7 ms·

Harder than it looks. Everything is dual use. Certainly didn't expect my game development telemetry[1] system used to improve artillery [2]... [1] https://gdcv

by gmerc 28d ago

Harder than it looks. Everything is dual use. Certainly didn't expect my game development telemetry[1] system used to improve artillery [2]... [1] https://gdcvault.com/play/1012227/Development-Telemetry-in-Video-Games https://gdcvault.com/play/1012227/Development-Telemetry-in-V... [2] https://www.army.mil/article/85934/solution_to_weapon_development_problem_halo_mass_effect https://www.army.mil/article/85934/solution_to_weapon_develo...

rasengan 28d ago
I feel really bad for you. It might actually be wise [1] to create a new, slightly less permissioned license for open source wherein the open is defined as anything that isn’t in a kill or surveillance chain or, more broadly, for military use… [1] for the community
- deleted 28d ago
  [deleted]
- stpdnerdism 28d ago
  I doubt this is enforceable. Are you going to sue a government secret program because they used some open source code in a way that violates some weird clause?
  - gentooflux 28d ago
    Yes, citizens should sue the government when the government takes actions which are grounds for suit. The government sure will come after your money if you do things they say you shouldn't, and what's good for the goose is good for the gander.
    - well_ackshually 28d ago
      You won't know, they'll say it's for national security so licenses don't matter, and then if you keep going they'll make sure your life is a living hell and your bank accounts closed. I'm begging tech bros to understand that abusive governments _do not care about abusing you_
      - throwaway27448 28d ago
        [flagged]
        pessimizer 28d ago
        No, treating your illusion of control as a religion is suicidal. You need a theory of power other than complaining to the manager. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Illusion_of_control https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Illusion_of_control
        throwaway27448 28d ago
        Surely you should use every tool at your disposal including the courts?
    - lolgovlol 28d ago
      [flagged]
      - gentooflux 28d ago
        You seem to be suggesting that it's impossible to successfully sue the federal government, which is provably untrue. Yes the government abuses the rights of its citizens and will vehemently defend itself if challenged, but suit is the one of the more potent peaceful means we have to redress grievances with them. As this is a civil discussion, being rude is uncalled for. Maybe go for a walk in nature and get your head back on straight.
        hparadiz 28d ago
        No one is saying you can't sue the government. You can in fact. What we're saying is you won't get the outcome you desire. The fact that you think they will simply stop production because you sued them is frankly laughably naive. That's not being rude. It's just reality.
  - itintheory 28d ago
    On the other hand, it may be worth publicly and unambiguously stating a position even if unenforceable. This seems to be what most modern protest movements are based on. For instance, how many software repos "stand with Ukraine", even though they won't make an impact on frontline military reality?
  - deleted 28d ago
    [deleted]
- well_ackshually 28d ago
  Ah yes, they're carpet bombing people and indiscriminately killing fighters, adults and children, but they're going to be stopped because... the software they use is two clause GPL.
  - QuercusMax 28d ago
    You could sue cloud providers who are using your software and selling to the military
- nlittlepoole 28d ago
  https://firstdonoharm.dev/ https://firstdonoharm.dev/
- sheept 28d ago
  That wouldn't be open source. OSI includes the clause "No Discrimination Against Fields of Endeavor"[0] for its definition of open source. Famously, the JSON license[1] has a clause "The Software shall be used for Good, not Evil," so the Free Software Foundation considers it nonfree.[2] [0]: https://opensource.org/osd https://opensource.org/osd [1]: https://www.json.org/license.html https://www.json.org/license.html [2]: https://www.gnu.org/licenses/license-list.en.html#JSON https://www.gnu.org/licenses/license-list.en.html#JSON
  - hparadiz 28d ago
    The idea that a defense manufacturer would be stopped by this is too funny. The code won't be auditable by you so how will you know? Secondly even if you did find out the most you'd get is a payout. Thirdly if you believe that missile aren't running GNU/Linux I have a bridge to sell you.
    - inemesitaffia 27d ago
      IBM would be stopped
  - Teever 28d ago
    I've contemplated writing an email to RMS asking him how he feels about the use of GNU software in military and surveillance systems and if he could do it over if he would do things differently to alllow users to put a clause in their OSS licenses that forbid such things.
    - m4rtink 28d ago
      IIRC that has been discussed many times & can be definitely found in mailing list archives.
    - wizzwizz4 28d ago
