It's strange that people in SV pretend like if they refuse to build software then nobody else will. Palantir exists (and has been so successful) because the government was trying to build this software (either themselves or through defense contractors) and ended up spending WAY too much money and only delivering a product that put US soldiers at risk.
We should be clear about these cases that are brought against him (I'm not saying he isn't guilty, but context is important here):
Case 1 - as Minister of Communications he, allegedly, tried to get a tax extension for a company whose owners had given him expensive cigars and jewelry to his wife (worth $3100). The extension was not granted. He also tried to get a US visa for one of the owners.
Case 2 - One of the newspapers in Israel said that if he gave them advantages over a competing newpaper they would paint Bibi and his family in a positive light in their coverage
*Case 3 - seemingly similar to Case 2, a large news website offered to portray Bibi in a better light if he would push through regulatory changes as Minisiter of Communications.
> Case 3 - seemingly similar to Case 2, a large news website offered to portray Bibi in a better light if he would push through regulatory changes as Minisiter of Communications.
Favorable coverage was the original charge (סיקור אוהד). However, since this website was exteremely hostile to Netanyahu, the charge was changed to being unusually responsive* to requests from Netanyahu's spokespeople (הענות חריגה).
They used a computer program to target hamas members based on signals and other intelligence inclusive of people who are not in any way combatants.
Bombs including and especially large not particularly sophisticated bombs were dropped on entire buildings preferentially at night to ensure the target would be likely to be home with their wife and family and you know any other families in the same building.
Previously such strikes with very large numbers of collateral damage were authorized to kill top members of Hamas. Now they were authorized to hopefully an 18 year old cook irrespective of the 7 children that would burn to death painfully in the fire.
They recovered around 150 hostages at the cost of 50,000 children being killed or injured.
Remember that Gaza isn't a democracy. Hamas is 50k people out of 2M of which the number of people that actually have decision making power would fit in a small room. Most people in Gaza aren't Hamas.
Israel is presently starving a large city full of people under the pretense of forcing them to leave knowing that can't do so. Starving people isn't morally different than herding them all into gas chambers.
If there is a place that needs immediate intervention it is using force to enforce peace in Gaza before all the remaining people in Gaza die.
They're starving 2 million people in broad daylight and basically everyone in the highest levels of the administration has said blatantly genocidal shit, but yeah it's all just bias.
Bringing up Al Jazeera as an unbiased source about Israel is weird.
Amnesty international emitted report that say "Israel is not commiting genocide according to existing definitions, thus definitions should be changed":
> As outlined below, Amnesty International considers this an overly cramped interpretation of international jurisprudence and one that would effectively preclude a finding of genocide in the context of an armed conflict.
Somehow people cite it as a proof of genocide.
BBC has produced a documentary with narrator being son of Hamas official, and were forced to apologize for that [1]. They sheleved another documentary with impartiality concerns. They have contributors calling to "burn Jews like Hitler" [2].
So yeah, there are unbiased critics of Israel, just none of those you listed
> Amnesty international emitted report that say "Israel is not commiting genocide according to existing definitions, thus definitions should be changed"
Source? Perhaps older report, before the country dropped any pretense of respecting international norms on human rights. Today Amnesty sees a clear case of genocide underway against indigenous palestinians in Gaza. See https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2024/12/amnesty-inter...
> 5.5.2 STATE INTENT
The jurisprudence on genocidal intent on the part of a state is more limited. The ICJ has accepted that, in the absence of direct proof, specific intent may be established indirectly by inference for purposes of state responsibility, and has adopted much of the reasoning of the international tribunals.380 However, its rulings on inferring intent can be read extremely narrowly, in a manner that would potentially preclude a state from having genocidal intent alongside one or more additional motives or goals in relation to the conduct of its military operations. As outlined below, Amnesty International considers this an overly cramped interpretation of international jurisprudence and one that would effectively preclude a finding of genocide in the context of an armed conflict. The organization considers that the Genocide Convention must be interpreted in a manner that ensures that genocide remains prohibited in both peacetime and in war and that ICJ jurisprudence should not be read to effectively preclude a finding of genocide during war.
