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U.S. Army, Uber sign research agreement

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Re: U.S. Army, Uber sign research agreement

#111

Post by RealityVoid »

dao- wrote: post #35
RealityVoid wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think your comment is a little bit unfair seeing as only a very very small subset of those ~74.000 employees work for the "military industrial complex" and even that on a subset of the problem that is not directly aimed at killing people.

I don't understand how you're trying to spin this. If you only want to look at the people working directly on military projects (a restriction that I'm not sure makes sense in the first place), the number of people who signed the petition and resigned from Google will also go down. How exactly does this back Bobbleoxs' comment?

I think saying I want to "spin" something implies I have some sort of ulterior motive for doing so and only care about projecting am image, not about the truth. I can assure you, that is not so, I simply think Google, overall, has managed to be a good influence on the world. I might be wrong, but my opinion comes from honest belief. Assuming otherwise poisons the conversation.

What I was trying to highlight is that the rapport between the involvement in military research and the amount of revolt stemming from it is quite small, ergo the reaction is not quite a drop in the bucket but quite strong, looking at what prompted it.

Re: U.S. Army, Uber sign research agreement

#112

Post by calcifer »

jonknee wrote: post #83
calcifer wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I also talked about flying cars before, how is that "experience"?

Do you have people on staff working on building flying cars? If so you too can probably match the government for $500,000 and research the topic.

> Do you have people on staff working on building flying cars?

Does Uber? They sure talk about things a lot and yet, there is very little - if any - proof of them doing actual work on "flying cars".

I'm inclined to agree with other comments that this is mostly a PR stunt for Uber.

Re: U.S. Army, Uber sign research agreement

#113

Post by malandrew »

calcifer wrote: post #112
jonknee wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you have people on staff working on building flying cars? If so you too can probably match the government for $500,000 and research the topic.

> Do you have people on staff working on building flying cars? Does Uber? They sure talk about things a lot and yet, there is very little - if any - proof of them doing actual work on "flying cars". I'm inclined to agree with other comments that this is mostly a PR stunt for Uber.

UberElevate Summit Videos:

Part 1: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rWvQuk0_xjs

Part 2: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5uELtDHITGo

You can see that they do have people actually working on various important aspects of urban aviation.

Re: U.S. Army, Uber sign research agreement

#114

Post by imglorp »

baddox wrote: post #104
imglorp wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it's about loosing a rotor, not net torque. You need to keep the roll and pitch stable in an outage. Like that hexapod in the above link, if you lose one prop/motor/controller, you can increase power to other unit in the stack and decrease power to all the others, maintaining your stability while you descend and look for an emergency landing spot.

Right, but if both of your rotors are spinning the same direction, you have net torque under normal operation.

Only from the one pod. In all these multirotor deals, there will be other pods to make a net zero torque: not necessarily all the same pod to cancel itself out.

Re: U.S. Army, Uber sign research agreement

#115

Post by fiiv »

frockington wrote: post #67
fiiv wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think this is definitely true. There are many countries in the world that are looking for an excuse to turn public opinion against Uber, and having the US Army as a partner is definitely a good way to do that.

And then they can also scrap all of the planes, space programs, tor networks, telephones and just about every other modern technology that the US Military has in someway funded

The way this tends to work is not rational, it's reactionary and often punitive. It doesn't matter if product X also was partially funded by US Army, if regulators don't like Uber, this is yet another thing to create that argument with.

Re: U.S. Army, Uber sign research agreement

#116

Post by doktrin »

nightcracker wrote: post #45
doktrin wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> ~12 Google employees resigned. Out of ~4,000 signers to the petition. Out of ~74,000 total employees. > 5.6% of staff signed a petition and 1.6% resigned. 1.6% would be almost 12,000, not 12. I'm not familiar with this case but a quick search corroborated that it was a dozen employees that walked out.

1.6% of 74000 is approx 1200, not 12000.

Actually it's 120

Re: U.S. Army, Uber sign research agreement

#117

Post by assblaster »

soperj wrote: post #100
d0lph wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

More like coerced, there is no option.

Vote for someone else? If people actually care, and it seems a great number do, it is possible to actually do something.

Defense of the United States is required by the US Constitution. Defense requires military spending. Military spending is money given to the military itself as well as arms produced by non military companies and contractors.

The military industrial complex is, essentially, a mandatory relationship, though with significant problems leading to inefficiency and poor management decisions.

The way to fix this is through reform. It could be argued that the election of a private citizen with no government experience however significant experience in the private sector is evidence of actual voting in for change in the military leadership. Whether this translates to actual long term efficiency is yet to be seen.

Re: U.S. Army, Uber sign research agreement

#118

Post by SahAssar »

d0lph wrote: post #101
soperj wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Vote for someone else? If people actually care, and it seems a great number do, it is possible to actually do something.

Not in a two party system. Voting for anyone that deviates from the status quo is throwing away your vote.

It's throwing away your vote until it isn't. As recent as 1992 a third candidate got above 18%, and led in the polls just a few months before the election.

Either way, voting for reformist candidates (for either way you support) in senate, house and local elections goes a long way.

Re: U.S. Army, Uber sign research agreement

#119

Post by SahAssar »

praneshp wrote: post #93
criticalpotato wrote: post #21

Or would it be time to give up on Uber and finally admit that they're neither a technology company nor anything else "groundbreaking" that Valley thinks they are. "Technology" for the company has been coming up with a mobile app to connect drivers and potential customers - something hardly groundbreaking. Probably the most groundbreaking technological thing coming from these guys has been the multiple evasion softwar…

> "Technology" for the company has been coming up with a mobile app to connect drivers and potential customers - something hardly groundbreaking https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16887276

Making a more precise geolocation feature does not make them anything more than "a mobile app to connect drivers and potential customers". Perhaps a well made one (with fancy geolocation like in that article), but not more.

Re: U.S. Army, Uber sign research agreement

#120

Post by killjoywashere »

rsp1984 wrote: post #110
killjoywashere wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have done multiple CRADAs and frankly believe they are the most underutilized tool in the tech industry, they're the intellectual equivalent of buying mining rights for $5/acre. The government has staggeringly interesting problems that need solving and sole access to some very interesting data, which they will happily share as long as you bring your own pick-axe and shovel. Go to federallabs.org and start shopping.…

This sounds super interesting but my knowledge in this area is too limited to fully get what you're saying. they're the intellectual equivalent of buying mining rights for $5/acre ... The key is prospecting. You want to look around, get a good idea of how big a particular reserve is, and go for something big. Could you elaborate on this a little or give an example? As far as I understand CRADA is "cooperative R&D", s…

> So if the govt already gets a license to the patents, and the tech has been developed with defense purposes in mind, how am I going to profit as a private company?

Let's break that down a bit...

So the government has patent rights. They'd have to exercise them, which requires product development. Are you aware of the government selling many widgets to citizens? They sell road maintenance, insurance, and security services. But they don't really sell citizens "things".

Companies are savvy. If the government approached you and said "we have this patented tech, we want you to use it in this widget", now that you know about CRADAs, wouldn't you be a bit worried about a lawsuit from the other people who have rights on that patent?

Further, without commercialization, the government has rights on that one thing. They don't have rights on version 2, or even version 1.1.

You mention defense. Why? Are you in the defense business? Dept of Transportation might be better for self-driving cars. DoE or NIST might be better high tech partners. USDA or FDA if your in the food space. Etc.

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