I don't like Jack Dorsey and I don't get why he should be involved in the FOSDEM keynote either but why is Drew incapable of forming any argument anyone could actually agree with?
You dislike Jack because he sold Twitter and it made mastodon popular, and that's a bad thing? And because this also meant that people with cushy FAANG jobs who could easily find another job at the drop of a hat got displaced by Elon as a result? Is that really your argument Drew?
Maybe it's time for a "No Drews DeVault at FOSDEM" blog post.
Well yes, there is also that (apparently he had no choice and didn't even sell his stock, not that I feel sorry for him, but seems like Drew's argument only gets weaker).
I have no opinion on the sit-in, but it is always hilarious to see ex-Twitterites breathlessly bemoaning the sale, as if massive centralized ad-based networks feeding algorithmically presented "content" to the masses are somehow a boon to society as long as they are owned by a "good guy".
> [...] peacefully prevent the talk from proceeding as scheduled.
I am strongly opposed to this idea. We should not be burning books and should not be preventing talks from proceeding.
See Tim Urban's book What's Our Problem?: A Self-Help Book for Societies for why blocking speakers is a bad idea. Tim's argument essentially is that it's okay to decide you don't want to see a speaker, it's also okay to decide if you advice your friends to not see a speaker, but it's not okay to block a speaker from speaking to anyone.
Seems like there should be a reasonable protocol for major protest to a presentation without actually stopping it: like a sound proof booth over to the side where they can make whatever gestures and signs they want, and also speakers in the booth that are broadcasting their opinions on what is being said... anyone in the audience can have an earpieces to control the amount and channel of protest they want to hear personally
Yeah. If we feel strongly about Dorsey speaking, just don't go to the keynote? Imagine the keynote has few or even no audience, wouldn't that be strong enough a message? Dragging everyone down for one's own morality is not good for the conference or our society.
I’ve disagreed with Drew on many things in the past but this is something with him that I 100% aligned, and I sincerely hope that he is joined by many others at the sit in.
This whole thing is a non-issue, not sure why Drew is overreacting to this extent.
FOSDEM is a not-for-profit org. They run on sponsorships and donations. Many sponsors are what we would consider to be part of Big Evil Tech. The last year I was at the FOSDEM beer event, Google sponsored many rounds of beer, in addition to helping pay for the conference. All the money that goes into FOSDEM is invested in subsequent editions.
FOSDEM org gets money from the sponsored talk, but no one is required to attend it. If you don't like Dorsey or his talk, you don't have to attend it. Or better yet, you can attend it and ask critical questions.
I'm sure you meant to help, but a factual inaccuracy crept into your comment. FOSDEM has never ever scheduled any talk or other content in exchange for money. There is an absolute consensus within the organising all-volunteer team to stay that course.
Our goal is to bring free and open source software developers together at a yearly conference. We manage income and expenses very carefully, eliminating any need to compromise our mission by selling talk space.
My bad, Mark, I misunderstood the motivations behind the Dorsey talk. I'm afraid I can no longer edit my previous comment, but consider that part retracted.
> After Dorsey sold Twitter to Elon Musk, selling the platform out to the far right for a crisp billion-with-a-“B” dollar payout
Tangential point but did he sell Twitter to Musk? I thought Twitter was a publicly owned company and its board (on which Jack wasn't present AFAIK) agreed to sell to Musk. Jack did rollover his holdings into the new private entity X Holdings Corp created for this purpose, instead of cashing-out. So instead of owning 2.4% or so of Twitter shares, he holds shares of X Holdings Corp, I think.
There are two things that don't sit right with me:
1. "the FOSS community shouldered the burden – both with our labor and our wallets – of a massive exodus onto our volunteer-operated servers" -- this implies that users actually using decentralized services is a burden, a bad thing. Or rather, that a) it would be much better if Twitter was better and people just continued using Twitter rather than FOSS platforms b) that Twitter has some kind of obligation to keep their platform good because not doing so will make people use FOSS services. If the operators don't want their service to be used, they don't have to offer it...
2. "No billionaires" as a motto, implying that having money in itself (and not a specific way of behaving) is wrong, unethical, and worthy of exclusion. That feels like an very common envy-based position, trying to tear people down because they are better off. He does have reasonable points for not wanting that specific billionaire, but the demand for exclusion is "no billionaires". Should e.g. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brian_Acton not be allowed/given a platform at FOSDEM?
1. I agree, and stopped reading at that point. If you don't want users on your site, disable the sign up field. New FOSS tool users are not your enemy, and if you don't want them taking up your resources then you should scope your resources to a limited audience. I have a hard time taking anything Drew is saying seriously here.
