Discussion
robin_reala: You didn’t know Boston Dynamics was involved in weaponised platforms until 2 weeks ago? That feels like wilful ignorance at this point; DARPA was sponsoring BigDog which was revealed two decades ago: https://www.newscientist.com/article/dn8802-robotic-pack-mul...
rvz: Unfortunately, this is where robotics is going to end up. We already have drones being used in warfare. Humanoids are next.Won't be surprised to see hundreds of thousands of humanoid robots strapped up with explosives running to their target or some of them flying to their target with drones attached.
XorNot: Why would you build a very expensive bipedal robot to suicide bomb someone, when as you note, a very cheap flying drone could do the same thing? (and more over: already is, this is literally how drones are used in Ukraine).Which of course leads to point 2: it's very easy to take a moral stance on weapons when you don't think you're in any danger, nor going to be doing any of the fighting otherwise.
ukd1: Why: bipedal maybe not, but non-flying can usually carry more.
ukd1: Well humanoid / non-flying robotic weapons are already being used, and have been for a while. e.g. Zelenskyy https://x.com/KaterynaLis/status/2043827043863863404?s=20 talking about their successful use recently.
vb-8448: > I’m not willing to go thereUnfortunately it doesn't matter, some else will go ... just look at the ukr war.
testemailfordg2: I guess people making swords and arrows in the past had similar ethical dilemas in the begining, until they were attacked and then it became business as usual.
arvid-lind: I would assume those things (at least arrows) were created for hunting food rather than killing other people, but I could be wrong. Maybe the tech there is that a lot of weapons can be created with simple components.With robotics and AI, it feels like there are a lot of directions it could go that would lead to higher quality of life and not just temporary advantages for killing other people.
tqwhite: Tough call giving up a good job. Admiration.
Imustaskforhelp: can I recommend to you to not use google forms, I know that they are convenient but they aren't privacy friendly.There are many open source solutions out there: https://alternativeto.net/software/google-forms/?license=ope... I recommend if you can choose any of privacy friendly options, thanks and have a nice day.
macrolet: Perhaps we need something like hnforms or startupforms, to help founders?
cardamomo: My hot take: if a founder can't spin up a simple, self-hosted webform of some sort, I'm already wary of their technical skills.
macrolet: I would let them do the opposite. I would make hnforms (maybe mdforms) based on the following idea.Write a form in .md (even tell an llm to do it) and just put it online.
pj_mukh: Boston Dynamics has sworn off all war machine development [1].But as expected, others have taken their place [2]. Guilt-tripping a single non-monopoly proving useless again.[1]: https://bostondynamics.com/news/general-purpose-robots-shoul...[2]: https://www.digitimes.com/news/a20260323PD219/military-bosto...
Hendrikto: > Boston Dynamics has sworn off all war machine development [1].That’s just marketing bs in the same vein as “Your privacy is very important to us.”. It means nothing.
ForHackernews: Why would they have to be killer robots strapped with explosives? If we have highly capable semi-autonomous robots they could be non-lethal with no risk of life to their owners. It upends the entire paradigm of kill-or-be-killed warfare.Rather than blowing up a school full of little girls, you could deploy a swarm of thousands of fast-moving cat-sized robots armed with tasers and bolas to identify and capture targeted enemy leaders.
leetrout: I am building a very similar thing after a short stent at a robotics company in 2024. The industry is very far behind more general dev experience and tooling.I am forced to accept the popularity of ROS but I find it to generally be a terrible experience. Are you considering an alternative? Have you used foxglove?
Tangurena2: I don't see bipedal murderbots being commonplace - they're a lot slower than 4-legged "Big Dogs". I think that the Ukraine war has shown that "slaughterbots" are far more likely.https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O-2tpwW0kmU
laydn: bipedal murderbots... not yet... I think advanced exoskeletons will be there first. They are already testing basic ones in the field:https://www.businessinsider.com/ukraine-exoskeleton-test-bat...
busterarm: Yeah, can I have OP's old job?
jmalicki: DARPA sponsors lots of things that aren't specifically about weapons or killing people - medical treatment, logistics, etc. that are useful for defense/war but generally applicable.Sure, Boston Dynamics is a bit more obvious there, but merely having DARPA funding doesn't mean it's about killing people.
barratia: Hey! Great to hear from someone in the same boat. I completely agree, the general dev experience and tooling around ROS can be deeply frustrating...I am definitely looking into Foxglove! It seems to solve many of the transport/protocol headaches, but I feel like there's still a massive gap in how we actually interact with the robots day to day, especially when you are not glued to a desktop monitor.I'd love to hear more about your experience. What specific part of the tooling drove you crazy enough to start building an alternative?(Also, if you are open to a quick 15-min chat to share "war" stories, let me know!)
pj_mukh: foxglove is just observability no? not...everything else? You still need ROS.
Esophagus4: I would hope a founder wouldn’t waste time on home-brewing their own web form when there are tons of off the shelf ones that all have no discernible difference.It would be like writing your own email servers or calendar software. It would be a distraction at best.
rkozik1989: Good on you for quitting, but unless you know of people in your network who're willing to buy what you're making not sure if this will work. Often times its the simplest ideas that make the most profitable businesses. You know, like selling handmade soap or coffee. The problem with what you're doing is you are trying to enter a market as the first person doing it. Which means nobody has taken the risk to prove there is a demand, and without that it means you're potentially burning a ton of time and resources with no logical place to pivot to next.
