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Anduril, a startup from Oculus founder Palmer Luckey, now valued at $1B

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Re: Anduril, a startup from Oculus founder Palmer Luckey, now valued at $1B

#201
post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The United States itself had "open borders" for a long period of time. There was mass immigration from Ireland, Italy, and many other places and it worked out quite well for us. Even today, we have "open borders" within the US. People are free to move from from poor (or poorly run) communities to places with more opportunities and it's a win-win. Similarly Europe has 26 countries in the Shengen area. Some of the coun…

> The United States itself had "open borders" for a long period of time. There was mass immigration from Ireland, Italy, and many other places and it worked out quite well for us. There was no welfare state back then, and the economic situation was vastly different. Also saying it went "quite well" looks over all of the ethnic tension that took decades to fix. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Irish_Americans#Discriminat…

> Heard about Brexit?

The UK was never in the Schengen Area to begin with.

Re: Anduril, a startup from Oculus founder Palmer Luckey, now valued at $1B

#202
post #39

It's hearing things like this that make me regret having supported Luckey on his Kickstarter. I had followed him for a few years on the MTBS3D forum when he was experimenting with various HMD prototypes (usually modding the heck out of the Forte VFX-1). He just seemed like a kid with a dream, and the will and ability to make it happen - and potentially revive VR for "Round 2". I suppose he did do that, and while I di…

You have short shrifted and belittled his views on this issue. Suggest you listen to this podcast where he expounds on his views, which are thoughtful and deep -- https://www.stitcher.com/podcast/turner-podcast-network/the-...

Re: Anduril, a startup from Oculus founder Palmer Luckey, now valued at $1B

#203
post #39

It's hearing things like this that make me regret having supported Luckey on his Kickstarter. I had followed him for a few years on the MTBS3D forum when he was experimenting with various HMD prototypes (usually modding the heck out of the Forte VFX-1). He just seemed like a kid with a dream, and the will and ability to make it happen - and potentially revive VR for "Round 2". I suppose he did do that, and while I di…

Eliminating borders is a recipe for disaster. You can't expect your country to remain the same if you let millions or dozens of millions of people freely coming in from different cultures and backgrounds. Immigration is all about "how much is still OK to let in (trade-off between risks and benefits)", and once you say "whoever wants to enter", it's hard to take this kind of opinion seriously.

> You can't expect your country to remain the same

Why would anyone want or expect their country to remain the same? Especially the US? There are massive problems here, with millions of people hurting every day. The current state of the US is not a nice place for tens of millions+ of its residents.

Stating that you'd expect a country to 'remain the same' is tantamount to stating you want the current horrible problems that presently plague our society to persist - with no action against them. That doesn't make any sense.

Things are awful right now. Thing should _not_ stay the same. Things should improve, and people should work every day to improve them.

> it's hard to take this kind of opinion seriously.

Please do not belittle or demean other commenter's opinions. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Re: Anduril, a startup from Oculus founder Palmer Luckey, now valued at $1B

#204
post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The submitted title ("Palmer Luckey's new startup, a virtual US/Mexico wall, valued $1B by A16Z") broke the site guidelines, which ask: " Please use the original title, unless it is misleading or linkbait; don't editorialize. " We've reverted it to the original now. Submitters: Rewriting titles has a massive effect on discussion, so please don't do that unless the original title is misleading or linkbait. https://new…

>misleading or linkbait Those are massively subjective concepts, especially in the modern political climate. Have you considered adding examples or further discussing this point in the guidelines?

There are zillions of case studies in the moderation comments we've posted over the years. I wouldn't add much to the guidelines because if we make them too long, they won't get read.

Many things about moderation are massively subjective. We do our best to be fair, and in most cases the guidelines provide good guidance.

Re: Anduril, a startup from Oculus founder Palmer Luckey, now valued at $1B

#205
post #46
post #39

It's hearing things like this that make me regret having supported Luckey on his Kickstarter. I had followed him for a few years on the MTBS3D forum when he was experimenting with various HMD prototypes (usually modding the heck out of the Forte VFX-1). He just seemed like a kid with a dream, and the will and ability to make it happen - and potentially revive VR for "Round 2". I suppose he did do that, and while I di…

>So - while I would prefer a "monitored solution" to border control over physical imposing measures, my real preference would be for us to all work toward eliminating these national-level borders completely. You sound like someone with the ability to live anywhere, who consequently has little stake in their current "somewhere." Lots of Americans (and people in other countries) don't have this flexibility. They are di…

Radical idea: why not giving a legal path to whoever wants to enter instead? Illegal work would become much less frequent and convenient and business owners would be forced to pay a fair wage to these now documented immigrants or get sued. Then you would not have any more unfair competition.

