive measures for border security. This raises the question of why, since "border security" doesn't seem like a realistic answer. The people who see it as oppressive believe the real purpose of this push for "border security" is a political statement to the effect of "brown people aren't welcome here." (Trump also kind of helped give this theory currency by claiming that Americans of Mexican descent are so likely to be biased against him due to the wall that a Mexican-American judge needed to recuse himself.)
I have never understood why people think that if someone has something means they don't need more of it.
Because almost everything in life works this way. Once I have a place to live, I don't need to find a second one. Once I've eaten enough food to be full, I don't need to keep eating. Maybe by buying enough clothes you can avoid doing laundry, though…
Because almost everything in life works this way. Once I have a place to live, I don't need to find a second one. Once I've eaten enough food to be full, I don't need to keep eating.
Except that's not how it works, at all.
Overweight people are overweight because they eat when they don't need to.
People with money pursue ever greater amounts of it.
I think the causality you were trying to invoke goes "If you eat more than you need, you could become overweight." As such, it describes ways people can become overweight, not the cause for obesity or food cravings.
People are overweight for reasons other than "eating too much," just as drug addicts relapse for reasons other than "trying meth once." I'm actually comfortable thinking about greed as a symptom of a disconnected world view as well. Just one that none of the afflicted are inclined to treat.
> Overweight people are overweight because they eat when they don't need to
That's a massive over-simplification, but by the same token, okay? We've now established that over-accumulation of wealth is comparable to an eating / mental disorder? Has anyone looked into treating this disorder?
Buying clothes to protect you from the elements, are you? Many people buy them for entirely different reasons, like signaling social status and other things. Even if you do this very conservatively, you need to keep up because fashions change and what your dress signaled last year is not what it signals this. Sheesh.
What I meant is money is one commodity where even the super rich wants more, not less. Just because they have a lot of money doesn't mean they stop caring about it.
Because the percentage increase is likely to be so small as to be unnoticeable. That's why most economic utility models are logarithmic. If Luck already has $1B then making another few $M is unlikely to make any difference other than for social affirmation reasons.
If you think that Lidar technology for border security can only be used at national boundaries, I have a bridge in NY to sell you.
The job is fun and challenging, the toys are great, the budgets are unlimited and how many times in your career can you be in a meeting where four star generals listen with eyes wide open every word you say?
This technology can't be used to "oppress" populations more than any other technology can. It's here given as a possible solution for surveillance of military bases and border control. Both seems sensible enough. I think you're seeing it in a too grim light.
How is protecting your borders, a military base, etc oppressive?
Yes, the technology could be repurposed for nefarious uses, but so can just about every other technology. Machine learning, for example, probably has some excellent military applications.
Oh, c'mon. There's plenty of difference between having border control and an insular totalitarian regime. You don't see any difference in the comparison?
Technology is always advancing, in fact at an increasing rate, whether you like it or not. Trying to scare people about the technology is not the answer.
yeh i disagree. when u have truckloads of money, u meet people with truckloads more. So how do the richest get richer? Defence spending. The only industry where profits are measured in billions.
Trump's America and Putins Russia are the same. In Russia, it costs big$$ to get favourable regulations from the government and access to government spending. Once u pay, ur returns are garenteed. As we can see with Trumps budget, its obvious he is paying back the US's own oligarchy in order to gain a life-long membership.
I'm always willing to take the unpopular side, as anyone who knows me knows.
With regards to Luckey's exit from Facebook, and the controversy of his politically-oriented actions:
Persecuting someone for choosing a political candidate or supporting a political group is the exact opposite of a democracy - no matter how "abominable" that group might seem. I am not a Trump supporter, but the way people have treated his supporters sickens me. Can we agree to disagree, rather than launch a witch hunt on anyone who does not share similar views? This has manifested itself everywhere, its not even choosing sides anymore (see: Kathy Griffin).
We are so afraid of free speech it is ridiculous. I say let people speak. If people want to speak and say potentially idiotic things, let them expose their views. They are free to speak, we are free to listen or ignore. We have a huge empathy problem where anyone that holds an opposing view is inhuman.
We are afraid that free speech will incite violence, but ironically a lot more violence has come from trying to suppress free speech.