440bx: Good on you. I quit my job in the defence sector over two decades ago for the same reasons. Best decision I ever made.
bcjdjsndon: At what point did you realise what the defence sector was?
martythemaniak: After many many years in fintech, I'm now getting into robotics by trying to build an autonomous snow clearing robot, think of it like a miniature electric loader.I've been using AI heavily to do this, so everything is in ROS2 since it's "standard" and AIs have pretty good training for it. I can see how it's annoying and suboptimal if you're writing manually and after a more integrated system, but it's been pretty good for getting up and running because it's "standard" and kinda plug and play. I see why you'd want to rewrite it for production, the endless processes and nodes and startup processes can get annoyingOne of the more useful things I've done so far is actually not robotics related directly, it's a Godot based "game" with a ROS bridge that lets me drive the robot from Foxglove, which I will eventlly get a vlm based agent to drive. Seems much easier and faster than Issac Sim for getting started with.
moomoo11: Neat. That will make weapons testing on robots even easier.Did you think this through? Or are you just virtue signaling lolEither way kinda cringe.Edit: sorry I dropped a 500MT truth nuke lol
estearum: The only thing cringe is acting as if the answer to this age-old dilemma is obvious or the impact of any one person's decision is easy to calculate.Virtue signaling > vice signaling every day :)
moomoo11: Both of them are fake and lame. The truth is in the middle.Just like the OP’s post where he claims a moral high ground but then proceeds to feed the monster he created.Why not just skip the fake bs and just say he’s going to make something cool?Then again, engineers built the Death Star in Star Wars. I’m sure it was interesting work.
senordevnyc: Nowhere near as cringe as your rude and vapid commentary.
moomoo11: Damn I dropped a truth nuke that heavy huh?
specproc: Much love and respect. I quit a job over a similar matter of principle. The decision to walk was easy, but the following year wasn't.I'm glad I did it though. We have to few years on this earth to spend our energies hurting others.
bcjdjsndon: > We have to few years on this earth to spend our energies hurting others.Don't you live in a nation state that uses violence to maintain the order that you've come to enjoy? Here's a harsh dose of reality for ya, suffering is unavoidable... the trick is convincing the worker class that it's easier to just cooperate
estearum: all suffering is equal in amount and necessitytherefore it makes no sense to consider one's own role in producing, mitigating, or directing suffering in the worldi am very smart/s
Froedlich: Yep. Boston Dynamics has been dependent on military contracts since their founding in 1992.The "no more military weapons" statement seems to have been after they were acquired by Hyundai.Boston Dynamics' business is, basically, "mobility platforms." After all these years the basic development is all done; now they're pivoting to commercial markets.There's no real difference between a "murderbot" and, say, a police riot-control platform, a fire-fighting platform, a forestry platform, etc.They might not be explicitly developing weapon packages any more, but there are plenty of other companies who will be happy to take the money to build them onto Boston Dynamics' platforms.
pj_mukh: "there are plenty of other companies who will be happy to take the money to build them onto Boston Dynamics' platforms."Only way to solve this is DRM. War machine (or even intimidation tool) creations on their platforms is a Terms of Use violation [1][1]: https://bostondynamics.com/blog/an-ethical-approach-to-mobil...
440bx: Well it's not all bad. Some of the stuff we did was entirely defence and disaster support. I basically got to choose projects I worked on until I was told I couldn't.
bcjdjsndon: Oh you mean defence = good, offence = bad?
sminchev: Robots are everywhere. Especially in the factories. I think making things automatic is good, all those stupid jobs, moving all day something from one place to another, manually is pure waste of human energy. If this energy is redirected to education, and more meaningful work, those people will be much more valuable for their community and the world. If robots are used in that direction, they can do a lot of good things, and there will be no ethical lines to cross.Helping people enhance is a good thing!
idiotsecant: Nobody is objecting to the loss of bad jobs. The jobs themselves are not the problem. The problem is that we tie basic human dignity to how much value that human can produce, and then remove the ability to produce that value. It leads to the stratification of society between the people who own the automation and the people who don't. That's always been a problem but we're about to enter a period of exponentially worse growth of that problem, beyond the ability of social systems to handle. A 'k shaped' future is not stable.
pizza234: > Nobody is objecting to the loss of bad jobs. The jobs themselves are not the problem.Very strong disagree; a lot of people is objecting. A job on an assembly line may be "bad" for somebody, but for somebody else can be a lifeline, if they won't be able to find another job soon enough and/or in reasonable conditions. Long-term, the job market can rebalance (and if unemployed people are supported in their education, it's great), but short-term displacement is a serious issue.
bcjdjsndon: If your job is that tedious a robot could do it, it's a bad job. Do you think Sam Altman wastes a single minute on operations and the actual minutae of running a business? Fuck no he gets wageslaves like me and yo to do it
estearum: Every year, fewer and fewer people are capable of doing jobs that robots cannot do. That's sort of the whole conundrum here."Robots" broadly defined are getting more capable and more intelligent at a significantly faster rate than humans are.This obviously produces incredible economic surplus, but 1) that surplus is naturally captured by the owners of those robots and not the people they replaced, and 2) doesn't seem clear that all the negative consequences of mass obsolescence are solvable by economic surplus even in theory.
bcjdjsndon: Search "Humans are becoming horses" by CGP grey. He's making the exact same point as you except his is 15 years old and still hasn't passed.I ask you to follow your premise to it's conclusion... who's paying for it these robots and who buys the stuff the robots make? Other robots?? In this world where robot serves robot, where exactly did we disappear to?
idiotsecant: ... You realize you just made exactly the same point I did, right? I know you have two eyes and 10 fingers but give those appendages a rest and reread
440bx: Not really. Offence is sometimes the best defence. But when people start rubbing their hands at the prospect of a war being their retirement plan I don't want to be around them.