To GP: It's less "no one should have any mass". It's more "Billionaires are like Black Holes, and therefore should be avoided" -- yes, it is a value judgement; no, it's not a blanket statement about money.
> That feels like an very common envy-based position, trying to tear people down because they are better off.
No, it's not because they are better off. It's because (a) to get control of that level of economic resources in this economy, you generally have to do something with many questionable aspects to it, despite its (potential) popularity and (b) you don't need to remain a billionaire or show signs of trying to increase your holdings. Mackenzie Bezos shows the way here - still deliriously rich but giving away money like a bank on fire and having plain her goal to ultimately donate essentially all of it.
The billionaires we don't want at FOSDEM are not just rich, they want to be richer and they are, from our perspective, demonstrably causing harm.
Yes, I happen to think that marginal tax rates above some threshold should probably be on the order of 95%, but I don't begrudge people making a lot of money by doing something good and/or for a lot of people.
I don’t understand what you’re suggesting here. FOSDEM is a free event, attendees don’t pay. I doubt speakers are paid much or at all, either, though I wouldn’t be surprised if the organisers covered their travel/hotel/meals.
> After Dorsey sold Twitter to Elon Musk, selling the platform out to the far right for a crisp billion-with-a-“B” dollar payout
Twitter was publicly traded at the time and Dorsey owned approximately 2-3%. The shareholders overwhelmingly voted in favor of the sale, effectively giving Dorsey no choice. He, in fact, didn't even sell, he instead rolled his shares over into the new company, which means he didn't take the payout implied and instead ate the decrease in value that has occurred since then.
I'm all for criticizing billionaires for the things they do wrong, but there are enough of those things that we don't need to invent fault where there is none! It's actually counterproductive to do so because it distracts from your legitimate points.
I don't know how someone could look at Dorsey/Musk/Bezos actions and still be interested in what they have to say. There's probably a lot to be learned from someone who worships money, assuming that your goal is to emulate them.
However their lifestyle and ideology is inherently dangerous to workers and life on earth as we know it. So yeah I don't really care what they have to say beyond knowing how the enemy views the average citizen (hint: it's not very positively).
I think what they have to say is uninteresting for a very different reason. The owe very little of what they own to what they actually think and do. They just managed to keep on top of a huge commercial organism which development and almost cancerous growth has been dictated more by the environment it grew in and sheer chance than any single human opinions and choices. By every possible individual measurement they are no further from average than a standard deviation. There are many more unique and interesting people.
That feat of staying on top of self-inflating balloon is their only claim to fame. So they might have interesting things to say about how to backstab and exploit and avoid getting dethroned but that's all. Unfortunately that's what not they happily share.
That too. These people aren't exceptional in interesting ways, they are however exceptionally optimized for one kind of success (getting that dolla dolla bill) in a zero interest rate tech environment. Turns out that being a good con man is the optimal way to do that, but then why would I want to listen to a con man?
Sorry. When I look at Musk I see self landing rockets, electric cars , star link etc. Obviously he seems to be quite close to truth since without getting close to reality you can't do any of these since Physics is brutal and does not reward any false assumptions.
So that gives me a sense that Musk is much closer to truth than most people out there. What am I missing?
Are you saying without Musk involvement these companies would have been even better performing? Like how did you do that calculation? Seems almost impossible to me how one can simulate that.
This is demented levels of cope. Musk is the most successful is basically everything he does across extremely different industries. SpaceX is a decade ahead of the next closest competitor. Tesla and self driving is wildly ahead of any other car manufacturer.
I think this makes a great argument for Sharia Law as created during the Islamic Golden Age. I don't think there's any period of time with more scientific advancement. Astronomy, architecture, calculus, statistics, physics, chemistry, biology, medicine... You name it, they improved it. Does this means their legal system must be "closer to truth" too?
Not many. I grew up in a developing country so making money and getting out of low middle class has always been on my mind since childhood. So I don't have much interest in inventors that remains poor. Though I love Feynman if you count him as an inventor. Funny enough PayPal helped me make my first income by doing a remote job when I was in school.
I'm not a big conference goer so my sample rate is not super high, but I've seen zero keynote speakers with something I cared to listen to. Regardless of their ideology ... I'm just not getting much out of those kinds of speakers.
I'll tell a little story:
I worked at a company with like 1k employees. Good company as far as I knew, as much as such a company can be.
I work the night shift (tech support) and I'm young so I go to the company wide meeting in person because I'm curious and honestly don't have much to do. CEO talks, nothing of interest is said. I go back to my desk and get my things and I'm really tired and I'm in the elevator heading home.
