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Microsoft Wins $480M Army HoloLens Contract

88 points by twerkmonsta 8y ago

deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
lawrenceyan 8y ago
Where is the outrage from Microsoft employees? Take a stand like your Google counterparts have! You can make money and not have to sell away your soul at the same time. They aren’t mutually exclusive. Take self-driving vehicles. Every single piece of technology used in its development could be used with some minor tweaking in a military application to massively increase the lethality of existing weapons and allow for an unprecedented level of increased killing and destruction. But instead of selling themselves out to a future that will be remarkably more dystopian if given in to military application, Google has chosen to make commercial self-driving vehicles which not only will likely save an innumerable amount of lives by preventing fatal driving accidents, but also will be making boatloads of money at the same time! Technology is a force multiplier for better or worse, and it’s up to us as the future engineers and scientists who will be creating this technology to choose the right path. For those sociopathic leaning people who could care less about avoiding a future of death on an unprecedented massive and automated scale, luckily that path will be no less lucrative.
- beginningguava 8y ago
  >Take self-driving vehicles. Every single piece of technology used in its development could be used with some minor tweaking in a military application You do realize DARPA funded the competitions that kicked off self-driving cars right? Silicon valley wouldn't exist without the military
  - lawrenceyan 8y ago
    How does that change anything? It’s like saying because NASA was funded primarily due to the advent of the Cold War, that NASA should only work on researching and building ICBMs because that’s the type of stuff they originated from. The logic doesn’t make any sense.
- sgc 8y ago
  Two different situations. Google is making a tool designed for immediate oppression. Microsoft is making a tool for a defense force. Of course that defense force has been used immorally in the recent past, but it is a necessity of life and will remain one in perpetuity.
  - mips_avatar 8y ago
    What was so bad about Maven? I only had heard about the part of it using AI to detect bombs being placed in Kabul. It sounded like a great opportunity to protect civillians.
    - sgc 8y ago
      People are currently mad at google for helping to censor Chinese internet more than anything else. That is what I was referring to. I didn't really have anything against project Maven, but then again I wasn't working on it so I don't know it's true scope or goals.
- mips_avatar 8y ago
  I think the Google outrage is misplaced. The US government gave google the chance to save a lot of civillian lives by detecting truck bombs and evacuating civilians using AI. Like who knows how well this program would have worked if Google committed to it. But now those lives are definitely not going to be saved. The surveillance videos are just going to be watched after a horrific attack and used to find the perpetrators. Which might help track down the killers, but won’t bring back the people killed in the attacks.
  - lawrenceyan 8y ago
    Your argument is only valid if you believe that military applications of technology can be compartmentalized and limited in a way that one can always find a way to contribute to “good life saving military use cases” only. But where the contradiction lies comes from the fact that the fundamental objective of any military is ultimately in increasing its ability to wage war and defeat other existing militaries. Such an objective is necessarily orthogonal to “saving civilian lives” unless you define only a subset of humanity to be the civilian lives you wish to save treating those outside as expendable. Disregarding how illogical and frankly inhumane in my opinion it is in arbitrarily choosing to delineate people like this, even in purely pragmatic and economic terms, it makes no sense. War is a zero sum game no matter how much you can optimize it such that the least amount of lives are taken in doing so. The result of a use in military force is always ultimately the destruction of something which if not treated through other diplomatic means will escalate to larger and larger conflicts until at some point, nothing is left. Be very wary of those who tell you that the work you are doing is only to decrease casualty rates and save lives because that same reduction can and will be used to justify an increased usage of military force because of that very newly lowered rate. Instead of working to increase the effectiveness and lethality of militaries, why not choose to spend your energy on trying to find ways to make it easier and more effective to resolving conflict by other diplomatic means? If such a belief is idealistic in today’s world, perhaps it is. But I believe there exists a future where such a world is possible if we only choose to not immediately give in to the cynicism of that other belief.
