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No Billionares at FOSDEM

drewdevault.com

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Re: No Billionares at FOSDEM

#121

Post by bryanlarsen »

Thorrez wrote: post #89
wormlord wrote: post #15

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 t…

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.

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.

Re: No Billionares at FOSDEM

#122

Post by lolinder »

Shawnecy wrote: post #95

[flagged]

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.

Re: No Billionares at FOSDEM

#123

Post by michaelt »

SpicyLemonZest wrote: post #86
whamlastxmas wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It definitely is in terms of product offerings, though it’s not their main money maker

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.

Re: No Billionares at FOSDEM

#124

Post by Redoubts »

handity wrote: post #13

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".

They’re fish, discovering water for the first time.

Re: No Billionares at FOSDEM

#125

Post by piva00 »

throw5959 wrote: post #92
wormlord wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

[flagged]

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...

Re: No Billionares at FOSDEM

#126

Post by psadauskas »

caeril wrote: post #107
psadauskas wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Musk declared in 2018 that climate change was the most significant threat humanity would face this century. But then more recently, he's said that farming doesn't contribute. https://x.com/elonmusk/status/1672793968587702272 He flies on his private jet all over the world, that alone contributing 100s of times more than the average household. https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/nov/20/elon-mus... His social m…

[flagged]

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.

Re: No Billionares at FOSDEM

#127

Post by baggy_trough »

rmgk wrote: post #118
baggy_trough wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

By listening to different points of view and deciding what best makes sense to us. That is why suppressing speech(es) is wrong.

So we should give Drew the other half of the keynote to make an informed decision afterward?

No, but he can definitely talk somewhere else.

Re: No Billionares at FOSDEM

#128

Post by debo_ »

pjfin123 wrote: post #71
debo_ wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He isn't boycotting. He is planning to peacefully protest, which I think is reasonable.

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.

You're describing disruption, not violence.

Re: No Billionares at FOSDEM

#129

Post by michaelt »

throw5959 wrote: post #103
michaelt wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 defen…

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 wha…

I'm talking about the Apollo Lunar Module.

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.

Re: No Billionares at FOSDEM

#130

Post by wolfram74 »

caeril wrote: post #107
psadauskas wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Musk declared in 2018 that climate change was the most significant threat humanity would face this century. But then more recently, he's said that farming doesn't contribute. https://x.com/elonmusk/status/1672793968587702272 He flies on his private jet all over the world, that alone contributing 100s of times more than the average household. https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/nov/20/elon-mus... His social m…

[flagged]

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!
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