Regarding state intent, it appears this means that Amnesty is just remarking that a state can't launder genocide intent by parallel constructing additional motives or goals that are legitimate sounding.
So that does not support your conclusion that "Israel is not commiting genocide according to existing definitions, thus definitions should be changed". Alas, the text is misquoted, as it doesn't appear anywhere in the document. Those are not Amnesty words, neither the text actually in the report supports it.
> Alas, the text is misquoted, as it doesn't appear anywhere in the document.
I wrote the direct quote after the colon and ">" symbol. The part in quotes in my rephrasing. Of course AI wouldn't write such thing directly, they need to hide it deep into the report behind convoluted language.
This paragraph consists of
1. Explaination how genocide definition is interpreted by international courts, specifically ICJ.
2. Claim that existing interpretation preclude a finding of genocide in the context of an armed conflict (for example, war in Gaza). I'm not sure that it's true, because for example, Srebrenica massacre happened during armed conflict and was found an act of genocide, but let's take their claim on face value.
3. Conclusion that we need change the interpretation of definition of genocide to be able to find during war conflict (specifically, war in Gaza)
Part 2 is what I summarized as "Israel is not commiting genocide according to existing definitions", and part 3 is what I summarized as "thus definitions should be changed". Technically they want to change interpretation and not definition, so the better summary would be "Israel cannot be found guilty of genocide according to existing interpretation of genocide, so the interpretation should change". Or do you disagree with this one too?
Iran has killed, threatened, or killed-through-proxy many Americans in the last 50 years. They have created and sown instability throughout the region threatening Israel, Iraq, and Saudi Arabia just to name a few. Notice that none of their regional neighbors have come to their defense.
They have consistently and openly threatened US leaders.
What a bunch of assholes, you're right, there's no talking to them. I wonder why they're so angry at us?
"The last 50 years", you say? Oh, so right around the time when the US and Britain overthrew Iran's democratically elected Prime Minister to install a religious nutcase, because that nutcase would agree to sell them oil at a better price?
>"The last 50 years", you say? Oh, so right around the time when the US and Britain overthrew Iran's democratically elected Prime Minister to install a religious nutcase, because that nutcase would agree to sell them oil at a better price?
When people are mixing up basic facts like this you know the mainstream's knowledge of Iran is heavily propagandized. Really would help if people actually read a history textbook for once instead of believing everything they hear from someone else.
>>The disagreement with the board was supposedly related more to elements of the board trying to parts up and sell off bits of Intel.
If true this would be very interesting. The most recent rumors were TSMC was trying to grab a part of Intel and have Nvidia/Broadcom/AMD take over the rest. Bringing in a CEO that literally left the board because he was against carving up Intel would be quite the signal from the board.
Weapons development is at best helpful as it hopefully provides a deterrent to nefarious actors and at worst protects our interest as Americans if someone caused us to move beyond weapons as a "deterrent."
Pretending like national defense and development of weapons is a bad thing is hiding your head in sand and pretending that there's nobody that wants to hurt you.
To me, yours is the strange viewpoint. We have nukes and a massive air force. That is the bulk of the deterrence. Use good statesmanship and diplomacy and that covers the rest. Anything else being developed is for political suppression or fueling regional wars and imperial bullshit.
> YC is funding weapon manufacturers lol. Where are the ethics there?
Circular reasoning? The reason we have a massive and more importantly effective air force is because weapons development occurred. It would not take very long at all for China to surpass the US in terms of air effectiveness if the US stopped working on defense projects.
There is no circular reasoning here. I said funding weapons development is unethical, guy responded saying we need weapon development for deterrence, I point out that we have had plenty of effective weapons and the new ones will not be used for peer wars but for gladio/terrorism or regional wars.
Further weapon development just fuels arms races and puts the world in a worse place. That is why I find it unethical to fund it.
Also, btw, China already surpassed us despite all our spending. They are defining what a 6th gen fighter is, after all.
And that's fine, but they're solely yours. 57% of US citizens support expanding the military.