    - dogma1138 8y ago
- mc32 8y ago
  There should be outrage from Russia, Syria, Iran, ISIS, etc., but not US employees. This enhances _our_ army, rather than others' armies. We have some indirect control over what our army does, but none over those other armies. Sometimes idealists become like pacifists who would rather die than confront someone who is going to annihilate you. That your PoV, but it certainly isn't the majority PoV even amongst Democrats. The world isn't a dreamy place; you have to make dirty choices, given what's available. Of course, if you want to see western influence wane, then sure, and allow other less progressive influence wax. That's the realpolitik. These decisions should be left to the democratic process rather then the province of unelected idealists.
  - xnyan 8y ago
    TLDR: Shut up and code?
  - r00fus 8y ago
    Your viewpoint makes sense if you see the US Armed Forces as a incorruptible benevolent force. Take a look at police forces who claim to "serve and protect" while summarily executing random citizens (sorry, wrong house SWATTING) or racially motivated (black kid with toy = imminent threat).
    - pavelrub 8y ago
      Not at all. His viewpoint makes sense simply by understanding that US military superiority over countries like Russia and China is significantly better, to the entire western world, than any realistic alternative.
      - asendra 8y ago
        That only makes sense if you stop putting morons in charge, though.
    - austincheney 8y ago
      How do you equivocate a military force to a police force and simultaneously equate that comparison to an exaggerated stereotype? Pretty hyperbolic.
- melling 8y ago
  It appears that Microsoft has a different point of view: https://venturebeat.com/2018/10/26/microsoft-to-u-s-military-weve-got-your-six/ https://venturebeat.com/2018/10/26/microsoft-to-u-s-military...
- wangyjx 8y ago
  If a US company does not support US army, US army turns to China or Russian companies?
  - herewulf 8y ago
    No, the US military goes to great lengths (and sometimes expense) to have things domestically made, mainly for security but also for economic reasons.
    - fsloth 8y ago
      "mainly for security ... also for economic reasons." Given how powerful the military-industrial complex is I'm not sure if those should be reversed to "mainly for economic reasons... also for security". US military from one point of view is a huge state subsidy not only to capital owners, but to the people employed there as well.
      - deleted 8y ago
        [deleted]
    - anticensor 8y ago
      All military forces do that. Not specific to US or any other particular state.
- fsloth 8y ago
  Weapons technology is not evil. Sovereign states cannot exist without a credible capacity to project force within their territory. If people have qualms with how the weapons are used they should take effort in the political process.
  - paganel 8y ago
    > If people have qualms with how the weapons are used they should take effort in the political process War and politics are very much the same thing, if we would have have managed to "fix" politics by now I'm pretty sure war would have also been "fixed" instantly. But "fixing" politics is an elusive (and I personally think impossible) job, we've been having a go at it for at least 2,400 years (think Plato) but apparently it still seems that people in power like to promise the impossible to the multitudes who believe them just because (think the propaganda lies told to the Athenians just before the ill-fated expidition to Sicily [1]). [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sicilian_Expedition https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sicilian_Expedition
    - fsloth 8y ago
