[HN Gopher] Unity signs "multi-million dollar" contract to help ...
___________________________________________________________________
Unity signs "multi-million dollar" contract to help U.S. government
with defense
Author : cpeterso
Score : 97 points
Date : 2022-08-12 05:10 UTC (17 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.gamedeveloper.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.gamedeveloper.com)
| cpursley wrote:
| Shouldn't "defense" be in air-quotes?
| AndrewVos wrote:
| Hah was literally thinking the same thing. "Department of
| wholesale torture and murder of innocent civilians" doesn't
| have the same ring to it though does it?
| [deleted]
| JakeAl wrote:
| They use Unity for a wide variety of purposes, including cyber-
| security and educational training in general. BE glad they are
| making jobs available for the thousands of kids graduating with
| Unity certification in an oversaturated game market. There's a
| huge demand for "Unity Engineers" (read: actual programmers who
| also know how to use a GUI/IDE like Unity).
| wyre wrote:
| > BE glad they are making jobs available for the thousands of
| kids graduating
|
| In the same way that I should be glad that the military takes
| advantage of poor kids and sends them to war by giving them
| college tuition? No thanks.
| bannedbybros wrote:
| AreYouSirius wrote:
| relyks wrote:
| The department of defense has been using Unity for a long time.
| As someone who worked at the U.S. Army using Unity, when I was
| there awhile ago, Unity was used for developing simulations to
| train groups of soldiers to use different kinds equipment and to
| understand battle scenarios. I did work for a trainer that taught
| people how to use an M777 Howitzer
| (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M777_howitzer).
|
| I get the ethical concerns Unity employees have had, but can't
| any development environment be potentially used for ethically
| gray purposes? Personally, I didn't see myself as directly
| sponsoring war, especially since all American taxpayers are
| contributing towards the defense budget. I saw my work as being
| part of an ecosystem that could help save soldiers' lives.
| Soldiers will need to go fight either way for defensive purposes
| and they need to be trained. If the training process can be more
| effective and efficient by using game-like simulations, why
| shouldn't it be? The simulations also end up saving a lot of
| money, because it's not necessary to waste gas or ammunition
| taking a tank or a heavy artillery piece out for demonstration
| use.
| meheleventyone wrote:
| Using Unity is different from Unity the company directly
| working with defense contracts. I can see people taking moral
| issue with that and not everyone working at Unity is a US
| citizen and even if you are you don't get a choice in how your
| taxes are used. Whereas this agreement is voluntary support.
| From a user perspective it's also at odds with the public image
| from the history of the company even if it's been a
| historically good platform for other companies to develop
| defense simulations and training tools with.
| balentio wrote:
| 2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote:
| > I saw my work as being part of an ecosystem that could help
| save soldiers' lives.
|
| Exactly. You worked on a training environment for the M777
| howitzer. Better training means less chance that they hit the
| nearby friendly unit or civilians. If they can deliver accurate
| fire more quickly under pressure that means less time for the
| enemy to kill friendlies as well. Better trained soldiers is a
| win for all parties that are not the enemy.
| jvanderbot wrote:
| Maintaining a standing army is just sensible, from a game
| theoretic perspective. And it (for better or worse) has
| positive industrial/academic/technological feedback loops --
| Unity being paid lots of money being just one example.
|
| I would like to live in a peaceful country and world. A
| peaceful country is one that chooses not to fight. If you
| cannot fight, you are not peaceful, you are helpless.
| buran77 wrote:
| > Soldiers will need to go fight either way for defensive
| purposes and they need to be trained
|
| "Defensive purposes" is one hell of a creative license. You
| know it when soldiers "need to go fight" on the other side of
| the world "for defensive purposes". Or when a random someone
| enters your home with a gun "for defensive purposes". When was
| the last time a US soldier was called to arms to defend their
| own country?
|
| > can't any development environment be potentially used for
| ethically gray purposes?
|
| Any development can and will probably eventually be used as
| such. But while Facebook's "gray area" is siphoning and
| monetizing users' data, the US military's "gray area" is
| invading countries and killing _a whole lot_ of innocent people
| in the process. So many that they have to threaten everyone
| else in the world with deadly action if they even try to look
| too closely. That 's one soft definition of gray.
|
| Imagine the NSO Group claiming "software development gray area"
| to defend themselves. And with any military the moral/ethical
| objection will go far beyond that because no matter how the
| rules are followed, the main purpose of a military is to
| achieve things by threat or application of deadly violence. So
| a general objection to cooperating with the military complex
| will always have a solid foundation.
| arcticfox wrote:
| > the US military's "gray area" is invading countries and
| killing a whole lot of innocent people in the process
|
| Or, you know, being by far the largest reason (outside of the
| Ukrainians themselves) that Ukraine is able to protect itself
| from an evil war of aggression and not face Holodomor
| v2...https://www.statista.com/chart/27278/military-aid-to-
| ukraine...
|
| The Ukrainian "Saint Javelin" even has one of these training
| modes being discussed (I don't actually know if it was made
| using Unity, but it sure looked like it)
|
| Gray area.
| blub wrote:
| Russia and Ukraine had many disagreements since the
| dissolution of the Soviet Union. The moment that relations
| really took a turn for the worse was after Ukraine started
| flirting with NATO and to a lesser extent EU, at which
| point Russia took Crimea and tensions started in the East.
|
| Ukraine then continued to align and train with NATO, the
| Minsk accords failed and Russia invaded. At this point, our
| best understanding is that they wanted to enact quick
| regime change and re-align the country's position to
| Russia. As to your reference to Holodomor 2, there's no
| indication that they wanted to commit genocide or force a
| large scale famine.