The issue isn't necessarily that he supports Trump, it's that he donated money to a group that knowingly shitposts, which if anything is an attack on free speech.
A quote from that group: "shitposting is powerful and meme magic is real".
The founders of the same group spread white supremacist and anti-semitic memes.
Surely the problem with funding a group like that is that they are actively employing measures to reduce free speech or a balanced political discussion?
In that context it's not someone who is using their free speech, but employing others to suppress it. That's the problem I have with Luckey's actions (and yes, a whole lot of other people's too).
Yep, in fact he supposedly supports Ron Paul, but Nimble America is definitely a more Trump-ish, alt-right-ish type of thing.
According to Luckey, they made some memes that he liked. Maybe they were not racist memes, but I do not know. Maybe Luckey did not know about some of their worse memes. Anyhow, he threw them a chunk of money. We can infer without greater evidence that Luckey is racist simply because he donated to something.
All of that said, the one and only attack on free speech is censorship. Censorship comes in many forms, including the form of shaming people. I think what the alt-right does is dumb, but at the same time, they hide in their own dark corner of the internet and I never have to interact with them so I am fine carrying about my business. Luckey donating to Nimble America had a similar lack of effect on me.
I totally agree with you, bad phrasing on my part. I'm talking about the less trivial aspects of "shame" as it applies to carrying a reputation, say, in Silicon Valley - thus affecting who will hire you, who will fire you, even who will refuse to connect with you in business.
Of course, you are totally free to develop opinions about people - but at the same time laws for slander, libel, and defamation exist for a good reason. Many people made Luckey out to be Hitler, but if you met him in real life you'd probably find it hard to insist on this comparison.
I think we've reached a point in society where having your livelihood taken from you is the same as being jailed, aka "thrown in cages".
The difference, of course, is that it isn't the government doing it. It's the general population.
I'm of 2 minds about it because I don't want to support anyone that supports racism.
But I also feel that people deserve second chances. People do learn from their mistakes, and they have to be allowed to continue on afterwards or there's no point in changing.
I haven't heard of Luckey apologizing, but that isn't surprising because the media doesn't think that's good enough news to broadcast. They only publish the worst stuff, not the best. He might have done so and I'd have no idea.
>I think we've reached a point in society where having your livelihood taken from you is the same as being jailed, aka "thrown in cages".
>The difference, of course, is that it isn't the government doing it. It's the general population.
That's society saying that one's behavior is unacceptable and that it won't do business with them. I find that perfectly acceptable. Its not being forced by a single entity, but rather a general consensus is reached among everyone.
> The difference, of course, is that it isn't the government doing it. It's the general population.
Do you honestly think this socio-political pressure is new? It's now visible due to how well-connected the world is now and it resonates a bit because the victims are people HN potentially identify with.
This has been going on for ages and is not limited to the left or right, labels have been flying for ages: n!@@&^-lover, RINO, fascist, cuckservertive, racist, and on and on.
> We can infer without greater evidence that Luckey is racist simply because he donated to something.
Snark punctuating a hazy, misinformed comment is ironically one of the calling cards of the alt-right: incoherency of speech to provoke incoherency of thought.
This is of course just another version of GPL vs. BSD.
Attempt to maximize some measure of "total freedom" at the expense of some individual freedom, or just let everybody do what they want even if it harms the community?
Shitposting is not 'an attack on free speech'. It's speech. What you're doing is doublespeak - also not an attack on free speech, merely an attack on logic.
If their message is more captivating than stupid memes, it'll get through.
Sadly that's not true. If there are millions of stupid messages then it's very hard to see the good ones. To use HN as an analogy, some brilliant stories never make it to the front page on a busy day because /newest is just moving too fast. In that sense shitposting does deprive people of speech by making it impossible for anyone to listen.
> Persecuting someone for choosing a political candidate or supporting a political group is the exact opposite of a democracy
Speaking out against atrocities and harmful political views is exactly what democracy is about.
Some people find themselves "persecuted" any time someone disagrees or they can't get media on their side. That is diluting the term and in no way reason to stop speaking out against them. (And perhaps ironically, the ones who want to silence others often see themselves as silenced.)
