Earlier quoted context omitted.
Anduril was supposed to be a sponsor for a Nix conference; it was then dropped after community reacted negatively to having a weapons manufacturer being a sponsor. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37418351
"Outraged community" were about 30 people with few to no project contributions but a lot of political slogans and of likely questionable state of mind.
Air Force picks Anduril, General Atomics to develop unmanned fighter jets
101–110 of 439 posts
Re: Air Force picks Anduril, General Atomics to develop unmanned fighter jets
#102Earlier quoted context omitted.
Kyiv would still be the right location. Russia want anything that may distract the world's attention from the crimes they commit everyday in Ukraine.
Russia's aggression against Ukraine, started a decade ago, the war on Palestinians has been going on for ~55 years.
This comparison is irrelevant to the conversation. But even otherwise it is misleading and leaves out lots of history. The modern state of Israel has existed for that long - but if anything, it’s a war for Jewish people’s existence in land that was historically Jewish. And it wouldn’t be a “war” if Israel could exist peacefully and not constantly be threatened by terrorists. Most people don’t see a problem with a war of self defense in response to October 7, so I’m not sure what you think would happen if “warhawks” saw the “consequences” of their work. If anything, this is a low casualty conflict compared to most.
Re: Air Force picks Anduril, General Atomics to develop unmanned fighter jets
#103Earlier quoted context omitted.
Thank you very much. I feel like engineering innovation has been concentrated on technology and not in defense engineering at all. Immigrants have helped a lot in building the tech sector's innovation in the last half of the century. But the defense industry often requires naturalized citizens to work on these projects. I think there is a difference between immigrants coming to North America to work and eventually se…
Innovation has not been in defense engineering lately because the US has lost A LOT of public trust when it comes to the defense industry in the wake of Vietnam, Iraq, and Afghanistan. The US is not the country, nor do they have the reputation in front of the public that led to the Manhattan project, where the greatest minds would willingly work on defense projects, not just willingly but eagerly. The breakthroughs a…
I also went to a/the top CS school. When I graduated I would have never considered working at a defense company. Now, after bouncing around big tech and startups for a few years, I am a few days away from accepting a position at one. What changed? Appreciation for how entirely insignificant to downright harmful the rest of the industry is, perhaps. I made changes that impacted tens of millions of users in... no significant way whatsoever. Certainly not anything they'd remember on their deathbed. And what else is out there? Finding better algorithms to keep people hooked on their phones watching ads for longer, making more bullshit "AI" products to strip communication of all personality, and hundreds and hundreds of healthcare startups begging me to help them "cut out the middleman" in X healthcare system and replace them with... themselves! Idk. If I can make one anti-drone system take down one more suicide drone than it'd be able to without me, I'm 100% sure whoever would have been on the other end of that kamikaze will appreciate my efforts a hell of a lot more than the 2^25 people I fed a slightly different arrangement of pixels than they'd have gotten without me.
Re: Air Force picks Anduril, General Atomics to develop unmanned fighter jets
#104This is for the next phase of the project that involves building flying prototypes. Later stages include mass production which could go to a Boeing or Lockheed. I wonder how much of the decision to give this to a smaller player is based on a desire to maintain diversity among defense contractors and the competitive advantages that come with. In other words the US Military continues to be a successful centrally planne…
Probably overthinking. The Europeans signed deals with Helsing and Palantir recently for similar projects. That must have lit a fire under someones ass.
Sorry I don’t follow. What did I overthink?
Re: Air Force picks Anduril, General Atomics to develop unmanned fighter jets
#105Earlier quoted context omitted.
If you don’t want to build weapons because you don’t like the variety of ways they may be wielded, that’s a valid and reasonable ethical stance. If you don’t want to build anything that could ever potentially be used in the manufacture of those weapons, you probably shouldn’t be building open source software or contributing anything to do with any programming language at all.
I think there's a big difference between "being used by" and "being active members of the community". Open Source means you can't really prohibit Anduril from using your projects; but _welcoming_ them and their money is a different matter altogether.
When the defense industry funds things they tend to go for architectures without a single point of failure and have the resources to create new things if the existing things are insufficient or adversarial. DARPA funding created the internet etc.