CEO steps in. Smiles and introduces himself and says "What did you think?" I'm really tired, so I say something like "It was ok I guess, it's just not my kinda event. Stuff I really want to know I don't think can be said at an event like that..."
Other folks in the elevator (including my boss's boss who I didn't notice) look kinda horrified.
CEO looks at me and pauses for a minute: "Yeah I get it..."
And that was the truth of it ... there's nothing for those folks to say that they can say that I would want to know. I want the nitty gritty, not some pie in the sky stuff.
Yeah the keynote format is really weird. It's more about getting people inspired and hiping your company than talking about anything.
I understand it when it's someone important in the community, but I think the "invited keynote" is a monstrosity that makes no sense and was invented at the behest of sponsors.
What other person started a rocket company from scratch and got them landing? Of course I want to hear everything he says. Yes, he's crazy - seems to be a requirement if you want to do such stuff. Doesn't mean I will ignore it. I can think for myself, it's not like I take everything at face value.
All that to say, perhaps other people don't prioritize values like you do. The technical excellence that companies repeatedly achieved under Musk is incredible.
> What other person started a rocket company from scratch and got them landing?
I'd rather listen to Lars Blackmore (the engineer who is largely responsible for SpaceX powered descent). Or Gwynne Shotwell who actually oversees the business day-to-day. I'm really not interested in what the money guy has to say, especially since he is primarily interested in cultivating his public image-- how can you trust anything he says? The dude pays people to play a videogame for him 24/7 so he can pretend he is the best player in the world. That's not a metaphor -- he actually does that.
Sure, I'm not saying Musk is the only person who has interesting things to say about it. You're absolutely correct about these other people and I listen to them too.
But you're not giving Musk enough credit. All engineers and other professionals told him that landing rockets is bullshit, and what is interesting here is that he went and made it happen anyways.
I'm not talking just about the engineering, everything is interesting here - the project management, the hiring, the investments, the business side... Musk has a lot of input and influence in all of these, he was the one who decided and paid for it.
> All engineers and other professionals told him that landing rockets is bullshit
You literally responded to a guy citing Lars Blackmore, who is the engineer that designed their landing algorithm--which was developed at NASA's JPL lab (before SpaceX existed).
Musk bet on landing rockets _because_ engineers told him that it was possible.
The Air Force was studying RTLS as part of the ARES (Affordable REsponsive Spacelift) program in 2005 (Which was the result of 1992/1994-era discussions on "spacecast 2020"):
And I don't see any rocket actually coming back with an orbital payload? Where's the demonstrator? Like that quiet supersonic thing Lockheed is demonstrating.
Even Lars didn't deliver at the first attempt. So it's not like it was something available off the shelf. Like some cryptography library you include in your code.
> All engineers and other professionals told him that landing rockets is bullshit
Every company has some kind of mythology where someone says "you'll never make it in this town!". The reality is that uncrewed propulsive landing was technologically feasible since the soviets landed a rover on the moon. NASA propulsively landed a rover on Mars back in 2011.
Like I said, listening to billionaires is probably interesting if your goal is "acquire boatloads of money". But we already know how to do that.
1. Appear confident
2. Lie
3. Have no morals or ethics
4. Prioritize the pursuit of power above all else
Sorry but no, this is absolutely not what happened. I am watching it closely ever since SpaceX was founded in 2002. There is an incredible gap between the tech demo you're speaking about, and actually landing a heavy orbital rocket, and then doing it 100 times in a row without a hiccup.
Mars is completely off topic, as they didn't land the booster there. We had Space Shuttle before and it didn't say much about landing rocket boosters.
> There is an incredible gap between the tech demo you're speaking about,
Didn't Apollo 11 land on the moon using a rocket, then take off from the moon again, back in the 1960s?
Not exactly a tech demo. And the Apollo missions had the additional challenges of being crewed, and targeting an atmosphere and gravity they couldn't reproduce on earth for test purposes.
The SpaceX stuff is neat though, compared to the defence industry clowns they're competing with.
Apollo 11 had a three stage rocket and every stage was discarded. SpaceX is obviously not the first company to land something - but landing a rocket booster that just performed an orbital lift is the interesting and extremely hard thing to do. The payload can be entirely designed to land - but the booster has many other constraints (payload weight and its desired velocity and trajectory being some of them).
To do what Apollo 11 did without discarding the boosters you also need orbital refueling and probably rapid turnaround (or a huge inventory of boosters), which SpaceX plans to develop next. Awesome stuff.
You know, this bit https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apollo_Lunar_Module that descended to the moon, landed, some guys walked out and grabbed some moon rocks, then they took off again and made it back to earth.
That's a rocket-propelled space vehicle gently landing tail first, and ready for immediately reuse.
