They've all become war profiteers and fascist enablers.
The only way to live with my conscience was to choose not to be complicit.
Your claim is similar to saying nobody should own a gun, because it should be illegal to defend yourself or others. So everyone who owns any kind of weapon is evil and bad? Only bad people are allowed to own weapons and we should just roll over?
Nobody should defend Ukraine from Russia? Anduril has been helping Ukraine since very early on.
Let the guy have his little side modding hobby.
It is a decision to start producing regardless of how well-intentioned it is. You will be profiting off of people being maimed and killed. Various people thought they solved war through new weapons only to create more effective killing machines. That's what WW1 was.
Palmer does not have to work on weapons nor justify making them. Building tech that will be used to murder people (and yes, it will happen) is a decision. Not funding his other hobby when he's getting money off US military contracts is hardly breaking his bank. He wants to build weapons? I don't want to buy his products. Easy.
Building more efficient weapons does not make us safer. Every dollar saved through "strength" and better weapons matters little to the parents who lost their kid when the most precise weapon in the world kills a bunch of schoolchildren like it did at the start of the Iran war. If you can't gaurantee your weapons won't get used for that, why would you build them? You cannot.
I thought Tony Stark already made this point.
If nobody in the world was manufacturing any weapons and it was fully observable from space, nobody would have cause to manufacture these kinds of weapons. We do not live in that world.
At some point, any reasonable person should agree that if a country exists in an environment that contains many threats it might need to defend itself or others from, then it makes complete sense for it to develop weapons towards that aim. Countries are not people, people are people. So people make the weapons.
It just so happens that Palmer Luckey is a person. He can't sell weapons to any random person or country he wants, he can only sell them to the US or with permission of the US to a country that the US has a strategic interest in defending.
Precision weapons have helped reduce casualties. This is a fact. Please try to contradict this fact in the face of napalm bombing and nuclear bombs of yesteryears. Please try to tell me that precision weapons aren't better than just randomly aiming artillery at the sky and letting'er rip. Please do. I want to hear your well founded argument for this.
Is it more efficient than napalm? Great. It still will be used to kill people which I find to be gross, especially when innocents will die, too. If somebody has to build weapons and somebody has to fund said weapons maker, I'm glad it doesn't have to be me. Doesn't have to be Palmer either.
"Peace through strength" is a fine motto, but you can't claim that motto and then turn around and base your business on selling to an entity that routinely starts non-defensive wars.
You have so many tools at your disposal for learning, you really have no reason to just have no idea what is going on unless you just don't prioritize your time that way. In which case, it's ok to understand that you don't know, but why hold your opinion so strongly then?
Go do a couple searches real quick and see what some of the points of the war may be. Many of them will be incorrect or incomplete, but you will come back with at least some reasons that exist.
It's ironic, in another world HN commenters would be lauding Luckey and ModRetro for all these virtues.
Isn't it strange that commentors focus on the other, less palatable, aspect of his life?
As the meme goes, "you do not, under any circumstances, 'gotta hand it to them.'"
Nevermind that he literally was equating the two and explicitly says so.
Kill a few dozen people with your own hands and people are (rightfully) horrified.
Run a business that enables the killing of orders of magnitude more people, and you can be a respected pillar of society.
Killing instantly becomes respectable if it's done legally and for profit.
Sadly, this is just an average online take.
Careful. You're one step away from playing out the "Yet you participate in society. Curious!" meme. Besides, many people who are not in the Anduril fan club already boycott Microsoft for their ethical transgressions.
And I don't think you can use "one step away from" a meme arguments at all. Pattern matching to a cartoon is not a great tool for this in the first place, and once you've acknowledged that the pattern doesn't even match, what's the point?
Sounds like a great idea! I'm all for it
I've seen this astroturfing and spreading of lies increase since he delivered weapons to Taiwan so they can defend themselves. Probably the CCP amping up their influence campaign against him.
Lot's of HN (and "social" media) commenters in this world evidently are; nothing ironic about it.
