
Artificial Killing Machine - wglb
http://hackaday.com/2015/07/16/artificial-killing-machine/
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guiomie
This link lead me to the API used by the project:
[http://www.dronestre.am/](http://www.dronestre.am/) followed by the twitter
account linked to the api
[https://twitter.com/dronestream](https://twitter.com/dronestream)

I never thought the US conducted so many strikes, especially in Pakistan ...

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jbegley
thanks for checking it out. i'm the person who made it. there are also iOS and
android apps if you'd like to get notified for each one...

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crocal
Impressive. Would you mind explaining how you collect the data?

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jbegley
most of the heavy lifting is done by the bureau of investigative journalism. i
just read the news articles they aggregate and fill in some metadata.

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slg
Just a reminder that a missile fired by a drone is no different than a missile
fired by a manned jet or any other vehicle. Drones are simply a technology
tool to help protect the lives of our own military. Drones are no different
than something like stealth technology in that regard. I can't imagine that
anyone would create an art project criticizing the US because the radar
signature of our aircraft are too small. You shouldn't have a problem with how
many people we kill with drones, you should have a problem with how many
people we kill.

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TrevorJ
They are no different functionally and perhaps morally (though on could argue
that killing people remotely from your desk in Missouri is troubling).

They are VERY VERY different politically and therefore in reality, however.
It's been demonstrated that for whatever reason the public at large isn't
nearly so concerned about military actions carried out by drones. Maybe it's
the low cost, or the fact that we don't risk American lives doing it, I'm not
sure. If you looked at all the drone strikes over the last 10 years and
replaced them with operations that involved american boots on the
ground/f-16s/CIA wetwork etc it's very hard to imagine a scenario where that
would have been acceptable to the American public.

Drones also have loitering capabilities that would be much more expensive to
maintain with jets. Basically, I'm of the mind that drone strikes are seen as
'easy' and low risk politically so we end up killing more people than we would
if we had to weigh the risks of more traditional means before we carried out
the operation.

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pekk
The public isn't nearly so concerned about military actions carried out by a
volunteer military. But nobody is proposing that we reinstate the draft, are
we? And as a reminder, even the draft did not stop Vietnam - including My Lai,
Agent Orange and uncountably many other atrocities. Why would eliminating
drones do so? There is no drone-based explanation for why we accepted
adventures like, say, Nicaragua. The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan were not
primarily enabled by drones. Maybe you can argue that drones "helped." But the
real thing that feeds this is the insanely high approval ratings of a "war
president" (at least at the beginning, before political objectives are clearly
unwinnable) and the high electability of presidents who beat their chests
about raising our military profile. Which is the fault of an irrational,
undereducated, bloodthirsty electorate.

I will go even further here: in my opinion, drones have not really helped make
the wars more palatable at all, on the contrary, they have actually been the
single best, most emotionally impactful argument anyone can think to deploy
against US military policy and the Obama administration in particular. THAT is
the reason we keep hearing about them, not necessarily because they are more
heinous, but because the issue is perceived as a great political vulnerability
and political opportunity. It sounds better to say that things are now worse
than ever because of Obama's unprecedented evil than to point out that the
real problem is _why we are bombing at all._ I don't expect focus on the drone
issue to have any real fruit in terms of reducing the impact of US wars.

I wonder if you even base your opinion that drone strikes are resulting in
more deaths on any real data or if you made up your mind ahead of any data.
And I suspect you are grossly overestimating the degree of care taken in
bombing campaigns prior to the drone era. The risks to high-altitude bombers
in the conditions we are using drones are not vast. The real risks are of
overbombing, which is one of the objectively worst and most immoral aspects of
bombing campaigns in decades past (think cluster bombs).

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weinzierl
Reminds me of a short story written in 1914 by Franz Kafka called "In the
Penal Colony"[1]. It's very much worth a read, an English translation is
available at [2].

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/In_the_Penal_Colony](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/In_the_Penal_Colony)

[2]
[http://records.viu.ca/~johnstoi/kafka/inthepenalcolony.htm](http://records.viu.ca/~johnstoi/kafka/inthepenalcolony.htm)

SPOILER:

In the story the condemned prisoners aren't told their sentence. There is a
elaborate machine - described in much detail - that carves the sentence into
the skin of the convict. The machine works (or used to work) in such
precision, that after exactly 24 hours an epiphany about the misdeed and death
occur simultaneously.

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gweinberg
That's not the spoiler.