Given that it clearly had been done, I doubt anyone who knew what they were talking about was telling Musk it couldn't be done.
I don't know how to put this if you don't see the difference yourself by now, but that's not an orbital rocket that could lift anything from Earth nor land back there. One huge problem is hypersonic aerodynamics, something you absolutely don't care about on the Moon. The payload weight can be much greater due to tiny gravity. Google "tyranny of the rocket equation".
Okay, that is one down. You've got to get through literally all the rest of the engineers and professionals. At some point, you'll hit the engineers at NASA that were working on this problem before SpaceX existed.
Well I heard it myself from practically anybody up until 2015. I even attended quite a lot of conference talks on this topic... I'm sure it's not hard to find it online, famously a NASA director (I think?) did so.
You're saying every engineer and every person with any other type of profession you've ever spoken with, said that it was impossible to land a rocket? I feel like plenty of professionals don't even have an opinion on the matter.
Even if that's true, there's still every engineer and every other professional in the world you haven't spoken with. To take an example, I'm an engineer, I didn't say it. That disproves the claim.
If we wanted to be more accurate, we could say that less than 0.00001% of all engineers and professionals told elmu that it was impossible to land a rocket.
That seems less impressive than saying 100%, doesn't it? But hey, this is hacker news, not a math exam, and 100% is pretty much < 0.00001%, lol.
> Sorry but no, this is absolutely not what happened
What didn't happen? I didn't provide you a narrative, I gave 2 examples of uncrewed propulsive landing which literally happened.
> There is an incredible gap between the tech demo you're speaking about, and actually landing a heavy orbital rocket, and then doing it 100 times in a row without a hiccup.
I agree. Now please point to me which part of the self-landing booster Elon built.
I told you what didn't happen - the situation wasn't as clear as you say. Everybody in the space industry was absolutely sure he is totally crazy and it's impossible to do with an entire first/second stage rocket booster.
He built the company that built the booster, which to me is at least as interesting as building the booster itself.
It's not just about money - Bezos has much more money available than SpaceX had in 2002-2015, and yet his rockets still don't land.
Actually, Blue Origin beat SpaceX to land a booster. The difference is that BO landed New Shepard, which can barely bump a manned capsule over the Karman line, whereas SpaceX is landing an orbital-class booster, which is a much more difficult proposition.
I do agree though that SpaceX has used their money much more efficiently and moved a lot faster in general than BO.
He doesn’t do that. People who don’t like him claim that he does without any basis to it, and you’re perpetuating this hyperbole by claiming it as fact when the very thing you linked doesn’t even go that far.
Musk sucks, attack him for valid reasons like racism instead of some made up bullshit about cheating at video games.
He literally does do that. Top-level players of the game have called him out for it. They have tracked his time with an API. It is actually mathematically impossible to be at his level in POE-- you would have to be a top-tier player and play nonstop for 20+ hrs a day.
People who like Musk aren't going to care that he is racist, they will argue about what actually constitutes as racism (erm pushes up glasses --actually have u read the bell curve???).
Having definitive proof of him paying others to play videogames for him is an example of how he just lies about everything. If he lies about videogames what else does he lie about?
Where does he lie about a video game? Maybe he has someone boost his level. Did he say it's not true? Just doing that can have many reasons - maybe he likes a shiny number there, wants a bigger challenge, more fun because of higher level and more items or whatever.
Just playing on an account that I didn't level up myself is not lying. I know that some competitive amateur players think it's the end of the world but no, nobody cares.
He stated on Joe Rogan he was one of the best Diablo players in the world (top 20 or thereabouts). The only way to do that is to grind the game with long hours, because it gets exponentially more difficult to level up. I don't remember exactly how many hours of playtime he'd need to achieve the level he was at, but it was excessive. Something like 14+ hours a day.
Then he recently live streamed his Path of Exile 2 account. It was one of the highest leveled accounts in the world. Similar to Diablo, that's not possible without grinding the game for many hours. However, it was clear from the stream that Musk barely understood how to play the game. He was having trouble just finding things in the UI.
The point is: he paid someone (or multiple people) for a leveled up account. Then he publicly claimed to be one of the top players in the world.
It's both shocking and revealing that he's willing to put forth such a blatant lie, for something that matters so little (a video game).
Thank you, if he really said that he is one of the best players, that would be a lie. I don't think just streaming a leveled up account is a lie, though.
Why do you talk about hours per day? Does it matter if you play less hours per day, but more days?
> Why do you talk about hours per day? Does it matter if you play less hours per day, but more days?
Because the only way to level up your character is to grind through a dungeon. You'll get experience for doing so. Every time you level up your character, it takes exponentially more experience to hit the next level.