      Politics is an inseparable part of human existence, and yes, war is an extension of politics. That's why you can't get rid of it. The cornerstone of the sovereignty of a polity is the credible capability to project force within their territory. To put in another words, the zeroth rule of existence of the state, is that the state is the entity with the potential for instrumenting most violence within the territory over which they claim dominion. As an example failed states can have various factions claiming sovereignty over mini-fiefdoms of their own, mainly due to their superior force projection capability. See the fragmentation in Libya, or the warlords of Somalia, etc. That's what I meant about fixing the political process. Over a specific territory there is always an entity with the most force projection capability, and that entity likely has the most political power over that specific area. You can't have a state without capability for violence. That's why military service is an honorable profession, (and not a crime against humanity) and absolute pacifists are completely delusional about the current state of human existence. I would like to have a world without war as well, but that's not the world we live in right now. Like in large software projects, you can't rewrite the world. You just have to try to maintain it and make it a little better, while learning to live with the quirks and the bugs of history. Currently war is hard coded to the political structure of the world.
- whyte_mackay 8y ago
  The one difference is that Microsoft has always been transparent and open in their support for the US military. They even advertise it: https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/global-infrastructure/government/dod/ https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/global-infrastructure/gove... On the other hand, Google has been on the record saying they won't develop military AI, that an autonomous weapons race is dangerous and unwanted, and that they want to organize the world's information to keep it accessible to anyone. Microsoft employees knew what they signed up for and have moral authority to make that decision. Google employees thought they signed up to "do no evil" and their efforts were used by a secret project that violates all but one of their safe AI guidelines (the one about delivering technical excellence). I myself am a bit more agnostic/apathetic about creating technology that could be used for bad: I just want to create and focus on the best possible (gun turret, data mining, missile tech), that will deliver on its promise of what it said out to do with utmost accuracy and robustness. That's why I find it really important to work for companies and governments that I can trust to not abuse my technology once it is out of my hands, and are transparent about its usage. But I don't find any damage to my soul if the decision makers make an evil usage decision: That is fully on them. I am not going to handicap or refuse to work on something interesting, because their morals are out of whack.
teslaberry 8y ago
this is how you build garbage. augmented garbage with tax payermoney. the new occulus and new htc vive are the only pieces of hardware worth a damn. start there. butno.no body in the military is paying the slightest attention to users.
syntaxing 8y ago
I used a hololens recently and I was super excited but was disappointed in the end. The technology is definitely cool but the limited field of vision really kills it. The built in hand gestures detection is nice though.
- wangyjx 8y ago
  next version of Hololens will solve the view field issue. I think MS will delivery next-gen hololens to Army
  - vtesucks 8y ago
    I didn't downvote but what makes you think?
    - wangyjx 8y ago
      microsoft mentioned earlier this year that it would release the new version in 19
  - ToFab123 8y ago
    I am not sure if the FOV issues has been solved but it is being improved a lot in the next version according to patent filings https://mspoweruser.com/microsoft-found-way-double-hololens-field-view/ https://mspoweruser.com/microsoft-found-way-double-hololens-...
herewulf 8y ago
> "Many Microsoft employees don't believe that what we build should be used for waging war" Someone is lacking in perspective. The modern US military cannot operate without Windows, SharePoint, Exchange, Internet Explorer, Office, and most importantly, PowerPoint. It's both frustrating and sad.
- zimbatm 8y ago
  The modern world is also powered by technologies invented because of various wars. Duct tape / super glue / rockets / radars which led to the microwave over / .. Wasn't the Internet initially a distributed communication network that would still operate under nuclear attacks?
  - hrktb 8y ago
