Earlier quoted context omitted.
Anyone here in NYC that wants to meet up? Any cool hacket events here?
Have you considered getting a life instead of soliciting one from strangers on the Internet?
Who pissed in your Soylent today?
A Pentagon-funded contest spawned many of today’s self-driving startups
71–80 of 99 posts
Re: A Pentagon-funded contest spawned many of today’s self-driving startups
#72Earlier quoted context omitted.
What is the solution? I would rather have automated drone armies in the hands of the US government than anyone else. The same could be said of the atomic bomb. A weapon made purely for mass scale indiscriminate destruction of humanity. But if not us, then who would we trust to develop such a technology?
"What is the solution? I would rather have automated drone armies in the hands of the US government than anyone else" Wow
Someone will have them. Who do you want it to be?
Re: A Pentagon-funded contest spawned many of today’s self-driving startups
#73Earlier quoted context omitted.
"What is the solution? I would rather have automated drone armies in the hands of the US government than anyone else" Wow
Someone will have them. Who do you want it to be?
Ideally distributed enough so that the US government couldn't run roughshod over anyone it pleased.
Re: A Pentagon-funded contest spawned many of today’s self-driving startups
#74I would argue that the 2004 DARPA challenge was a failure with the best car, Sandstorm, only going 7 miles before getting stuck on a rock. That led to a do-over in 2005 that was really the first success. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DARPA_Grand_Challenge#2004_Gra...
I would argue that no one who has commented in this thread so far has actually read the article.
Ha, yes it's especially obvious in this case since the HN-chosen title is opposite the general flow of the article.
I think people would be more likely to read the bulk of articles if they actually followed the inverted pyramid structure. Instead, nearly every one begins with a meandering human-interest story to draw the reader in.
Whatever happened to those proposals to annotate the web?
Re: A Pentagon-funded contest spawned many of today’s self-driving startups
#75Earlier quoted context omitted.
Permit my inquiry but whenever i see comments like this, I can't help but think that your main reason for believing in this train of thought is majorly because the negative effects of U.s military industrial complex has pretty much never affected you. because if you were perhaps an Arab who watched his/her home town bombed to shit by a us drone and had the us write off the human casualties that resulted there in from…
I am American, and I hear this from Americans all the time. The reality is far different, though. Does the Russian military perform more humanely in war than the US military? I don't think so. Would the Chinese? Things like My Lai and Abu Ghraib are the exception with the US military, not the rule. I obviously don't want any single powerful entity to have access to this technology, but I can see the reality of it, wh…
I imagine knowledge over whether those are the exception or the rule for the US military is classified. they don't have to tell you when they've been doing evil
Re: A Pentagon-funded contest spawned many of today’s self-driving startups
#76Keeping up with Darpa's challenges is a good way to see into the future a couple of their current projects: 1) A machine-learning competition to overcome scarcity in the radio frequency which is INSANELY fascinating and, if they pull it off, hugely impactful -> https://spectrumcollaborationchallenge.com 2) A program to build technology to drive “swarm sprint” exercises to inform tactics and technologies for large gro…
The technologies that will be developed in #2 will be absolutely, unquestionably used by governments to repress their own people.
Most technology since the plough has eventually accelerated the consolidation of power of institutions over individuals.
Re: A Pentagon-funded contest spawned many of today’s self-driving startups
#77Ahhh DARPA, that state controlled, taxpayer funded, centrally planned bedrock of free market capitalism.
Even if the government entity is taxpayer funded and centrally planned, this is a competition structured like a market. They set out a bid (the winning amount for the goal) and people can compete however they see fit and spend what they want.
Similarly, the Army doing RFPs to buy a bunch of toilets is still a free market to compete in as a toilet supplier.
Re: A Pentagon-funded contest spawned many of today’s self-driving startups
#78It certainly seems to validate the strategy of "grand challenges" to focus research. One could argue that the X prize helped spawn today's commercial space companies. So does this mean a good way for benevolent billionaires to improve the world would be to sponsor things like this? Certainly Gate's sponsoring the toilets prize was influential in bringing out better sanitation ideas. I wonder if anyone would sponsor a…
>One could argue that the X prize helped spawn today's commercial space companies. That'd be a stretch. The Ansari X Prize led to a bunch of companies pursuing a goal with little commercial value and few designs with orbital aspirations. The winner led to a costly, dead-end design that has still yet to fly again for suborbital tourism, killed four people along the way, and will never service orbit. The rest of the co…
Sanders proposed a prize system for pharmaceuticals. It's an interesting alternative to patents for rewarding innovation in that space particularly, which is entirely patent dependent.
Re: A Pentagon-funded contest spawned many of today’s self-driving startups
#79Earlier quoted context omitted.
> The technologies that will be developed in #2 will be absolutely, unquestionably used by governments to repress their own people One can go to the dawn of self-driving cars, the Internet, really any potentially game-changing technology, and throw this out. It's an inconsequential assertion that provokes no follow-on thought. Just emotion. Graduating this seed from FUD to a chain of critical thought involves asking…
Anyone who thinks deeply on the ramifications of the computer and related technology should come to the conclusion that they will inevitably lead to the destruction of individual liberty and total subjugation or annihilation of a significant portion of humanity. This is not gunpowder, the printing press, or the cotton gin and to compare them you're either naive or being disingenuous. There is little hope for us to de…
I think that's a very pessimistic view of the world. So far technology empowered as much as it destroyed individual liberties. There is still hope. With the upcoming decentralized technologies, I hope that the power returns to individuals again.
Re: A Pentagon-funded contest spawned many of today’s self-driving startups
#80Earlier quoted context omitted.
Anyone who thinks deeply on the ramifications of the computer and related technology should come to the conclusion that they will inevitably lead to the destruction of individual liberty and total subjugation or annihilation of a significant portion of humanity. This is not gunpowder, the printing press, or the cotton gin and to compare them you're either naive or being disingenuous. There is little hope for us to de…
What is the solution? I would rather have automated drone armies in the hands of the US government than anyone else. The same could be said of the atomic bomb. A weapon made purely for mass scale indiscriminate destruction of humanity. But if not us, then who would we trust to develop such a technology?
The British, Russians and French have these weapons and have never used them. The South Africans developed them and gave them up. The Israelis probably have them but don’t admit to it.
Of these people, only the Americans have used them, and they used them on population centers.
I’m not taking a position on whether this was right or wrong. I’m just pointing out that you are trusting the only government that has ever killed thousands with these weapons and distrusting several governments that have not.