It’s easily demonstrated as true by sifting through the antisemitic comments that are currently flooding all platforms.
Even if we suspend that for a moment and assume that when they say “zionists” they do not mean “jews”, making the sort of demonizing statements about a large group people with loosely defined membership is not unlike antisemitism or islamophobia.
In this very thread throw310822 has said “Such are the methods and powers of zionists”, and that I am a zionist. So are those now my powers? Do all the tropes now apply to me?
Thanks for linking this article! However, the full description of the incident seems that Namecheap blocked the domain, the CEO got into tweet arguments justifying it (and taking inconsistent positions), and after the backlash said it was a hasty block by the mod team, without an apology.
I generally give NC the benefit of the doubt (because of their principled stance on Ukraine, which to me means they can be principled elsewhere too), but in this case it's very difficult to explain it away.
They're now a defense contractor, the copy on their website sounds like military cosplaying.... Probably chasing the stupid profits of Anduril and Palantir, and doing the old open source rugpull in the process.
Zulip (for Slack) and Wekan (for Trello) are good replacements, save yourself the ethical and technical worries.
So so weird that we live in a timeline where Anduril and Palantir are military contractors of the US and other governments.
I know it’s somewhat of a tired observation by now but I still wonder every time how badly you have to misread LOTR to name your company after the witch kings cursed surveillance artefacts.
I wonder when the first weapons manufacturing company calls themselves Angmar or Uruk-hai.
The names are really dope though I have to give them that…
> I know it’s somewhat of a tired observation by now but I still wonder every time how badly you have to misread LOTR to name your company after the witch kings cursed surveillance artefacts.
Have you considered that it is not "misread", they just see themselves on Saruman side ?
I know it’s been said but Anduril is the sword wielded by Aragon, forged from the shards of Narsil which defeated Sauron.
And the Palantiri were artifacts given by the Elves to the greatest race of Men to govern their kingdom. No connection to the witch-king (except some post-Tolkien video game).
Not to be "that guy" but Anduril is Aragorn's sword and is the most good-guy good-thing that could ever be fantasized about. It's used to defeat Sauron. And the Palantir stones are not "the bad guys tool", they were made by the Elves in ancient history and a few of them wound up in the bad guys hands. Misread LOTR indeed!
I specifically referred to the witch kings surveillance artefacts with misreading.
I don’t think their creation story is mentioned in LOTR, other than that they are extremely powerful and dangerous.
But you are right of course about Anduril and if you take the whole silmarillion as background. I never really liked that part though
The Palantiri were created by the Elves in Valinor and given to the high race of Men.
The witch-king could in theory have used a Palantir, but there’s no suggestion he did.
The seven stars in Gondor’s crest are the Palantari, and in the War of the Ring, Aragon specifically requested they be added to his banner. They represent the highest level of the civilization of Men.
Yes, but the elf who created them is quite a tragic character himself. To the extent that his own mother chose to die after giving birth because she knew how much sorrow he would eventually bring. So I'd be careful to not paint them as a good thing either.
you're right, and definitely Palantir is a harder sell here. But to say "they named their weapons company Anduril, what are they, bad guys?" frustrates the nerd in me quite a lot.
And even if you use it only for bug ticketing there are products that are big enough that it takes a long time to implement changes. You really don’t want outsiders to be able to read open bug tickets for security vulnerabilities you are working on fixing for example. And you also don’t want outsiders to read your planned features either, probably.
I think it makes perfect sense to use e2e encryption for bug tickets considering this.
So far we had many leaks from internal systems of many companies like that and frankly not much happened, even when actual code leaked. It's far overrated fear, especially if you self-host it.
Every software development organisation I've been in that used Mattermost built integrations with monitoring, build pipelines, LDAP queries and the like.
I'm sure organisations in war would do similar things, but with the tools of their 'craft'.
Knives were too, and yet I'm not calling people to use forks instead. There is a difference between military contractors and generic tools.
Edit: sorry, hotheaded reply. I assume you mean that the creator of mIRC was encouraging it (though it's not mentioned anywhere). I still.stand by my analogy, but I see your point given your assumption.
> I assume you mean that the creator of mIRC was aware of it and encouraging it.
Like most licensed software, it was likely licensed by “US Government” or “Department of Defense”. Plus, it was openly written about back in the day. It was well known. No clauses in their licensing to prevent its use for those purposes.
Comparing to Mattermost and amplifying the original comment, Mattermost website is openly associating with PlatformOne.