|
| Russia's actions in Georgia, Belarus or Crimea itself
| indicate the more likely fate of Ukraine. Of course the
| problem with an escalation spiral is that there's no
| telling where it will end up. Still, considering that
| Ukraine's allowing gas exports to transit their country and
| Russia's allowing grain exports, the relation is not as
| hopeless as you make it seem.
|
| As for the US's contribution to the Ukraine war effort,
| paradoxically, the US support and NATO courting them were
| likely an important trigger of the invasion. And the US
| support which enabled Ukraine's resistance means that it's
| now trapped in a spiral of violence with Russia that is
| tearing both countries apart.
|
| We can't know what could have been, but looking at other
| neighbors of Russia's an alternative reality where Ukraine
| remains corrupt, poor, in Russia's sphere of influence but
| whole is not unlikely.
| donkeyd wrote:
| As a European, I feel very thankful that the US has given
| up many of the luxuries (health care, social security, paid
| time off by law) we have here to fund a military to protect
| the world. My country has 2 fighter jets and a tank with a
| flat tire (hyperbole) and really depends on this. I've been
| vocally critical of the US defense spending, but through
| the Ukraine war have come to a realization we've all been
| spoiled and naive and feel like Europe really needs to pick
| up defense spending and not just in the short term.
| nightski wrote:
| The reality is our debt servicing (interest) will outpace
| our military spending soon.
| adventured wrote:
| The US has the world's largest entitlement and social
| welfare programs, including its vast Social Security
| program (which is not actually paid for in full by its
| recipients, it's heavily subsidized, ie a welfare
| transfer) or eg its $120 billion EBT food program. And
| that's just at the federal level, the US has another
| gigantic government complex at the state level.
|
| Most US government spending, $10 trillion (federal +
| state + local), goes to social welfare programs and
| entitlements.
|
| That $10 trillion is larger than the entire economies of
| Japan + Germany combined.
|
| The US spends more on healthcare than any other nation,
| by far. It hasn't given up anything.
|
| The poorest 1/4 of the US population gets entirely free
| healthcare, and it's the most expensive free healthcare
| that you'll find anywhere on the planet. Another quarter
| of the US population receives directly subsidized
| healthcare.
|
| Over-spending on the US military is a $200-$250 billion
| problem. The US spends $4+ trillion on healthcare every
| year.
|
| Practically every full-time employee (32 hours or more
| per week) in the US gets paid time off. Your average
| retail store employee - working at CVS, Walgreens,
| Amazon, Walmart, Target, etc - earning ~$13-$17 / hour
| typically accrues 10-14 days of PTO per year (one can
| certainly argue it should be more; pretending it doesn't
| exist, or using "by law" to devalue its existence, is
| absurd).
| jolly_jailtime wrote:
| Don't forget them lucky 1/2 percenters who get free
| healthcare, food, residence, and leisure time! I'm
| talking about the incarcerated 1.7m in the Land of the
| Free.
| WaxProlix wrote:
| Close, but it's actually a bit over 700/100k, so >0.7% of
| the population.
| [deleted]
| quartesixte wrote:
| Yeah this isn't a money problem it's an inefficiency
| problem at this rate. There are systemic problems here
| (of the systems engineering kind not the racial justice
| kind).
| ScoobleDoodle wrote:
| The US could have both a large military and decent
| universal health care. We choose to have an economically
| exploitive healthcare system and retirement with the
| politicians we elect.
|
| It would cost the US less as a society to have universal
| healthcare rather than the horror we have now.
| rob74 wrote:
| I think the US could afford both proper health
| care/social security and the current military, but of
| course they would have to try it first to see if it
| works...
| mensetmanusman wrote:
| The US pays about 5x per health service used compared to
| the OECD. Every reduction in spend would result in
| massive job losses in overhead that keep our house of
| cards from collapsing.
| humanrebar wrote:
| I was about to say it could fully defund the military and
| still not fully tackle healthcare and poverty problems.
| Especially if interest rates on government debt starts
| going up.
| ManVanderHuge wrote:
| I think it's possible too, and I'm sure the military
| can/always is trying to cut money corners where it can so
| as to keep within budget, but I'm sure it all comes down
| to some massive cut in the military likely requiring us
| to decommit from some massive objective we currently are
| ahead on. Making sure we have enough presence to keep the
| South China Sea open, have enough equipment to give to
| countries we are allied with who have large enemies (see
| Ukraine, Taiwan), hold on to allies in strategic regions
| (see Israel - though I don't agree with what they do with
| equipment), be prepared for self defense or "necessary
| wars", be prepared to deploy to Europe because they
| underspend, maintain the nuclear arsenal so there's no
| catastrophe there, etc etc. No one wants to be the
| president who cut the budget so we lost in that field.
| wyre wrote:
| > I'm sure the military can/always is trying to cut money
| corners where it can
|
| I doubt it. When the budget is billions of largely
| unaudited dollars and a senate that will approve any
| budget increases what reason is there to save money? I
| can't imagine the nepotism found in military contracts
| are saving the military money when these companies
| gaining the contracts want as much tax-payer money as
| possible.
| buran77 wrote:
| > Gray area.
|
| I'm sure you believe you set something straight but you did
| not. Two things can be true at the same time and still not
| be in any kind of gray area.
|
| Can you get out of a murder charge by saving someone else's
| life? Walk into a hospital and save one patient's life
| while stabbing the other to death? Rape someone but then
| give them a job that provides for everything? Pay for the
| preservation of an endangered animal only after you get the
| chance to kill some of the very same animals? You think
| Harvey Weinstein didn't pay the tuition or put a roof over
| one of his victim's heads? Yeah, think of him in the gray
| area.
