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Comment by urbandw311er | Hacker News Reader

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I know that your comment can be read as unfairly hijacking a news item without adding much, and I'm also somewhat annoyed with it.

But I know the place it's coming from. After having been in tech for 20 years and having had the chance to write some code that runs on billions of devices now and so on, I also can't shake the growing sense that few of us work on solutions to relevant problems anymore, and the best we seem to be able to come up with - strapping screens to people's faces and forgetting the world - feels increasingly dystopic and like giving up completely. There's other stuff going on, some of it far more exciting, but my "where will this go if we build it?" critical filter is definitely a lot more primed now than it was in the early 2000s.

And I think that's probably a good thing.

On the news item though: I think an interesting new core UI gesture. If you remember those system-global text actions that were popularized in NeXTSTEP (and still stick around in systems like KDE's Plasma), this feels like a modern spin on it.

Hey thanks for embracing the idea of what I was trying to say, I think in all honesty it was a little bit of an early morning, pre-coffee snipe and it is a reasonably interesting UI gesture. Fortunately the ever-vigilant HN crowd put me in my place! ;-)

But I can tell from the rest of your comment that you understand the main gist of where I'm coming from. Of course it's not Google's fault per-se, but as a megacorp full of big brains, many of them wasted on pointless, often-abandoned busy work, it does embody this idea that we've somehow lost our way as a species. We're on this weird treadmill of capitalism and we can't get off it, and while we're addicted to influencers peddling ridiculous sunglasses there really is some horrible stuff going down. We could do so much more if there was some magical way to re-organise the planet and its governance! Euughh, time for more coffee I think...

If you want to improve the world in some way, waiting for someone else to spontaneously decide to affect the change is in generally probably not going to do it.

Well it's good that I'm not doing that, then.

It does seem like you expect Google to affect the change for you though.

Not 'for me', but 'alongside me' would be great.

In general it's pretty hard to blame and guilt other entities into doing things. Hostility is met with hostility. Leading by example is the primary thing that is effective when it comes to rallying allies to a cause.

It would not be "alongside me" unless you were participating in the same aim, which you just said you were not. It really seems like a rules for thee situation.

Wow, overly dramatic and without a point. It’s a demo for a product that is supposed to make money.

What did you expect, a FLIR image of a tank then circling it to find the model? Or a dead palestinian child next to an object in Gaza, then circling the object?

Wow, I didn't expect any of those things! Are they slated for Q2?

This can be said on any new or shiny thing not dealing with any of the issues you mentioned.

And that's a fair point. Shame though, when you think about the sheer stack of resources and great minds that Google has, and as far as we can tell they're being squandered on things like creating then abandoning Fuscia.

I'd rather those minds in Google work on silly AI stuff rather than, say, war.

how is the "world is on its knees"? also didn't google target net-zero carbon by 2030? https://sustainability.google/operating-sustainably/ what do you want google to do about war?

Well, on both of those points: (1) Net Zero is to be expected, not applauded. You mess up the planet as a side effect of becoming obscenely rich, then you put it right, sorry no star. If anything, we should be pushing for them to go well beyond Net Zero. (2) I think that's a fair question and a fair point. It might make for an interesting Hackathon though! What could Google do to alleviate the effects of war, or encourage peace? Who knows. But spending your time working out how to help people buy cool sunglasses isn't going to make much headway there.

I know this sounds dismissive and cynical, but I mean it genuinely: a Google hackathon focused on the problem of war would do as much to solve that problem as releasing a new feature to make it easier to impulse buy sunglasses.

we need better communication to get OVER waging war...

we are all humans, we should not continue to wage war against each other for any reason.

  > we are all humans, we should not continue to wage war against each other for any reason

That is easy to say when you have everything you need. People whose grandfather's land was stolen have no other recourse than to wage war against the occupation.

i dont think individual humans should own land

Even if they don't own it, should they not still fight for it? Is it not their right to murder the descendants of those who live on the land that their grandfathers once lived on?

i do not think we should keep killing each other. no.

Then present a better option.

Let us assume that I live in a country that your grandfather fled. Now you want to move to that country but the government will not give you citizenship. Nor did your grandfather not your father not yourself receive citizenship of the new country you are in, and you were even born in that new country (like your father before you).

What options do you have other than infiltrating my country and killing me?

This is and always has been the sentiment of a subset of the people who are rich and dominant, out of touch with the realities of the world.

so you are saying humans should wage MORE wars against each other?

Wars are never waged just to wage wars, they are a means to an end: territory expansion, access to resources, religious reasons, whatever. It’s nonsensical to say humans should wage more or less wars. I get wars are unpleasant and cause suffering. Shooting someone in self defense is unpleasant and causes suffering too. But sometimes it happens to be the right thing to do.

ok, you go killing your cousins in space then, i would prefer the earth to be a no-murder zone

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