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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

#281

Post by chillwaves »

CapricornNoble wrote: post #273
aey wrote: post #256

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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. I…

That's right, because most illegal immigration comes in the form of visa overstays. They are coming in the sky!!

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

#282

Post by patientplatypus »

Think of all the marketing opportunities there are in this sort of evil. It's so positively lucrative.

You could televise drone camera footage and have bets on which drones shoot the most fleeing brown people. You could have an e-sports league, but instead of playing Star Craft you could have nationally recognized "players" manning the drones. People would fill stadiums!

You could even, with a little thought on the tech stack, have machine gun turrets that the public could operate for $20 for 20 minutes. Hell they could do it through the internet from the comfort of their bunker. So long as the turrets were pointed south there wouldn't be any risk of any of the "important" people being killed.

Truly this is a visionary whose time has come.

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

#283

Post by ENGNR »

zootam wrote: post #235
atonse wrote: post #63

Yuck. It's like the perfect marriage of taking any remaining humanity out of law enforcement and add tons of bottomless greed to it. It's so very Peter Thiel-ish. I'd love to say I wish them well, but I hope this company goes out of business due to a public outrage. But they'll always find someone to sell to, like authoritarian governments, and make money hand-over-fist.

>It's so very Peter Thiel-ish. soon, all of the United State's defense companies will be named after stuff from Lord of the Rings

I bet they get angry every night over not owning ‘ring’ itself, it even plugs directly into law enforcement

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

#284

Post by prepend »

insulanus wrote: post #206
prepend wrote: post #142

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…

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…

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

Of course. My point was not that cultures create entirely different species with absolutely no commonalities. I think people have much more in common than different. But there are differences and customizations that are real and not arbitrary. Although I think they might have been triggered and evolved from arbitrary factors (ie weather in one region is kind of arbitrary because it exists whether people are there or not).

So while Germans may make wine and French make bier (these are both done far away from the borders as well btw) that doesn’t make Germany and France the same. It just means they have lots in common.

What I struggle with is how to think about what the right relationship is between different groups that have many things in common but aren’t the same, and don’t necessarily need to be the same.

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

#285

Post by luckylion »

rmilejczz wrote: post #97
luckylion wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I sometimes wonder if we humans will ever get over this artificial border fetish we have. Sounds like you believe that humans are the only animals that get territorial.

Do you strive to be more animalistic? That doesn’t seem like a very noble pursuit for a human being

My point is: if it's a natural phenomenon, it obviously isn't artificial. Animals do it, it wasn't invented by humans for some arbitrary reason. Pretending that it was leads to confused thinking.

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

#286

Post by prepend »

darksaints wrote: post #227
purple_ducks wrote: post #209

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 majori…

Yes, I'm well aware of the racist sentiments and actions of the past in the US. The simple fact of the matter is that we still let them in the country.

But that attitude resulted in much less allowed into the country than desired to enter.

I think it’s weird that the US seems to always have a struggle where there’s lots of racism but still makes some progress. For example, I figured that the current vitriol against immigration meant the US was some sort of racist hellhole limiting immigration but this article [0]states the census estimates 13.7% of the US wasn’t born in the US. And this Pew [1] article shows this as near the historic highs of 14.8% at the end of the 19th century. I think this is pretty cool and refreshing. So despite lots of heated statements, the US is improving in the number and quality of people immigrating.

[0] https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-immigration-data-idUS... [1] https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2019/01/30/immigrant-s...

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

#287

Post by cpeterso »

zootam wrote: post #235
atonse wrote: post #63

Yuck. It's like the perfect marriage of taking any remaining humanity out of law enforcement and add tons of bottomless greed to it. It's so very Peter Thiel-ish. I'd love to say I wish them well, but I hope this company goes out of business due to a public outrage. But they'll always find someone to sell to, like authoritarian governments, and make money hand-over-fist.

>It's so very Peter Thiel-ish. soon, all of the United State's defense companies will be named after stuff from Lord of the Rings

Reference: Andúril is the name of Aragorn's sword from Lord of the Rings. Stephen Colbert owns one of the prop swords from the films.

https://lotr.fandom.com/wiki/And%C3%BAril

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

#288

Post by mindcandy »

dmix wrote: post #179
mrguyorama wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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?

It should be pretty obvious to anyone using the internet for long to identify what's flamebait. If you need examples just look at the political sections of Twitter and Reddit where all sense of civility and intellectual debate has been abandoned. Or look at the headlines of clickbait news sites like Buzzfeed and Vice which target that demographic and do the opposite. There's no shortage of examples kicking around.

It should be for a lot of people. But, for more than enough people, it’s not. And, even if it is obvious, the drama it promotes even among the knowledgable is a big negative I’d prefer to avoid on HN.

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

#289

Post by auslander »

patientplatypus wrote: post #282

Think of all the marketing opportunities there are in this sort of evil. It's so positively lucrative. You could televise drone camera footage and have bets on which drones shoot the most fleeing brown people. You could have an e-sports league, but instead of playing Star Craft you could have nationally recognized "players" manning the drones. People would fill stadiums! You could even, with a little thought on the t…

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Purge

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

#290

Post by siruncledrew »

dpflan wrote: post #4

“I felt like there were not nearly enough high-tech companies working on defense problems in a way that was more similar to the Silicon Valley model of innovation rather than a traditional defense contract.” (Luckey) Is this true (not enough companies applying "SV innovation model" to "defense problems")?

Is the SV model really the most optimal model?

Similar statements get brought up claiming SVmodel(old_thing) = better_thing, but without really going into _why_.

It might as well just be giving an old thing the Midas touch.

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