    I don't think it's fair to say 'because of war'. Many if not all of those could have been discovered in any other circumstances, or equivalents would have been found. I mean that anything we find useful now could have been discovered for their sheer usefulness. War accelerated the process, and prioritised some kind of discoveries, but it's not a source of discovery in itself.
    - folli 8y ago
      But I think it's fair to say that our current technological progress would at least lag a couple of centuries behind without armed conflict and the resulting need to be faster/more destructive/better protected/better armed/... than your respective enemy.
      - hrktb 8y ago
        I see your point, but we had tremendous progress in the last half of the 20th century that was not a consequence of direct armed conflicts. I agree that political tension and the threat of conflict (in particular the whole Cold War dynamic) helped push a lot of innovations, but it's only tension, not bombing or killing of whole populations (it also happened, but I can't see any huge progress coming directly from that)
langitbiru 8y ago
It reminds me of Black Mirror episode where using Augmented Reality, the face of enemies is morphed into the face of monsters so the soldiers would not hesitate to kill the enemies. May we live in interesting times!
- afpx 8y ago
  It’s a pretty good idea. Post-battle investigations show that only like 15-30% of soldiers actually shoot their weapons (the percentage increases along with the distance). So, a commander could effectively double or triple their force with a small change.
martijn_himself 8y ago
This seems to be a typical case of someone in charge of a budget having to spend it otherwise it will be allocated elsewhere. Either they have access to a completely improved device or expect a lot of devices being chucked out by aggravated servicemen. The current gen HoloLens is not much more than a toy.
- fromthestart 8y ago
  >the Army said it wanted to incorporate night vision and thermal sensing, measure vital signs like breathing and “readiness,” monitor for concussions and offer hearing protection. Maybe a little ambitious, but if it does half of those things it might be quite useful, no?
  - martijn_himself 8y ago
    It definitely would be I suppose. However the current gen HoloLens is not much more then a tech demo for use in a controlled environment, pretty much the opposite from the envisaged use case.
  - starbeast 8y ago
    They should be very careful with the naming. Something tells me that 'Windows For Helmets' may not inspire morale.
  - alexandercrohde 8y ago
    Sounds great until you get a BSOD and need a 5 pound battery connected to your lens, which also has overheating problems. I mean if you can't build an efficient phone, I'm cynical you can do build an efficient anything else.
Traubenfuchs 8y ago
For every employee that is upset about this there is probably another one that is proud about it and 5 that really don't care.
- jmspring 8y ago
  Count me in the "don't care" department -- the company needs to do business to survive and thrive. I like that things are going well for the company at the moment. Some of these people complaining about it are likely the same sort that, when given a chance to ask Satya a question during a Q&A session, ask about getting free food in Redmond.
artur_makly 8y ago
if this leads us to mitigating future wars to just a virtual battlefield .. im all for it. let them get their testosterone kicks while the rest of us evolve peacefully.
lostgame 8y ago
Not that I agree with, or support war in any way, and it always makes me a little sick to my stomach to see brilliant people coming up with technology to make killing people simpler - but... HoloLens has sure better improve by orders of magnitude before I'd ever want to see it used in any sort of field. It's like looking into a postage stamp of reality.
mindgam3 8y ago
Props to Microsoft biz dev for finding someone to buy those things, but wow - that is a lot of money to spend on HMDs that will never get anywhere near actual combat. At least I hope they don’t, for the safety of our troops. Can you even imagine wearing one of those monstrosities in a hostile environment requiring agility and situational awareness?
Simulacra 8y ago
This is almost humorous in a sad kind of way. If Google is not able to fulfill contracts for the Defense Department, then the government will simply go to the next source. I think Amazon, with its new HQ2 a mile from the Pentagon, and less problems of employees walking out, is going to dominate in this area.