Ive seen MM instances across defense dev teams for quite a while specifically to avoid Teams bs in the air force, gov teams does not like mixing with other orgs. Now it seems they’re actually going for contracts and Ill bet great money are mostly funded by USAF. Im very, very surprised.
> Center for the Study of Partisanship and Ideology
> some stereotypes are malevolent and destructive:
> ...
> Jews as grasping hook-nosed Nazis perpetrating genocide on innocent Palestinian babies.
Very underhanded way to paint the widely held accusations of genocide in Gaza as antisemitic...
Looking into it further: the CSPI is a right wing think-tank headed by Richard Hanania (from the website's bio, a thinker on the Right interested in culture wars, who has published vile stuff on Palestine, and has the infantile authoritarian viewpoints on politics that have unfortunately become synonymous with the "new right"). So take some salt with you if you're visiting that website...
The ideas is great indeed. And you are right, the author did not make any effort to steer the AI towards a better outcome. For example, the "great river" is Danube, it obviously exists today, and it is way larger than what AI has generated. This takes away from the immense scale of the Roman achievement. Trajan's Bridge over the Danube [1] was by far the largest bridge constructed by that time (fun fact: it was surpassed by another Roman bridge built during Constantine).
Very well written, but reads to me like the sophistry it decries.
Part of the modern US trend of "progressive" intellectuals to turn everything into fodder for partisan politics and demonise the Republicans. I know that Republican intellectuals also do this, with equally laughable claims ("Democrats are far-left").
Hence, it's difficult to read this seriously. It even has the intentionally unsubtle implications, the literary equivalent of a knowing eye wink, and the willful misunderstanding of jokes as being some.dark portents... Granted, Democrats (the party that presided over a genocide) are not mentioned or lauded, but the superiority of Democratic persuasion is heavily implied, and this makes the whole argument shaky.
And it's drenched with spite for the people: populism is bad, because look at the masses being too stupid to understand what's good for them. I don't know, leftist populists seem to be on point about where the issues lie.
Long-winded comment to say: this is bottom of the barrel US team politics disguised as something higher, by quoting TS Eliot and using complicated words.
> but the superiority of Democratic persuasion is heavily implied, and this makes the whole argument shaky.
If you read it as one grounded in the US ... sure. Implied by absence, etc.
Mind you it's a Commonwealth author, grounded in Australia, commenting on the populism of the current US government and not paying any attention to US Democrats, US Republicans of yore (you recall, the pre Trump Republicans), or indeed paying paying much attention to the blinkered polarisation of the US bimodal political condition.
The location of the author doesn't really matter though, no? The mentions of non-US politics are about early XXth century pre-fascist European countries, otherwise it only mentions US politicians/personalities (including an obscure, to me, official and Kirk).
I'm not American, not even in a Commonwealth country, but I'd say that managing to mention Kirk while not mentioning the failings of American politics as a whole does indeed play right into the blinkered polarisation, for all intents and purposes.
> while not mentioning the failings of American politics as a whole
I've never seen that mentioned by the left, right or anybody else, wherever they might be - nothing but spotty and one-sided critics. Do you really think your idea about that is of superior quality?
You seem to like populism but that term has as many meanings as people talking about it, which makes talking about it entirely pointless. In other words, the devil is in the details.
So what I meant is: this article is sophistry grounded in US team-style politics, so the bias (or, uncharitably, manipulation attempt) has to be made explicit.
I do frequently see articles/posts criticising the dreadful illusion of US democracy. They come from thinkers and activists who identify as being left (not liberal), mainly, but also anarchist, libertarian, independent, or simply anti-genocide.
Here, I see an article that panders to one side, behind a veneer of sophistication and democratic ideals, and gestures at the ideology that is corrupt to 95% without mentioning once the one corrupt to 90%.
> populism but that term has as many meanings as people talking about it
Agree completely, but think the author reduces it to "bad thing for the unwashed" by not defining it.
I assume this is sarcasm, but, for those reading, a unitary state is definitely not what those words meant. If they did, that would mean that 27 countries willingly and fully signed away their sovereignty, without knowledge of the public. The only times where this has happened before in world histoey was either surrender in the face if insurmountable odds, or a decision by the elites in exchange for unimaginable riches. As far as I know, the politicians and bureaucrats who made/signed those treaties didn't become billionaires since.
How much credence do you give it? I'm not an economist, and my general approach to any government's publications (especially in economics) is one of scepticism. Especially if it aligns with the party line (published in 2018, under May, who was very strongly anti-immigration).
Edit: this isn't made by the government but by a university, so scepticism is lessened slightly.
Independent of the veracity of throw310822's hypothesis, this assertion is ridiculous on its face.
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