Persecuting someone for choosing a political candidate or supporting a political group is the exact opposite of a democracy - no matter how "abominable" that group might seem.
What you call "persecution" I call a difference of opinion. No one is saying this guy should be locked up for his views, and he clearly has the means and opportunity to continue pursuing his political and career goals.
He aligned himself with groups his employer found unsavory (shitlords, trolls, meme magicians, etc.) and lost his job. that's not persecution, that's playing with fire and getting burned.
So you're saying we shouldn't be free to speak freely about other people speaking freely? Free speech only applies to Luckey, but not to anyone who disagrees with him?
This idea that a billionaire is being persecuted because people wrote articles about a SuperPAC he started in order to manipulate public opinion is ludicrous.
Playing devil's advocate may be intellectually satisfying for you but I believe it damages the discourse by presuming a fundamental equality between the two sides, as if this is all just a game and there is no right and wrong. Your perspective here is, essentially, nihilistic. You steadfastly refuse to make a value judgement on the people you are defending.
This perspective was satirized by @dril on Twitter[0]:
> the wise man bowed his head solemnly and spoke: "theres actually zero difference between good & bad things. you imbecile. you fucking moron"
From this everything-is-neutral, there-is-no-right-and-wrong vantage point, I can see how the Trump backlash could look like anti-free-speech partisanship. But everything is not neutral. There are such things as right and wrong.
That's a clever way to disguise your opposition to free speech, just categorize perspectives as morally "wrong" versus "not-wrong", and declare that only "not-wrong" viewpoints can be heard.
And I can choose not to listen to them, or to disagree with them, or to speak out against them, or to refuse to associate with them, or to refuse to support their causes, or all of the above.
The problem you seem to have is confusing "I disagree with, and thus refuse to associate with or support, and will speak out against, this person's views" for "This person is oppressed".
In a marketplace of ideas, some people are not going to be winners.
Good points. As mentioned, I think its totally fair (even encouraged) to debate political views.
There is a clear difference between debating political views and witch hunting though.
People are having to write public apologies for having their own views or engaging in free speech. This is NOT ok in my opinion. People are getting fired or threatened for being Trump supporters. Also not ok IMO.
The clear difference is when it turns from political debate ("free speech") into real-world consequence.
And some things should have consequence. If a person engaged in racial discrimination in the workplace, I would totally fire them. However, if someone supported political candidate of dubious values, its a different ballgame - maybe they support that candidate for their economic policy, who knows. The crazy thing is Luckey is not even a Trump supporter, at least according to his public apology.
My frustration is that the right wing has been doing this to people on the left for 70 years.
It's not OK that the left has started doing it to the right, but the people I see going on about "liberal witch hunts" and "Literally Hitler" and "This is why Trump won" I didn't see having a problem back when Jonah Goldberg wrote a bestselling book about how Hillary was "Literally Hitler", or a problem when Limbaugh/Hannity/OReilly were saying that anti-war protesters were terrorist lovers.
These people didn't have a problem when entertainers who spoke out against George W Bush were blackballed. Or when people who opposed the DOMA were accused of being anti-Christian. Or all the bullshit about Vietnam vets getting spit on (it never happened, but it's still accepted as conventional wisdom that it did.) People have gotten threatened and fired from their jobs for supporting gun control - why no outrage about that? People who are pro-choice still get accused of being baby-killers. Where's the outrage about that from the frozen peach lover community?
Being accused of being a traitor to America or to Christianity for holding leftist political beliefs has been the social norm since the 1950's in this country. I wish people would quit acting like some 13 year old liberals on Tumblr started this shit.
Suggested Reading:
Liberal Fascism, by Jonah Goldberg
Deliver Us from Evil: Defeating Terrorism, Despotism, and Liberalism, by Sean Hannity
The Crucible, by Arthur Miller
Literally any post on Breitbart, ever.
There is a clear difference between debating political views and witch hunting though.
People are having to write public apologies for having their own views or engaging in free speech
So would you see a boycott as a "witch hunt"? After all, the point is to force an organization, or its leaders, to disavow opinions or positions. Do people not have the right to collectively speak in that fashion?
Because ultimately that's what these "witch hunts" people wring their hands about boil down to: organized action by people who disagree.
