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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

#271

Post by CapricornNoble »

jobigoud wrote: post #45
gotoeleven wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe this is too off topic for HN, but I'm genuinely curious what is the best argument for why it is bad/racist to enforce immigration laws? I've heard people argue that a wall won't be effective. But some people seem to have the view that immigration laws shouldn't be enforced at all and we should allow people to use whatever loopholes (refugee status, traveling w/ children) there are to get in and then not show up…

I'll bite because I'm ambivalent about immigration laws. Why should people that just happen to be born in a third world country live a shitty life with no way out? You can't just say they have to do a revolution in their own country, not everyone is interested in activism, why should this be the fight of their life instead of stuff they actually want to do? You were born in a nice place by sheer luck. It's unfair. I…

>>>You can't just say they have to do a revolution in their own country,

Uh, yes I can. The US exists because the population staged a rebellion. I don't find it unconscionable to expect others to undertake the same effort our forebears did to improve their situation.

>>>You were born in a nice place by sheer luck. It's unfair.

Some of us are also taller than average as well, which is directly correlated with total career earnings. Sheer luck and unfair. Outcomes will ALWAYS vary due to the inherent genetic variations and capabilities in the human population.

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

#272

Post by CapricornNoble »

anigbrowl wrote: post #243
javagram wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People illegally present in the US cannot work legally. That means they work under the table and are subject to all sorts of abuse, and their presence promotes gray market/black market economies. While I think it is unfair to deport people who have been here for decades and giving them amnesty (again, like we did in the 1980s) is a reasonable solution especially for those who were kids when they came here, I don’t ha…

So let people have work permits as long as they don't commit serious crimes and the illegal work problem goes away. There is no necessity for the control freakery that has driven much immigration policy in recent years.

Two of the big problems right now are:

1. People entering the country outside of defined points of entry. We can't issue a work permit to people we don't know are here. Anduril's products are meant to address these gaps in the border, which should lead to all traffic being forced to official points of entry.

2. Illegals who commit crimes get released.[1] Sometimes released domestically, sometimes deported. Some of the deported ones return. Which brings us back to #1.

[1]https://www.foxnews.com/us/kate-steinle-jose-inez-garcia-zar...

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

#273

Post by CapricornNoble »

aey wrote: post #256
CapricornNoble wrote: post #238

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>>>A bit of a tangent, but how is the US/Mexico border a "defense" issue? Border security is THE most basic, fundamental responsibility of national defense. The US has just spent so frickin' long with benign powers on its land borders, and so focused on global expeditionary operations, that its border security efforts have atrophied. That said, national defense is now an over-arching term that includes a mix of law e…

Then why aren’t they deploying this on the US/Canadian border? Or Alaska? I can see Russia from there. This whole thing smacks of corruption.

Because there is significantly less illegal immigration coming from those borders. Responsible resource allocation involves employing your assets where they will net the greatest utility.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economy_of_force

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Utility_maximization_problem

Let's say 1 Anduril Widget would stop 10 border crossings/year on the southern border, but only 1/yr on the Canadian border. If I have 100 widgets, allocating them all to the southern border is the objectively superior employment of my assets. Only if my marginal utility per widget drops to preventing <1 crossing per year in the SOUTH should I even CONSIDER shifting resources to the northern border.

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

#274

Post by zelly »

Rebelgecko wrote: post #61

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…

LOTR had literal race wars. Think about it for a second.

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

#275

Post by _iyig »

neotek wrote: post #266
_iyig wrote: post #226

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You mean besides the mass sexual violence in Cologne, the Berlin Christmas market attack, or the fact that migrants in Germany are disproportionately more likely to commit violent crimes [0][1][2]? What really gets me is headlines like “German far-right capitalizes on migrant crimes,” as if those politicians were happy the crimes had been committed or consented to the policy decisions that led to them occurring. [0]…

None of your links support your claim that migrants are more likely to commit violent crimes, in fact they present evidence that dispels that (very obvious) lie. They also point out that the far-right groups that are spreading this propaganda as a means to promote their racist agenda are lying: >But it turned out, several cases did not take place in Europe, and, with the exception of one case, there is no evidence su…

Well, you're lying. Might be impolite to mention, but I don't know what else to say.

First link, Reuters: "Violent crime rose by about 10 percent in 2015 and 2016, a study showed. It attributed more than 90 percent of that to young male refugees."

Second link, The Local: "Police statistics show that 38.6 percent of violent crimes were committed by foreigners in 2018" (Ethnic Germans make up 76% of the population)

Third link is there to illustrate specific cases.

In case you remain unconvinced, even the BBC is with me on this, with a much more detailed statistical breakdown:

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-45419466

Groups like AfD thrive when people like you make assertions that are so easily disproven. They screenshot comments like yours and photoshop them next to the type of articles and headlines that I linked. Unfortunately, such images make effective recruitment tools.