88 points by twerkmonsta 8y ago

deleted 8y ago

[deleted]

Where is the outrage from Microsoft employees? Take a stand like your Google counterparts have! You can make money and not have to sell away your soul at the same time. They aren’t mutually exclusive. Take self-driving vehicles. Every single piece of technology used in its development could be used with some minor tweaking in a military application to massively increase the lethality of existing weapons and allow for an unprecedented level of increased killing and destruction. But instead of selling themselves out to a future that will be remarkably more dystopian if given in to military application, Google has chosen to make commercial self-driving vehicles which not only will likely save an innumerable amount of lives by preventing fatal driving accidents, but also will be making boatloads of money at the same time! Technology is a force multiplier for better or worse, and it’s up to us as the future engineers and scientists who will be creating this technology to choose the right path. For those sociopathic leaning people who could care less about avoiding a future of death on an unprecedented massive and automated scale, luckily that path will be no less lucrative.

beginningguava 8y ago
>Take self-driving vehicles. Every single piece of technology used in its development could be used with some minor tweaking in a military application You do realize DARPA funded the competitions that kicked off self-driving cars right? Silicon valley wouldn't exist without the military
- lawrenceyan 8y ago
  How does that change anything? It’s like saying because NASA was funded primarily due to the advent of the Cold War, that NASA should only work on researching and building ICBMs because that’s the type of stuff they originated from. The logic doesn’t make any sense.
sgc 8y ago
Two different situations. Google is making a tool designed for immediate oppression. Microsoft is making a tool for a defense force. Of course that defense force has been used immorally in the recent past, but it is a necessity of life and will remain one in perpetuity.
- mips_avatar 8y ago
  What was so bad about Maven? I only had heard about the part of it using AI to detect bombs being placed in Kabul. It sounded like a great opportunity to protect civillians.
  - sgc 8y ago
    People are currently mad at google for helping to censor Chinese internet more than anything else. That is what I was referring to. I didn't really have anything against project Maven, but then again I wasn't working on it so I don't know it's true scope or goals.
mips_avatar 8y ago
I think the Google outrage is misplaced. The US government gave google the chance to save a lot of civillian lives by detecting truck bombs and evacuating civilians using AI. Like who knows how well this program would have worked if Google committed to it. But now those lives are definitely not going to be saved. The surveillance videos are just going to be watched after a horrific attack and used to find the perpetrators. Which might help track down the killers, but won’t bring back the people killed in the attacks.
- lawrenceyan 8y ago
  Your argument is only valid if you believe that military applications of technology can be compartmentalized and limited in a way that one can always find a way to contribute to “good life saving military use cases” only. But where the contradiction lies comes from the fact that the fundamental objective of any military is ultimately in increasing its ability to wage war and defeat other existing militaries. Such an objective is necessarily orthogonal to “saving civilian lives” unless you define only a subset of humanity to be the civilian lives you wish to save treating those outside as expendable. Disregarding how illogical and frankly inhumane in my opinion it is in arbitrarily choosing to delineate people like this, even in purely pragmatic and economic terms, it makes no sense. War is a zero sum game no matter how much you can optimize it such that the least amount of lives are taken in doing so. The result of a use in military force is always ultimately the destruction of something which if not treated through other diplomatic means will escalate to larger and larger conflicts until at some point, nothing is left. Be very wary of those who tell you that the work you are doing is only to decrease casualty rates and save lives because that same reduction can and will be used to justify an increased usage of military force because of that very newly lowered rate. Instead of working to increase the effectiveness and lethality of militaries, why not choose to spend your energy on trying to find ways to make it easier and more effective to resolving conflict by other diplomatic means? If such a belief is idealistic in today’s world, perhaps it is. But I believe there exists a future where such a world is possible if we only choose to not immediately give in to the cynicism of that other belief.
  - dogma1138 8y ago
mc32 8y ago
There should be outrage from Russia, Syria, Iran, ISIS, etc., but not US employees. This enhances _our_ army, rather than others' armies. We have some indirect control over what our army does, but none over those other armies. Sometimes idealists become like pacifists who would rather die than confront someone who is going to annihilate you. That your PoV, but it certainly isn't the majority PoV even amongst Democrats. The world isn't a dreamy place; you have to make dirty choices, given what's available. Of course, if you want to see western influence wane, then sure, and allow other less progressive influence wax. That's the realpolitik. These decisions should be left to the democratic process rather then the province of unelected idealists.
- xnyan 8y ago
  TLDR: Shut up and code?
- r00fus 8y ago
