451–460 of 516 posts
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God dammit, I knew my open source game framework was going to be used for nefarious purposes, how could I have been so short sighted?
Just kill yourself now.
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So every other country is some tiny 3rd world nation? You do realize there are major superpowers that are currently kept at bay through the promise of force? Or do you think they’re just being nice?
You do realize there are major superpowers that are currently kept at bay through the promise of force? Do you think they are deterred by observing American success in the ground campaigns it keeps losing or by the nuclear arsenal?
Let's not conflate foreign policy and politics with military might. Things can go wrong from bad leadership regardless of what powers are at command, but those powers at the same time guarantee a certain level of safety and capability on behalf of the nation's interests. I don't see how you can deny that with any sense of reality.
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Yeah, this is an incredibly unordinary talking point and it's not honest. At the very least it's just troll bait. "I hope your org gets sued." For what, not hiring crazy racist people? It's okay to call a spade a spade, instead of trying to masquerade these "differences" as some kind of valid, constructive view point. It's incredibly politically correct and it's annoying. The chances of you actually being a good, int…
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It's not that black and white. Working on missile guidance? Then I can see your point of view... but everything else in some way facilitates or contributes to facilitating such things. One can rapidly reduce it to "fixing a Linux bug... facilitates the military industrial complex". You might wish to not work on things that directly are used by the military, but the vast majority of technology is indirectly used becau…
I am not trying to over-simplify, but should I stop buying goods and services because the taxes taken on these transactions benefit the military? The dividing line varies from person to person, of course. I think most would agree that improving a guidance algorithm for missile targeting is directly supporting the military. Fixing a kernel bug is not directly supporting the military. I'm a pacifist and I would go by m…
These employees are free to exercise their right to (not) work for whomever they want, but the certainty they express (as well as most commenters here) in their own self-righteousness seems misplaced to me. There's certainly a case to be made that a strong US military is in the world's best interest. In fact, I would wager that a majority of Americans (and a majority of citizens of democratic countries across the wor…
Which society does have that lien, the one I left behind that fully payed for my education (although almost everything I know about computers I learned on my own) or the one hosting the company I happen to work for right now? What about some years in the future when I move to another company/country?
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Lemme just underline this. Google engineers come from all over the world, and Google products are built to serve people all over the world. The Googlers opposed to Maven believe that building software that enables one government to enact (more) drone strikes against civilians in other countries is contrary to the mission of making people's lives better. Preemptive lazy answers for lazy replies: Companies only exist t…
> Maven believe that building software that enables one government to enact (more) drone strikes against civilians in other countries is contrary to the mission of making people's lives better. I think that's a mischaracterization that's important to correct in the name of accuracy: https://www.nytimes.com/2018/05/30/technology/google-project... : > The polarized debate about Google and the military may leave out som…
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Yeah, this is an incredibly unordinary talking point and it's not honest. At the very least it's just troll bait. "I hope your org gets sued." For what, not hiring crazy racist people? It's okay to call a spade a spade, instead of trying to masquerade these "differences" as some kind of valid, constructive view point. It's incredibly politically correct and it's annoying. The chances of you actually being a good, int…
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Militaries don't create good results, they only remove impediments to good results. You can't grow an economy by bombing infrastructure and killing people. Where your analysis is incomplete is that military might is not the only reason that people will avoid fighting. A strong military is a negative incentive ("I might lose or die"), but there are plenty of positive incentives for nations to avoid warfare. In fact, i…
> In fact, international relations tend to be dominated by positive incentives, which is why "cheeseburger diplomacy" is such a reliable concept “Cheeseburger diplomacy” is not a reliable concept, either the Obama practice to which the media gave the name or Friedman's McDonald's peace theory, which makes more sense in the context of your comment.
That was just an example, though. My main point is that the peoples and nations of the world, given the opportunity, overwhelmingly prefer to pursue relationships of peaceful mutual benefit, rather than military threat. The purpose of a military is merely to preserve or restore that opportunity.
The notion that trade has a negative correlation with war is a well-accepted concept in international relations, and one of the reasons national governments exert themselves to grow international economic relationships.
I'm confused. When engineers from a company who deals with the military (or some other ethically objectionably client) don't refuse to work on these projects, HN questions their values and urges them to make a stand, refuse, find another job if necessary, etc. When the engineers do refuse, HN criticises them for beign self-righteous, virtue-signalling, and unpatriotic because countries with a lower ethical bar (Russi…
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Google is at this point not just some US company, but a multi-national one. I'm not a US citizen, so for me the US having a strong military isn't necessarily in my best interests, depending on circumstance. So what stops me, as a Google customer (which I am), to stop doing business with them, given that I see proof after proof that they are working against my interests? This is the same problem as with the Snowden le…
Sorry to rain on your parade Google is a "US" company - just because its sets up in Europe to get access to cheap labour and as a lobbying tool "look we employ x people in your country" - doesn't make any difference. Eu companies do the same German pro union at home hire dodgy American union busters in the UK for example
Arguing that Google owes special allegiance to the US gov't is like arguing that it owes special allegiance to the gov't of Delaware.