      He's already written that essay. It's more rhetoric than substance, but his position is clear. https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/programs-must-not-limit-freedom-to-run.html https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/programs-must-not-limit-freed...
- Petersipoi 28d ago
  Why do you want the people risking their lives to protect your freedom to have worse artillery? I don't understand this thinking at all. If my country is going to shoot something, I want them to be able to control what actually gets hit. I swear, people take borderline religious stances on things to the point that they no longer make sense.
  - nilamo 28d ago
    How do you know for sure that only your team is using the code? Are you ok with "the enemy" using your code to kill your soldiers, or you?
    - maxlybbert 28d ago
      Many wars are simply what you’d expect from violent leaders who realize they can order other people into combat for them. But some wars really are for the greater good. There are definitely militaries that I want to see win, and militaries that I want to see lose. I realize I don’t have any code that would be of any use to any military. If I did, I don’t see how I could write a license to allow the use of my code by only people I agree with.
      - freeone3000 28d ago
        You can write whatever you want in a license, including something as vague as “you can only use this code if I agree with your moral stances”. (For expediency, it might be worth enumerating the cases.) The OSI might disapprove, but you don’t have to listen to them.
  - V__ 28d ago
    "protect your freedom" does a lot of work here..
  - bluefirebrand 28d ago
    > Why do you want the people risking their lives to protect your freedom to have worse artillery If better artillery is being built on open source tech then everyone has better artillery. Not just the people "protecting you" but also the people trying to kill those people
- jacquesm 28d ago
  You think they're going to read that license and then go oh, sorry, we won't use this because you told us not to?
deleted 28d ago
[deleted]
onion2k 28d ago
I don't think the author is suggesting we shouldn't build useful things. He's saying to the people who built the military system that they shouldn't be doing that. It's the last step that's the problem, not the people who built all the things they stand on. Otherwise we'd be suggesting that no one build a database engine or a digital camera or a computer ever again in case they're used to build evil tech.
- sssilver 28d ago
  Not sure about digital cameras or database engines, but computers and the Internet were, in large part, created for military needs first and foremost.
- asdfman123 28d ago
  They're not confessing, they're bragging
CarVac 28d ago
I think there's a distinction between creating generic info-gathering technology that helps them gather their own data from their own users, and you gathering data that the government can then ask (force) you to hand over.
MomsAVoxell 28d ago
>Harder than it looks. But maybe easier than it sounds. All technology can be weaponized. It can also be de-weaponized. One of my favorite late-night thought experiments, is "what would it take to turn an AK47 or an AR15 into a water pump?" .. the possibilities are endless. "How could a tank be turned into a bicycle factory?", another great one worth the effort to think about. The only difference between peaceful technology and a weapon is the intention of the user. The very real spiritual intention. De-weaponization starts with the human being. Those who think weapons are necessary must always take lesser priority than those who invent technology to make the lives of their fellow human beings better. There are so many examples of the tool-makers winning harder and at greater scale than the bomb-manufacturer. We wouldn't be here now if the balance was the other way - our world is however threatened by having this scale weighed heavily, by those who think murder is the solution to anything. It's a spirit thing. Not spiritu-al, a spirit thing. What is the spirit of the designer? If they want to help humanity, it will be difficult technology to weaponize (although not impossible). It will be easy to de-weaponize, also. We need to focus more on the spirit of help, and less on hurt. Imagine if those F35 mounting pylons were used to drop field-portable water-purification systems directly where they are needed most. Imagine if they could be used to drop a copy of archive.org, anywhere in the world, in any language. Imagine if those ships were being used to bring power to the villages that need it most. Instead of glide bombs, we have glide libraries. Instead of cluster munitions, we instead drop cluster medical kits! Oh, the glory to be had by those who would do this - the allies in the poor and weak of the world to be found! Imagine this happening, changing the intention from hate and fear, to respect and love. All it takes is the spirit, a bit of imagination, and any and all technology can be de-weaponized. It is the warrior narcissist who stands in the way of this. Disarm them too - smash their mirror: Drop books, not bombs!