  Your viewpoint makes sense if you see the US Armed Forces as a incorruptible benevolent force. Take a look at police forces who claim to "serve and protect" while summarily executing random citizens (sorry, wrong house SWATTING) or racially motivated (black kid with toy = imminent threat).
  - pavelrub 8y ago
    Not at all. His viewpoint makes sense simply by understanding that US military superiority over countries like Russia and China is significantly better, to the entire western world, than any realistic alternative.
    - asendra 8y ago
      That only makes sense if you stop putting morons in charge, though.
  - austincheney 8y ago
    How do you equivocate a military force to a police force and simultaneously equate that comparison to an exaggerated stereotype? Pretty hyperbolic.
melling 8y ago
It appears that Microsoft has a different point of view: https://venturebeat.com/2018/10/26/microsoft-to-u-s-military-weve-got-your-six/ https://venturebeat.com/2018/10/26/microsoft-to-u-s-military...
wangyjx 8y ago
If a US company does not support US army, US army turns to China or Russian companies?
- herewulf 8y ago
  No, the US military goes to great lengths (and sometimes expense) to have things domestically made, mainly for security but also for economic reasons.
  - fsloth 8y ago
    "mainly for security ... also for economic reasons." Given how powerful the military-industrial complex is I'm not sure if those should be reversed to "mainly for economic reasons... also for security". US military from one point of view is a huge state subsidy not only to capital owners, but to the people employed there as well.
    - deleted 8y ago
      [deleted]
  - anticensor 8y ago
    All military forces do that. Not specific to US or any other particular state.
fsloth 8y ago
Weapons technology is not evil. Sovereign states cannot exist without a credible capacity to project force within their territory. If people have qualms with how the weapons are used they should take effort in the political process.
- paganel 8y ago
  > If people have qualms with how the weapons are used they should take effort in the political process War and politics are very much the same thing, if we would have have managed to "fix" politics by now I'm pretty sure war would have also been "fixed" instantly. But "fixing" politics is an elusive (and I personally think impossible) job, we've been having a go at it for at least 2,400 years (think Plato) but apparently it still seems that people in power like to promise the impossible to the multitudes who believe them just because (think the propaganda lies told to the Athenians just before the ill-fated expidition to Sicily [1]). [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sicilian_Expedition https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sicilian_Expedition
  - fsloth 8y ago
    Politics is an inseparable part of human existence, and yes, war is an extension of politics. That's why you can't get rid of it. The cornerstone of the sovereignty of a polity is the credible capability to project force within their territory. To put in another words, the zeroth rule of existence of the state, is that the state is the entity with the potential for instrumenting most violence within the territory over which they claim dominion. As an example failed states can have various factions claiming sovereignty over mini-fiefdoms of their own, mainly due to their superior force projection capability. See the fragmentation in Libya, or the warlords of Somalia, etc. That's what I meant about fixing the political process. Over a specific territory there is always an entity with the most force projection capability, and that entity likely has the most political power over that specific area. You can't have a state without capability for violence. That's why military service is an honorable profession, (and not a crime against humanity) and absolute pacifists are completely delusional about the current state of human existence. I would like to have a world without war as well, but that's not the world we live in right now. Like in large software projects, you can't rewrite the world. You just have to try to maintain it and make it a little better, while learning to live with the quirks and the bugs of history. Currently war is hard coded to the political structure of the world.
whyte_mackay 8y ago
The one difference is that Microsoft has always been transparent and open in their support for the US military. They even advertise it: https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/global-infrastructure/government/dod/ https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/global-infrastructure/gove... On the other hand, Google has been on the record saying they won't develop military AI, that an autonomous weapons race is dangerous and unwanted, and that they want to organize the world's information to keep it accessible to anyone. Microsoft employees knew what they signed up for and have moral authority to make that decision. Google employees thought they signed up to "do no evil" and their efforts were used by a secret project that violates all but one of their safe AI guidelines (the one about delivering technical excellence). I myself am a bit more agnostic/apathetic about creating technology that could be used for bad: I just want to create and focus on the best possible (gun turret, data mining, missile tech), that will deliver on its promise of what it said out to do with utmost accuracy and robustness. That's why I find it really important to work for companies and governments that I can trust to not abuse my technology once it is out of my hands, and are transparent about its usage. But I don't find any damage to my soul if the decision makers make an evil usage decision: That is fully on them. I am not going to handicap or refuse to work on something interesting, because their morals are out of whack.