|
| Can you give me your example above and proudly proclaim
| "grey area" without sounding like the kind of person who
| thinks _any_ wrongdoing gets wiped with a gesture of good
| will?
|
| P.S. Gray should be the thin border where white and black
| touch and intermingle, not the whole damn thing except the
| white/black edges. That might ebb and flow and drift with
| generations and society but this moment is not it.
| brokenkebab2 wrote:
| Can we decide that saving a victim from violence by
| applying violence to an aggressor is net positive? Yes,
| absolutely
| buran77 wrote:
| Do you apply this principle consistently or only when and
| how it suits you? Yes, absolutely it is a trick question.
|
| Are you aware of any case where the US went to war under
| pretenses known to be false from the start, or interfered
| in the internal affairs of another country to cause loss
| of life, or allied with countries that committed
| terrorism against the US and others, etc. and none of the
| initiators suffered any consequences?
|
| It's bad enough that morals can be twisted enough to
| justify just about anything and in any condition, and
| education these days lets anyone think they can justify
| anything simply by the fact that they said it. Don't add
| hypocrisy to that too.
| the_only_law wrote:
| This would justify any number of attacks on the US.
| adventured wrote:
| They can certainly give it their best shot if they want
| to deal with the consequences. That's how the world
| actually works. Institutions like the UN are almost
| entirely powerless when it comes down to it, while eg
| NATO or the various militarily powerful nations are not.
| You can witness that with what has gone on in the
| invasion of Ukraine, what has the UN stopped or
| prevented? Nothing. The same will hold true when China
| invades Taiwan one day.
|
| The countries with potent military capabilities dictate
| how everything goes in this world. It was true a thousand
| years ago, it was true a hundred years ago, and it's true
| today. It will always be true, for very obvious reasons.
| the_only_law wrote:
| Ok. Where did I say anything to the contrary.
| sudosysgen wrote:
| Society breaks down if we follow this principle.
| somenameforme wrote:
| And then when in your 'aggressive defense' you end up
| hurting somebody else who now uses the exact same logic
| to start attacking you? This is how war (and terrorism)
| perpetuate endlessly.
|
| It only ends when one side or the other, and anybody who
| might have empathized with them, is completely
| annihilated or when somebody stops behaving, from their
| perspective, righteously. Neither option is probable,
| which is why society just keeps replaying history on an
| endless loop in history, with little more than technology
| offering a change of scenery.
|
| If you want to see what will happen tomorrow, simply
| learn about what happened yesterday. The only trick is
| realizing what role you're playing.
| emptysongglass wrote:
| I feel they set it straight. You, on the other hand,
| don't seem to commit to any point but instead digress
| wildly between one half-baked example to the next with a
| postscript that could as well be a theory on color
| science.
| roenxi wrote:
| We've been trying to avoid US soldiers fighting Russian
| soldiers for decades now; it'll look a lot worse than the
| Holodomor v2 if nukes start flying.
|
| Given that they aren't, I suspect we'll find that US
| soldiers aren't technically involved in the fight in
| Ukraine. It is ironic that even now, US soldiers are only
| deployed for aggressive purposes.
| adventured wrote:
| US soldiers during the post WW2 era are overwhelmingly
| deployed for non-directly aggressive purposes in fact.
| They're deployed as a standing deterrent to regimes
| looking to conquer other nations.
|
| That includes in Japan, South Korea and various nations
| in Europe (Germany, Italy, Poland, et al.). By the hour,
| those locations have seen the largest and longest-term US
| military deployments in its history. They're not there to
| start wars, they're there to deter the aggressors
| (Russia, North Korea, China primarily) from attempting to
| conquer their neighbors and annex more territory.
| throwawayacc2 wrote:
| > When was the last time a US soldier was called to arms to
| defend their own country?
|
| I am not american so maybe I am wrong but I believe it was
| Afghanistan in 2001 and Iraq in 2003 no?
|
| The justification, weather correct or not, was in both cases
| exactly what you said. To "defend their own country".
|
| In Afghanistan to prevent further 9/11 style attacks from
| being committed against the USA and in Iraq to prevent WMDs
| from being used against the USA. The famous/infamous "do you
| want the proof to come in the form of a mushroom cloud?" bit.
|
| Again, weather the justification was correct or not is not
| what I am pointing out. I am pointing out in both cases, the
| USA called soldiers to fight "to arms to defend their own
| country"
| buran77 wrote:
| > in both cases, the USA called soldiers to fight "to arms
| to defend their own country"
|
| Having _a_ justification doesn 't mean it must be _a good_
| justification. The WMD that didn 't exist? Being the close
| ally of the country that actually supported 9/11?
|
| Let's not keep going on the same beaten path which will not
| suddenly give us a different answer. For more than a
| century the US has been involved in affairs everywhere else
| in the world long before everyone else in the world was
| involved in any US affairs. Both 9/11 and the subsequent
| invasions (or the acts that came before) were just as much
| terrorist actions but if you creatively draw the line you
| can arbitrarily erase any inconvenient action that came
| before. If you draw the line at 2002 the invasions look
| unprovoked. And if you draw it in the early 1980s then 9/11
| looks like soldiers defending their country against further
| attack. Who would you say first meddled with whom to
| trigger the chain of escalations that came after? But no
| need to dig, ask yourself as a decent human being: should
| you bomb a wedding and call it defense?
|
| If you had heard as often as I have people justifying the
| unjustifiable (then and now) you'd understand what's the
| problem with arbitrary lines and pro forma justifications.