I don't remember the exact number of hours per day that are required to hit the levels his characters are at, but it's in excess of 14+ hours/day.
Combine that with the evidence from his live streaming that he doesn't actually know how to play these games, and it's clear that he can't have achieved the character levels he has on his own.
To be clear, I don't think anyone really cares that he's paying for a leveled up account. What people care about is that he's taking credit for achieving the high level on his own, when that's obviously not true.
Q: Why would a person with $300 billion feel the need to lie about being good at a video game?
A: Likely because deception has become habitual/reflexive for them.
The point is Elon lies about the most trivial things where it's easy to show he's lying. Elon is a habitual liar. His continual lying is starting to hurt business.
When will Tesla FSD be fully functional? Why would you believe anything Elon has to say on the matter since he's a habitual liar?
Elon faked the Optimus robot demo. Which has called into question the entirety of the Robotaxi reveal.
Tesla's new DumpsterTruck doesn't have many of the capabilities he promised years ago.
Maybe you don't care that people habitually lie to you, even about the most trivial of things, but I care. It tells me a lot about a person's honor and integrity, or in Elon's case, his utter and complete lack of those virtues.
I don't care about a video game but this exposé has a lot more damning examples of Musk lying through his teeth to get where he is, totally recommend the read (and the related links in the article): https://sethabramson.substack.com/p/the-truth-about-musk-fro...
Right, but you replied to the parent, not yourself, and the parent didn't call him "crazy", they simply pointed out that he is hostile to workers (he is).
It's sad that people can see a good thing and think it cancels out all bad things
McDonnell Douglas seems to have gotten it done, from a quick skim of [1]. It appears they ran out of funding and the program was cancelled. According to the same article,
> Elon Musk stated that the SpaceX Falcon 9 development was "... continuing the great work of the DC-X project."
It's so sad that the current culture wants to judge peoples life based on the worst they've ever done. Yea, Musk is a troll online, but his success as a business/tech leader is something you can only doubt by donning the proverbial tin foil hat.
I care less about his "troll" posts online (implying there is a conspiracy of jews importing people to destroy America is just a troll and not an actual Nazi conspiracy guys) than his manipulation of the US government, mistreatment of workers, and maybe the most egregious of all, being a fake nerd and pretending to like Evangelion.
Elon Musk is concerned about climate change, and created Telsa to lead the migration to electric cars to help combat climate change. That seems like a positive impact to life on earth.
So maybe in the past he was concerned about climate change, but that appears to no longer be the case, or its further down on his list, below accumulating billions in wealth and amassing political power.
Lovely word "materially" there, doing a load of work. That way you can just say that subsidizing renewables, or battery manufacturing, or efficiency refits for housing isn't "material" and now you aren't a liar!
Well sure, I'm unhappy about every politician's efforts, they all need to be doing more. But I can also be more unhappy about the guy who denies it exists entirely, staffs his cabinet for more deniers, and does his incompetent best to roll back the very tiny gains we've managed to obtain.
Musk believed in the silly Peak Oil theory, and jumped in early at Tesla because he figured that Peak Oil would create a market for electric cars. Tesla itself has embraced climate change both because there are many employees there passionate about it and because it's good marketing for them.
Elon Musk did not found Tesla, and most definitely did not did it for environmental reasons.
"Tesla was incorporated in July 2003 by Martin Eberhard and Marc Tarpenning as Tesla Motors." [1]
"If, I don’t know, 50 to 100 years from now, we’re mostly sustainable. I think that’ll probably be okay. So it’s not like the house is on fire immediately.
[...]
"The risk is not as high as a lot of people say it is with respect to global warming." [2]
Thanks for the clarification about founding. But he joined as chair of the board when the company was less than 1 year old, and helped develop their first car.
>and most definitely did not did it for environmental reasons.
From that same link, he says one of the goals of Tesla is to make environmentalism cool:
> And so you get the solar power, mind that with batteries. So because obviously the sun doesn't shine at night and then you use that to charge the electric cars and you have a long-term sustainable solution.
> And, you know, that's what Tesla is trying to move things towards. And I think we've made a lot of progress in that regard. But when you look at our cars, like we don't believe that environmentalism, that caring about the environment should mean that you have to suffer.
> So we make sure that our cars are beautiful, that they drive well, that they're fast, they're, you know, sexy. I mean, they're cool.
The money in itself is a problem. People with that amount of wealth are separated from the rest of humanity (and most of the time go to great lengths to make sure they absolutely never cross path with ordinary humans). They don't have the same goals as everyone else, they don't face the same issues, they contribute to climate change in extreme proportions while escaping its most urgent consequences (for the time being).