- ff317 28d ago
  > Imagine if those F35 mounting pylons were used to drop field-portable water-purification systems directly where they are needed most. Except we can (and do!) accomplish that with much simpler airplanes. The staggering costs and complexities of an F35 (the thrust:weight, maneuverability, and stealth) don't make sense for any "peaceful" application.
jonplackett 28d ago
There should be a distinction between helping the military and helping a police state. Eg. Flock cameras don’t help the military but do help the police state.
- lukan 28d ago
  In case of ground invasion (or just to detect enemy drones in the sky) having access tonlots of cameras is of military use.
  - jonplackett 28d ago
    I think you are just playing devil’s advocate.
    - deleted 28d ago
      [deleted]
  - rpdillon 28d ago
    Not a likely scenario, FWIW: https://www.military.com/history/5-reasons-why-geography-americas-greatest-weapon-against-invasion.html https://www.military.com/history/5-reasons-why-geography-ame... I would expect any invading forces would need to be surveilled by planes or satellites, or perhaps drones, since they would immediately destroy something like flock cameras.
    - __MatrixMan__ 28d ago
      You're assuming that the invaders can't just buy, hack, or social engineer, access to the cameras from Flock. Lately it has been social engineering: https://www.404media.co/floridas-wildlife-cops-are-searching-thousands-of-flock-cameras-for-ice/ https://www.404media.co/floridas-wildlife-cops-are-searching... but there's also a concern that the cameras themselves have compromised supply chains and may serve other masters: https://www.404media.co/new-jersey-used-covid-relief-funds-to-buy-banned-dahua-chinese-surveillance-cameras/ https://www.404media.co/new-jersey-used-covid-relief-funds-t...
Zambyte 28d ago
You didn't expect the application you developed called "Skynet" that has an eye of sauron as it's logo to be used by the military? Sorry, I don't believe you.
- genxy 28d ago
  I only made a prototype of the torment nexus as illustrative satire, I didn't think someone would actually ship it to production! All satire is dual use.
  - rtkwe 28d ago
    Oh from the cautionary sci-fi classic "Do Not Create the Torment Nexus"? I always thought it'd be awesome to create after reading that!
    - musicale 28d ago
      It was part of the training data.
    - pfdietz 28d ago
      Twitter/X has a lot to answer for, but at least it helped create some memorable memes.
      - genxy 26d ago
        I mean, that is like crediting gmail with the contents of an email. The Torment Nexus came from Alex Blechman a staff writer for The Onion.
        pfdietz 26d ago
        Ouch. Burn accepted.
  - ocodo 28d ago
    Orwell didn't think he was writing a guidebook...
haolez 28d ago
Yep. Early in my career I developed a simple driver for a CAN interface to be used in a medical device, which was my assigned project. The same code was used in another project of this same company. The project was a missile. It felt weird.
- stuaxo 28d ago
  Possibly always was the main project.
jvuygbbkuurx 28d ago
You didn't expect your telemetry system to be used as a telemetry system?
- CamperBob2 28d ago
  So what's the answer here? Don't build telemetry systems?
  - wtallis 28d ago
    Generally, yes. Most telemetry systems in software are not producing enough actionable insight to justify the privacy invasion. Spying on your customers on an opt-out basis just in case you one day come up with a use for that data is a widespread practice but clearly unethical, and leaves you (or whoever acquires your employer) in the position of being tempted to use the data for worse things than just deciding what bugs and features to prioritize.
  - Zambyte 28d ago
    Yes. Telemetry is anti-social at best, authoritarian at worst. We have built industries on "the user won't tell us what they want so we have to spy on them so we can build what they want" and then instead of building what they want, building the thing that extracts the most money out of their users (probably not what the user wanted!)
nonameiguess 28d ago
Do you actually object to countries having standing armies with ranged area weaponry? This isn't what the article is talking about at all. It never says don't build military technology. It says don't build things like a database of who in the country is and isn't gay and what religion everyone practices, for fear a future bigoted administration might use it to target those people. If your government is turning howitzers on you, that's less a police state and more a civil war. I don't know what you do against that, but it's a different situation. There is precedent in the US with the Army being used to round up and forcibly displace native populations, but that really seems to be the kind of thing that requires a political solution, not prevention of any possibility. If we didn't have an Army at all, then secession would have succeeded, there would still be chattel slavery, and one of the hostile European colonial powers likely would have simply conquered the west itself and killed all the natives anyway.
