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Israel used Palantir technologies in pager attack in Lebanon

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Re: Israel used Palantir technologies in pager attack in Lebanon

#91

Post by spwa4 »

sekh60 wrote: post #49
bilekas wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"It's not a war crime the first time!" Anyway sadly even if they did start attacking civilians, say Palestinian civilians as a random example, who is going to enforce the penalty for war crimes. These days its seems they're more of a suggestion than a rule of engaging in war.

War crime laws only apply to poorer nations sadly

Huh? Lebanon is not being held to war crime laws, and is the poorer nation. They bombed Northern Israel for over 2 years, including a soccer field full of children that weren't their targets but are very much dead.

If anything, it's the opposite.

Re: Israel used Palantir technologies in pager attack in Lebanon

#92

Post by tguvot »

dang wrote: post #63
_DeadFred_ wrote: post #59

This conversation already has comments on one side flagged to invisibility. If you are going to allow these conversations, but only allow one side, then Hacker News is not about discussion but about what?

If there are flagged comments which are not breaking the site guidelines, I'd like links to take a look at. The moderation intention is for comments which break the site guidelines to be flagged, regardless of which side they are or aren't on. It's not possible to reach this state perfectly, of course.

95% of flagged comments don't break guidelines in any given discussion. flagging been used forever to silence "inconvenient facts" and "dissenting opinions"

as example, just below there is reply to you saying that flagging been abused, been flagged

Re: Israel used Palantir technologies in pager attack in Lebanon

#93

Post by dang »

tguvot wrote: post #92
dang wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If there are flagged comments which are not breaking the site guidelines, I'd like links to take a look at. The moderation intention is for comments which break the site guidelines to be flagged, regardless of which side they are or aren't on. It's not possible to reach this state perfectly, of course.

95% of flagged comments don't break guidelines in any given discussion. flagging been used forever to silence "inconvenient facts" and "dissenting opinions" as example, just below there is reply to you saying that flagging been abused, been flagged

> 95% of flagged comments don't break guidelines in any given discussion

That number is much too high IMO, so I assume we interpret the site guidelines very differently.

> as example, just below there is reply to you saying that flagging been abused, been flagged

I assume you mean https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46221396? No, you'd see "[flagged]" if that were the case. The comment is [dead], but it was killed by software, not flagged by users. I'll restore it.

Re: Israel used Palantir technologies in pager attack in Lebanon

#94

Post by kyboren »

tw04 wrote: post #85
bunji wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The intended targets of the exploding papers weren't civilians. Very few actual civilians ended up hurt by the detonations, much fewer than attacks by conventional weapons. It's about as targeted an attack as one can achieve from a distance. As an act of warfare, Israel did a splendid job on this. Thoroughly impressive work.

> Very few actual civilians ended up hurt by the detonations, much fewer than attacks by conventional weapons. The reports are 4,000 wounded and 12 killed unintended targets in order to kill 42 targets. On what planet is that “very few actual civilians”? I think you knew full well before posting that’s a ridiculous claim which is why you did it anonymously.

> The reports are 4,000 wounded and 12 killed unintended targets

Which reports? According to whom? Hezbollah?

Re: Israel used Palantir technologies in pager attack in Lebanon

#95

Post by dralley »

zug_zug wrote: post #83
impossiblefork wrote: post #8

I actually consider the pager attack to be legal. There's obviously criticism of it, but I'm fairly sure you're allowed to do this kind of thing by laws of war. Obviously this creates a huge problem for pretty much everyone though, since we can imagine that our ordinary consumer products from all sorts countries could similarly explode if we ended up at war with the manufacturers.

I don't know if it's "legal" or not and by who's laws, but it certainly seems like terrorism to me (i.e. intentionally creating a state of terror). I think if Lebanon found a clever way to assassinate the top 45 military commanders in Israel the same people who are defending this wouldn't be calling it a "Legal act of war".

Targeted attacks against military/militia leadership is not terrorism - almost by definition.

