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PaperclipPerfector  6mo ago (text post)   3553 thread views

Small-Scale Question Sunday for May 5, 2024

Do you have a dumb question that you're kind of embarrassed to ask in the main thread? Is there something you're just not sure about?

This is your opportunity to ask questions. No question too simple or too silly.

Culture war topics are accepted, and proposals for a better intro post are appreciated.

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Yeah, it's strange. I got curious, so I decided to poke around in some of the links gattsuru provided. There's talk about toxic governance, but very few specifics. And I've seen stuff like that, and I know it can be hard to make a truthful list that would convince an outsider. But still, it feels weak, a lot of words talking around issues, from people who can't or won't come to a point.

One part, about banning one person (JR), seemed to be a controversy over whether a defense contractor (Anduril) should be allowed to sponsor the project, with the losing faction being "NATO defense contractors are what prevent Russia from conquering Ukraine and the rest of the world", and the winning faction being "defense contractors kill people and are icky and we don't want their name near us" (various positions were put forth, but I can't come up with a coherent charitable interpretation). One thing that jumped out was that the mere fact of his applying to become a Board observer was treated as a problem. And what really got my attention were the comments by people speaking in support of him that were "flagged by the community and temporarily hidden".

https://discourse.nixos.org/t/why-was-jon-ringer-banned-from-github/44114

That led back to this earlier thread (also linked to by gattsuru) where JR was opposed to reserving a board seat for a woman. The conversation went as expected, these days: he's out of step with the progressive majority.

https://discourse.nixos.org/t/objection-to-minority-representation-by-a-single-class-in-nixos-sponsorship-policy/42968

And those led to this Reddit post, where JR says goodbye in a fairly professional manner:

https://old.reddit.com/r/NixOS/comments/1cd5fod/in_case_im_unable_to_return_wish_you_all_the_best/

But the Reddit comments had links to a bunch of stuff, including this (somewhat overheated) explanation, which is solidly culture war, and which apparently got the authors banned immediately:

https://github.com/nrdxp/rfc-evidence/blob/master/rfc_evidences_experiences.md

And then this bit of aftermath, again mostly notable for the attitude of the moderators and the content of the flagged comments:

https://discourse.nixos.org/t/delroths-muting-in-the-moderation-matrix-room/44090

I still can't figure out what side of the culture war the people fleeing the project are on, and that's probably intentional.

One part, about banning one person (JR), seemed to be a controversy over whether a defense contractor (Anduril) should be allowed to sponsor the project, with the losing faction being "NATO defense contractors are what prevent Russia from conquering Ukraine and the rest of the world", and the winning faction being "defense contractors kill people and are icky and we don't want their name near us" (various positions were put forth, but I can't come up with a coherent charitable interpretation)

The charitable steelman is that Anduril's products flirt increasingly closely with autonomous weapons, and the extent humans are in the loop (for autonomous weapons made by other people) has at best diffused responsibility regarding validity of target selection, and more practically put to a point where oversight and responsibility aren't enforceable. The... less charitable bit is that, like Palantir, the (surveillance) equipment and technology is also used by ICE and police, and a lot of Nix tech could be and/or could be driven to be very useful for that equipment and technology. The even less charitable one is that, while Palmer Luckey isn't as No Go politics-wise as Peter Thiel, it's known, in ways that kept people from supporting him.

And what really got my attention were the comments by people speaking in support of him that were "flagged by the community and temporarily hidden".

Yeah. On one hand, that's a Discourse (the forum software designed by CodingHorror's lead) default behavior, and one reason (among many) I'm glad that Zorba didn't base this forum off Discourse. On the other hand, the moderation team can override it, or allow successor threads, and didn't.

I still can't figure out what side of the culture war the people fleeing the project are on, and that's probably intentional.

Dunno. There's at least some text from big names in the github from the TotsNotBlueTriberJustUsingTheirAssumptions, and not much explicit red triber, but that doesn't exclude the porque no los dos.

There's at least some text from big names in the github from the TotsNotBlueTriberJustUsingTheirAssumptions, and not much explicit red triber, but that doesn't exclude the porque no los dos.

I was vaguely assuming that the Red tribe didn't want to paint targets on themselves, that this particular clan of the Blue tribe is addicted to their word-salad obfuscatory approach, and that the Grey tribe is genuinely upset about the corruption of the process. (For versions of R/B/G that are closer to conservative/leftist/liberal.)

For whatever reason, most of them seemed to feel it in their interests to frame the conflict as about moderation policies and formal structure. The quote about hypocrisy being "the tribute that vice pays to virtue" came to mind when forcing my way through some of the tortured language used by the mod team and their supporters. Also something Tolkien said about evil not being able to create, only twist.

I'm guessing this will mostly blow over, a relatively small number of contributors and slightly larger number of users will leave, whether publicly or silently. I suspect people on both the left and right will do this, thr left being louder and the right being quieter. Then the project will continue, but with less enthusiasm from evangelists.

The technology has a lot going for it (hence why Anduril wants to use it!) and it'll probably move more into a "used as a tool professionally" space rather than a "get excited about it personally and make it part of your identity" space. I'm not sure any side of their community, such as it is, trusts anyone else. The community will die but I'm guessing the technology will live on.

a defense contractor (Anduril)

Which is weird, because Anduril makes small drones that defensively destroy incoming attacking drones by flying into them. They make actual defensive drones. They don't make Predator or Reaper style drones that are full sized planed that "drone" people with missiles.

That is Anduril's current portfolio, but they were recently one of the companies selected to continue (along with General Atomics, the makers of Predator and Reaper) development of an aircraft for the CCA program, which is most certainly a more traditional defence product. https://www.af.mil/News/Article-Display/Article/3754980/air-force-exercises-two-collaborative-combat-aircraft-option-awards/

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