What's worse is that while trying to cloak yourself in "free speech", you're really making an argument that is virulently hateful to it. The only way not to have the "witch hunts" you're so terrified of is to stifle speech. The only way not to have people pressured into public apologies is to stifle speech. You cannot have "free speech" and not have the potential for consequences in the form of large numbers of people disagreeing with or disassociating from you. What you really seem to want is a freedom of first speech -- in other words, someone who speaks first gets a special privilege of never having to deal with people disagreeing, or consequences of the general public's views of their speech. And if that is what you want, you should stop calling it "free speech" and start calling it "privileged special protection for certain speakers", since that's what it would actually be.
I think the major issue is polarization and stereotyping. You cannot have a sensible discussion without being labeled this or that. You cannot agree/disagree with anything anyone says or you'll be labeled that person's "supporter" or "hater".
Yes, and the fact that we use the term "Hitler" and "Nazi" with little to no discretion. The terms are virtually meaningless now. So many people in my social circle used these words to describe Luckey, yet I do not see Luckey participating in genocide.
Is it fair to reduce Hitler and the Nazis to just the mass genocides they perpetrated? You talk about the terms becoming meaningless, yet that was the the only thing they did.
For many years they were campaigning to make Germany great again, as other countries were taking advantage of them and some elements in their country were intentionally making bad deals. Plus obviously the people who weren't real Germans were a problem that needed to be dealt with. They wanted to build up the army and built strong links between large corporations and the government.
So maybe it's okay to call people who do things like that Nazis?
No, they have every right to do that - that is part of free discussion. But something does not sit quite right when we see people having to issue public apologies for supporting a political group. Its not like Hilary or Sanders supporters at Facebook/Oculus where ever expected to do something like that. Thats a clear signal that one side is being persecuted for their views. Another way of putting it - we should attack political ideologies, not the individuals who carry them.
> No, they have every right to do that - that is part of free discussion. But something does not sit quite right when we see people having to issue public apologies for supporting a political group. Its not like Hilary or Sanders supporters at Facebook/Oculus where ever expected to do something like that.
Mmm, surely you think there's a line somewhere, right? Hypothetically, if a business owner used their profits to fund people committing genocide in Africa, you would find that objectionable, boycott that business, and demand an apology, yes? If so, then you draw the line at least at supporting genocide.
Others draw the line elsewhere. Supporting the Republican party in 2017 means supporting minority disenfranchisement, supporting open racism against and profiling of people of Hispanic and Middle Eastern descent, supporting poor health outcomes for people who aren't wealthy, supporting the undermining of our democracy through a blatant disregard for reality, and a list of other atrocities of varying magnitudes depending on who you ask. The same cannot be said for Democrats.
I think it's reasonable for many people to draw their lines at that point, and demand an apology from business leaders who support Republicans. I also think it's reasonable for you to draw your line elsewhere, and to debate in favor of your line. But I think it's crazy to claim that there is no line that a person may cross that should expel them from our modern society.
No, they have every right to do that - that is part of free discussion. But something does not sit quite right...
I just deleted a lengthy post rebutting you, because I realized that quoting this is all I need. You profess to support free speech, but you do not. That's all there is.
Is it? I'm not seeing how it's anti-free-speech to find concerning the deployment of intimidation and blackballing tactics to suppress political expression.
I walked by a "free-speech" rally the last time I visited your country. It was mostly a bunch of poor people who seemed in serious need of doctors, tailors, and dentists, yelling at "antifa" protestors and telling them to shut-up.
This word, I do not think it means what you think it means.
Nope, sorry. This isn't a witch hunt on people who do not share my views. It is a witch hunt on a man unfit to hold the office, with detestable views, not just ones I don't share.
I don't know why people can't see that Trump is an entirely different situation than the usual "damn my party lost".
Trump is not afraid of saying controversial things or making statements which do not mirror the currently understood facts. That much is known. There is probably a legal definition for what would make the president unfit to serve and it likely does not apply to Trump.
Nobody expects the president to be a genius military strategist, a certified priest, a renowned scientist, a master economist or whatever else. What people do expect is that he seeks out those he trusts most to offer opinions, data and interpretations of data to allow him to make informed decisions he deems best for the country.