asveikau 28d ago
I don't think the article is saying don't build a payload-agnostic telemetry engine. The specific examples cited are that it's probably legitimate to have a vehicle registration database (with the caveat that even that could be abused), but not a database of sexual orientations or religious affiliations.
rBrenick 28d ago
Keeping it within game dev, I will say that telemetry and bug report tooling looks really cool. Big fan of it grabbing build info directly from the session that the user was playing. Feeling kinda inspired to build something similar for the studio I work at now. Thanks for sharing!
jambalaya8 28d ago
clearly people have a responsibility to sit down and think long and hard and try to rule out as much as possible the negatives of any tech or ideas they share with other people. Or at least give it a cursory thought or find someone with that mindset to tamp those issues down. Absolutely before even considering a funding step or presentation to anyone outside of a very small trusted group. Ideas take fire way too quickly now not to be cautious.
- fuzzfactor 28d ago
  From another excellent comment: >How do you make sure a police state doesn't happen? There is no way to be sure, all one person can do most of the time is make a personal effort and hope it is not overwhelmed by storm-trooper ambitions and communist-dictator tactics. When I look at Flock, it is so sad. It's been 30 full years since I got my early webcams when they were made by Intel and were still expensive business machines intended for teleconferencing over dial-up. Without really needing the internet of course. It didn't take long before I was using one for observing my fledgling company's parking lot 24/7, and on more than half my CRT monitor you could see every car that drove by on my street, which was almost constant during the daytime. This was 99% of the action compared to visitors who pulled in. It didn't take that long before I could remotely call in to the cam plugged into the front office PC through dial-up networking in Windows 95, and when I got a smartphone in 2001 I no longer needed a remote laptop most of the time as long as I was OK with the small screen of the flip-phone form factor. Rather than leaving the spare land-line available for calling directly in, alternatively it was also possible to log into an ISP over dial-up from my company, then keep the line tied up so I (or anyone really) could have access over the internet. When broadband internet came around it made a really big difference since the stream was not as compressed, and motion not nearly as blurry and jerky. It was nice having the choice between a private remote connection to my front office PC over direct dial-up whenever I wanted, as well as enjoying the faster speed of the public internet plenty of the time too. Anyway it didn't take long to realize that if webcams ever really catch on, then our local law enforcement would be highly interested in what could be done if they could freely observe them like I was doing looking at my own stream. I didn't know anybody else that had a webcam at first, but for protection of my own building all I would have to do is give the law my IP address and they could pick up the stream no differently than I was. They already knew my location and I had an excellent relationship with all the first responders. Naturally nothing was encrypted back then so that wasn't even a consideration, there was really nothing confidential on my stream to begin with. I really thought about it long and hard and it took quite a while trying to examine all the possibilities. There were a few obvious downsides regarding privacy which needed much further consideration, so I could not in good conscience pull the trigger until that had been justified very deeply. I didn't expect to hesitate that long but it really did take more than a year to conclude without a doubt that the negatives outweighed the positives, but that was only in the short run. In the long run the virtually unlimited downsides could only accumulate in excess of the possible upsides, and it was a big unknown how scattered cams could be used to compromise general privacy. Eventually had to realize such a cam network would be more easily used in a predatory way rather than for protection from predators, regardless of who was watching or recording. At significant scale it seemed like it could very well become exponentially dystopian. No big deal, if you're not capable of thinking of something overwhelmingly positive to base your business on, I understand. At least I didn't pioneer it, and I assume a lot of other early webcam owners gradually engaged in some of the same thought processes or it would have gotten a lot worse a lot sooner. I sure did talk to a lot of them, as webcams got more popular over time. Most of them were on laptops though and very seldom were aimed at a public space. There are so many worthwhile things to do which don't amount to spying on Americans.
akshay_akula 19d ago
Tbf defense tech isn't necessarily police state tech. There's some overlap but def very different.