They have enough influence in the world as it is, for the rest of us not voluntarily giving up some of our precious time to listen to what they have to say.
People with not as much wealth are more reasonable or something?
I don't buy it.
We're talking about a conference that apparently puts itself up for sale in a way ... that's the problem. The other stuff is a silly distraction. You're not solving anything with a personal wreath rule, conference is still for sale. Dude with slightly less wealth is going to just buy in...
> People with not as much wealth are more reasonable
Oh, no. But they have less power and less influence, and are more likely to fly commercial when they come talk to a conference, so have lower emissions. Also, I'm talking more in general: we should absolutely not listen to billionaires, even those few who, unlike Musk, haven't yet gone completely insane.
By all means let them sponsor open source events, we’ll just take the benefits. If that means listening to their latest swindle then so be it, small price to pay. Isn’t this what the phrase “useful idiots” was invented for?
I hope that they do whatever they personally feel is an appropriate use of their time, and that know-it-alls in the crowd don’t try and ruin anything that the volunteers do end up deciding is worth working hard to set up.
So conference organizers get in on the grift while the community is robbed by whatever crypto scam/other bullshit this guy sells on stage? I guess it's fine if they also add a large and prominent "THIS GUY IS TRYING TO ROB YOU" banner to the stage and livestreams.
To be fair (and I'm a big fan of Drew), it seems unlikely that Jack could have prevented the sale of Twitter to Musk.
I'm part-way through the book “Character Limit: How Elon Musk Destroyed Twitter” by Kate Conger and Ryan Mac, and so far I can recommend it. It's not necessarily perfect writing (they do _not_ think highly of Jack, nor really any other tech-bros), but definitely informative.
[Disclaimer: I have been an employee at Square/Block for nine years now, so I technically work for Jack. Luckily, we have the kind of work culture where my openly bemoaning his blockchain obsession has not (yet) had any (obvious) negative consequences… although tbh I would be _extremely_ surprised if he even recognized my name or face.]
You know he ran the Stallman hit piece, right? You know it was also discovered he was into a certain type of Japanese "art" involving the exact same child-involved things he criticized Stallman for right? (There's a website detailing it, but gets flagged/removed from here)
You should not be a fan of Drew. He is a terrible human being. I had a friend house him during a conference and found the man insufferable. He's a hypocrite and lolcow and no one should take anything he say seriously.
Hmmm. Now I'm not sure what to think. Despite the flack he gets, I've thought most of what he wrote was reasonable, including the Stallman Report — although it's been a long while since I read it carefully.
I'm curious as to what flavor of insufferable he was to your friend.
As for being into sexually explicit drawings of minors… yuck.
"If billionaires want to participate in FOSS, I'm going to ask them to refrain from using our platforms to talk about their AI/blockchain/bitcoin/climate-disaster-as-a-service grifty business ventures, and instead buy our respect by, say, donating 250 million dollars to NLNet or the Sovereign Tech Fund."
I would not approve of having a Billionaire keynote a FOSS conference based on his business ventures. However, the author says that billionaires should:
> instead buy our respect by, say, donating 250 million dollars to NLNet
> or the Sovereign Tech Fund
and then, he would have our respect? Hmm. I was later reminded of this phrase when reading author also laments how
> Dorsey sold Twitter to Elon Musk, selling the platform out to the far right
as if a Billionaire + BlackRock + Vanguard can "sell out" in any way, as if they are somehow an elightened elite which is supposed to hold the fort, while Billionaire #2 (Musk) is the evil-far-right we must defend the other Capitalists from.
You see, there's the crux -- if one's a billionaire, one is obviously hoarding money as in not using any significant amount of it to the benefit of society and definitely not to help open-source which is the topic of FOSDEM. Otherwise one would not be a billionaire. By this logic, billionaires are off-topic to FOSDEM.
Thus what are billionaires doing speaking on FOSDEM?
The guy is famous for companies like Twitter and has a blockchain obsession... Pretty sure you can't just draw a conclusion he's a benefit to society. Def. a benefit to other billionaire shareholders tho. Still off-topic for FOSDEM.
I guess, but it feels more than a little like calling Amazon a video streaming company. I don’t think someone who understood that Block is Square would identify it this way.
In 2022 at the peak of cryptocurrency mania, when the market for bored ape NFTs was worth a billion dollars, Dorsey decided to pivot away from the point-of-sales business, develop a bitcoin hardware wallet, develop a bitcoin mining chip, and rename the company from Square to Block.
Completely understandable decision at the time. Who wouldn't want a piece of that action?
But we can't retcon the pivot out of existence just because the blockchain hype has cooled off.
