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- typeofhuman 2mo ago[flagged]
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- bogota 2mo ago[dead]
- reasonabl_human 2mo agoTech killing innocents? Citation needed.
- zuzululu 2mo agoI don't get it. Modretro is for retro gamers. What does that have to do with those things you listed ?
- dabluecaboose 2mo agoA friend of mine did posit the quandary that an "unpalatable" individual such as Luckey appears to be one of the few making consumer-friendly products: Removable, swappable battery packs, AA battery support, standard USB-C charging, easy interoperability, open sourced designs, exposed screws, teardown instructions, etc. Apparently ModRetro is even looking into making dumb TVs for gaming. It's ironic, in another world HN commenters would be lauding Luckey and ModRetro for all these virtues.
- spankibalt 2mo ago> It's ironic, in another world HN commenters would be lauding Luckey and ModRetro for all these virtues. Lot's of HN (and "social" media) commenters in this world evidently are; nothing ironic about it. It's just many people have a radically different set of ethics which, once they become principles, can't be easily, or at all, compromised on. And just to be fair, it's not just the what, but the how (which extends not just to Luckey & Friends, but to Anduril & Friends).
- munk-a 2mo agoI am nuanced enough to appreciate that these qualities are present in the products being produced and still not buy from this producer because of their industry ties. Hopefully someone without such ridiculously unpalatable PR is able to copycat their design and sell a competitor - and hopefully the lead they've laid sets the standard for easily replaceable parts for the market (though, I'd mention that retro gaming hardware is intentionally made to be as modular as possible in most circumstances anyways).
- spankibalt 2mo ago> I am nuanced enough to appreciate that these qualities are present in the products being produced and still not buy from this producer because of their industry ties. ModRetro produces one thing I do have an interest in. A partly aluminium-cast version of the, to me, most ergonomic gamepad made so far: the classic trimaran-style N64 controller. But that marriage ain't gonna happen. And that goes for every other (future) product of theirs as well.
- barrowclift 2mo agoThe article isn't "about" ModRetro, please engage with the actual material instead of off-topic political tirades.
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- rurjejdj 2mo ago[dead]
- eltondegeneres 2mo ago> Modretro agreed to publish the game as a physical launch title for their M64 (a modern N64 clone), complete with cartridge, packaging and manual! The article says the game is published by ModRetro.
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- austinthetaco 2mo ago[flagged]
- dabluecaboose 2mo ago[flagged]
- dabluecaboose 2mo agoGood to see Kotaku's admirable journalistic practice of posting a list of histrionic tweets is alive and well
- deadbabe 2mo ago[flagged]
- zuzululu 2mo ago[flagged]
- dosisking 2mo ago> And ? Are you upset that Google/Microsoft/Oracle sells their tech to the military? Yes > Xbox controller is used on nuclear subs too. I have never played an Xbox, nor do I have any interest in doing so. There is nothing interesting about the Xbox.
- qup 2mo agoYou're saying things about yourself, not the Xbox or MS. There is something interesting about the Xbox, as evidenced by its sales record.
- jackb4040 2mo agoXbox is literally imploding right now, they laid off half the company and significantly raised the console price. If sales were good they never would've had to do game pass. Besides, it's a dumb argument to compare military purchasing non-weapons commodities like controllers or toilet paper to a literal weapons company. It is almost literally impossible to live anywhere in the world without using a platform hosted on AWS or Azure. It is very easy to not buy things from the drone and now retro-console king. They are entirely different asks.
- zuzululu 2mo agobut the comforts you enjoy directly came from those very items you listed as unethical. you could live off the grid in the cabins without internet if you truly believed in being free from the grips of the military industrial complex and the petrodollar you deeply feel guilty about anything less and you risk sounding like a hypocrite
- jackb4040 2mo agoGenuinely what am I supposed to do if you can't read? Participating in the global economy is not the same thing as enthusiastically giving money to a company that only makes weapons of war because you love war. If you try to not use AWS in a modernized economy like the US you will probably die on the street and still have unwittingly used AWS anyways.
- bogota 2mo ago[flagged]
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- zuzululu 2mo ago[flagged]
- munk-a 2mo ago[flagged]
- zuzululu 2mo agowhere did I say you should buy the product? I have no stake, I simply bought it because the original article said we shouldn't buy it. contrarian and virtue signaling are very different. i could totally care less if you choose not to buy it. i respect diversity
- pell 2mo agoGiving people context is gatekeeping now?
