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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 fyngyrz on Wednesday June 07 2017, @03:06PM
No. It isn't. Often, when the law is immoral, obeying it is immoral. If the law says that it is illegal to escape from slavery (it did), yet a slave tries anyway, this is (a) not in any way unreasonable, and (b) a thoroughly moral thing to do. Further, if the law required one to return a runaway slave (it did; see the The Fugitive Slave Act, ca. 1850), then the law required others to do something immoral; doing so puts compliant individuals irretrievably in the wrong. When the law is wrong, not only is there no imperative (other than fear and coercion) to obey it, there is a bombproof moral case to disobey it should the issue arise.
The only moral move is to follow moral laws: If the government wants the citizens to obey the laws, it must make only moral laws, and impose only moral consequences. This is (obviously) a goal that should be among the topmost when crafting legislation. Since it isn't, the duty to triage toxic law falls upon the public.
There are many such immoral and toxic laws on the books today, and they make for interesting discussion, albeit a different one and one that certainly includes debate as to the various cases for morality, and what that means. I generally use the slavery laws because the dust has long since settled – any moderately sane person with two wet neurons to rub together can see that coercive slavery is inherently wrong.
I wrote a more extended discussion of this 9/2016 in a (slightly) different context. You can read it here [fyngyrz.com] if you wish.
The bottom line is that strict/rote compliance with the law can result in definitively evil and toxic acts. Don't use the law verbatim. Learn about the law, learn about ethics, develop an understanding of what informed, personal and consensual choice is, carefully devise a relevant morality you can defend, and then use your brain.