Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

NixOS just dropped Anduril as a NixCon sponsor

twitter.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

31–40 of 114 posts

Re: NixOS just dropped Anduril as a NixCon sponsor

#31

Post by cjbprime »

tomschlick wrote: post #17
mepian wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Anduril is infamous for its AI sentry towers along the US-Mexico border.

People who push back on technology used at the border make little sense to me. Using technology frees up other resources to process migrants more quickly through the abused asylum process. That means they are in detention for less time, they get court cases quicker, and get asylum or removal quicker.

Surely you can imagine some consistent viewpoints that a person could have here, such as "it can be a good thing when someone is able to escape a terrible situation in their current country even if they don't meet the rules for being granted asylum"?

Re: NixOS just dropped Anduril as a NixCon sponsor

#32

Post by debo_ »

AI sentry towers on the US-Mexico border lends credence to Anduril's name from Lord of the Rings -- "the Flame of the West."

This is completely unrelated, but if you like weapons with cool names (or are looking for names for your next defense-industry startup) the Tolkien legendarium has many!

Angrist - the dagger that cut a Silmaril from Morgoth's iron crown. Means "Iron Cleaver" in Sindarin

Dagmor - "dark-slayer", Beren's short blade

Aranruth - The terrible sword of Thingol, King of Doriath. Means "King's Ire"

The twin bastard swords "Anglachel" and "Anguirel" -- Forged by Eol the Dark Elf from a meteor, these swords were both sort of malevolent and I think were probably inspired by the Norse Tyrfing. Probably also influenced Stormbringer and Mournblade in those terrible Moorcock books.

Celeg Aithorn - A legendary sword from the First Age. Reference to a Valar (God's) blade "lightning", and said to be the blade that will one day cleave the world.

Edit: Ack! I forgot my favorite. "Dramborleg" -- the axe that the man Tuor found during the Fall of Gondolin. He slew three balrogs (!) and many orc champions with it. Means "thudder-sharp", because it both smashes and cuts at the same time. ("smote both a heavy dint as of a club and cleft as a sword")

... that's enough. I know the posted tweet is a serious topic and what I have posted is not, but that's where I'm at today.

Re: NixOS just dropped Anduril as a NixCon sponsor

#33

Post by arianvanp »

Would like to add some needed context (at least I think it's needed):

* This started out because NixOS mastodon account posted on chaos.social local timeline which is rather German Mastodon instance with a strict no-military-content-without-content-warnings moderation policy. People got angry for NixOS posting about the sponsor there and started complaining en masse to drop it. I think most people complaining aren't affiliated with NixOS at all but I'm sure there were also attendees of the conference complaining on Mastodon.

* NixCon is a (compared to other open source conferences like kubecon) extremely small community conference, organised by volunteers who have been under immense pressure this week to pull off all the organisation whilst also having to handle this drama on Mastodon.

* We as a community should definitely discuss during the conference this weekend what we're gonna have as policies for sponsorship going forward. Because as far as I know we haven't had any real formal policies regarding NixCon organisation at all. It has always been kind of community-driven.

* This year the role of the NixOS foundation has been made way more clear in the NixOS community. Before it really was just an entity for receiving donations but it did not actively do anything community building. I'm happy that we have an active Foundation board now that isn't just an administrative formality but an actual voice that can make statements.

* NixOS foundation is having a board meeting today and will have a more clear statement later from what I understand

* I am looking forward to Nixcon this weekend despite this hiccup. And I'm sure we'll figure it out.

Edit:

Also for context a statement from the founder of Anduril: https://twitter.com/PalmerLuckey/status/1699590452847272044

Re: NixOS just dropped Anduril as a NixCon sponsor

#34

Post by arthurcolle »

danpalmer wrote: post #9
rvz wrote: post #2

Right. So why haven't they gotten rid of Google as a sponsor then given that they also hold contracts with multiple governments, militaries and especially one contract with the Pentagon in the US on top of aiding their surveillance programmes?