| I apologize if a comment box cannot support any better
| explanation despite the unshakeable foundation for what I
| said.
| buscoquadnary wrote:
| So interesting point of clarification. I was reading up
| on chemical weapons of WW1 the other day and fell down a
| Wikipedia rabbit hole, I found out that technically Iraq
| did not have WMDs, I think I was reading about Sarin gas
| and the article explained that it is 80% a certain
| mixture and 20% of another mixture largely. It then
| pointed out that Iraq had those two ingredients, in the
| right quantities, in two separate warehouses across the
| street from each other. So technically they didn't have
| WMDs they just had everything they would need to make a
| WMD on short notice.
| buran77 wrote:
| OK... so would you call any US farmer with some
| fertilizer and a tank of diesel a terrorist and rain
| bombs on them? Or is it arbitrarily reserved for
| countries on the other side of the world? For defense...
|
| You know, the irony is that as long as the US and the
| West in general had an interest in keeping an even bigger
| enemy (Iran) in check, they had no moral objection to
| providing Iraq with all kinds of assistance, financing,
| equipment, materials, and training on developing the very
| same WMDs they later invaded Iraq for having, even if it
| was known they were destroyed.
|
| But you'll always get exactly the story you need to hear
| to support the conclusion you should support. And you
| will support it because people care less and less about
| critical thinking, collecting available info from both
| sides. It's so much easier to just get the conclusion in
| predigested bytes, ideally just a punchline. If this kind
| of "thinking" is enough to make people storm the Capitol
| of the US, it's enough to get the to support the invasion
| of a dusty corner of the world most of them couldn't even
| point at on the map.
| erklik wrote:
| > Iraq to prevent WMDs from being used against the USA
|
| This is something that was proven to be a lie. There were
| no WMDs, and Bush knew that there wasn't enough evidence
| that they existed.
| pjc50 wrote:
| > weather the justification was correct or not is not what
| I am pointing out
|
| This is however entirely critical to the whole thing.
| Pretty much every country which has ever launched an
| aggressive war has claimed along the way that it was
| defensive or in response to provocation.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_declaration_of_war_aga
| i... : yup, that's Hitler claiming that it was in response
| to US provocation.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese_declaration_of_war_o
| n... : yes, after history's most famous surprise attack
| there's a declaration with "Our Empire, for its existence
| and self-defense has no other recourse but to appeal to
| arms and to crush every obstacle in its path" on the end.
| taken_username wrote:
| How come US is the only country that needs military bases
| all over the world to "defend their country"?
|
| With your justification the Russia invasion is actually to
| prevent a future war with NATO. I am pretty sure one can
| justify any war that way.
| ironick09 wrote:
| Well, no, the US is most certainly not the only country
| with military bases all over the world: https://en.m.wiki
| pedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_with_overs.... I know
| it's easy to assume that because you normally only ever
| hear about the US army, I agree the US does have the
| largest number of overseas bases around the world, it's
| not the _only_.
|
| NATO is a defensive organization. How does going to war
| with the Ukraine help Russia avoid confrontation with
| NATO when invading the Ukraine puts NATO members and arms
| length reach away dramatically increasing the chance of a
| full scale conflict with NATO? This argument doesn't make
| any sense.
|
| Justify != right. Anyone can justify a war from their
| POV, see Russia -> Ukraine, US -> Iraq. It doesn't make
| it any more right.
| humanrebar wrote:
| > ...the main purpose of a military is to achieve things by
| threat or application of deadly violence.
|
| Are you against the U.S. military in particular or all
| militaries? This part makes me think the latter.
|
| I don't think it's all that controversial or ethically
| dubious to believe, in general, that militaries need to exist
| and that they therefore need to train their members on how to
| operate weapons.
|
| More specific arguments against particular militaries and
| particular weapon systems are more interesting.
|
| At any rate, some of the "things" that militaries achieve are
| good, necessary and, arguably, properly achieved by violence
| and the threat thereof. Such as protection from external
| threats of tyranny (surely we can all think of one
| contemporaneous tyrant with a military?).
|
| That means, I think, involvement in conventional weapons
| systems for _some_ military can be fine. In the case of the
| U.S. military, I could see objecting in particular, but I
| wouldn 't predict any real impact to U.S. foreign policy due
| to that sort of personal choice. The main benefit would be on
| a personal and, depending on the circles you travel in,
| social level.
| buran77 wrote:
| I am not _against_ any military, I understand their role in
| the modern world. I can also simply recognize the moral and
| ethical objections to collaborating with any of them. This
| being said, in the "civilized" world (the "us" in us vs.
| them) the US military went above and beyond when it came to
| providing extra reasons to have such moral objections.
| brokenkebab2 wrote:
| Your opening lines seem yo be in contradiction with the
| ending.
| jvanderbot wrote:
| Your opinion is valid and understandable, but has no
| bearing on top-level commenters career decisions.
|
| And nobody here really has any solid ground to defend the
| US _in those instances where they have morally slipped_ ,
| but nobody has any right to say the US should not have a
| military _because of those instances_.
| buran77 wrote:
| > has no bearing on top-level commenters career decisions
|
| Of course not! Nothing I say here is aimed at influencing
| career decisions. OP's life choices are their own.
|
| I clearly targeted 2 ostensibly objective statements. One
| was the creative interpretation of "defense" (attacking a
| country on the other side of the world even for reasons
| known to be fabricated cannot be called "defense"), and
| the second was the attempt to call everything "a gray
| area" to muddy the waters (thus homogenizing and
| conflating writing software that tracks the websites you
| visit with helping train the people potentially dropping
| bombs on weddings).