Re: Anduril, a startup from Oculus founder Palmer Luckey, now valued at $1B

#206
post #39

It's hearing things like this that make me regret having supported Luckey on his Kickstarter. I had followed him for a few years on the MTBS3D forum when he was experimenting with various HMD prototypes (usually modding the heck out of the Forte VFX-1). He just seemed like a kid with a dream, and the will and ability to make it happen - and potentially revive VR for "Round 2". I suppose he did do that, and while I di…

I applaud your honesty in expressing a desire for open borders. I think culture would benefit from more open and honest discussions on this topic as all the double speak makes it frustrating and boring to discuss, normally. I’m not really very interested in borders one way or the other but national borders certainly aren’t “artificial.” There are certainly some artificial aspects (lines of longtitude, etc) but border…

I agree with everything you said except this: > borders are also created by geography and culture

It seems to me that borders exist because certain people could wield power, and gain benefits from controlling land.

When we were hunter gatherers, the idea of "territory" makes more sense, because different clans were taking things from the land (including the ability to traverse it without getting into conflicts).

Also, there weren't enough people to fill the entire Earth, and no one had a house filled with every model of Playstation, so being Nomadic wasn't a huge burden compared to staying in one place.

Later, when we had organized militaries, and food came from working the ground for months, Kings could benefit by stealing land and serfs from other Kings that had rightfully stolen them from some other King, and so on.

I don't think too many land-grab wars started with the thinking, "You know what the French need? Culture. And boy, are we gonna give it to 'em".

And also this: > the border of France and Germany, for example, is very real and those countries have different cultures

I hear that near the border, the Germans are even allowed to make wine, and the French are allowed to make bier! ;)

Re: Anduril, a startup from Oculus founder Palmer Luckey, now valued at $1B

#207

What is wrong with enforcing border security laws? Curious why you think less of him for supporting those efforts.

Nothing is wrong with securing your nation's border.

Big fan of the iron curtain, then? The way borders between North Korea and China/SK are secured too? Protesters being shot to death at the Gaza Strip borders? That's fine?

There have to be reasonable limits to how you secure your border and whether you violate international and local laws to do it. The US border is currently being "secured" by ignoring lots of laws and treaties we agreed to re: asylum seekers and people seem to be OK with that even though the result is dead or horribly ill asylum seekers who have done literally nothing wrong.

Re: Anduril, a startup from Oculus founder Palmer Luckey, now valued at $1B

#208
Awesome!

Anduril is one of the few startups today I believe is solving a core problem in the United States' institutions - Defense industry dysfunction. It costs American taxpayers billions of dollars on weapons that under-perform at best and endanger American lives at worst.

Palmer correctly identifies some of the incentive issues with current defense contracts. Rather than working on contracts pre-defined by the DoD, which puts the US Treasury on the line for all cost over-runs and entangles project planning in Pentagon political intrigue, Anduril R&Ds technologies on their own dime, to their own specs, before trying to make a sale. High-risk, but one way to do it right today. He explains his vision more in this interview: https://twitter.com/micsolana/status/1087803794266550272

Re: Anduril, a startup from Oculus founder Palmer Luckey, now valued at $1B

#209

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I applaud your honesty in expressing a desire for open borders. I think culture would benefit from more open and honest discussions on this topic as all the double speak makes it frustrating and boring to discuss, normally. I’m not really very interested in borders one way or the other but national borders certainly aren’t “artificial.” There are certainly some artificial aspects (lines of longtitude, etc) but border…

Culture isn't artificial, but lines in the sand create hard disconnects where culture is much more fluid. I'm a Seattlite, and I can tell you I feel more cultural similarity to British Columbians than I do to Texans. And people from Miami have a lot more cultural similarity to Cubans and Veneuzuelans than they do Alabamans. And Guatamalans have a ton of cultural similarity to Hondurans and Salvadorans, but northern M…

> We have always been at least somewhat tolerant of massive waves of migration, whether they were Germans, Italians, Irish, British, Chinese

The US wasn't tolerant. I don't even know where to begin. A single comment cannot convey how anti-immigrant the US was.

Nativism took hold of the US when the Irish and Germans arrived (mainly due to religious reasons & also fear of cheaper labour) Given that Italians were majority Catholics, they'd have the same intolerance shown. The Chinese were also hounded.

Laws were passed to discriminate against all those groups.

The only people who possibly got off lightly were the British (due to same religion & culture)

Re: Anduril, a startup from Oculus founder Palmer Luckey, now valued at $1B

#210

For various reasons, I'm slightly sketched out by pretty much every company I've heard of that is named after something from Lord of the Rings. Even when I don't think they're contributing to a dystopian surveillance state (à la Palantir and this one), you have the other HN front-page story about Mithril Capital being accused of mismanaging investor funds. Is there some weird self-selection that causes only certain t…

Now I feel bad for naming my company Valinor and my product Huan.
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