To some extent, I think many of his whimsical views are irrelevant and are simply highlighted by media for profitability while others are perhaps overinflated relative to their original form. His actions are all that really matter and the media is covering him so studiously that if he does something truly horrid then it's unlikely to squeak by.
Having said that, there is a very serious danger that the media may have cried wolf too many times and the public may not pay as much attention if they have to cry wolf for real. They've overinflated and misrepresented many issues in every attempt to depopularize or delegitimize Trump, that they may have destroyed some of their potential as an alarm bell service.
A couple years ago if you were to put out a truly fair unbiased survey across the country which asked about the border wall or immigration from that list of countries without trying to force racial or religious interpretations, the results might be surprising in retrospect. After these things became super-topics thrust into the light of the campaign, the media machine went into full swing to convince people that everything about them was horrible.
Many people didn't even know they should have strong opinions about these and if Obama had done them (perhaps more smoothly), it might have just been another day. The trend out there is not to properly inform people on topics, but to instill anger. To some degree, Trump won on that emotional vote by using the same tactics.
What people have felt is that the government was not representing them and a candidate appeared that showed every indication of fighting an uphill battle where both parties and the media were against him. Saying a few unpopular things was not considered enough to be damning, especially when the media had thrown a lot of its credibility out by passing a certain threshold for bias which may have hurt their influence on shaping public opinion.
Now, part of what is keeping all of the controversy alive is that many people feel that Trump is being judged as guilty until proven innocent while at the same time there is parallel information (both fake news and legitimate) that offers reasonable doubt.
There was a time when news and scientific papers were trusted by default, but trust has been sacrificed for agendas and personal or corporate gain. It was never a good thing that they were trusted by default, but it was good that they were less opinion oriented. Now the burden has been placed back on the individual to do their own research, but many do not have the time or are not equipped to do research and the internet offers many counter-productive shortcuts.
I'm not a particularly politically invested person and I completely opt-out of the process. No voting, no donating, no activism, etc. It is however good to see that more people have gained interest in that process, despite how juvenile it may seem on both sides.
I don't know if any of that satisfies your curiosity, but I apologize for it being lengthy. It's easy to give in to the doomsaying that's popular right now, but I don't think Trump even measures on the chart of things to worry about over the next 100-200 years. Technically I guess that's also considered doomsaying. :) Doomed if we do, doomed if we don't.
As a भारतीय I'm amused by the whole Trump thing- it looks to me that anything Trump touches, media immediately takes the opposite side. Amused because we were rules by a political dynasty for 50 years and when pro-development govt. took over, they faced similar resistance. So much so that when the govt wants to abolish Triple talaq, the media is pro-triple-talaq. For those who don't know what it is- it's a practise where a muslim man only has to say talaq thrice to irrevokably divorce his wife.
I don't know Trump much but the parallels are amazing. I know our media is bought and paid for by vested interests but such a thing in the US would be unimaginable for me. And then again, your media all saw proofs of WMD in Iraq.
> And then again, your media all saw proofs of WMD in Iraq
I'm an American and maybe completely out of the loop but I never saw any news report that WMD was discovered in Iraq. I'm guessing it may have been circulated online but the news I watched never reported it from my memory.
Maybe it was downplayed in America but it was a massive part of the UK participating in the war and eventually went on to be a big scandal after David Kelly's death https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hutton_Inquiry
What? It was the Bush administration who acted on intelligence that they later admitted was "the best they had" but inaccurate. Condoleezza Rice spoke many times about this in the aftermath.
Laying WMDs in Iraq at the feet of the media, as if they could influence our military's action, is ridiculous.
The media played a pivotal role in garnering enough public opinion to support the move. The administration needed the appearance of public support for the invasion, especially since international support was lacking. Of course the military can do whatever they want, as they have throughout history. But history also shows that invasions are usually preceded by public relations campaigns to convince the public it's a good idea.
I just googled WMDs Iraq and NYT and was surprised to see an article in 2014 about 'confirming' WMDs in Iraq [1]. I never read this story before and don't know how widespread it was (I'm not a huge news junky but generally watch news several times/week and read online occasionally).
There was a study published in 2005 showing that a huge majority of americans (and australians/germans) did not believe WMDs were found in Iraq[2]. I do wonder how the numbers changed after the 2014 article by the NYT.