|
| Your job choice is yours alone to make. I can only
| express disagreement if I were to make it for myself. But
| I can certainly have a strong objection to redefining or
| twisting facts to justify that choice. That's not only a
| transparent attempt of making the choice more palatable
| in the eyes of others but explaining it like that
| ironically has the opposite effect.
| beebmam wrote:
| The people of the world, much less just the US, have a
| sincere interest in preventing terrorism. The functional
| elimination of Al Qaeda and ISIS are both two things people
| should be celebrating. Many countries are responsible for
| their elimination, and we're all better off for it.
|
| Unfortunately, both left and right wing propagandists are
| agitating to make you think it was unjustified to eradicate
| these two groups. Don't believe that garbage. These
| organizations genuinely believed that the entire world has
| been corrupted, including much of the Muslim world, and
| deserved the terrorism their groups inflicted.
| the_only_law wrote:
| > have a sincere interest in preventing terrorism.
|
| Yeah that's why China is sending people to camps out in
| Xinjiang.
|
| Also I'd love some cuttings on people defending ISIs and
| Al-Qaeda. The Taliban I could maybe believe, but ISIs is
| almost universally hated.
| winReInstall wrote:
| Eh, both are alive and well, and are just power projection
| tools, aka irregular forces for dirty local conflicts the
| big players do not want to be involved in. Terrorism it is
| only when the dog bites the lord who hunts.
| andsoitis wrote:
| > When was the last time a US soldier was called to arms to
| defend their own country?
|
| The right way to think about defending one's country is that
| it means "defends the interests of the country", which can
| include helping allies, keeping trade routes stable, etc.
|
| Good read: https://www.brookings.edu/opinions/the-importance-
| of-u-s-mil...
| tyen_ wrote:
| Sure, if you are into the whole imperialism thing.
| mythrwy wrote:
| There is no clear limit to that expanded definition though.
| zardo wrote:
| Yeah, may as well do away with the concepts of offence
| and defence and just call it fighting.
| randomfinn wrote:
| Would you also say that the Russian army is defending the
| country by invading Ukraine?
| tallanvor wrote:
| Elected officials decide where the military goes, so the
| criticism as to where soldiers are sent needs to be directed
| to the right place.
|
| And yes, there are certainly civilian deaths that are caused
| by the US military making the wrong decisions about how to
| achieve the objectives they've been given, but even then,
| they can't just refuse to do the job - that's the entire
| point of civilian control over the military.
| jvanderbot wrote:
| Past mistakes of militaries does not mean militaries should
| be abolished. Just like past mistakes of police does not mean
| police should be abolished (they'd just be renamed to
| something else).
|
| You can be upset by past actions of the US military (or any)
| without calling for GP to quit his job.
|
| I would be happy in a peaceful world, but a world without
| defense capabilities is a world of helpless people, not
| peaceful ones.
| kranke155 wrote:
| You have a very reduced view of what defense means. When was
| the last time a US soldier defended his own country? In very
| direct manner, Afghanistan.
|
| Indirectly, US deployments in - Taiwan, Korea, now Poland,
| NATO itself as an alliance, as Ukraine proves beyond any
| doubt - maintain peace throughout the world. In this subject
| the populace is often misinformed while the political and
| military elites in the US are quite clear - US commitments
| all over the world maintain peace that allows for US hegemony
| in trade and other areas to dominate the world's economy.
|
| The US used to think it could be the world's most powerful
| country and "not get involved". That led to World War 2, and
| the idea died there. If the US "doesn't get involved", it
| will end up with another hegemon taking over Europe/Asia and
| lose its position at the top of the food chain. If that's
| what you want, go for it, cut the military budget. But when
| China and Russia turn the rest of the world into autocracies,
| you might find you made the wrong choice.
|
| The alternative to a strong hegemon that maintains peace is
| clear - it's chaos and wars of domination. The relatively
| small slippage in power that's happened in the last 20 years
| have led to an imperialist war in Ukraine. If you want to
| have that all over the world, go for it, cut the budget and
| complain about all military power being "wrong".
| dgb23 wrote:
| The most violent aggressor in the world is just
| "maintaining peace". If that isn't doublespeak then I don't
| know what is.
|
| WW2 didn't happen because the US got in late. It was much
| more complicated than that and driven by fascism and
| imperialism across the globe. It's hard to say whether
| anything could have prevented that war.
|
| We should be forever grateful for the people who fought
| back the fascists, internal and external. But you picked
| one of the few instances where it made sense for the US to
| go to war. Wars since the last century have become so
| destructive and violent that people will almost never
| support them except they are deceived or oppressed. The
| solution should not be "we do the killing for you under
| false pretense" but to put processes in order that are
| based on mutual agreement.
| kranke155 wrote:
| You should read Henry Kissinger - but I imagine maybe you
| think he's a war criminal?
|
| Give it 20 years and see. A close reading of world
| history seems to tell me - without a strong military
| dominating hegemon keeping the peace, you get war and
| chaos.
|
| The only war of aggression I can think of was Iraq.
| Vietnam was a war against an ideological enemy, wrong
| headed as it might have been, based off a flawed theory.
| I don't consider the other wars as aggression because I
| don't consider policing the world to mean you're an
| agressor. The world needs policing.
| fiat_fandango wrote:
| Are they building the domestic IRS combat breaching simulator
| yet?
| seydor wrote:
| No crisis go to waste
| hammyhavoc wrote:
| Me: Give me Godot or give me death.
|
| Unity: allow me.