by gmerc 28d ago

rasengan 28d ago

I feel really bad for you. It might actually be wise [1] to create a new, slightly less permissioned license for open source wherein the open is defined as anything that isn’t in a kill or surveillance chain or, more broadly, for military use… [1] for the community

deleted 28d ago
[deleted]
stpdnerdism 28d ago
I doubt this is enforceable. Are you going to sue a government secret program because they used some open source code in a way that violates some weird clause?
- gentooflux 28d ago
  Yes, citizens should sue the government when the government takes actions which are grounds for suit. The government sure will come after your money if you do things they say you shouldn't, and what's good for the goose is good for the gander.
  - well_ackshually 28d ago
    You won't know, they'll say it's for national security so licenses don't matter, and then if you keep going they'll make sure your life is a living hell and your bank accounts closed. I'm begging tech bros to understand that abusive governments _do not care about abusing you_
    - throwaway27448 28d ago
      [flagged]
      - pessimizer 28d ago
        No, treating your illusion of control as a religion is suicidal. You need a theory of power other than complaining to the manager. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Illusion_of_control https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Illusion_of_control
        throwaway27448 28d ago
        Surely you should use every tool at your disposal including the courts?
  - lolgovlol 28d ago
    [flagged]
    - gentooflux 28d ago
      You seem to be suggesting that it's impossible to successfully sue the federal government, which is provably untrue. Yes the government abuses the rights of its citizens and will vehemently defend itself if challenged, but suit is the one of the more potent peaceful means we have to redress grievances with them. As this is a civil discussion, being rude is uncalled for. Maybe go for a walk in nature and get your head back on straight.
      - hparadiz 28d ago
        No one is saying you can't sue the government. You can in fact. What we're saying is you won't get the outcome you desire. The fact that you think they will simply stop production because you sued them is frankly laughably naive. That's not being rude. It's just reality.
- itintheory 28d ago
  On the other hand, it may be worth publicly and unambiguously stating a position even if unenforceable. This seems to be what most modern protest movements are based on. For instance, how many software repos "stand with Ukraine", even though they won't make an impact on frontline military reality?
- deleted 28d ago
  [deleted]
well_ackshually 28d ago
Ah yes, they're carpet bombing people and indiscriminately killing fighters, adults and children, but they're going to be stopped because... the software they use is two clause GPL.
- QuercusMax 28d ago
  You could sue cloud providers who are using your software and selling to the military
nlittlepoole 28d ago
https://firstdonoharm.dev/ https://firstdonoharm.dev/
sheept 28d ago
That wouldn't be open source. OSI includes the clause "No Discrimination Against Fields of Endeavor"[0] for its definition of open source. Famously, the JSON license[1] has a clause "The Software shall be used for Good, not Evil," so the Free Software Foundation considers it nonfree.[2] [0]: https://opensource.org/osd https://opensource.org/osd [1]: https://www.json.org/license.html https://www.json.org/license.html [2]: https://www.gnu.org/licenses/license-list.en.html#JSON https://www.gnu.org/licenses/license-list.en.html#JSON
- hparadiz 28d ago
  The idea that a defense manufacturer would be stopped by this is too funny. The code won't be auditable by you so how will you know? Secondly even if you did find out the most you'd get is a payout. Thirdly if you believe that missile aren't running GNU/Linux I have a bridge to sell you.
  - inemesitaffia 27d ago
    IBM would be stopped
- Teever 28d ago
  I've contemplated writing an email to RMS asking him how he feels about the use of GNU software in military and surveillance systems and if he could do it over if he would do things differently to alllow users to put a clause in their OSS licenses that forbid such things.
  - m4rtink 28d ago
    IIRC that has been discussed many times & can be definitely found in mailing list archives.
  - wizzwizz4 28d ago
    He's already written that essay. It's more rhetoric than substance, but his position is clear. https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/programs-must-not-limit-freedom-to-run.html https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/programs-must-not-limit-freed...
Petersipoi 28d ago
Why do you want the people risking their lives to protect your freedom to have worse artillery? I don't understand this thinking at all. If my country is going to shoot something, I want them to be able to control what actually gets hit. I swear, people take borderline religious stances on things to the point that they no longer make sense.
- nilamo 28d ago
  How do you know for sure that only your team is using the code? Are you ok with "the enemy" using your code to kill your soldiers, or you?
  - maxlybbert 28d ago
    Many wars are simply what you’d expect from violent leaders who realize they can order other people into combat for them. But some wars really are for the greater good. There are definitely militaries that I want to see win, and militaries that I want to see lose. I realize I don’t have any code that would be of any use to any military. If I did, I don’t see how I could write a license to allow the use of my code by only people I agree with.
    - freeone3000 28d ago
      You can write whatever you want in a license, including something as vague as “you can only use this code if I agree with your moral stances”. (For expediency, it might be worth enumerating the cases.) The OSI might disapprove, but you don’t have to listen to them.
- V__ 28d ago
  "protect your freedom" does a lot of work here..
- bluefirebrand 28d ago
  > Why do you want the people risking their lives to protect your freedom to have worse artillery If better artillery is being built on open source tech then everyone has better artillery. Not just the people "protecting you" but also the people trying to kill those people
jacquesm 28d ago
You think they're going to read that license and then go oh, sorry, we won't use this because you told us not to?