Further you have no evidence to back up your claim that anything outside of the Air Force and nukes are all that are required to properly deter threats.
I would imagine that you also have no credible evidence that "Anything else being developed is for political suppression or fueling regional wars and imperial bullshit."
If you don't want to be involved in developing weapons then that's fine, nobody is forcing you to do so. To claim someone as anti-ethical because they chose to do so in a legal way may be your opinion but surely not a fact.
I'm not sure what data you're using to prove this but it seems like many of the largest brands in the US are still using sweatshop labor [1]. Many still have no idea of what's going on in Xinjiang [2]
Are you trying to make the point that people don’t care or aren’t aware of the fact that their clothes are made in sweatshops by linking to a western blog extensively detailing the brands that use sweatshops with the implied point that you should avoid them because they are bad?
Sweatshops are bad. Westerns know this. They don’t want sweatshops.
Seeing YC back a sweatshop management application that uses AI to help managers harass their workers is sad. It would
be similar to them investing in faster slave ships in the 1850s.
I'm saying that people _say_ they have issues with sweatshops but when push comes to shove they're willing to buy the Nikes.
I'm not trying to make a decision here on right vs. wrong just pointing out that most people _say_ they care but they're not really willing to do much about it.
I think the fear-mongering here has spiraled out of control. This app seems to be a place that patients (and their caregivers read:family) can upload and share data amongst themselves.
While you might not fall directly under HIPAA laws (as I don't think you a covered entity nor a Business Associate) you definitely are aware that you will have PHI and thus you have to protect it - especially if you're saying that it's "Private" and "Secure."
I'd focus on making sure that all data is encrypted in transit and at rest and that all systems on your side are locked down. You and anybody that might have access to your database shouldn't have free access this data. I'd read through some of the HIPAA guidelines especially from the business associate side and conform to those.
Don't be scared by everyone here. Read up on the HIPAA guidelines, check out HITRUST, never take your eye off security. Keep getting better.
If you're worried, you can always consult a lawyer or even an auditor for some advice (I'm neither).
I don't read others' warnings as fear mongering. Rather, they are genuinely offering concrete steps to be taken to avoid problems that frequently arise in this domain.
"Go talk to a lawyer" is not an attempt to scare or some impossible abstract advice. It's a very concrete, and very reasonable step that really ought to be taken early on in this effort.
Maybe everyone here is off base. How might the app developer determine this? By talking to a lawyer.
Speaking to a lawyer is not the first step when building something in this domain (unless you already have someone bankrolling you).
In this case there's an app that this guy built for families to use. It's obviously in it's infancy. The helpful advice here would be about posting that this is in beta or maybe reading the HIPAA guidelines and ensuring that he's adhering to those guidelines where applicable. Focus on tightening up security. What's his plan to ensure that data in encrypted in transit and at rest? What kind of monitoring will the app have? Does he need to be thinking about intrusion detection? Will he need to enforce 2FA?
Does he need to stop everything and start speaking to lawyers? Probably not.
Talking to a lawyer is not "stopping everything", it's an hour or two of time and maybe a couple hundred dollars. Not nothing, sure, but not something that should be an obstacle for most here.
At the end of the day I don't think we're arguing here and I'm not saying that the OP _shouldn't_ speak to a lawyer but here are a few choice comments from this post that I'll use to prove my point:
First - the TOP comment in this post:
>>" I would advise you to temporarily close your site and hire a lawyer straight away."
And other top level comments:
>> You should asap bring the app down, contact all users, send them their info, delete them from your servers, notifying them of that and get a lawyer specialising in health related law.
>>If you can’t answer that question you really need to listen to the people telling you to take it down until you can work it out.
>>Speaking as someone who works in IT in healthcare - you need to close your site down immediately, do not pass Go, etc., and hire a lawyer.
It's strange that people in SV pretend like if they refuse to build software then nobody else will. Palantir exists (and has been so successful) because the government was trying to build this software (either themselves or through defense contractors) and ended up spending WAY too much money and only delivering a product that put US soldiers at risk.
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