ryankupyn · HackerTrans

4 years agodiscuss

And we should let them all in - the people who are leaving Russia now have an ardent desire to escape what is fast becoming a totalitarian state, while the Ukrainians are, of course, fleeing an invading army that has shown callous disregard for their lives.

ryankupyn

4 years agodiscuss

It's worth replying specifically to highlight how wrong the original comment is, but the evidence that was cited by the Russian government to justify their invasion was clearly fabricated.

For instance, an alleged car bombing in Donetsk right before the invasion was staged using cadavers,[1] and a video used to claim that Ukrainian troops were moving aggressively into separatist territory was filmed far from its purported location.[2]

If Russia was so sure that Ukraine was committing these atrocities, they wouldn't need to rely on fake videos to justify attacking.

[1] https://www.bellingcat.com/news/2022/02/28/exploiting-cadave...

[2] https://www.cnn.com/2022/02/22/europe/russia-videos-debunkin...

ryankupyn

5 years agodiscuss

I think the key distinction is that, for the most part, the current generation of cruise missiles are targeted and launched with a "human in the loop" - that is, a person actively makes the decision to fire the missile at a specific target. However, the autonomous weapons being debated have significantly less direct human control - they are potentially designed to simply patrol a certain area and attack anything that the weapon classifies as an enemy.

Of course, there are grey areas here - certainly there are existing missiles that can be launched without a defined target and programmed to aim for anything that, say, has radar emissions that match known enemy systems.

ryankupyn

5 years agodiscuss

"Omicron" also has the advantage of being easier to hear and understand in english - "Nu" can cause confusion because it sounds so much like "New".

ryankupyn

5 years agodiscuss

This is an intriguing concept, but given that the submarine is small and suitable for mostly high-value cargo (whisky is the example cargo given in the article) I'm not sure how it'll offer significant advantages over other forms of transportation in practice.

Although submarines are more effective navigating through storms, one could simply wait for the storm to pass when shipping non-time-sensitive cargo, then use a regular surface cargo ship (which could be automated if desired just like the submarine). Surface ships also have the advantage of compatibility with our already-established shipbuilding and maintenance infrastructure, while a submarine would require the proliferation of new skills and tools to support it.

For time-critical cargo (where one can't wait for a hypothetical storm to pass), it's likely aircraft would be a better option for most shipments - certainly in severe storms aircraft can't operate either, but in that case the very act of loading and unloading the submarine would be hazardous as well.

ryankupyn

5 years agodiscuss

I think that a lot of this makes sense from Google's legal perspective, where antitrust litigation is a constant consideration and any internal document mentioning market share or competitors could be used against them.

I'm sure that there is a great deal of discussion about potential anticompetitive issues within Google and with their outside counsel, but in a context where legal privilege protects against disclosure.

ryankupyn

5 years agodiscuss

I think it'd be risky for Carvana if they tried "cornering the market" on used cars - unlike houses, used cars fall in price pretty quickly and new-car production has the potential to increase as car manufacturers respond in a way that housing production does not. If Carvana buys up all the inventory to drive up prices they'll need a plan to unload as well - while keeping prices high.

ryankupyn

5 years agodiscuss

I think the challenge is that if the rewards were high, Twitter employees (with the advantage of inside information) might be tempted to "tip off" an outsider in exchange for a cut of the reward, rather than just reporting the issue internally.

At the same time, there isn't much of an outside market for algorithmic bias info in the same way there for security vulnerabilities. Probably the biggest effect of this reward will be to pull some grad students who were going to study algorithmic bias anyways towards studying Twitter specifically - after all, there aren't any rewards for studying the algorithmic bias of other companies!

ryankupyn

5 years agodiscuss

I think this is a really good point, and I think that if anyone is really committed to promoting free-speech-maximalist approach to the web they should be focused on building tools that make is easier for people to host and distribute their own content without relying on a centralized service.

Any business with the technical ability to censor what they host is going to be tempted (and likely pressured by other actors) to take down content that people find objectionable. Removing these "chokepoints" where a small number of people have the ability to engage in mass censorship is key if you want to promote more diverse speech on the web. (Not everyone has this goal!)

ryankupyn

5 years agodiscuss

The critical thing is that this also requires a growing population - which is not guaranteed in all places/timeframes!

ryankupyn

5 years agodiscuss

I think the most concerning element in the ProPublica piece is that there might be individuals inside the government who are willing to exfiltrate extremely sensitive private information and hand it over to outside parties without any public process/consent - this seems like a major privacy risk, and even more so than other entities/corporations one deals with it's very hard (for understandable reasons!) to prevent the IRS from collecting and retaining personal information, and tough to keep them accountable for the information they do collect.

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