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

#276

Post by manfredo »

aey wrote: post #256
CapricornNoble wrote: post #238

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>>>A bit of a tangent, but how is the US/Mexico border a "defense" issue? Border security is THE most basic, fundamental responsibility of national defense. The US has just spent so frickin' long with benign powers on its land borders, and so focused on global expeditionary operations, that its border security efforts have atrophied. That said, national defense is now an over-arching term that includes a mix of law e…

Then why aren’t they deploying this on the US/Canadian border? Or Alaska? I can see Russia from there. This whole thing smacks of corruption.

It's not corruption, it's basic resource allocation. Why would we want to dedicate equal amounts of manpower to both borders, when only one of them accounts for the overwhelming majority of unlawful crossings?

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

#279

Post by _iyig »

mjamil wrote: post #267
_iyig wrote: post #253

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Our borders are secure, immigration is not a threat to your life Police keep finding bodies [0] of MS-13 victims [1] buried in parks [2] in my area, so pardon me if I disagree. [0] https://beta.washingtonpost.com/local/public-safety/ms-13-me... [1] https://patch.com/virginia/greateralexandria/teen-pleads-gui... [2] https://beta.washingtonpost.com/local/public-safety/fairfax-...

Risk is relative. What’s your standard for being secure? The homicide rate in the US is 4.9/100k people, which is lower than the global average. Is your standard for security measured by this metric? If so, you should feel quite good; the rate in Fairfax county is 1.9/100k people. Or is it that you’re allowing the emotion aroused by the splashy headlines you linked to color your judgement?

In response, I'll ask you this: how do you feel about the private ownership of assault-style rifles?

Risk is relative. What’s your standard for being secure? The rifle homicide rate in the US is 0.18/100k people [0], which includes hunting and "traditional" rifles in addition to assault-style weapons. Is your standard for security measured by this metric? If so, you should feel quite good. Or is it that you’re allowing the emotion aroused by splashy headlines to color your judgement?

To answer you directly: I wouldn't make my home more dangerous if I can avoid it, barring some counterbalancing upside. The counterargument that, "it's still way better than living in a favela!" doesn't work for me.

Economically, mass low-skill migration has significant downsides for low-skill American workers. The "upside" is an increase in the total economic pie for U.S. citizens, but only because capitalists can exploit migrant workers even harder, and non-citizen workers' shares of the pie don't count.

[0] https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2019/08/16/what-the-da...

[1] https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2016/09/trump-clinto...

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

#280

Post by gonational »

mjamil wrote: post #263
gonational wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> immigration is not a threat to your life My wife and I have both been hit by illegal immigrants. One of them driving drunk and drinking in the car while he hit me, and had no insurance or license, and had a prior DUI that he missed court for. The other (one that hit my wife’s car) simply didn’t have insurance, but wasn’t drinking. My wife’s car had to be repaired heavily (over $5,000), which was paid for by our ins…

That’s awful. I’m sorry that happened to you. But I’m not sure I understand your argument. If one or both of these drivers were legally in the US, what would law enforcement do differently? From my reading of your situation, it sounds like you had the misfortune of twice encountering under-insured drivers, and had to deal with the consequences. How did you make the (il)logical jump from that to, “Illegal immigration…

Thanks for the reply. Both were illegal immigrants; one had a license and wasn’t DUI. The answer to why I think this is caused by the illegal status is that, pertaining to when the Honduran immigrant (the DUI one) hit me, I went out of town with my wife during the period of time when he was supposed to go to court and obviously go to jail because he had done the same thing 11 months before and actually left the scene in that case, so he was already wanted, and so I thought “surely he will go to jail for many months...” when we got back to town I called the prosecuting attorney to ask her what happen with his sentencing/verdict/etc., and she told me that he didn’t show up to court. So I asked her “so are you going to go arrest him?“, And she informed me that they don’t handle cases like this by going to the house to arrest him. I was confused thinking ‘oh so this is going to be like an outstanding warrant and he will get arrested when he gets pulled over at some point’. I was frustrated but I thought ‘well it’s only in evitable that he will go to jail eventually’. But then I realized, ‘wait a minute, if he was already arrested for the same thing 11 months before and they didn’t even keep him in jail longer than 12 hours in the drunk tank, why would they ever put him in jail...’. That’s when I started asking more questions and found out (from the PA’s secretary) that the reason they couldn’t arrest him is because if they were to try him for contempt of court they would end up having to deport him, and this is when I found out we were living in a sanctuary county.

So the reason he was drinking and driving isn’t because he’s an illegal immigrant or because he was from Honduras. It’s because there is no rule of law when you are letting people break your laws to get into the country to begin with. And if there is no law there is no accountability. If I didn’t have to worry about getting in trouble myself, I might be out drinking rum runners on the highway 24 hours a day.

We all like to think of ourselves as virtuous, but, without accountability to the rest of society, we are just wild animals on this rock floating through space.

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