this post was submitted on 11 Feb 2025
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[–] [email protected] 2 points 5 days ago* (last edited 5 days ago)

Canada might need these sooner rather than later.

With the breakdown of democracy and the rule of law in America, the Constitution just became wholly unenforceable and therefore irrelevant. That means that Trump could make good on his fever dream of invading Canada.

And there are many Americans who would jump at the chance to obey his command to slaughter Canadians. With only 40M against America’s 334M - and 0.097M military personnel against America’s 2.1M - it would be absolutely no contest.

Our only way of making such a fascist act of aggression as painful as possible would be with asymmetrical warfare using tiny, hard-to-defeat drones that could act independently and strike without warning. Deploy 10k of these suckers onto a battlefield, and the only survivors would be those within sealed armour or flying at high altitude. Because even an A10 Warthog loitering low over the field can be taken out if it unexpectedly ingests a half-dozen of the explosive buggers.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 6 days ago

I think there was an X-Files episode about this.

[–] [email protected] 70 points 1 week ago (6 children)

We all know where this is gonna end...

[–] [email protected] 44 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Surveillance drones everywhere.

[–] [email protected] 40 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Surveillance is the "nice" version of it.

[–] [email protected] 26 points 1 week ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Exactly! Flying, they are flying everywheeeaaahhhh!

[–] [email protected] 13 points 1 week ago (3 children)
[–] [email protected] 10 points 1 week ago (1 children)
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[–] [email protected] 9 points 1 week ago (3 children)

I've low-key started to think the only reason we haven't seen autonomous hunter-killer drones yet is that nobody's willing to break the seal, and I'm scared for what happens when somebody finally does.

[–] [email protected] 21 points 1 week ago (2 children)

My dear stranger, those already exist, and have been used in war to terminate key individuals.

We are living the dream.

[–] [email protected] 19 points 1 week ago

key individuals

Such as Palestinian children

[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Point me towards systems that don't have a human in the loop, particularly any that utilize fully-autonomous swarms, and I'll agree. Scary as the former are, there's a world of difference between a handful of FPV suicide drones, and a cloud of HL2-Manhack-esque things operating on face-recogniton-guided autopilot.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Oh, that's what you mean... yeah, there are humans behind, but potato potato, swap one brain for another... anyway it is a killing machine that can get you anywhere in the planet.

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[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 week ago

Horizon Zero Dawn looking more eminent any day now.

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[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 week ago
[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 week ago

#BugsArentReal

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 week ago

And it sucks, when you think inside Star Wars, such small drones are used only in medical or expensive surveillance and military applications.

But in real life it can really be a swarm of things worse than scarabs in The Mummy.

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[–] [email protected] 49 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (6 children)

In the latest video about this by veritasium, he asked the researcher about ethics concern. the researcher insist that they dont care as humanity can decide for itself.

Meanwhile:

The new report also details the extent of MIT’s partnerships with Israeli military contractors like Elbit Systems, which supplies 85 percent of Israel’s killer drones, and Maersk, one of the world’s largest shipping companies, that has sent millions of pounds of military goods to Israel since the start of the war on Gaza. The Israeli military also sponsored several of the MIT projects with funds provided by the U.S. Defense Department.

https://theintercept.com/2025/01/16/mit-israel-military-funding-research-gaza/

[–] [email protected] 13 points 1 week ago (1 children)

That researcher is a real life Dr. Hoenikker. Vonnegut is probably shrugging in his grave

[–] [email protected] 10 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago)

-…his mother was completely consumed by robotic bees. So it goes.

[–] 0x0 11 points 1 week ago

MIT also (indirectly) killed Aaron Swartz.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 1 week ago

“We are willing to ignore and downplay the ethical concerns as long as the money keeping coming in”

[–] 0x0 4 points 1 week ago

MIT also (indirectly) killed Aaron Swartz.

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[–] [email protected] 46 points 1 week ago (4 children)

I'd rather just have bees.

[–] [email protected] 28 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago)

But how can techbros get rich from bees? Bees just make themselves for free then serve the greater good, the little buzzing communists.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Even birds are starting to seem acceptable

[–] [email protected] 1 points 6 days ago

oh so you think birds aren't already flying robots? robot bees are just the next step.

/s obviously

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[–] [email protected] 27 points 1 week ago (5 children)

The new technology could increase crop yields dramatically without harming the environment.

That's a surprisingly benign use case, I was expecting far worse.

[–] [email protected] 40 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Plot twist: The crop is human misery.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 week ago

Well then fucking harvest me and get it over with

[–] [email protected] 17 points 1 week ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 week ago (3 children)
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[–] [email protected] 15 points 1 week ago

The public use case.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago)

Without a doubt they will have those other use cases in mind too. Mentioning them is just not good for marketing in public.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 week ago

I guess I'm the only one thinking about how it's inevitable that birds and other animals will mistake them for real insects and die from ingesting these things, god knows what kind of toxic materials they're made of but I'm willing to bet it's not safe to eat them

[–] [email protected] 21 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (1 children)

Dear technology under capitalism... We just want healthcare, housing, etc... We don't fucking need swarms of robot insects.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 week ago

Just today I was watching this video:

How we came to hate technology

[–] [email protected] 21 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Because developing a replacement for bees is certainly a better solution then saving the bees...

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 week ago (1 children)

They think there will be more profit in it, especially since bees can't be repurposed as weapons.

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[–] [email protected] 16 points 1 week ago (1 children)

I've seen this episode of Black Mirror.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 6 days ago* (last edited 6 days ago)

Fall into me

And drown inside me

I know you will see

The beauty of me

Also, I've seen this episode of Tom Scott.

[–] [email protected] 11 points 1 week ago

Nope, I’m out

[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 week ago (1 children)

It wont be long now before the nanobots exist and the Borg can finally take over. Resistance is futile.

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[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 week ago (1 children)

How's this for an obscure reference? This reminded me of an episode of Max Headroom in which the wunderkind Bryce invented a robotic fly with a spycam that could be used to literally bug a room. They send it on a mission to uncover an evil plot and everyone is excitedly crowded around the screen and heaping praise on it. Then it manages to sneak into the evil lair where it promptly gets swatted, leaving Bryce shocked and devastated.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 week ago

They also did this in Spy Kids

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 week ago

Looks like they hovered for 1000 seconds. It was previously stress limited such that the joints would break after just a few seconds. I think they might still be tethered for a power source, I haven't seen any of these micro flapping bots include a battery yet, and they didn't mention that they did.

https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/scirobotics.adp4256

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 week ago

Bradbury called it in Farahenheit 451.

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