It's just many people have a radically different set of ethics which, once they become principles, can't be easily, or at all, compromised on. And just to be fair, it's not just the what, but the how (which extends not just to Luckey & Friends, but to Anduril & Friends).
ModRetro produces one thing I do have an interest in. A partly aluminium-cast version of the, to me, most ergonomic gamepad made so far: the classic trimaran-style N64 controller. But that marriage ain't gonna happen. And that goes for every other (future) product of theirs as well.
Certainly one of the most devisive controller designs, but the lack of two thumbsticks is precisely what I like about it. The pad centers one thumbstick and the trigger on opposite sides of the "main hull", with the rest of the inputs divided along two (remappable) zones, i. e. the outriggers. I have never held a controller in my hand with better ergonomics and holding adaptability. Even the size is just right for my hands.
It's the only pad that ever made FPS games on a console a joy to play for me; put in two analog sticks and you fuck with that formula. Its only serious weaknesses are the cheap plastic, especially for the thumbstick, and the weight (too light). Make a full metal version out of it, with some thumbstick material mods known from the PvP fighting game community, and it's the best. Well, at least for me.
I suppose what I'm trying to say is that it's ironic that the one guy providing these consumer-friendly features is considered anathema by many of the people clamoring for those features. You, yourself even mention downthread that you'd otherwise be interested in the M64 Pro controller, but won't consider it.
I was just trying to make a genuine comment remarking on the dichotomy, but I guess people are more interested in making quippy one-liners.
Yeah, I got that. I just don't think the fact that a to me detestable individual can have, or work for, an outfit that produces (some) good, interesting, or even highly impactful merchandise is at all remarkable. History is littered with such people, especially in the tech sector (e. g. Ford, von Braun, etc.).
Is SAAB bad making JAS Gripen being soon used against Russia?
I find your and similar views to be very childish. And somewhat suspicious.
Who would benefit from the west investing less in weapons systems? It boils down to what side you are on honestly.
The article says the game is published by ModRetro.
I mean, that's just defense companies in general now. Would you rather have your own soldiers dying in a war, rather than robots? Ukraine is using AI in their targeting, is that something you condemn?
This is no different from the invention of machine guns or artillery. Yes, it's sad that these things will be used in war to kill (more) people. But intentionally avoiding that technology means you're just handicapping your own military and sacrificing others' lives for your principles.
If you went around scrutinizing the personal failings of every single creator and deciding not to support their art, you would cut yourself off from a huge chunk of human creation. Creators and builders are disproportionately imperfect people.
Harvey Weinstein, for example, is a serial abuser and genuinely evil person. He also was involved in an enormous number of Hollywood productions. Do you go out of your way to make sure to never watch or consume media associated with him? My guess is probably not. It's impractical and also I think the net benefit of this mindset, where we only allow people with certain moral characteristics to succeed, is a loss for society.
Social media’s a helluva drug.
so the question here is why can you not tolerate people simply separating a product from the manufacturer of another niche that is completely legal and is demanded by sovereign nations?
also not a good look using kotaku as a source, were you aware of their poor journalistic standards?
I'd take a step back and assess whether the media you are consuming is dictating what to think and feel rather than from free will.
Yes
> Xbox controller is used on nuclear subs too.
I have never played an Xbox, nor do I have any interest in doing so. There is nothing interesting about the Xbox.
There is something interesting about the Xbox, as evidenced by its sales record.
Besides, it's a dumb argument to compare military purchasing non-weapons commodities like controllers or toilet paper to a literal weapons company. It is almost literally impossible to live anywhere in the world without using a platform hosted on AWS or Azure. It is very easy to not buy things from the drone and now retro-console king. They are entirely different asks.
you could live off the grid in the cabins without internet if you truly believed in being free from the grips of the military industrial complex and the petrodollar you deeply feel guilty about
anything less and you risk sounding like a hypocrite
For those not aware, look for the green name highlight.
contrarian and virtue signaling are very different. i could totally care less if you choose not to buy it.
i respect diversity