Do notice that the article doesn't claim they found any evidence of active development or use WMDs, which is what the USA claimed as a justification for the invasion. All they found were abandoned chemical weapons from the 80s. Everyone already knew that Iraq used chemical weapons back then, so the only new discovery was that the remaining weapons had just been abandoned instead of properly destroyed.
There is a certain amount of knee-jerk reaction and each situation should ideally be judged on its own individual merits, but this is also Trump we're talking about. It's been a pretty accurate heuristic so far to say that any idea that comes out of his head is more likely to be a bad one than a good one.
There is a robust amount of media that pretty much cheers everything Trump does (Fox News, a bunch of online news operations).
CNN has a bunch of people they pay to come say how great Trump is. That sounds sarcastic, but they really do have several paid commentators that will work backwards and find anything to justify anything.
As an engineer there are certain things I refuse to work on. Anything to do with weapons, immigration, gambling. The list is ever evolving...
We can chose to work in these fields, we can choose not to. There will be engineers who have to do things to get a pay check, to feed their families. I don't begrudge that.
However it is up to each of us who understand the technology to ensure that we vote and support the best political representatives who understand when it is morally correct to best implement such advances.
This is about border cameras, sure, just as much as border patrol is about borders. It's not uncommon for border patrol to set up checkpoints two or three hundred miles from the border just to shake down people for identification (Papers, please!).
Today's border cameras are liable to be deployed all over in the future. Watch what you build because it's very hard to un-build things.
The farther I know is Sarita TX and one along I-10 some where in AZ (been through both), they are not two hundred miles inside, even though Sarita TX is about 80 miles from border. Would really appreciate if you can point one check post that is 200 miles inland from border?
I'm not sure if the 100 mile thing is a new convention or not (https://www.aclu.org/other/constitution-100-mile-border-zone) but it's 100 miles from the border as the crow flies, not via highways. That means the entire state of Vermont is somehow inside that zone.
I think the 200 mile figure that was reported, though I can't find the citation, involved the driving distance. Vermont, for example, is 159 miles end to end, and somehow the southern tip is in the border zone.
What if they decide this entire zone is worth putting up cameras in? What if that software that recognizes "illegals" is so bad that it simply tags anyone who looks vaguely Mexican? These systems are only as good as their data, and the data is astonishingly thin in areas where it counts.
> Would really appreciate if you can point one check post that is 200 miles inland from border?
The overwhelming majority of the country lives within 200 miles of a border (since ocean borders count as borders). 66% of the country lives within only 100 miles of the border.
So even if you're talking about something that "only" applies to the 200 mile region, you're still talking about something that applies to the vast majority of people actually living here.
"Build the wall" is not merely about enforcing border crossings. It's a political rallying call to scapegoat undocumented immigrants.
He's developing a technological alternative to "full-scale border walls." He also explicitly positions it as a "defense" technology to protect citizens from threats. A substantial amount of the money to be made here is made possible by anti-immigrant hysteria.
This is easy to say when you're from an island-nation. The few non-island nations without border control are all third-world hell holes with major terrorism problems.
What happened to the EU? Is it not also made of 'non-island nations without border control'? Sure, it has external borders — but only around a whole continent.
The majority of terrorists are second and third generation immigrants. Border control or travel bans won't stop them as they already here and would not have prevented all terroristic attacks.
Trump's travel ban or lidar-based border control wouldn't even have prevented 9/11 as most came from a country that is of economic importance.
Maybe Luckey can sell its technology to Saudia Arabia and Trump can then boast of the big money deals he made. In the mean time SA can fund European mosque's that calls not to integrate, to resist western society/ideals or democracy. That is big part of the problem.
I don't believe for one bit that this has to do with "security" or "keeping troops save". There are easier things you can do that would improve that.
Changing work can be costly, risky, difficult and just plain annoying. It may have negative consequences for the family and for your CV (imagine leaving your job soon after you realize what you _really_ are working on... and then again... and then being asked in an interview about that). These are all reasons enough to stop some people from simply changing a job once they realize it's not what they want to work on. Because oftentimes you don't know how you respond to something until you're in it.