deleted 28d ago

[deleted]

onion2k 28d ago

I don't think the author is suggesting we shouldn't build useful things. He's saying to the people who built the military system that they shouldn't be doing that. It's the last step that's the problem, not the people who built all the things they stand on. Otherwise we'd be suggesting that no one build a database engine or a digital camera or a computer ever again in case they're used to build evil tech.

sssilver 28d ago
Not sure about digital cameras or database engines, but computers and the Internet were, in large part, created for military needs first and foremost.
asdfman123 28d ago
They're not confessing, they're bragging

CarVac 28d ago

I think there's a distinction between creating generic info-gathering technology that helps them gather their own data from their own users, and you gathering data that the government can then ask (force) you to hand over.

MomsAVoxell 28d ago

>Harder than it looks. But maybe easier than it sounds. All technology can be weaponized. It can also be de-weaponized. One of my favorite late-night thought experiments, is "what would it take to turn an AK47 or an AR15 into a water pump?" .. the possibilities are endless. "How could a tank be turned into a bicycle factory?", another great one worth the effort to think about. The only difference between peaceful technology and a weapon is the intention of the user. The very real spiritual intention. De-weaponization starts with the human being. Those who think weapons are necessary must always take lesser priority than those who invent technology to make the lives of their fellow human beings better. There are so many examples of the tool-makers winning harder and at greater scale than the bomb-manufacturer. We wouldn't be here now if the balance was the other way - our world is however threatened by having this scale weighed heavily, by those who think murder is the solution to anything. It's a spirit thing. Not spiritu-al, a spirit thing. What is the spirit of the designer? If they want to help humanity, it will be difficult technology to weaponize (although not impossible). It will be easy to de-weaponize, also. We need to focus more on the spirit of help, and less on hurt. Imagine if those F35 mounting pylons were used to drop field-portable water-purification systems directly where they are needed most. Imagine if they could be used to drop a copy of archive.org, anywhere in the world, in any language. Imagine if those ships were being used to bring power to the villages that need it most. Instead of glide bombs, we have glide libraries. Instead of cluster munitions, we instead drop cluster medical kits! Oh, the glory to be had by those who would do this - the allies in the poor and weak of the world to be found! Imagine this happening, changing the intention from hate and fear, to respect and love. All it takes is the spirit, a bit of imagination, and any and all technology can be de-weaponized. It is the warrior narcissist who stands in the way of this. Disarm them too - smash their mirror: Drop books, not bombs!

