I can do you one better. I can represent the largest number with a single binary bit.

I can do it in half a bit

Slow down there mr zip file

increase the border size. more. yes. in the bloodiest red. yes. its rectangle time

huh.. seems like a head-scratcher why it would relevant to this argument to select objectionable words instead of benign, inert words.

right, but the productivity boost provides further leverage

Seems you are arguing that The Tragedy Of The Commons could never happen because people benefit from the Commons

also on the frontpage: new YC homepage celebrating palantir

I assume the same as if the car owner put a brick on the gas pedal and there was no driver when it had an accident

Found the Chief Legal Officer for Waymo

Okay but what if I install servos and ask Claude Code to operate the vehicle for me?

I wonder if assembly programmers felt this way about the reliability of the electical components which their code relies upon...

I wonder if electrical engineers felt this way about the reliability of the silicon crystal lattice their circuits rely upon…

Naturally this makes me think of the brilliant Justine Tunney's https://justine.lol/ape.html / https://github.com/jart/cosmopolitan / https://redbean.dev/

any opinions on the german WW2 engineer laying neutral tracks toward Auschwitz

EDIT: sorry, that was glib. However I want to make the argument that the argument of doing "neutral" physical work is not absolutely morally absolving.

There wasn’t anything built there until well after the tracks were laid, if I understand the logistics of that area correctly.

Yes. It's not, and I agree. There's no bright line that says you're morally culpable or you are not morally culpable for what you do. But all of us should think about our roles in that light. If Palantir uses Git, does that mean new Git contributions are part of what is arguably an ethnic cleansing? I wouldn't be able to sleep at night and work on this project. (I do not work at Palantir).

But the point is also that maybe we should take one step back and think about the morality of the people we put in decision making roles. The technology is morally neutral, but the intention is not. And helping to realize that intention is not. And sometimes the things we build can be used in horrible ways unless we also think about safeguarding their use.

This is just the tip of the iceberg. It is my very real fear that a lot of information has been aggregated into Palantir and other applications and is usable with no restraint. And that even if you just run the build system, across hundreds of apps, you might be culpable as well.

Well that's clearly an example of putting the cart before the horse. You should be able to sleep at night so long as you remember that Git isn't what enables Palantir to power an army of federalized brownshirts; it's the people making the tools explicitly for an army of federalized brownshirts with Git that are morally culpable.

Okay, that's where you draw the line. But someone provides power to their data center and their offices. Someone provides hand-held devices. Someone provides network connectivity. Someone has a contract to house and feed these agents. Someone has the logistical and fleet services for their vehicles. Someone is likely the landlord to their buildings. Someone has a contract to clean the buildings. Someone is a deciding to buy a block of Palantir stock versus some other software company. Someone runs the private prison into which people are herded. An attorney has a choice to file a charge or not file a charge. A judge has the choice to bend over backward to give ICE/CBP the benefit of the doubt, or be skeptical.

Baking a roll of bread is not immoral. Baking bread as part of a contract to feed the gestapo, is.

There are people who would not sleep at night knowing that the tool they created was enabling such things. I believe some are looking to make "semi-open" source licenses that add more restrictions.