(Biased, I work at Google), but I think there's a material difference between what Google does (as I understand it, from public info) – providing infrastructure services on Google Cloud, as all the major cloud providers do, or providing customer support for cloud workloads – and building defence related technology. To my knowledge Google and the other big tech companies aren't building application directly for offenc…

> To my knowledge Google and the other big tech companies aren't building application directly for offence/defence.

Project Maven? Dragonfly?

Re: NixOS just dropped Anduril as a NixCon sponsor

#35

Post by mightyham »

burkaman wrote: post #15
peatmoss wrote: post #3

Is there some specific controversy with Anduril that the community is reacting to, or is NixCon simply avoiding sponsorship from defense firms?

I'm not aware of any specific recent controversy, but the core concept of autonomous military equipment is extremely controversial. Bloomberg called them "Tech's Most Controversial Startup" a few years ago: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2019-10-03/tech-s-mo... Palmer Luckey and Peter Thiel themselves are also quite controversial political actors.

By controversial you mean that they are conservative. I'm not aware of anything they've done that is particularly controversial; furthermore, if the standard for controversial is that a person has donated money to political candidates and organizations that would make a huge portion of big tech figures controversial.

Re: NixOS just dropped Anduril as a NixCon sponsor

#36

Post by dale_glass »

corry wrote: post #18
xyzal wrote: post #4

I wonder where that anti-military sentiment in U.S. tech stems from? At least in former Soviet bloc, we view your military in quite a positive light. Well, for sure in a more positive light than armies of competing 'superpowers'.

I say this as a Canadian (meaning - don't take my opinion on the US too seriously), but it's so strange to see what's happening to tech. US Tech in the past: "we dislike the military, the government, the military-industrial complex (and generally all authority) because we skew hippy and/or libertarian. Let us be creative and free!" US Tech today: "we dislike the military, the government, and the military-industrial c…

I don't see what's the difference between "we skew hippy and/or libertarian" and "our particular flavour of cultural identity politics". Hippy and libertarian is a particular flavor of cultural identity politics.

Re: NixOS just dropped Anduril as a NixCon sponsor

#37

Post by sremani »

arianvanp wrote: post #33

Would like to add some needed context (at least I think it's needed): * This started out because NixOS mastodon account posted on chaos.social local timeline which is rather German Mastodon instance with a strict no-military-content-without-content-warnings moderation policy. People got angry for NixOS posting about the sponsor there and started complaining en masse to drop it. I think most people complaining aren't…

thanks for providing some context here.

Re: NixOS just dropped Anduril as a NixCon sponsor

#39

Post by fodkodrasz »

mfer wrote: post #27
fodkodrasz wrote: post #7

What is the point? Getting some goodwill of non-paying users (aka. freeloaders), while (maybe) alienating paying users? I get that it is a project that uses lots of volunteer work, but you won't pay your hosting fees and buildfarms from latest rust helloworld-webservice flake contributions from the programmers-socks wearing community. Sidenote: the foundation of current computing is built on DoD money.

> Getting some goodwill of non-paying users I think you'll find they'll loose goodwill from some other non-paying folks. There are many people who code and use this technology who are pro-military. They may not speak up in the same circles as those who are against this but they exist. I'm only pointing this out to showcase the market is more diverse than people often realize.

also there is a silent majority, who does not have a special stance on lots of topics, just thinks like live and let live, and these kind of signalling are always a bad news for them (regardless of anti- or pro-something), as these useless drama-acts signal further polarization of the world, which often signal that some political takeover has happened in organizations which are not inherently political. This often signals a loss of focus for projects. (think GNU for example)

Re: NixOS just dropped Anduril as a NixCon sponsor

#40

Post by abathur »

peatmoss wrote: post #3

Is there some specific controversy with Anduril that the community is reacting to, or is NixCon simply avoiding sponsorship from defense firms?

Most of the commentary I've seen is generic, but most of the specific comments I've seen mention Anduril's loitering munitions.
Post reply on HN