I disagree that anything you describe could actually be both commercially viable and deployable without authoritarian involvement

You haven’t heard of Ring cameras? Commercial security systems? They do basically what I’m describing, just not as well because they don’t have as much of an incentive. Are end users willing to pay for these more advanced models? No, so consumer grade cameras stick to object detection like deer vs racoon instead of specific individual detection (e.g. scanning eyes).

Governments, however, are willing to pay that amount. Why? Because they think it’ll help them detect criminals, and they think that helps keep people safe. It’s an extension of the HOA idea, just with government-scale funds backed up with law enforcement to go after threats. That, in itself, isn’t authoritarian, but setting up such a system opens the door for authoritarians to take control and misuse it.

I’d go so far as to say that the people in your theoretical HOA are analogous to supporters of a authoritarian regime.

Analogous, sure, but the HOA has no enforcement arm for non-residents, so all they can do is ask the police to intervene. That’s the difference with a city, it has a police force it can order to intervene using information from that system. It’s the mixing of enforcement and surveillance that makes it authoritarian.

So a surveillance system is not itself authoritarian, it’s only authoritarian of there’s some enforcement arm to enforce obedience or punish disobedience.

If it is nearly impossible to meaningfully use apolitically, then it is not apolitical.

Again, I disagree. Something is only political when used for political ends.

What’s crazy is I agree with some of what he says, but disagree entirely with his company.

Basically, he says the Antichrist promises security in exchange for giving up your freedom. However, his company does exactly that, it promises security in exchange for taking away freedom from the people. So at best he’s a hypocrite and at worst an accelerationist.

I agree that people are willing to trade freedom for security, but I disagree that’s what governments should do. Governments need to protect freedoms first, and security second.

Similarly, even if HOAs could deploy a system like that, that’d make them authoritarian.

That really depends how the system is used. If it explicitly doesn’t record regular residents and people who have signed up officially as visitors (and homeowners can review footage), I don’t think the camera system itself would really be authoritarian. Yeah, the system would be capable of violating privacy, but as long as the system is transparent and reviewable by the residents, I think it can be privacy-respecting. Basically, it would be like a home security system, but across a neighborhood, and it can even be self-hosted to not let third parties access the data (and police requests would go through the HOA board, which consists of residents).

That’s my point. If the system itself can be used in a privacy-respecting way (and the vast majority can), even if it’s typically not used that way, the system itself cannot be authoritarian. If an institution uses it in an authoritarian way, then the institution is authoritarian.

In short:

1. cameras are not authoritarian
2. databases are not authoritarian
3. license plate and face recognition software isn’t authoritarian
4. connecting 1-3 together in a searchable way isn’t authoritarian (would be a fun hobby project)
5. Sharing info from 4 isn’t authoritarian (again, could be a fun hobby with friends)
6. An institution (gov’t, business, HOA, etc) using 4 and/or 5 to enforce policy on citizens/employees/residents/etc is authoritarian

I have friends that use home cameras to do object classification as a hobby, mostly to identify and fee record wildlife. I’ve also heard of people doing this to identify package deliveries and catch package thiefs. Sharing those models with others on the internet is largely the same idea as what flock is doing, and with enough data, similar solutions to what Palantir is doing could be done entirely by hobbyists.

The products Flock and Palantir aren’t authoritarian in and of themselves, it becomes authoritarian when those products are used to enforce policy.

Some solutions here are technically illegal to make laws about. The government cannot force a company to give away its copyrighted server code, not even in compiled form. Since there are alternatives that don’t require giving away copyrighted material, it’s better to keep it vague.

So it’s both the friendliest to companies and the easiest to pass as a law.

I would argue that such a product would be by its nature political, because it’s only practical use case was the furtherance of a political goal.

Again, I disagree. Surveillance has a lot of use cases outside of government, and a huge use case is keeping the government in check. Palantir could have sold its services to non-profits like the ACLU as a check on local, state, and law enforcement agencies. They could have sold it to HOAs and neighborhood watch associations as an early warning system for repeat offenders.

The government skirting the 4th amendment (and a few others) doesn’t automatically make its sub-contractor’s products “authoritarian,” it makes its use of those products authoritarian.

So a system that does so (like the ones sold to the govt) is a political software product.