- zuzululu 2mo agoyou just defined gatekeeping
- FactNotFeeling 2mo ago[flagged]
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- FactNotFeeling 2mo ago[flagged]
- GlickWick 2mo agoI remain eternally grateful that HN's developers created an indicator that an account was created very recently. For those not aware, look for the green name highlight.
- Petersipoi 2mo ago[flagged]
- Keyframe 2mo agoAWS (and many others) is also then war profiteering company with JWCC, C2E, WildandStormy, not to mention all the other defense contractors that rely on their computer power to design and operate mass surveillance and killing of people. Is your agenda selectively blind?
- woodrowbarlow 2mo agonot OP but yes, i consider the tech sphere's dive into mass surveillance to be war profiteering and have eliminated or minimized several in my life including amazon and spotify.
- vrganj 2mo agoThis is why I exited the tech industry. They've all become war profiteers and fascist enablers. The only way to live with my conscience was to choose not to be complicit.
- applfanboysbgon 2mo agoWhy are you presenting your unfounded assumption as a gotcha? Do you have any basis whatsoever to believe GP supports AWS?
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- Keyframe 2mo agofor the same reason GP assumed war profiteering. Guy is maybe and probably, based on his talks, interested in his homeland's defense. Maybe he's in it for the tech. Every defense company is war profiteering and thus unethical, especially this one? That's not only uncalled for, but absolutely cancerous thought as exemplified by the thread and poison it spreads.
- applfanboysbgon 2mo agoNobody has invaded the US in nearly a century, nor will they ever again with the advent of nuclear weapons; to this day no nuclear state has ever been invaded, least of all one which is isolated from any conceivable rival by two oceans. Ergo, no American in the business of manufacturing weapons is in it for "his homeland's defense". Peace is an option, if only Americans would allow it to be.
- throwaway613746 2mo ago[dead]
- lurk2 2mo agoI saw a video from the ModRetro YouTube channel a few days ago and thought it was AI because it only had 10,000 subscribers. They’ve been at it since March of 2024 and have less than 400,000 views spread across 54 videos. Strong attention economy recession indicator that even a memeified billionaire can’t get organic attention on a platform like that.
- 1234letshaveatw 2mo agothat's wild, it's not like the videos are hosted on an irrelevant platform like bluesky or something. Who knows
- jackb4040 2mo ago[flagged]
- pixelready 2mo agoYeah, I’m seeing this a lot too recently. I guess polarization comes for us all eventually. Nuance and cognitive dissonance are so painful for some they simply flatten their position to something that feels safely straightforward, even if ghoulish? Social media’s a helluva drug.
- zuzululu 2mo agobut your position that people just making nuanced non-emotional purchase decisions is somehow flawed itself is the main point of contention, its similar to how vegetarians keep pushing their views and preferences as a yardstick to measure others who don't share the same values. so the question here is why can you not tolerate people simply separating a product from the manufacturer of another niche that is completely legal and is demanded by sovereign nations?
- jackb4040 2mo ago[dead]
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- stronglikedan 2mo agoIt common to reply to silly comments with more silliness. It's a obvious virtue signal, which rightfully draws ridicule. Some people use mocking as ridicule, and it says nothing about the person doing the mocking, since they're likely saying it as a joke.
- jackb4040 2mo agoIt's not a good or acceptable thing for the level of discourse on this website to be a bunch of 8th-grade boys on Xbox Live. You can disagree with OP or be conservative or whatever, but saying you want to support a drone manufacturer for no self-interested reason but because you like drone warfare is not a proportionate response to someone saying something "silly".
- peroxy 2mo ago[flagged]
- Dig1t 2mo agoThis is the same concept as "separating art from the artist". i.e. can you appreciate the creation without associating it with the personal foibles of the creator? If you went around scrutinizing the personal failings of every single creator and deciding not to support their art, you would cut yourself off from a huge chunk of human creation. Creators and builders are disproportionately imperfect people. Harvey Weinstein, for example, is a serial abuser and genuinely evil person. He also was involved in an enormous number of Hollywood productions. Do you go out of your way to make sure to never watch or consume media associated with him? My guess is probably not. It's impractical and also I think the net benefit of this mindset, where we only allow people with certain moral characteristics to succeed, is a loss for society.
