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Programmers should just obey! Do not think about the orders you get! Are you a good patriot or are you against us?!? Do not criticize your leaders! OBEY! Bu

Programmers should just obey! Do not think about the orders you get! Are you a good patriot or are you against us?!? Do not criticize your leaders! OBEY! Build a startup, try to get rich, and never ever talk about anything serious!

_djo_ 14y ago
What's that all about? The fact that this story has been voted so far up the front page indicates that HN's readers believe it's a serious issue worth reading about and discussing.
- wladimir 14y ago
  He's not trying to illustrate what HN readers think, but the mindset of people that try to use technology for purposes of control. Either by having programmers build software for surveillance tech, or by making them build backdoors into other software making surveillance possible. Even though we (collectively, as technologists) make this all possible, we hardly have a say how it will be used, even against ourselves.
  - _djo_ 14y ago
    That's what I thought he was talking about until I got to his second paragraph, which seems HN-specific.
    - cynoclast 14y ago
      It isn't HN-specific. It is about how we all individually see the problem, but do nothing about. It is a choice. Be a cog in the machine that makes your life livable, but makes everyone's just a little bit worse by doing so instead of trying to change the system. A single raindrop never feels responsible for the flood. If we all, just the technologists all got together and said, hey, quit it with that war shit and refused to make new or maintain old war making machines, war would end almost immediately. But the system has made the consequences of an individual or a minority doing that disastrously bad for them if they do it alone. It is a cage of fear. Legitimate fear. Fear of what would happen if we end up standing alone in our rebellion. But we don't. We read HN and talk about making money. And that economic output, that money will be used against us to make things worse for everybody but the plutocracy that controls the political duopoly.
      - Hannan 14y ago
        How would that work? As in, what percentage of the technologists would need to agree to that to have it happen? It seems to me (with my extremely limited view of economics), that it would just create shortage of supply, and so the technologists that would continue to participate would make a lot more money. That in turn would make it more difficult for the techs that might agree with your position, but are currently in dismal financial circumstances for whatever reason, to refuse to create/maintain the "war machines." Perhaps I'm too pessimistic, and am the problem you're speaking of. But it seems like a "boil the ocean" proposition to me, at least from any way I can try to envision it happening.
        wladimir 14y ago
        Perhaps putting a social stigma on the people that do 'cooporate with the war machine' could avoid that, similar to that on people that work even though a certain group is on strike. I'm pretty pessimistic as well, but I don't think it's impossible. A group can collectively bargain for rights, it would not be the first time in history that happens.

_djo_ 14y ago

What's that all about? The fact that this story has been voted so far up the front page indicates that HN's readers believe it's a serious issue worth reading about and discussing.

wladimir 14y ago
He's not trying to illustrate what HN readers think, but the mindset of people that try to use technology for purposes of control. Either by having programmers build software for surveillance tech, or by making them build backdoors into other software making surveillance possible. Even though we (collectively, as technologists) make this all possible, we hardly have a say how it will be used, even against ourselves.
- _djo_ 14y ago
  That's what I thought he was talking about until I got to his second paragraph, which seems HN-specific.
  - cynoclast 14y ago
    It isn't HN-specific. It is about how we all individually see the problem, but do nothing about. It is a choice. Be a cog in the machine that makes your life livable, but makes everyone's just a little bit worse by doing so instead of trying to change the system. A single raindrop never feels responsible for the flood. If we all, just the technologists all got together and said, hey, quit it with that war shit and refused to make new or maintain old war making machines, war would end almost immediately. But the system has made the consequences of an individual or a minority doing that disastrously bad for them if they do it alone. It is a cage of fear. Legitimate fear. Fear of what would happen if we end up standing alone in our rebellion. But we don't. We read HN and talk about making money. And that economic output, that money will be used against us to make things worse for everybody but the plutocracy that controls the political duopoly.
    - Hannan 14y ago
      How would that work? As in, what percentage of the technologists would need to agree to that to have it happen? It seems to me (with my extremely limited view of economics), that it would just create shortage of supply, and so the technologists that would continue to participate would make a lot more money. That in turn would make it more difficult for the techs that might agree with your position, but are currently in dismal financial circumstances for whatever reason, to refuse to create/maintain the "war machines." Perhaps I'm too pessimistic, and am the problem you're speaking of. But it seems like a "boil the ocean" proposition to me, at least from any way I can try to envision it happening.
      - wladimir 14y ago
        Perhaps putting a social stigma on the people that do 'cooporate with the war machine' could avoid that, similar to that on people that work even though a certain group is on strike. I'm pretty pessimistic as well, but I don't think it's impossible. A group can collectively bargain for rights, it would not be the first time in history that happens.