ff317 28d ago
> Imagine if those F35 mounting pylons were used to drop field-portable water-purification systems directly where they are needed most. Except we can (and do!) accomplish that with much simpler airplanes. The staggering costs and complexities of an F35 (the thrust:weight, maneuverability, and stealth) don't make sense for any "peaceful" application.

jonplackett 28d ago

There should be a distinction between helping the military and helping a police state. Eg. Flock cameras don’t help the military but do help the police state.

lukan 28d ago
In case of ground invasion (or just to detect enemy drones in the sky) having access tonlots of cameras is of military use.
- jonplackett 28d ago
  I think you are just playing devil’s advocate.
  - deleted 28d ago
    [deleted]
- rpdillon 28d ago
  Not a likely scenario, FWIW: https://www.military.com/history/5-reasons-why-geography-americas-greatest-weapon-against-invasion.html https://www.military.com/history/5-reasons-why-geography-ame... I would expect any invading forces would need to be surveilled by planes or satellites, or perhaps drones, since they would immediately destroy something like flock cameras.
  - __MatrixMan__ 28d ago
    You're assuming that the invaders can't just buy, hack, or social engineer, access to the cameras from Flock. Lately it has been social engineering: https://www.404media.co/floridas-wildlife-cops-are-searching-thousands-of-flock-cameras-for-ice/ https://www.404media.co/floridas-wildlife-cops-are-searching... but there's also a concern that the cameras themselves have compromised supply chains and may serve other masters: https://www.404media.co/new-jersey-used-covid-relief-funds-to-buy-banned-dahua-chinese-surveillance-cameras/ https://www.404media.co/new-jersey-used-covid-relief-funds-t...

Zambyte 28d ago

You didn't expect the application you developed called "Skynet" that has an eye of sauron as it's logo to be used by the military? Sorry, I don't believe you.

genxy 28d ago
I only made a prototype of the torment nexus as illustrative satire, I didn't think someone would actually ship it to production! All satire is dual use.
- rtkwe 28d ago
  Oh from the cautionary sci-fi classic "Do Not Create the Torment Nexus"? I always thought it'd be awesome to create after reading that!
  - musicale 28d ago
    It was part of the training data.
  - pfdietz 28d ago
    Twitter/X has a lot to answer for, but at least it helped create some memorable memes.
    - genxy 26d ago
      I mean, that is like crediting gmail with the contents of an email. The Torment Nexus came from Alex Blechman a staff writer for The Onion.
      - pfdietz 26d ago
        Ouch. Burn accepted.
- ocodo 28d ago
  Orwell didn't think he was writing a guidebook...

haolez 28d ago

Yep. Early in my career I developed a simple driver for a CAN interface to be used in a medical device, which was my assigned project. The same code was used in another project of this same company. The project was a missile. It felt weird.

stuaxo 28d ago
Possibly always was the main project.

jvuygbbkuurx 28d ago

You didn't expect your telemetry system to be used as a telemetry system?

CamperBob2 28d ago
So what's the answer here? Don't build telemetry systems?
- wtallis 28d ago
  Generally, yes. Most telemetry systems in software are not producing enough actionable insight to justify the privacy invasion. Spying on your customers on an opt-out basis just in case you one day come up with a use for that data is a widespread practice but clearly unethical, and leaves you (or whoever acquires your employer) in the position of being tempted to use the data for worse things than just deciding what bugs and features to prioritize.
- Zambyte 28d ago
  Yes. Telemetry is anti-social at best, authoritarian at worst. We have built industries on "the user won't tell us what they want so we have to spy on them so we can build what they want" and then instead of building what they want, building the thing that extracts the most money out of their users (probably not what the user wanted!)

nonameiguess 28d ago

Do you actually object to countries having standing armies with ranged area weaponry? This isn't what the article is talking about at all. It never says don't build military technology. It says don't build things like a database of who in the country is and isn't gay and what religion everyone practices, for fear a future bigoted administration might use it to target those people. If your government is turning howitzers on you, that's less a police state and more a civil war. I don't know what you do against that, but it's a different situation. There is precedent in the US with the Army being used to round up and forcibly displace native populations, but that really seems to be the kind of thing that requires a political solution, not prevention of any possibility. If we didn't have an Army at all, then secession would have succeeded, there would still be chattel slavery, and one of the hostile European colonial powers likely would have simply conquered the west itself and killed all the natives anyway.