Billionares should not surprise anyone, as since Occupy capital did a very good job of hiding wolves among the sheep.
As for Drew, he is yet another narcissistic drama queen interested mostly in his own virtue signaling, as shown by Stallman case. His language was forged by liberal preachers that whisper to destroy any solidarity and political power of lower classes; to give them fake individualism, diversity and representation instead of real, material emancipation.
Considering that FOSS movement is filled with such people, and prefers code of conducts and pronouns juggling over real political power, I can easily predict it is doomed to fail.
So billionares at FOSDEM are just a symptoms of a terminal illness.
> After Dorsey sold Twitter to Elon Musk, selling the platform out to the far right for a crisp billion-with-a-“B” dollar payout, the FOSS community shouldered the burden – both with our labor and our wallets – of a massive exodus onto our volunteer-operated servers
I don't understand this sentiment at all. "We hate billionaires, but we need them to operate our servers because we don't want to"?
Extreme eyeroll on this post. Twitter's shareholders voted overwhelmingly to sell to Musk. 98.6% of them voted an affirmative yes, in which Dorsey was a very small minority. Dorsey could have voted no at ten times his stake in the company and still it would have been sold to Musk. Everyone was in agreement Musk was overpaying to an extreme degree.
> and its 11 million tons of annual CO2 emissions
Nobody is more in opposition to the current energy regime than Bitcoin miners. They are consistent lobbyists for deregulating private nuclear power, so that they can cleanly power their operations.
This reads like a petulant Communist's criticism of Dorsey. Much like many other of the author's diatribes.
Are you saying that liking loli porn (porn of animated children), to the point of moderating a community based around said porn, is less of a problem than the (very real, I agree) issues highlighted in the Stallman report? Both are super problematic, but being actively into porn that is actually banned in a lot of countries because of its links to pedophilia is even less defensible.
It's first time i am seeing these reports. I read through them. I don't have prior opinion about DeVault (don't know much about him) and i am not fighting for him. But the report seems to try to nail him for liking animated porn. I don't get much kick out of animated porn but the stuff i've seen has always been "enhanced" - everything is either too big, too small, too young, to old.
I am not sure how you can compare that to child pedophilia where just the creation of that material is an awful abuse.
Is it wierd to me? Sure i don't get how somebody can be excited about that. But people have wierd kinks and things like wierd real life extreme abuse porn seems to me to be worse and its legal.
Is there higher chance people that like animated porn like child pornography? For sure much higher. But it doesn't mean all of them are pedophiles. You know you become pedophile after you engage with that not just because of what your brain interprets as exciting.
I am all for canceling this guy after somebody has proof about him being pedophile but if that report was proof i think many people (especially extremely online people on hacker news) would be in exactly same water.
So, watching loli porn is what exactly? Why would someone be sexually a aroused by small children (but animated)?
I agree that it isn't as bad as actual child porn- no kids are usually harmed by loli porn getting created.
But it sure does tell me a lot about the sexual attractions someone might have. I don't think the allegations imply that he ever harmed or hurt children, just that there's just as much of case against him being into pedo stuff than Stallman. (Which btw, I'm not defending, and in fact I usually argue with Stallman fans defending him more than anything else)
I'm one of the flaggers. This is just my opinion, I'm not speaking for the others, but: I flagged because the piece is poorly argued and mostly just spiteful.
It starts off on a bad foot by implying that Dorsey chose to sell Twitter to Musk and made billions on the sale, both of which are false. Dorsey was forced to sell Twitter to Musk by the shareholders and the board. The shareholders profited, but Dorsey actually did not sell his shares, which means he did not cash out and instead lost money over the course of Musk's tenure. All of that nuance is ignored in favor of a swipe that's used to imply that Dorsey is a billionaire because he profited off selling Twitter to the far right.
Then later he uses his dislike for Dorsey in particular (and don't get me wrong, there are plenty of reasons to dislike Dorsey even if the Twitter sale isn't one of them) to justify saying that all billionaires should be unwelcome at FOSDEM. This isn't backed up by any sort of argument for why this generalization makes sense, it's just assumed that you should agree with him. Maybe we should, maybe we shouldn't, but there's no argument there.
In all, I'm unimpressed with the piece and the comment section reflected the mood of the piece: kind of mindlessly cranky without much thought. So I flagged the article because it's not the kind of thing that I think belongs on HN.
You're taking that quote out of context to imply that the guideline says that's the only reason to flag. That's not what it's saying, it's saying that you shouldn't post comments complaining about spam—flag and move on.
There are plenty of other reasons to flag a story, and it being a spiteful piece devoid of any semblance of curiosity seems as good reason as any.