If it was just random devices exploding, then sure, that could be considered terrorism. But it wasn't random devices, it was communication devices procured by Hezbollah and directly given by Hezbollah to their own members for their own purposes.

Re: Israel used Palantir technologies in pager attack in Lebanon

#96

Post by caycep »

btbuildem wrote: post #27

> Palantir ended up having to rent a second-floor building that housed its Tel Aviv office, to accommodate the intelligence analysts who needed tutorials Has anyone here tried using their software? It's salesforce-level fucked. They did a great job spewing lofty concepts, with their ontologies and their kinetic layers, but in the end it all ends up being a giant wormy ERP. There might be one good idea in there (artic…

you have to wonder, if they weren't the only tech firm willing to engage w/ DOD, would they survive in a more competitive atmosphere?

Re: Israel used Palantir technologies in pager attack in Lebanon

#97

Post by dang »

krautburglar wrote: post #70
dang wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If there are flagged comments which are not breaking the site guidelines, I'd like links to take a look at. The moderation intention is for comments which break the site guidelines to be flagged, regardless of which side they are or aren't on. It's not possible to reach this state perfectly, of course.

Dude, your flag function is abused to no end, and you don't really do anything about it. One of the earliest comments I've made was one on semi-recent X11 history, and got flagged for it, because apparently everything is political now. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45796728

I agree with you that https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45796728 should not have been flagged, and have fixed that now.

Re: Israel used Palantir technologies in pager attack in Lebanon

#98

Post by orwin »

bunji wrote: post #69
cramsession wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Attacking a civilian population is a war crime.

The intended targets of the exploding papers weren't civilians. Very few actual civilians ended up hurt by the detonations, much fewer than attacks by conventional weapons. It's about as targeted an attack as one can achieve from a distance. As an act of warfare, Israel did a splendid job on this. Thoroughly impressive work.

The issue is using civil infrastructure as weapon, that could arguably be an act of terror. As pagers are rarely used in non-criminal settings, i guess this is somewhat okay in my opinion, but the callousness and overall reactions (proudness, smugness) of israelis and most of the west on this near-terror attack is in my opinion another proof of a lack of empathy that is starting to be pervasive in our societies.

I know people talk about the "entitlement epidemic", but entitlement is just another name from narcissism, in essence a lack of empathy. Which seems to be more and more socially acceptable and even rewarded (with internet points mostly), like your comment show (i'm not jumping on you, you are tamer than many, so i think it's a better exemple for my point than more violent ones).

And since that's the example we show our kids today, i'm now officially more worried about our society ability to handle social media than climate change.

Re: Israel used Palantir technologies in pager attack in Lebanon

#99

Post by kjkjadksj »

zug_zug wrote: post #83
impossiblefork wrote: post #8

I actually consider the pager attack to be legal. There's obviously criticism of it, but I'm fairly sure you're allowed to do this kind of thing by laws of war. Obviously this creates a huge problem for pretty much everyone though, since we can imagine that our ordinary consumer products from all sorts countries could similarly explode if we ended up at war with the manufacturers.

I don't know if it's "legal" or not and by who's laws, but it certainly seems like terrorism to me (i.e. intentionally creating a state of terror). I think if Lebanon found a clever way to assassinate the top 45 military commanders in Israel the same people who are defending this wouldn't be calling it a "Legal act of war".

How are all acts of war not “intentionally creating a state of terror?”

Re: Israel used Palantir technologies in pager attack in Lebanon

#100

Post by Zetaphor »

kyboren wrote: post #87
zug_zug wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know if it's "legal" or not and by who's laws, but it certainly seems like terrorism to me (i.e. intentionally creating a state of terror). I think if Lebanon found a clever way to assassinate the top 45 military commanders in Israel the same people who are defending this wouldn't be calling it a "Legal act of war".

I think this was a brilliant operation and perfectly lawful. I also think that if Lebanon (not Hezbollah) were in a state of war with Israel, yes, that would (depending on proportionality and target discrimination) be perfectly legal, too.

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