I disagree with that conclusion. The use by the government is authoritarian, but that doesn’t make the product authoritarian.

To me where it gets tricky is when private entities grow to government-sized proportions, and begin to use these same tools for similar purposes

A private entity can do authoritarian things, like spying on its employees or customers. Authoritarianism isn’t strictly tied to governments, but anything that acts like a government. Here’s the first definition I found:

Characterized by or favoring absolute obedience to authority, as against individual freedom.

Software can’t really favor obedience to authority, it can’t really deny you your freedoms, it’s just software. Likewise for a camera system. The only way those things can be authoritarian is if paired with some form of enforcement arm, like corporate security or law enforcement. So that combined system is authoritarian, the cameras or software on their own cannot be authoritarian.

That’s my point.

And ideally give enough forewarning that the community can build it before they shut the servers off.

For sure, definitely be extra careful when organizing outside of the ways sanctioned by the company. In fact, I recommend not keeping any records about anything that goes on in the company, and keep union discussions about the union itself. If you want to recruit people, talk about how you’d like the relationship between the union and company to be, not about things the company is doing that you don’t like, because there’s a huge risk of giving the company a valid reason to fire you.

I’m more talking about what’s generally protected legally and what’s not. Again, if you’re looking to form a union, don’t get anywhere near that line.

The question is, will he still see a profit if it takes 5-10 years? Will his investors stick with him even if he loses billions? They almost left in 2008, what if this takes longer than that?

If you’re taking the contrarian stance in investing, you have to be right both about direction and timing, and timing the market is very hard if not impossible.

DuckDuckGo still does that, and it generates UUIDs too, which is nice.

Yeah, I read that he has somewhere around $300M. Not a billionaire, but not poor.

That’s the thing though, options are generally relatively short in duration, with most being a few months. The longest options are around 1-2 years out.

Could AI stay keep its hype for 1-2 years? Probably. Will it? Who knows!

The market can remain irrational longer than you can remain solvent.

Looks like very mixed returns. Which is what you’d expect from a strategy of betting on areas that are significantly overvalued.

Again, I don’t think it really does.

Let’s say I identify an officer that shot a pepper ball at a protester. Let’s say I report it to the news, file a complaint, and file a lawsuit. Here’s what I expect to happen:

• news agency runs a small piece on the incident, perhaps naming the officer, perhaps not
• police does an internal investigation and determines the officer was acting within their duties
• lawsuit is dropped because I don’t have standing (I’m not the victim), and if I did have standing, the agency might get fined and the officer retains their position

That’s not real accountability IMO, real accountability would result in the officer getting investigated by the AG or something and potentially jailed for using excessive force.

Nah, I played it 2-3 years ago and it was totally fine. The only bug I recall was at the end with the helicopter sequence, and it was really frustrating. Basically, I had to set a framerate cap to 30 FPS to progress the game (60 might work too, but I needed a cap).

There’s one impactful decision soon after and then a cutscene that’s based on that decision, but otherwise that’s the end. So if you run into the bug and don’t want to fix it, just watch the ending on YouTube or something.

“The CEO said in a meeting that they want to use AI to replace QA”

This sounds like it would be on the edge if the company is publicly traded and there’s a chance that information wasn’t communicated to investors, especially for something like video games where launch bugs could make or break initial impression and thus sales.

“Wanna hear about this cool bug I found today?”

This is probably fine if it’s unreleased and has been fixed. It’s probably not fine if it’s in a released product and hasn’t been fixed.

The longest term seems to be about 2 years.

Can we assume his puts aren’t for 2026, but at least 2028 or later?

I don’t think you can buy puts that far out. The longest seems to be about 2 years, so I guess January 2027?

Good thing Burry isn’t a billionaire, he’s a fund manager.

The solution IMO isn’t to make a bunch of rules to try to make them act better, the solution is to increase accountability. That means:

• end qualified immunity - when tried in court, they should be held to similar standards as citizens
• change how investigations of police officers happens - AG role should change to protect the people, not the state

At the same time, we should increase salaries of police officers to encourage good cops instead of power hungry cops, and perhaps have cash rewards for officers who turn in other officers for criminal violations.

If we focus on laws to force police to act better, they’ll just give themselves a pass.