We shouldn't be platforming or providing safe spaces to pedophiles. I flag any and all Drew DeVault content because I don't want this to be a pedophile bar.
I don't understand why DeVault's website is still allowed on Orange Reddit. There are people who I really respect who write good, non-spiteful, intelligent pieces who are still shadow banned after 5+ years.
We shouldn't be platforming or providing safe spaces to pedophiles. I flag any and all Drew DeVault content because I don't want this to be a pedophile bar.
Imagine if Windows came with adblock out of the box. It would be the best thing Microsoft ever did.
Now imagine the next best thing: if Dell installed adblock on all its Windows before you bought them. It would be the best thing Dell ever did.
Now imagine the next next best thing: if someone broke into a Dell warehouse, installed adblock on all the computers, and didn't do anything else. This would be a horrible crime and the perpetrator must be brought to justice post-haste!
Some might think those were good things because they were making it easier for people to access the content they wanted. That's the exact opposite of what Drew is proposing.
he's not preventing Jack Dorsey from doing anything. Jack Dorsey has enough money to buy FOSDEM, the building FOSDEM takes place in, and give every person who would have attended FOSDEM enough money to retire, and still be a billionaire afterwards. He can carry out a talk anywhere, at any time.
I think this is not a charitable take. The writing is balanced and he highlights that this is his subjective opinion and preference. Your comment is hyperbole and blows the whole thing out of proportion.
He highlights that this is his subjective opinion and preference right before announcing that he’s going to try and stop the talk from happening by sitting down on the stage. I think this is an extraordinarily rude thing to do at a volunteer led event and really demands a better justification than subjective dislike.
You could say the same about any peaceful protest, whether it's this, climate, politics, or etc. I don't have a strong opinion about this specific talk happening, but I think that if you see something that's wrong in the world, you should try to right it, extremes notwithstanding.
I could not say the same about any peaceful protest because most peaceful protests are not held to disrupt volunteer-led events. I don’t agree that you should try and enforce your personal preferences for who deserves a conference speaking slot by declaring you’ll try and prevent those you don’t approve of from taking the stage.
I have no opinion on the rest of the article, but it feels a bit disingenuous to say that Twitter burdened Mastodon because it made the latter much more popular.
Disrupting a talk isn't really "peaceful". You're physically obstructing the talk and daring the conference organizers who rented the room and other participants who want to hear the talk to use force to remove you.
If you believe someone is actively harming the audience (as he seems to), a peaceful protest is the way to go.
We'll learn soon enough if he is right and the community stands (sits?) with him or not.
But I couldn't not giggle on "freedom to hear someone talk" as an inverse of "free speech". Jack Dorsey has many platforms where he is welcome, and there are plenty opportunities to hear him share his thoughts. It's not like someone on the fringes is being shut off.
>> He isn't boycotting. He is planning to peacefully protest, which I think is reasonable.
No. He's planning to forcefully disrupt by blocking the stage. Narcissistic to the core: "My views and need for attention are more important than the other 8000 people here who may want to see this talk."
It absolutely is. If security is standing in front of the door to the stage are they going to push past? How is security supposed to remove them from the stage without using force? It's force that's designed to make the protesters look like they're the victim if anyone tries to get in their way.
A peaceful protest would be standing outside on the sidewalk with signs.
You're importing protest tactics developed for use against governments and large corporations into a context where they don't make any sense. There, this legalistic distinction between "force" and "disruption" is quite important, because ensuring you don't cross the line to "force" greatly decreases the legitimacy of any violent response. It doesn't matter at FOSDEM, because FOSDEM is not going to hire goons to beat you up regardless of what you do.
I don't fully understand your reply. Peaceful protests have existed for a long while before corporations did, for many different causes. They weren't always existential, nor were they always directed at the state.
I have participated in community events where venue security decided they had to forcibly remove protesters from the premises, and in one case they contacted police for help. I qualify those as peaceful protests, and I believe security / police took reasonable measures to respond. No one was hurt, and everyone got the message, whether they agreed with it or not.
Yes it is. You basically being a fascist by turning up using physical force to block free speech
You invoke violence by disrupting somebody elses rights. You force people to use violence/force to remove you in order to maintain the right to free speech.
Jack Dorsey would be free to say anything he wants outside of the stage, like Jordan Peterson once did, or pinned to the top of Bluesky, or to any mainstream media outlet of his choice, or on prime-time TV, or so on.
You dislike Jack because he sold Twitter and it made mastodon popular, and that's a bad thing? And because this also meant that people with cushy FAANG jobs who could easily find another job at the drop of a hat got displaced by Elon as a result? Is that really your argument Drew?
Maybe it's time for a "No Drews DeVault at FOSDEM" blog post.