And your morals involve insecure borders? No one's getting deported.
The implication of your argument is that cameras make borders more secure and therefore it's a good idea to have them. Cameras obviously don't stop people crossing a border physically like a wall would, so the only possible way they'll improve security is by providing evidence of who crossed. Your assertion that "No one's getting deported" is obviously wrong - if that were the case there'd be no need to have the cameras in the first place.
Deportations are happening at a rapid pace. No, the cameras may not be part of the current deportation / ICE frenzy, but working on them would put the engineer on the side of the Immigration establishment. From that point of view, it's a moral choice even if the specific object in question, a camera, is not immoral on its own.
I can deeply respect anyone who would refuse to aid the current government's immigration policies in any way, and I would refuse to do so myself.
My only rule is that I won't work on stuff that makes the world a worse place. I don't have to work on something that necessarily makes the world a better place, just not actively make it worse. It rules out a surprising number of jobs.
In general I think people very rarely do work they honestly believe makes the world a worse place. That rule you have is probably implicitly or explicitly shared by the majority of people. They just happen to disagree with you on which things make the world worse.
Can someone explain the apparent cognitive dissonance of popular HN opinion which seems to be:
1) Working on US border security is bad.
2) US Soldiers are good. Even though their job is ultimately for border security and border security in other countries.
Is it that they see the idea of a defensive military as good and tolerate it doing any amount of bad as long as it might also do good too? Are they following the Nuremberg defense of soldiers not being accountable for their actions as long as they're following orders?
Does 1) extend to other countries? Is border security for, say, Nigeria a bad thing? Or is it a good thing if it's enforced by Nigerian soldiers and bad if it's enforced by more efficient technology?
Working on border security because you want to keep armed groups out is perfectly reasonable and admirable, working on border security because you want to keep poor and terrified people fleeing armed groups out is pretty detestable. Unfortunately, I don't believe the current U.S. administration makes that distinction (and it is very arguable whether the U.S. military abroad, or even the U.N. peace-keepers do, but that's another story).
When the institutional reaction to a reporter fleeing death threats from agents of his government, by voluntarily surrendering at your border and asking for asylum, is to lock him up, then I can see reasons to criticize those working to empower said institutions (https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/worldviews/wp/2017/04/07...).
Also amusing is to observe the HN/SV attitude towards skilled immigration vs otherwise.
When President Trump issued an Executive Order banning immigrants from seven countries, over 100 tech companies showed up at the courts opposing the move. But support for skilled immigration - i.e. immigrants working at these tech companies - is scant. For instance, so far only Microsoft [2] has come forward to support legislation fixing systemic discrimination against skilled immigrants from the most populous countries.
Sure, the firms are free to choose the causes they support. But it sounds hollow when they are blind to plight of their own employees who they come across every day, but are able to manufacture anguish for others they often have very little contact.
They have been arguing for increasing the number of H1Bs. But when those H1Bs arrive in the country, work for their employers and then apply for permanent residentship, most of them - those from populous countries - are faced with wait times that last decades.
Note that I was talking about relief for current employees of these tech companies. Please direct me to evidence supporting massive support for this cause from tech companies.
I'm not really sure I understand your point. What you are saying is that companies:
1) Lobby to increase H1B caps
2) Once they are here they "don't do anything" to help them get permanent residency
I think you are conflating two very different things: Valley companies were very vocal about refugees not being allowed into the country, which has little (arguably nothing) to do with H1B immigration. Most people coming on H1Bs aren't fleeing a war zone or at risk of death.
While waiting times for extremely populous countries (i.e. China and India) can be very long, that's because of the way immigration quotas for citizenship/permanent residency are setup, and has nothing to do with the employer/employee relationship that is in the company's interest.
What, exactly, do you expect companies to do besides providing a job? What would be your proposal?
What, exactly, do you expect companies to do besides providing a job? What would be your proposal?
My proposal would be for companies to use their lobbying muscle to try pass legislation that would put a stop to the systemic racial discrimination embodied in the current legal immigration laws. It is no longer called "XYZ Exclusion Act of NNN" but that is what it boils down to, in practice. See Microsoft's stance I linked to in the comment you replied to originally. More of the same is what I expect from Valley companies who benefit immensely from the labor of immigrants.
