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Comment by A4ET8a8uTh0 | Hacker News Reader

I will be honest, while the project is actually neat, it showcases some of the issues with technological advancements as related to society ( and happens to also touch on one's exposure in a big city ). One could easily imagine a scenario ( or scenarios ), where this could be misused.

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Right? I can already imagine the government doing this to drop nuclear bombs on dissidents.

You seem to be making it unnecessarily dramatic for comedic effect and it does not have be government in attempt to dismiss genuine concern. The only reason I am not expanding on it is because I do not want to give people ideas.

Perhaps it can be used to drop water balloons full of Gatorade on parched travellers. Or, to extend the earlier concept, miniaturised atom bombs on beatniks.

As the saying goes, "ideas are cheap, execution is everything".

I guarantee you that you haven't come up with any ideas in the few minutes you've been thinking as a casual and presumably non-criminal observer that haven't been thought of already by countless criminal and terrorist groups. The only thing you're accomplishing by being vague is making it hard for us to understand what you're getting at.

People are influenced by what they read.

Whether the idea has occurred to a bad actor and if they choose to act on it are very different.

We effectively “promote” bad ideas with detailed public discussion; it’s literally what influencers get paid to do.

Hmm. On this very forum you will often see me argue actions vs speech and how the two are very different from one another and how only one of those can actually be construed as violence.

<< I guarantee you that you haven't come up with any ideas [...]that haven't been thought of already by countless criminal and terrorist groups.

It is likely. My imagination is somewhat limited, but this is kinda the point. If I can think it, a sizeable portion of the population can as well. The difference is that it just made it now is easier to deploy in non-benign manner. My concern is not with terror orgs. Those can and do their own thing. I am worried about a casual kid, who uses it for 'pranks' that will happen, as they seem to invariably eventually do, to go too far.

> The only reason I am not expanding on it is because I do not want to give people ideas.

Well and because your ideas are either fantasy land or old hat.

You realize anyone can throw a rock off an overpass and sometimes people actually do it right? People just choose not to.

The two situations are not alike. People choose not to throw rocks directly as the action is direct, immediate and likely against the law with all the things that it would influence. On the other hand, we have a remote system capable of dropping things on unsuspecting heads in an automated manner.

Do you really not see the difference?

One is easy an people don't do it, while one is complicated and people don't do it.

You could drop stuff from a drone or have a drone shoot a gun too, but people don't want to hurt other people in general.

What scenario is in your head that you think being able to drop something and hurt or kill someone is going to happen more if people can do it automatically?

Who are these people that aren't hurting anyone but are suddenly going to do it once it becomes a science project?

I had a longer post and deleted it. We disagree. Lets leave it at that.

There is no evidence or explanation here, you seem to just be saying that if people can hurt other people with some sort of automation they will, but you're not explaining why that would be or giving any examples of it happening.

You don’t need to aim that well with a nuclear bomb.

This sort of tech could clearly be applied to the “last mile” problem in hand grenade deliveries as well, so close range jammer based solutions seem pretty hopeless (I think that’s been pretty obvious for a while, but this hobbyist project really emphasizes the fact, right?)

Surely, if this got into the wrong hands evildoers could lower all sorts of things people order:

Toupees

Pianos

Air conditioners

Enriched yellow cake uranium

Specially trained mice with machine guns

Robert De Niro in Brazil

Etc etc

We must mobilize to stop this now before it’s too late. Hopefully this will be addressed during next week’s presidential election.

Yes, imagine if someone dropped a certain red cap with writing on it totally unbeknownst to you. People might form Opinions about you!

I'm old enough to remember fishing poles hanging out of windows in Alphabet so you could buy drugs.

Like a gun?

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