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We are Google employees – Google must drop Dragonfly

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Re: We are Google employees – Google must drop Dragonfly

#691

Post by tomschlick »

ed_elliott_asc wrote: post #683
tomschlick wrote: post #547

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Police do not need mine-resistant vehicles. Serious eye roll here. You're discarding all of the other capabilities and suggesting that because it is ALSO mine resistant it must be bad. > MRAPs have high maintenance and running costs. That's assuming they are used all the time. Most departments have them parked at their HQs and only use them for call outs or training. Regular maintenance wouldn't reach the same leve…

Why do Americans seem to do everything they can about people with guns, except take away their guns?

Because we have a constitutional right to said guns so we don't take removing them lightly. That said if someone has any history of violence, crime, or mental disorder I'm 100% in favor of removing access to weapons.

Re: We are Google employees – Google must drop Dragonfly

#692

Post by komali2 »

briandear wrote: post #587
komali2 wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It boils down to what the American culture, or I guess the employees at Google's culture, are willing to censor. China wants to censor its own human rights violations, I think there morally bad. Certain EU Nations want to prevent fat right nationalist radicalization via censorship. I think that's clumsy, but good. So hence "why single out China." It stops whenever the employees put up a fight. Isn't that the point of…

> Certain EU Nations want to prevent fat right nationalist radicalization via censorship But why don’t they apply the same censorship to the far left? That’s where I have my problem with it, it isn’t to protect the people from the far right, it’s to control public discourse in a way that reinforces their leftist ideology. The Communist Party isn’t censored in Europe, but right-wing groups are. You can celebrate Stali…

Nazism is wrong, though. So is a good majority of what far right nationalists preach.

It's almost, but not quite, false equivalence. You could make a moral relativism argument, but at the end of the day the global zeitgeist is moving towards the "good" that some people associate with liberal values, and always has been.

From an anthropological standpoint, I'm with you - the ideologies are indistinguishable. From a moral standpoint, I disagree strongly - one is generally Bad, the other is generally Good.

Re: We are Google employees – Google must drop Dragonfly

#693

Post by tomschlick »

ben509 wrote: post #669
tomschlick wrote: post #547

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Police do not need mine-resistant vehicles. Serious eye roll here. You're discarding all of the other capabilities and suggesting that because it is ALSO mine resistant it must be bad. > MRAPs have high maintenance and running costs. That's assuming they are used all the time. Most departments have them parked at their HQs and only use them for call outs or training. Regular maintenance wouldn't reach the same leve…

> You're discarding all of the other capabilities and suggesting that because it is ALSO mine resistant it must be bad. Having driven and gunned on an MRAP... yes, the mine resistance makes it bad. You resist mines by 1. moving away from them and 2. presenting armor at an angle. On a truck like an MRAPs, you mount it very high above the ground and for the size and weight, the interior space is limited because the cha…

For smaller depts that cant afford a custom Bearcat, I'm sure the smaller space and height burdens aren't too bad compared to not having armored cover at all.

Re: We are Google employees – Google must drop Dragonfly

#694

Post by dragonwriter »

tomschlick wrote: post #690
dsr_ wrote: post #688

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Here's the outrage: if the police have armored vehicles, that means that they perceive a need for armored vehicles. When officers walk past them, they are reminded that they are needed. When officers are inside them, they feel simultaneously invulnerable and threatened -- all this armor means that someone must want to kill them. From the other side, a community that sees MRAPs going past has to believe that there's a…

So we are talking about perception above all else? Great, but there are use cases for armored vehicles. Whether its an MRAP or a Bearcat. There are always going to be barricaded persons, hostage situations, active shooters, riots, and natural disasters that need responding to and those seem to be the best tools for the job. The goal is to get as close to the subject as possible without anyone getting hurt. From there…

> So we are talking about perception above all else?

Perception resulting from conscious, deliberate actions; or, viewed another way, nonverbal communication. Yes, it's key to police work.

Re: We are Google employees – Google must drop Dragonfly

#695

Post by tomschlick »

penagwin wrote: post #674
omnimus wrote: post #579

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well in USA civilians can buy automatic rifles and high caliber armor piercing sniper rifles... that does not necessary mean that its a good idea.

Nitpick: you can buy automatic rifles made before 1986 (might be off on the date but you get the idea). You can't go buy a brand new automatic. * you can however buy a modern rifle that's made to have its automatic mode disabled, but my understanding is that it's trivial to modify to become automatic (but it will no longer be legal)

> You can't go buy a brand new automatic.