| spandrew wrote:
| Seems fine? I don't see the need here for additional litigation.
| We all mostly hate war. US Military isn't going away, nor are
| Russia or China as global power brokers. -\\_(tsu)_/-
|
| Getting upset over this is akin to yelling at Xerox for selling
| their machines to the IRS because you got audited. Or because
| counterfeit currency can be produced. It's just a tool doing its
| (neutral) job. So long as we want our society to invent
| progressive tech this is the exhaust of it; people you don't like
| might use the tech.
| water-your-self wrote:
| Just because its happening doesnt mean we should passively
| contribute.
| cryptica wrote:
| I find these government contracts completely immoral. The
| government could easily hire skilled people directly for a
| fraction of the price. These are always really just about lining
| the pockets of execs.
| KineticLensman wrote:
| Just to expand on '3D' a bit. The application here is likely
| battlefield simulation rather than content creation as with
| Blender. The simulation could be in novel areas where exiting
| sims don't have pre-existing libraries of assets (e.g. meshes,
| textures and behaviours for military platforms) and / or to allow
| access to third party products that are integrated with Unity,
| e.g. AR/VR headsets.
|
| For traditional battlefield sim, Unity has hard competition from
| systems such as VBS that have extensive asset libraries and
| multiple training solutions delivered to western militaries over
| the last decade or so.
| rejor121 wrote:
| In my humble opinion, I feel like many commenters here aren't
| veterans or don't understand how thin the line is between a
| stable and unstable world. Or simply don't care to look deeper at
| why the USA military does what it does, along with the different
| three letter agencies.
|
| Yeah, a lot of mistakes have been made. Many of them will
| continue to be made. The hope is that we still leave the world
| better off than it was before.
|
| Inaction can lead to just as bad a result, if not worse, than
| taking an educated action at all. It's simple to sit there behind
| the desk reading articles and history when you're not one making
| the decisions, good or bad.
| seanw444 wrote:
| There hasn't been a single generally good armed conflict the US
| has participated in since the Korean war. And there are ones we
| didn't participate in that we absolutely should have. Like when
| the CCP obliterated the ROC. They're lucky they still have an
| island to occupy.
| mythrwy wrote:
| To me it doesn't appear the hope is actually that we leave the
| world better off then before.
|
| Otherwise the actions of the US Military and intelligence
| services would be much different, with longer term consequences
| thought through and impacts on peoples lives taken into broader
| consideration.
|
| To me, it looks like the hope is actually maintaining financial
| control of the resources of other nations. Every action I see
| indicates that.
|
| But the US is hardly alone in this respect either, just the
| most recent example.
| glenda wrote:
| Military violence can make the world more unstable too.
| Especially when many civilians are killed. There is no way to
| actually determine if military action taken by the US has been
| a net positive for the world.
| buscoquadnary wrote:
| There are a lot of Jews that exist today because of US
| military action that would like to weigh in on the net
| positive impact of the US military actions, as well as
| several million Koreans that don't have to live in "best
| Korea" to are pretty supportive of it.
| glenda wrote:
| And in the years since we have killed millions of people in
| Vietnam and hundreds of thousands in the Middle East and
| we're currently bankrolling what many people consider to be
| a genocide in Palestine.
|
| There have been several successful actions, but we're
| talking about the net impact not specific instances.
| [deleted]
| vollmond wrote:
| > It's simple to sit there behind the desk reading articles and
| history when you're not one making the decisions, good or bad.
|
| We are participants in those decisions, on both sides. We are
| part of the targets of those decisions (eg domestic spying,
| provision of military equipment to local and regional police
| forces), as well as tacit supporters of those decisions (or do
| you think an American civilian can travel the world without
| being blamed for those mistakes? I have heard of a lot of
| Canadian flags being added to travel luggage...).
|
| Our tax money pays to kill children in deserts. Our tax money
| pays to destabilize governments. Our parents and children and
| brothers and sisters who ARE veterans directly participate in
| executing those bad decisions. And then many of them commit
| suicide. My father shot himself three years ago, near his 50th
| anniversary of shipping out to Vietnam, because of the mistakes
| he was part of there and later which stayed with him for so
| many decades. I don't think our second-guessing of those
| decisions taken in our name is at all inappropriate.
|
| > Yeah, a lot of mistakes have been made. Many of them will
| continue to be made.
|
| There must be a threshold of "too many" or "too heinous"
| mistakes at which point one stops trying to improve an
| organization and instead withdraws support, right? Otherwise it
| may as well be a religion.
| UnpossibleJim wrote:
| So, in the 2022 released budget military spending accouted for
| 10 percent of all spending and 50% of discretionary spending.
| While we're spending that on active campaigns (not the dark
| ones), we aren't spending that on health care, education,
| infrastructure or disaster. Not to mention a cracking and
| floundering legal system in dire need of reform.
|
| We outspend every other country by a lot, including China and
| Russia combined... and then the next three added on top. We are
| not the only world power who has a moral obligation to keep the
| world safe, if that is what you say we are doing.
|
| I say this as the son of an Army veteran who died to 5
| different cancers caused from agent orange, only 3 of which
| would the VA cover after we fought (hard) with them. And the
| cousin to a Navy admiral whose almost up to his 25 years.
| buscoquadnary wrote:
| Ya, but we have been the ones to keep the world order stable
| the rest of the world powers consist of the EU, Russia and
| China. China is currently actively prosecuting a campaign of
| religious genocide, Russia speaks for itself, and the
| countries in the EU that are part of NATO don't even
| contribute the amount of money they agreed to, much less have
| a willingness to send soldiers to fight and die in some other
| corner of the world.