asveikau 28d ago

I don't think the article is saying don't build a payload-agnostic telemetry engine. The specific examples cited are that it's probably legitimate to have a vehicle registration database (with the caveat that even that could be abused), but not a database of sexual orientations or religious affiliations.

rBrenick 28d ago

Keeping it within game dev, I will say that telemetry and bug report tooling looks really cool. Big fan of it grabbing build info directly from the session that the user was playing. Feeling kinda inspired to build something similar for the studio I work at now. Thanks for sharing!

jambalaya8 28d ago

clearly people have a responsibility to sit down and think long and hard and try to rule out as much as possible the negatives of any tech or ideas they share with other people. Or at least give it a cursory thought or find someone with that mindset to tamp those issues down. Absolutely before even considering a funding step or presentation to anyone outside of a very small trusted group. Ideas take fire way too quickly now not to be cautious.

fuzzfactor 28d ago
From another excellent comment: >How do you make sure a police state doesn't happen? There is no way to be sure, all one person can do most of the time is make a personal effort and hope it is not overwhelmed by storm-trooper ambitions and communist-dictator tactics. When I look at Flock, it is so sad. It's been 30 full years since I got my early webcams when they were made by Intel and were still expensive business machines intended for teleconferencing over dial-up. Without really needing the internet of course. It didn't take long before I was using one for observing my fledgling company's parking lot 24/7, and on more than half my CRT monitor you could see every car that drove by on my street, which was almost constant during the daytime. This was 99% of the action compared to visitors who pulled in. It didn't take that long before I could remotely call in to the cam plugged into the front office PC through dial-up networking in Windows 95, and when I got a smartphone in 2001 I no longer needed a remote laptop most of the time as long as I was OK with the small screen of the flip-phone form factor. Rather than leaving the spare land-line available for calling directly in, alternatively it was also possible to log into an ISP over dial-up from my company, then keep the line tied up so I (or anyone really) could have access over the internet. When broadband internet came around it made a really big difference since the stream was not as compressed, and motion not nearly as blurry and jerky. It was nice having the choice between a private remote connection to my front office PC over direct dial-up whenever I wanted, as well as enjoying the faster speed of the public internet plenty of the time too. Anyway it didn't take long to realize that if webcams ever really catch on, then our local law enforcement would be highly interested in what could be done if they could freely observe them like I was doing looking at my own stream. I didn't know anybody else that had a webcam at first, but for protection of my own building all I would have to do is give the law my IP address and they could pick up the stream no differently than I was. They already knew my location and I had an excellent relationship with all the first responders. Naturally nothing was encrypted back then so that wasn't even a consideration, there was really nothing confidential on my stream to begin with. I really thought about it long and hard and it took quite a while trying to examine all the possibilities. There were a few obvious downsides regarding privacy which needed much further consideration, so I could not in good conscience pull the trigger until that had been justified very deeply. I didn't expect to hesitate that long but it really did take more than a year to conclude without a doubt that the negatives outweighed the positives, but that was only in the short run. In the long run the virtually unlimited downsides could only accumulate in excess of the possible upsides, and it was a big unknown how scattered cams could be used to compromise general privacy. Eventually had to realize such a cam network would be more easily used in a predatory way rather than for protection from predators, regardless of who was watching or recording. At significant scale it seemed like it could very well become exponentially dystopian. No big deal, if you're not capable of thinking of something overwhelmingly positive to base your business on, I understand. At least I didn't pioneer it, and I assume a lot of other early webcam owners gradually engaged in some of the same thought processes or it would have gotten a lot worse a lot sooner. I sure did talk to a lot of them, as webcams got more popular over time. Most of them were on laptops though and very seldom were aimed at a public space. There are so many worthwhile things to do which don't amount to spying on Americans.

akshay_akula 19d ago

Tbf defense tech isn't necessarily police state tech. There's some overlap but def very different.