Also the ones that are on the market (pre-86) go for tens of thousands of dollars to start. They are basically coveted by rich collectors who show them off at designated "machine gun shoot" days at specialty ranges.

> but my understanding is that it's trivial to modify to become automatic

It's not trivial. Requires decent gun-smithing skill, the ability to craft an auto sear, and some extra parts. To my knowledge no one has been confirmed to have done that and convicted of it in recent history.

Re: We are Google employees – Google must drop Dragonfly

#697

Post by tomschlick »

markdown wrote: post #626
tomschlick wrote: post #592

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> That's more than enough reason not to deploy them. No it's not. These vehicles can, and have saved lives. I have yet to hear of an MRAP killing someone in the US. > "we will crush you if you step out of line" Better wording would be "if you throw rocks or shoot at us we are still going to arrest you".

> These vehicles can, and have saved lives. Citation needed. Police all over the world do their jobs without these tanks. Is there any data proving crime goes down in cities where they are deployed? Is there any data proving that less lives are lost when these tanks are deployed in US cities? > Better wording would be "if you throw rocks or shoot at us we are still going to arrest you". People have been throwing rock…

> Citation needed.

Several active shooter situations where they need to retrieve downed officers / civilians without exposing the rescue team to gunfire. Most recently in the Pittsburgh shooting it was reported they used an armored vehicle to get to injured officers outside.

> Police all over the world do their jobs without these tanks.

First of all they are not tanks. They have no offensive capabilities so they would be classified as armored personnel carriers.

Second, these exist all over the world, here are some image results: https://duckduckgo.com/?q=european+riot+vehicle&t=ffab&iar=i...

> People have been throwing rocks at and shooting at US police for two centuries. How does having a tank help in arrests?

Allows officers to take cover behind it while the vehicle moves forward. When it reaches the people throwing rocks they can move to effect the arrest.

For shootings it allows them to much closer to barricaded subjects and make sure they cant escape / provides a platform to negotiate peaceful surrender.

Re: We are Google employees – Google must drop Dragonfly

#698

Post by manigandham »

electrograv wrote: post #513
tomschlick wrote: post #443

> MRAP's are for combat, not police work While they were designed for combat, they are effectively the same thing that Brinks uses to transport money. They are meant to stop bad things from killing the people inside. They have 0 offensive weapons. They are entirely defensive vehicles that have been used to rescue downed officers, civilians in harms way (gunfire), and multiple times in natural disasters where other ve…

Perhaps concerns about 'the over-militarization of police' is essentially a concern for situations where an extreme power imbalance exists between police and civilians, creating a much higher risk of totalitarian abuse and oppression by police in situations where the police force in question becomes corrupt or 'bad' in some way. (Disclaimer: I'm not making an anti-LEO argument; quite the contrary, I'm very pro-LEO, a…

Civilians can buy heavily armored vehicles, yes. They can also buy military vehicles, provided they are certified (like not carrying weapons) but it is definitely possible to be rolling around in a MRAP style machine completely legally.

Re: We are Google employees – Google must drop Dragonfly

#699

Post by Aeolun »

tomlagier wrote: post #344
senderista wrote: post #325

Earlier quoted context omitted.

OTOH, AMZN and MSFT have never even hesitated to accommodate the Chinese govt's demands. Which other companies do you think would be more ethically conscious than GOOG in these circumstances? (I don't work there.)

Dont forget AAPL! (who hesitated, but ended up capitulating on the iCloud front). I think the moral of the story here is that it's better to sell out from day 1 than to be seen as a hypocrite.

Not selling out loses all meaning the moment you do.

Re: We are Google employees – Google must drop Dragonfly

#700

Post by diminoten »

bduerst wrote: post #680
diminoten wrote: post #679

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think it's fair to try and nitpick people's ethical decisions like this. Imagine yes, this person would work for Amazon even though they're in China too. Does that make them not working for Google because they're in China a bad choice? I don't think so. Are we really prepared to tear everyone down who isn't absolute in their morality?

A moral inconsistency is not a nitpick when it's the entire industry. Their logic makes Google a better employer than Amazon, Apple, Microsoft, Facebook and any other tech company currently operating in China. Saying they spurned Google because the company was considering going to China is disengenious, since the majority of the substitute employers are already in China.

You're saying his moral position is invalid because he doesn't apply it consistently, and that is not true, and also possibly harmful.
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