|
| The fact of the matter is the US is one of only 3 powers that
| can help maintain a stable world order, that reduces piracy,
| stops things like ISIS, and helps keep megolmanical dictators
| like Kim Jung Un in check.
|
| You can argue other countries should be willing to contribute
| to that, but they don't. So those are your options China,
| Russia, or the US. You let me know which one you'd prefer,
| because as much as you don't like it those are your choices.
| UnpossibleJim wrote:
| Kim Jong Un doesn't exist without China, full stop. ISIS
| doesn't exist without the US and Russia. Those existential
| threats are pawns in a greater game left over from the
| 50's, 80's and 90's.
|
| As for the EU, why would they meet their obligations when
| they could spend their money elsewhere? They're the fat 30
| year old bachelor playing video games in their parents
| spare bedroom because they were never forced to leave. The
| US needs to take a step back and make them pay their own
| check at some point. It's time for the adults in the room
| to start adulting.
| sudosysgen wrote:
| It makes no sense to day Kim Jong Un doesn't exist
| without China. China has an interest in preventing a
| massive refugee crisis on their borders and are thus
| interested in the stability of North Korea.
|
| Unless you think China should regime change North Korea
| and risk the death and displacement of millions of
| people?
|
| If they could get Kim out without massive disaster then
| they would have done it yesterday. He causes them a lot
| of issues and they have been very reluctant to help him -
| they would have been well within their rights to, for
| example, veto all sanctions against North Korea.
| the_only_law wrote:
| > Inaction can lead to just as bad a result, if not worse
|
| Those damn soviets would have won if we didn't torture US
| citizens.
| throwawayyou wrote:
| This is colorful role-play. When you get older you'll write
| better with fewer cliches.
|
| > It's simple to sit there behind the desk...
|
| Most of DoD employees, including enlisted men, sit behind desks
| most of the day.
|
| The military is an excellent welfare institution. One of the
| limited forms of socially celebrated welfare in a lot of the
| United States, like the South.
| sylware wrote:
| ok, out-of-the-box glibc/linux dev support... but for defence...
| no source code? mmmmh....
| lizardactivist wrote:
| I associate the US flavor of "defense" with war, murder and
| racket more than actual defense or anything ethical. Who can
| blame me after seeing what they have done in the Middle East for
| the last 20 years?
|
| It's a shame to see Unity supporting something like this just to
| increase their revenue.
| cscurmudgeon wrote:
| To be fair you can thank the US model for Europe living in
| peace till now.
|
| https://www.mearsheimer.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/Why-I...
| thehappypm wrote:
| Well, when was the last time America was attacked?
| jmartrican wrote:
| You know without the US the Middle East might be in full blown
| war. The US defense might just be a stabilizing force. Just
| think about how much war deaths have reduced since becoming a
| super power. War used to be the default state of existence for
| much of the world. And even now the US defense is defending
| Ukraine, and defending democracies around the world.
| bannedbybros wrote:
| frobishercresc wrote:
| The US and the west seeded all these conflicts after WW2 when
| they arbritrarily divided up ex-Ottoman Empire land with no
| real interest in Japan or Germany esque Marshall Plan or
| establishing democracy.
|
| The US funded the Mujahadeen (now the Taliban) to remove the
| Soviet aligned government
|
| The US supported the Shah in Iran as an absolute monarch
| until a popular revolution removed him
|
| The US funded Iraq to fight the newly formed republic of
| Iran, partly since Iran wanted to keep the oil for themselves
|
| The US invaded Afghanistan to remove the extremists they
| propped up in the first place and spend trillions in taxpayer
| money to enrich US contractors
|
| The US invaded Iraq later on because of their oil
|
| US indiscriminately funded 'rebel' forces in Syria and Iraq,
| knowing many of them were extremists and would cause chaos in
| the region.
|
| The US props up the Israeli state with funding and weapons,
| where they impose rule over Palestine despite the fact Israel
| do not allow them vote in Israeli elections
|
| The US is currently stealing oil from Syrian oil-fields
|
| The US is pumping weapons into Ukraine only to weaken Russia
| and force Ukraine into a deeply submissive vassal position
| where they owe the US hundreds of billions and must act only
| in the US's interests.
|
| Does this sound like a military-industrial complex that is
| interested in peace or just in making money from chaos?
| KronisLV wrote:
| > Unity has signed a lucrative contract with enterprise
| technology firm CACI that will see it become the "preferred real-
| time 3D platform" for future systems design and simulation
| programs across the U.S. government.
|
| I know that some might dislike this on ethical grounds, but then
| again, I guess I couldn't really be opposed to something like
| Blender being used for 3D modelling for all sorts of domains, so
| my views of Unity shouldn't be that different, either. From a
| business perspective, that's just securing a lucrative deal for a
| high profile client.
|
| That said, Unity still is one of the better options for 3D
| gamedev beginners: good workflows for assets and level design,
| lots of plugins and assets that are available, great platform
| support, good scripting with C# (performant enough AND reasonably
| easy to use), one of the best amounts of tutorials and guides
| available. Of course, the downsides are the instability of...
| pretty much everything in the last few years: the editor getting
| slower with each release and especially for large projects, VCS
| support with Git/LFS can be sub-optimal, URP/HDRP/legacy render
| pipeline split and problems with assets, DOTS being incomplete,
| multiple UI/input systems, new package management functionality
| and problems opening/upgrading 2-4 year old example projects,
| networking being deprecated and even the organization itself
| being a bit controversial.