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weinzierl
After rereading the story: No, it's really not _the_ spoiler.

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InclinedPlane
The current nearly worldwide drone campaign that the US is engaged in is one
of the least ethical things this country has ever done. It has proven to be a
mostly indiscriminate weapon, little better than using car bombs, and it has
not only eroded America's moral high-ground on the international stage, it has
in many cases destroyed a favorable image of the US and turned entire
populations against us, for very little tangible benefit.

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csandreasen
If you consider drone strikes to be indiscriminate, compare the upper bound of
about 6,000[1] or so drone strike casualties over more than a decade to the
90,000[2] or so Vietnam bombing casualties, which in turn is dwarfed by the
World War 2 bombing casualties[3]. Compared to the alternative of using
traditional bombers or using ground forces, drone strikes represent a huge
reduction in civilian casualties.

I don't understand the people who protest drone strikes. War is hell - if your
country engages in any sort of violent military intervention, there will be
civilian casualties. I can get behind opposing unnecessary usage of military
force; I can get behind opposing attacks within the borders of a sovereign
nation that we aren't at war with. Protesting the tools used to conduct war
instead of the war itself makes little sense to me, particularly when that
tool marks a dramatic improvement in reducing civilian casualties.

[1]
[https://www.thebureauinvestigates.com/category/projects/dron...](https://www.thebureauinvestigates.com/category/projects/drones/drones-
graphs/)

[2] [http://thevietnamwar.info/operation-rolling-
thunder/](http://thevietnamwar.info/operation-rolling-thunder/)

[3]
[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civilian_casualties_of_strat...](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civilian_casualties_of_strategic_bombing)

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pjc50
The drone system enables not a big war, but a war small enough it can be
pretended away. It also represents a new kind of war: not against an opposing
national force, but against a list of individuals whose names are computed
from the global surveillance programme.

Yes, if you look at drones-the-technology the protest looks a bit mistargeted.
But that's just because it's a convenient label for drone-bombing-the-
politics.

Compare nuclear weapons. You could say that they're just another increase in
scale from the lethality of World war 2. But the politics (mutual assured
destruction etc, antiproliferation etc) are different.

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rel
Visualizations like these are incredible and I want to see more like them.
We're at a time where data wealth and transparency is becoming more and more
sought out and computers/microcontrollers are incredibly cheap.

An installation like this one would be thought provoking in an art gallery or
event space, especially if it's pulling raw data. The silence, or even
onslaught of noise, would be deafening. Presentations like these give a much
more tangible understanding than points on a graph.

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thekeg1108
If art installations of this type became more commonplace we could begin to
see dissenters manipulating them to make counterpoints. I'm sure someone with
a favorable opinion of the drone program is already working towards a method
to exploit this piece.

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rel
I think an answer to this is raw data. Data is data and you can of course
massage the information to do what you want[1] and it can also be argued that
it's been misinterpreted and improperly reported since the beginning of time.
The truth is that the only "true" judgement that can be made is by the person
who reads and interprets the raw data. If we make more "actualizations" like
this where it takes a raw information stream and leaves it to the viewer to
interpret, it will become less exploitable.

Akin to a thermometer, there are reporters and newscasters who can tell you
the weather outside and we hope they are not deceitful but if you look at a
thermometer, you have the raw data and you can make that judgement yourself.

[1][http://www.datavis.ca/gallery/lie-
factor.php](http://www.datavis.ca/gallery/lie-factor.php)

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ommunist
This is such a beautiful art object. Interesting, does it author know that
white is colour of death in the Middle East?

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yumraj
I think something like this is equally (or more) apt to the meat industry,
just replace humans in this with say cow or pigs on the assembly line.

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feefie
(If you use headphones you might want to turn them down until you hear the
volume of the cap guns in the video.)

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volaski
First thought those guns were automated drones flying around killing people

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ctdonath
Worth mentioning the Red Alert : Israel iOS app. Informs you every time a
missile is launched against Israel, rather distressing considering every
notification means someone could/did die - and how often those notifications
occur.

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guelo
A Palestinian version would be much more alarming considering that 10 times
more palestinians are killed compared to Israelis.

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Kliment
There's a weekly data report on civilians harmed on each side of that conflict
maintained by the UN at
[http://www.ochaopt.org/reports.aspx?id=104&page=1](http://www.ochaopt.org/reports.aspx?id=104&page=1)
. It's not real-time but the format is standardized enough to make an app out
of I guess.

