The whole point of Anduril is to create autonomous weapon systems that can kill people autonomously without human involvement. When you look at interviews and speeches that Palmer Luckey has given, they are always deeply unsettling. In a 2024 speech, he said "Societies have always needed a warrior class that is enthused and excited about enacting violence on others in pursuit of good aims. You need people like me who are sick in that way and who don't lose any sleep making tools of violence in order to preserve freedom." ( https://techcrunch.com/2024/10/01/palmer-luckey-every-countr... ). He's said in a Bloomberg interview that "there are actually things I would like to build that the DoD would not use and would not deploy, that they do think are beyond the pale" ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ItLFpYha6Wc ), and he's said in an Axios interview that he would be willing to build nuclear weapons, as well as chemical weapons "in a specific vertical". He elaborates by saying that it's a huge mistake that the US military isn't allowed to use tear gas in combat. ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VZfW3YTJ5Eg )
Creating “autonomous weapon systems that can kill people without human involvement” is not the whole point of Anduril. That is against SROE which are controlled by the DoW and it’d be a monumental ethical dilemma if this were to be changed.
Also, Palmer is one of many Anduril co-founders, and is not the acting CEO. His opinions are an input but are not ground truth for the company. He has effectively been a marketing figurehead for years.
Please stop spreading disinformation. If people engaged with defense technology and ethics in defense with more earnest curiosity, we’d have more productive dialogue and a less polarized tech community.
> Creating “autonomous weapon systems that can kill people without human involvement” is not the whole point of Anduril. That is against SROE which are controlled by the DoW and it’d be a monumental ethical dilemma if this were to be changed.
> Right now, there are so many weapon systems that require manning. You know, if I can have one guy command and controlling 100 aircraft, that's a lot easier than having to have a pilot in every single one. And it puts a lot fewer American lives at risk.
> To be clear, "autonomy" does not mean remote controlled.
> Once an autonomous weapon is programmed and given a task, it can use artificial intelligence for surveillance or to identify, select and engage targets. No operator needed.
> If you were having to require the human operator to actually map every single action and say, "Hey, do this. If that, then this." It would take so long to manage it that you would be better off just remotely piloting it. It's the AI onboard all these weapons that makes it possible to make it so easy.
To me that seems like he's describing a system where you give it a task like "kill all the insurgents in X area" and it'll go and do it without needing an operator.
> Also, Palmer is one of many Anduril co-founders, and is not the acting CEO. His opinions are an input but are not ground truth for the company. He has effectively been a marketing figurehead for years.
If the company's really good at heart, I'm not sure they would have kept a guy who keeps telling the media that the company is working on autonomous weapons to kill people without requiring an operator, and that he's frustrated that he can't make what he REALLY wants to because of all the pesky war crime treaties.
You understand that drones are used for precision strikes instead of indiscriminate bombing, right ?
It's the opposite of "sponsoring a genocide" (if there actually ever was one happening…)
send an unending chain of them and you solve the transmission problem _and_ they don't have to slow down as you'll always have another on the way past whatever you're targeting
How many times the Earth's materials would we consume doing that? And wouldn't it block ma lazor from reaching the previous probes and accelerating them?
it is insane to me that they rejected moving to zonal pricing. zonal pricing would give incentive to move power demand closer to production, create costs to nimby-ism, and give the benefits of lower costs to those who live closer. but it might make energy cost more down here in the south east and (in particular) London while benefiting the North and Scotland so we can't have that
This is covered in the article. The uncertainties brought about by zonal pricing are not really worth it, given that the main obstacle is the need for network reinforcement. The UK is just not that big! Introducing a complicated market reform which will be obsoleted within a few decades doesn't make sense.
Sweden used to have a single zone even though most generation is in the sparsely populated north and most consumption is in the slightly more populated south. Then they had to move to a zonal model because of pressure from Denmark who complained of the unfair competition for industry wanting to be in nearby Sweden and there was a move to a (IIRC it was actually UK-inspired) "nord pool" 'fake auction' energy market. It sucks for consumers :(
They abandoned it because it does not solve anything and it is political suicide. Most people would have ended being forced to pay more than they already pay without alternative, so would not have helped solve grid constraints, either.
Could you explain more? It appears economically self evident to me that it would improve the situation but I'm not in the industry and there's probably much I don't understand.
I would say that improving transmission seems like a much better solution but again I think zonal pricing can help there as it could then be more easily sold to the public as being able to import the cheaper (say) Scottish energy to your local zone, whereas at the moment there's no apparent direct cost associated with blocking pylon projects forever.
The majority of the population live in regions that would become more expensive. Additionally the majority of Scottish constituencies vote for their nationalist party, so the major national parties don't have any chance of getting seats from Scotland, where energy prices may fall slightly under such a scheme.
> The majority of the population live in regions that would become more expensive.
Yes, and if you are an individual, family, or even the vast majority of businesses you aren't going to move to Scotland over this, you are going to pay, no choice. So effectively this would have increased bills for most people, so bad politically, with only a marginal change to demand.
0 based is much simpler for any mathematical calculation done with the indexes. only reasons I can think where you need to handle it is when getting the last index from the length of the array or when interacting with the user. With 1-based you'll need to subtract or add 1 all over the place when doing almost anything
I will always have a case that has a cut-out for the camera so it still lays flat and it's otherwise thinner (or the case is thicker and thus more protective) than it would be if the camera didn't stick out slightly
I can make that argument wholeheartedly, not even as a “steelman” when it comes to legitimate advertising but so much of it is criminal, morally if not legally —- and the victim is not just the viewer but also the advertiser which is running ads that are completely mistargeted, that damage their brand, or get fraudulent clicks —- I remember the layout of anandtech always shifting around so you would try to click on a link and just before you did an ad would slide under your finger and ka-Ching! Was it by accident or design.
On the other hand I’ve known people who sold ads for newspaper and radio and all of them had some sense of ethics.
the best author-read audiobook I've listened to recently has been Service Model by Adrian Tchaikovsky[0].
He did a really good job and I would never have guessed it was the author himself. As you say, it's a very different and difficult job.
Absolutely! I listened to it just a couple weeks ago - I was amazed at how good his narration was! He had various voices, accents, great pacing, etc. Tchaikovsky is as good of a voice actor as he is an author. (Actually, maybe a bit better.)
The best author narrated books, by far, are narrated by Douglas Adams. He's recorded all his books, and they're all great. There's something special hearing the words coming straight from the genius himself.
I had a joint account with an ex who now lives abroad and I no longer have contact with.
I talked to the bank and there was no way to close the account without both of us present.
Recently they released a chat bot on their app and so I asked it to close the account and the bot did it for me! That's the best success I've had with a CS bot.
Possibly the policy changed in the mean-time or the lack of activity in the account for several years allowed it to happen (though the humans never told me after x years of inactivity I'd be able to close it)
> Recently they released a chat bot on their app and so I asked it to close the account and the bot did it for me!
Have you filed a support ticket for that? It's clearly a bug. It should have forced you to call an agent so they could upsell you on a premium service. /s
