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Oculus co-founder Palmer Luckey, who left Facebook in March, wants to build a wall... with LIDAR sensors:
Palmer Freeman Luckey was the kind of wunderkind Silicon Valley venerates. When he was just 21, he made an overnight fortune selling his start-up, a company called Oculus VR that made virtual-reality gear, to Facebook for $2 billion in 2014.
But the success story took a sideways turn this year when Mr. Luckey was pressured to leave Facebook months after news spread that he had secretly donated to an organization dedicated to spreading anti-Hillary Clinton internet memes.
[...] And he has a new start-up in the works, a company that is developing surveillance technology that could be deployed on borders between countries and around military bases, according to three people familiar with the plan who asked for anonymity because it's still confidential. They said the investment fund run by Peter Thiel, a technology adviser to Mr. Trump, planned to support the effort.
In an emailed statement, Mr. Luckey confirmed that he was working on a defense-related start-up. "We are spending more than ever on defense technology, yet the pace of innovation has been slowing for decades," he wrote. "We need a new kind of defense company, one that will save taxpayer dollars while creating superior technology to keep our troops and citizens safer."
Also at BBC, CNET, Boing Boing, PCMag, and Engadget.
(Score: 2) by quietus on Wednesday June 07 2017, @08:47AM (2 children)
Let's say that you created such a LIDAR-based [or sophisticated movement sensor] wall of say, half a mile, depth. Try the following: take your group of immigrants onto a part of the border where border guards are only passing every 2 hours or so. Cross into the United States, then return. Do this a couple of nights. The well-educated guards will decide that there's something wrong with the sensors on that part of the border. The next time you cross into the US, guards won't even call in the drone/satellite anymore to track you.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 07 2017, @09:36AM
The point is not to stop anybody from crossing but to extract preferably hundreds of millions of tax payer dollars for building this boondoggle.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Wednesday June 07 2017, @12:43PM
Or they'll decide someone is deliberately doing that and be waiting. Cat and mouse has all sorts of exciting possibilities. But really, most of this would be shut down by punishing employers who hire illegal immigrants. They would after all be the ones with something to lose. Don't need a wall then.