- wombat-man 2mo agoI have mixed feelings about it. I don't agree with how my country often ends up using these technologies, but defense tech and weaponry still seems pretty necessary. The US is not the only one doing this. Should they wait for their adversaries to have the upper hand? I don't think it's such a bad thing, as long as they can put the right people in charge. That's a whole other problem.
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- TulliusCicero 2mo ago> which makes human-killing robots I mean, that's just defense companies in general now. Would you rather have your own soldiers dying in a war, rather than robots? Ukraine is using AI in their targeting, is that something you condemn? This is no different from the invention of machine guns or artillery. Yes, it's sad that these things will be used in war to kill (more) people. But intentionally avoiding that technology means you're just handicapping your own military and sacrificing others' lives for your principles.
- ferbivore 2mo agoAnduril is not "just" anything.
- esikich 2mo ago[flagged]
- veeti 2mo agoWell, are those humans Iranian schoolchildren or Russian troops invading Ukraine? Hard to make a judgment without knowing.
- CMay 2mo agoHe's not a war profiteer, he's a peace profiteer. His philosophy is peace through strength, not profit through death. He even strongly emphasizes saving lives through weapons with better precision, which has been the trajectory of US weapons design for many decades. Russia is over there killing everything in sight and leveling entire cities including thousands of schools. Your claim is similar to saying nobody should own a gun, because it should be illegal to defend yourself or others. So everyone who owns any kind of weapon is evil and bad? Only bad people are allowed to own weapons and we should just roll over? Nobody should defend Ukraine from Russia? Anduril has been helping Ukraine since very early on. Let the guy have his little side modding hobby.
- orangedog 2mo agoStarting a weapon company is different from owning a gun. You have control over that gun. Your weapons company, those weapons will be used to kill innocent people, there is no doubt. Weapons don't only get used for clean operations in war and there is almost always collateral damage. It is a decision to start producing regardless of how well-intentioned it is. You will be profiting off of people being maimed and killed. Various people thought they solved war through new weapons only to create more effective killing machines. That's what WW1 was. Palmer does not have to work on weapons nor justify making them. Building tech that will be used to murder people (and yes, it will happen) is a decision. Not funding his other hobby when he's getting money off US military contracts is hardly breaking his bank. He wants to build weapons? I don't want to buy his products. Easy. Building more efficient weapons does not make us safer. Every dollar saved through "strength" and better weapons matters little to the parents who lost their kid when the most precise weapon in the world kills a bunch of schoolchildren like it did at the start of the Iran war. If you can't gaurantee your weapons won't get used for that, why would you build them? You cannot. I thought Tony Stark already made this point.
- CMay 2mo agoThe problem is that China, Russia, Iran and so on have all been accelerating their weapons manufacturing. Go complain to them. If nobody in the world was manufacturing any weapons and it was fully observable from space, nobody would have cause to manufacture these kinds of weapons. We do not live in that world. At some point, any reasonable person should agree that if a country exists in an environment that contains many threats it might need to defend itself or others from, then it makes complete sense for it to develop weapons towards that aim. Countries are not people, people are people. So people make the weapons. It just so happens that Palmer Luckey is a person. He can't sell weapons to any random person or country he wants, he can only sell them to the US or with permission of the US to a country that the US has a strategic interest in defending. Precision weapons have helped reduce casualties. This is a fact. Please try to contradict this fact in the face of napalm bombing and nuclear bombs of yesteryears. Please try to tell me that precision weapons aren't better than just randomly aiming artillery at the sky and letting'er rip. Please do. I want to hear your well founded argument for this.
- fryanyway_swe 2mo agoDo you see all weapons companies as bad? Is SAAB bad making JAS Gripen being soon used against Russia? I find your and similar views to be very childish. And somewhat suspicious. Who would benefit from the west investing less in weapons systems? It boils down to what side you are on honestly.
- bogota 2mo ago[dead]
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- missinglugnut 2mo agoGood Lord. You know that Anduril industries will keep making drones no matter how many discussions about retro gaming you ruin right? This backlash can hurt modretro, it can affect the author of this game, but the impact on the defense industry is zero. And this thread, fuck, you'd think running JavaScript on an n64 would be the safest place to avoid yelling about US politics in 2026 but here we are. And there's nothing to be gained. A smart person doing cool work published a game through a fun and ethical company that is owned by a person that also owns a defense company, so let's all scream about murdering children. As if that protects anyone from anything.