Instead these companies choose to use their influence to speak for allowing more refugees into the country, protecting illegal immigrants etc. This comes out as hollow to me. If these companies really cared for immigration issues, there are issues much closer to home.
It needn't be this or that. But, the fact that organizations like FWD.us etc are completely silent about legal immigration issues makes one wonder about their true intentions.
Executive Order 13769 lowered the number of refugees to be admitted
into the United States in 2017 to 50,000, suspended the U.S. Refugee
Admissions Program (USRAP) for 120 days, suspended the entry of Syrian
refugees indefinitely, directed some cabinet secretaries to suspend entry
of those whose countries do not meet adjudication standards under U.S.
immigration law for 90 days, and included exceptions on a case-by-case
basis. Homeland Security lists these countries as Iran, Iraq, Libya,
Somalia, Sudan, Syria, and Yemen.
I recall people with valid green cards having issues getting back into the country under the original EO. Even people with (e.g.) Canadian citizenship that were born in said countries were having issues... or people born in Canada whose parents were originally from those countries.
I don't think that the distinction is as narrow as you think that it is.
The impression i get is that soldiers (along with firemen and police, dunno so much about EMS) gets praise because they willingly put themselves in harms way.
At the other end, border patrol is seen as an extension of the surveillance state.
I have a lot of sympathy for both current and former members of the US armed forces.
Current members, because I grew up in a part of the country ideal for military recruiting: poor overall education, weak economy, and for many people enlisting is the only way they can see to escape from it. It's not direct conscription, but in terms of the genuine choices available it's often pretty close. And for "choices" that are partly or heavily coerced I'm much less judgmental.
Former members, because many of them signed up for the reasons outlined above, and now are treated horribly.
Is there anyone seriously so idiotic as to take the first position? May be I don't follow US politics that much, but I always thought that this position is either a strawman or sarcasm.
Idealistic, maybe, but not idiotic. I think reasons for thinking that "working on border security is bad" include:
1) The desire for a "free and open" world, especially without much first-hand experience of the immediate downsides of that.
2) That technologies in this space also directly enable police-state situations, and there are reasons to believe that this is a risk in the future.
3) A privacy-driven dislike for surveillance -- sure, you know who I am when I go through passport control, but I don't want to be tracked in more detail than that.
4) Our existing border security is reasonably functional, and there are better ways to spend the time & money. (Especially as pertains the arguably excessive "border wall".)
This article is pretty strange. It opens with
"...he was quietly ousted from Facebook after a $100,000 donation to a pro-Trump ‘shitposting’ group came to light."
However, the linked article doesn't say that. It says he gave $100,000 to Trump's inauguration. The linked article also references figures like "Microsoft, which donated $500,00", "Qualcomm, which donated $1,000,000". In fact, the article's title makes this clear: "...donated $100,000 to Trump’s inauguration"
How could a "reporter" and his editor be so confused that they completely misinterpret another article hosted on their own site? More importantly, why is this trash on Hacker News?
Yeah, the article confuses some basic details. The "shitposting group" that Palmer Luckey gave money to is called Nimble America. Palmer Luckey reportedly gave $10,000 to that group, not $100,000. Due to the inflammatory nature of the group, there was a controversy last September on exactly how much Palmer was directly involved. This is all easily Google-searchable.
I can see this being on Hacker News due to the technology connection. It would have been better to find a more neutral / factual article, perhaps. Maybe the BBC version? (http://www.bbc.com/news/technology-40158899)
The article pretty much comes out the gate with bias and agenda, now days that passes as journalism. I also find this habit of using allegations as proof really frustrating. I agree, it's disappointing to see garbage like this posted on Hacker News.
Good for him. He could've been still developing VR if the left didn't do everything in their power to ostracize him for the crime of supporting the winning presidential candidate.
Besides, there's something better to learn here: the surveillance state will always find willing people to work on technologies that can potentially be used to oppress populations. Luckey is enormously wealthy by world (and HN) standards -- he has "fuck you money" that so many on this board are searching for -- so you can't say he's out building this stuff to pay the bills, to feed his family, et cetera. He's out building this stuff because he is a paladin for this cause, regardless of whether or not you find it detestable.