|
| If I wanted to make a game to sell without being skilled enough
| to grok Unreal, I'd probably still go for Unity. But personal
| projects? Godot. The open source nature allows me to dodge all of
| the above, even if something as basic as terrain support must
| come in the form of a 3rd party plugin in Godot and I probably
| wouldn't ship anything good anyways (at least until Godot 4 is
| stable with better 3D support and 5-10 years pass and there are
| enough assets to use as a crutch). Regardless, it seems to have
| reached enough of a critical mass to remain a viable option even
| in the future and get more love than something like Xenko/Stride
| (which I've mentioned before), or jMonkeyEngine (although that is
| lower level) and avoid situations like happened with Machinery
| altogether.
|
| Back to Unity, though, I hope they stop implementing half baked
| functionality and spend 2-5 years fixing everything and working
| on consistency and stability instead. Which probably won't
| happen, much like in enterprise software rarely you get
| months/years to address all of the technical debt, but rather
| mostly keep implementing new features for direct business value.
| grenoire wrote:
| Over the last month, we've been hearing more about Unity's
| business developments than its work on the core product itself.
| verytrivial wrote:
| CEO making the super-yacht dash perhaps.
| kranke155 wrote:
| Afaik the product is going nowhere. Someone here said that he
| suspects the code base is loaded with unsustainable technical
| debt that they are no longer able to solve and...
| binbashthefash wrote:
| Just Google 'enlighten replacement unity' and follow along.
| It's been deprecated since 2019 with no replacement as their
| primary real-time global illumination.
| jay_kyburz wrote:
| Multiplayer even longer I suspect.
| CyanBird wrote:
| Jason Booth, the developer of * _crucially*_ important
| third party tools such as Microssplat has made several
| threads and blogs detailing his situation and extreme
| frustration with how Unity has handled and handles some of
| their apis and internal systems, no word from Unity years
| on end
|
| https://www.reddit.com/r/Unity3D/comments/f9awdv/microsplat
| _...
|
| The thread
|
| https://forum.unity.com/threads/can-unity-please-try-
| documen...
|
| Go read the latest comments on page 3, from may 11, 2022
|
| I develop with Unity, this is not good, microssplat is
| actually an infinitely better out of the box third party
| system than what UE5 has, but everything around it rots
| away not because of lack of care from Jason, but because
| lack of care from Unity's leadership and management. It
| takes Jason upwards of a month to two months to have his
| microssplat updates approved, Unity does not have a white
| gloves system to handle high value third party providers
| like him
| kranke155 wrote:
| sounds like a dying tech stack
| binbashthefash wrote:
| It is, that's why they blew over a billion on Weta and
| Parsec. Lumen and Nanite from epic are body-blows they
| have no answer to.
| antiverse wrote:
| I'm surprised this is coming to light now.
|
| I evaluated their tech early on, and it struck me right away
| at how poorly thought out some decisions were. Very basic
| things, too. One distinct issue I remember is not having any
| sort of an "Application" object or app-state pipeline
| interface/object that I can place my non-component logic
| into, stuff like checking various timers, handling app-level
| event hooks, and so on. Turns out, people attach this sort of
| logic to the Camera component. How the fuck did you get to
| that point without thinking about any of this?
| dangero wrote:
| You can just create a singleton that never gets destroyed
| to handle things like this.
| antiverse wrote:
| Exactly my point.
| Jensson wrote:
| You use this and then register whatever hooks you need. Can
| run before or after the first scene has been loaded etc.
| Put the configuration in some ScriptableObject somewhere in
| the project and load things based on that, or just hard
| code the things you need.
|
| https://docs.unity3d.com/ScriptReference/RuntimeInitializeO
| n...
|
| Edit: Alternatively just have a main scene and load/unload
| the other scenes as sub scenes, and put the application
| level objects in the main scene. Or use the above attribute
| and spawn the global objects and mark those object as "dont
| destroy on load" to make them survive the simple scene
| transitions. Or use normal C# static objects. There are so
| many ways to handle this, unity doesn't really block you
| from doing things, just code whatever you need.
| seanw444 wrote:
| This is what confused me the most about Unity in my game
| dev class in high school. It made no logical sense. Why
| would I put logic that has nothing to do with specific
| objects, inside a specific object? And why would I create a
| random invisible, unfunctional object to attach the code
| to? It's such a weird system.
| Deukhoofd wrote:
| The core product is constantly being improved, but they only
| have 3 major releases per year. The business decisions just are
| more popular on HackerNews.
|
| https://forum.unity.com/threads/unity-2022-2-beta-feature-hi...
| [deleted]
| colechristensen wrote:
| A "multimillion" defense contract is about the bottom of the
| barrel for small defense contracts. Like maybe one or two
| programs with a few dozen people working on them for a year or
| two.
| mschuster91 wrote:
| Sure, the big thing with any government contracts is that you
| have a _way_ better chance of getting "in" if you already have
| prior experience with government work. That's a _large_ part of
| why it 's usually the same cluster of three to six large
| companies winning an utter majority of public tenders - smaller
| but better (i.e. not optimized to milk government contracts for
| every cent) shops don't stand a chance against someone who has
| been in business with government for decades. The more
| contracts you have on your belt working directly or as a
| subcontractor, the better your chances.
| JackFr wrote:
| And if you're a small shop who is the incumbent on a small to
| medium size contract through a couple of bidding cycles, if
| one of the big boys wants that contract badly they'll acquire
| you. Much easier than winning the bud and makes everyone
| happy.
| ThePadawan wrote:
| It is my entire hope that "multimillion defense contract" boils
| down to:
|
| - People in suits give presentations for each other for 6
| months
|
| - The budget is used up
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