teslaberry 8y ago

this is how you build garbage. augmented garbage with tax payermoney. the new occulus and new htc vive are the only pieces of hardware worth a damn. start there. butno.no body in the military is paying the slightest attention to users.

syntaxing 8y ago

I used a hololens recently and I was super excited but was disappointed in the end. The technology is definitely cool but the limited field of vision really kills it. The built in hand gestures detection is nice though.

wangyjx 8y ago
next version of Hololens will solve the view field issue. I think MS will delivery next-gen hololens to Army
- vtesucks 8y ago
  I didn't downvote but what makes you think?
  - wangyjx 8y ago
    microsoft mentioned earlier this year that it would release the new version in 19
- ToFab123 8y ago
  I am not sure if the FOV issues has been solved but it is being improved a lot in the next version according to patent filings https://mspoweruser.com/microsoft-found-way-double-hololens-field-view/ https://mspoweruser.com/microsoft-found-way-double-hololens-...

herewulf 8y ago

> "Many Microsoft employees don't believe that what we build should be used for waging war" Someone is lacking in perspective. The modern US military cannot operate without Windows, SharePoint, Exchange, Internet Explorer, Office, and most importantly, PowerPoint. It's both frustrating and sad.

zimbatm 8y ago
The modern world is also powered by technologies invented because of various wars. Duct tape / super glue / rockets / radars which led to the microwave over / .. Wasn't the Internet initially a distributed communication network that would still operate under nuclear attacks?
- hrktb 8y ago
  I don't think it's fair to say 'because of war'. Many if not all of those could have been discovered in any other circumstances, or equivalents would have been found. I mean that anything we find useful now could have been discovered for their sheer usefulness. War accelerated the process, and prioritised some kind of discoveries, but it's not a source of discovery in itself.
  - folli 8y ago
    But I think it's fair to say that our current technological progress would at least lag a couple of centuries behind without armed conflict and the resulting need to be faster/more destructive/better protected/better armed/... than your respective enemy.
    - hrktb 8y ago
      I see your point, but we had tremendous progress in the last half of the 20th century that was not a consequence of direct armed conflicts. I agree that political tension and the threat of conflict (in particular the whole Cold War dynamic) helped push a lot of innovations, but it's only tension, not bombing or killing of whole populations (it also happened, but I can't see any huge progress coming directly from that)

langitbiru 8y ago

It reminds me of Black Mirror episode where using Augmented Reality, the face of enemies is morphed into the face of monsters so the soldiers would not hesitate to kill the enemies. May we live in interesting times!

afpx 8y ago
It’s a pretty good idea. Post-battle investigations show that only like 15-30% of soldiers actually shoot their weapons (the percentage increases along with the distance). So, a commander could effectively double or triple their force with a small change.

martijn_himself 8y ago

This seems to be a typical case of someone in charge of a budget having to spend it otherwise it will be allocated elsewhere. Either they have access to a completely improved device or expect a lot of devices being chucked out by aggravated servicemen. The current gen HoloLens is not much more than a toy.

fromthestart 8y ago
>the Army said it wanted to incorporate night vision and thermal sensing, measure vital signs like breathing and “readiness,” monitor for concussions and offer hearing protection. Maybe a little ambitious, but if it does half of those things it might be quite useful, no?
- martijn_himself 8y ago
  It definitely would be I suppose. However the current gen HoloLens is not much more then a tech demo for use in a controlled environment, pretty much the opposite from the envisaged use case.
- starbeast 8y ago
  They should be very careful with the naming. Something tells me that 'Windows For Helmets' may not inspire morale.
- alexandercrohde 8y ago
  Sounds great until you get a BSOD and need a 5 pound battery connected to your lens, which also has overheating problems. I mean if you can't build an efficient phone, I'm cynical you can do build an efficient anything else.

Traubenfuchs 8y ago

For every employee that is upset about this there is probably another one that is proud about it and 5 that really don't care.

jmspring 8y ago
Count me in the "don't care" department -- the company needs to do business to survive and thrive. I like that things are going well for the company at the moment. Some of these people complaining about it are likely the same sort that, when given a chance to ask Satya a question during a Q&A session, ask about getting free food in Redmond.

artur_makly 8y ago

if this leads us to mitigating future wars to just a virtual battlefield .. im all for it. let them get their testosterone kicks while the rest of us evolve peacefully.

lostgame 8y ago

Not that I agree with, or support war in any way, and it always makes me a little sick to my stomach to see brilliant people coming up with technology to make killing people simpler - but... HoloLens has sure better improve by orders of magnitude before I'd ever want to see it used in any sort of field. It's like looking into a postage stamp of reality.

mindgam3 8y ago

Props to Microsoft biz dev for finding someone to buy those things, but wow - that is a lot of money to spend on HMDs that will never get anywhere near actual combat. At least I hope they don’t, for the safety of our troops. Can you even imagine wearing one of those monstrosities in a hostile environment requiring agility and situational awareness?

Simulacra 8y ago

This is almost humorous in a sad kind of way. If Google is not able to fulfill contracts for the Defense Department, then the government will simply go to the next source. I think Amazon, with its new HQ2 a mile from the Pentagon, and less problems of employees walking out, is going to dominate in this area.