Meanwhile if you were to get the defense industry to not use your product, they're not going to go out of business or do less of whatever you didn't like. They're going to bring the same money to someone like Oracle or Microsoft with no qualms about taking it -- or bring even more money to them, which is your tax money, as those companies charge quite a lot.
This makes me suspicious that the people agitating for "don't take their money" are being subtly or not so subtly encouraged to do so by the people who want to take their money instead. After all, the historical norm is the opposite. Not just TCP/IP but Tor and SELinux and microprocessors and, considering that AT&T has long been a major defense contractor, transistors and lasers and solar panels and C and all the rest of it. Are the same people who want to refuse their money also inclined to refuse all of the other things it paid for?
Would we be better off if the University of California never took a Unix license or created BSD because of where it came from?
Re: Air Force picks Anduril, General Atomics to develop unmanned fighter jets
#106Earlier quoted context omitted.
"Outraged community" were about 30 people with few to no project contributions but a lot of political slogans and of likely questionable state of mind.
https://github.com/NixOS/nixpkgs/commits?author=neon-sunset
It doesn't take being a chef to know when something is shit :)
(on the off chance that some HN audience members have reading comprehension issues - this is aimed at politically driven non-contributing participants behind the anti-anduril outrage, Nix and its creator are absolutely fine)
Re: Air Force picks Anduril, General Atomics to develop unmanned fighter jets
#107Earlier quoted context omitted.
No one makes swarms in any real sense of the word, either. These unmanned Wingman jets will be the first in the world to do that too.
Look up Rogozins comments about how Ukrainians operate drones for a Russian loyalist perspective
Those are cheap consumer drones not “swarms”, cheap airplanes, and drones from other countries.
If they could make an F16 equivalent combat drone, they’d jump at the chance.
Re: Air Force picks Anduril, General Atomics to develop unmanned fighter jets
#108Is Anduril really that good? I am trying to figure out what is the potential of Anduril is. Their first phase product was in observability towers for border protection, then they made drone-ramming drones and now unmanned fighter jets. I am genuinely curious. I was in the whole retail investor space since early 2010s which saw the EV hype. Workhorse was supposed to supply vans for federal postal vans, Nikola had that…
I worked there. Think: budget defense contractor and you'll be really accurate. Their whole thing is to move fast and produce shit that breaks often and a lot. Pretty unreliable overall. Their major success is marketing and B2G (business to government) and funding. Ultimately it is these three things that will make them successful. You iterate on crap long enough (which defense contracts tend to allow) eventually the…
Interesting perspective. Coming from the perspective of a non-US defence executive, I will have to say that failing demos are quite normal in defence applications. It happens, and you still win contracts, because the end client sees the value prop and trusts you to sort out the issues. Still nerve wrecking though.
Re: Air Force picks Anduril, General Atomics to develop unmanned fighter jets
#109Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think it’s entirely valid for a community to decide they don’t want participation and funding from a defence contractor. That isn’t a scapegoat - it’s the actual goal. You may or may not agree with this stance and that is totally fine. You’re still free to use the software for whatever you want; you can also go ahead and fork it, or create a new community endorsing this use. If enough people agree then it will thri…
The problem is, there is not a community that is in agreement about this. There is a subset of the community, that like to pretend they are and speak for "the community", and when they get pushback from those that disagree they call it concern-trolling.
I'm confused about what the problem is then – why are you paying attention to those people?
Re: Air Force picks Anduril, General Atomics to develop unmanned fighter jets
#110Earlier quoted context omitted.
As you might be aware, which I cannot be certain of given your insubstantial reply, international geopolitics are usually a bit more nuanced than an aggressive "land grabbing tyrant".
And as you might be aware, sometimes they aren’t.
Are you asking what the nuance is in this case?
Ukraine is a strategically important region to Russia. They don't have to invade as long as they can threaten to invade, and thereby get concessions without armed conflict.
If Ukraine joins NATO then Russia could no longer credibly threaten to invade because it would put Russia at war with NATO. Ukraine about to join NATO is thereby destabilizing, because then Russia has to choose between invading immediately before they join, or doing nothing and permanently losing their leverage. This does not make the invasion justified but it makes it expected. US diplomats knew this perfectly well and pushed for Ukraine to join NATO anyway.
It's like telling your friend to corner a vicious dog. The dog is not innocent, the dog is going to bite them and you knew that and told them to do it anyway.