8 ms·

Autodesk and coal mining

112 points by wcerfgba 6y ago

jijji 6y ago
so let me get this straight, a software company should try to regulate the coal mining industry? thats like santa claus regulating the toy industry.
- shadowgovt 6y ago
  SaaS gives software companies a lot of practical leverage.
- Apocryphon 6y ago
  https://logicmag.io/nature/oil-is-the-new-data/ https://logicmag.io/nature/oil-is-the-new-data/ https://gizmodo.com/how-google-microsoft-and-big-tech-are-automating-the-1832790799 https://gizmodo.com/how-google-microsoft-and-big-tech-are-au...
- doctorhandshake 6y ago
  A company should operate ethically. It's not that complicated.
- joanielemercier 6y ago
  Autodesk should just respect their own policies and enforce them. They don't apply their own "code of conduct" either. http://autodesk.earth/#Change http://autodesk.earth/#Change
gruez 6y ago
> - Autodesk is partly owned by fossil fuels investor BlackRock (8.3%). They're the biggest investment company by NAV, so of course they're going to be invested in fossil fuels. This is the same blackrock that says they would begin to exit certain investments that "present a high sustainability-related risk" earlier this year[1], so I'm not sure why the hate. [1] https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2020-01-14/blackrock-has-green-plans https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2020-01-14/blackr...
- spacegod 6y ago
  This is hilarious. I think the author assumed Blackrock was a coal investor because of their name.
- pydry 6y ago
  It's well past the point where divestment could be motivated by environmental concern. Coal is a loss maker. If you're getting out now it's a profit driven decision.
  - sq_ 6y ago
    Well, at least they're getting out, even if it's not driven by true environmental concern. BlackRock taking that step seems like it has/will set the stage for other, smaller organizations to follow.
  - b1ur 6y ago
    Yeah, I'm conflicted on this. Obviously I'm happy that companies are moving away from unsustainable practices, but less than pleased that they see it as unsustainable financially as opposed to environmentally. Which leads me to believe that they would embrace an equally ecologically-destructive practice if it was forecast as profitable for the next 50 years.
- hobofan 6y ago
  > I'm not sure why the hate I'm still in the camp of "I'll believe it when I see it". > Fink doesn’t own that $7 trillion of assets, he manages it as a fiduciary for others, and it is obviously wise for him to say that this initiative is client-driven. But it’s also helpful for him if that’s true. This letter will get attention, and if BlackRock’s biggest and most vocal clients think it’s bad then they might take their money from BlackRock and give it to some other, less environmentally committed manager. Or the investors don't actually think that it _is_ good, just that it _looks_ good to publish such a statement (and not actually enforce it), the same way that Autodesk is just parading "sustainability" as a marketing statement.
coldpie 6y ago
I want to read this but I literally cannot figure out how to scroll the webpage.
- brutusborn 6y ago
  I was very surprised to read your comment, since my last thought after using the website was literally "that website was really nice and simple." Just goes to show how different user experiences can be. Scrolling worked fine for me. I'm using chrome on a samsung phone if anyone is interested :)
  - dx87 6y ago
    In Firefox on a desktop, sometimes one "tick" of the scroll wheel jumps down an entire page, sometimes just a few inches, and the scroll wheel stops working until the page is finished moving. You also can't scroll up once you get to the bottom of the page.
  - grogenaut 6y ago
    There's no scroll bar for me on desktop, however the middle mouse scroll worked. This is likely what happened to GP.
- lsaferite 6y ago
  I hate websites that think they know better than me how I should read a web page. The idea that as soon as I scroll the bottom of your 'page' of content you think it should auto-scroll so the 'next page' is at the top is asinine. I wanted to scroll the page just enough that the focus of my reading is in the center of my screen, but it kept insisting that it jump to the next 'page'. Worse still is that it treated it like a new page of content by monkeying around with the page history. That means when I get to the bottom of the web page and want to go back to the previous web page (HN), I really needed to hit back multiple times instead.
larrywright 6y ago
This website is awful, at least on mobile. I’d like to read this, but the site seems actively hostile towards that goal.
abakker 6y ago
I understand the POV here, but as a user of autodesk products, I don't want Autodesk to turn away the revenue they need to keep making products I use. products are an ecosystem and if the product gets worse or updates get slower then the whole ecosystem suffers. I will bet that a large number of green energy plants (solar, wind, etc) are designed using Autodesk tools, and a large amount of sustainable manufacturing as well. Not to be too reductive, but companies that make wrenches, welders, milling machines, steel, trucks etc. are all complicit in the same thing. Autodesk probably has provided services and tools which make this coal mine more efficient than it would have been otherwise, too - many of their products are designed to make engineering and manufacture more efficient. I do agree, though, that their PR department and their actual response to the issues have been poor. I am thankful that we don't judge ever business merely by their PR; most are not that good. disclaimer: I do not work for autodesk but I do own some small amount of autodesk stock because I like their products and use Fusion360 for free as a hobby machinist and woodworker.
- coldpie 6y ago
  > Not to be too reductive, but companies that make wrenches, welders, milling machines, steel, trucks etc. are all complicit in the same thing. We're literally talking the end of life on this planet as we know it. The companies you mention are also complicit in creating the upcoming climate-caused world wars and their executives should similarly be held responsible. If you think this position is extreme, you are not paying attention.
  - driverdan 6y ago
    Calling for a tool manufacturer to be responsible for how a tool is used is absurd.
    - shadowgovt 6y ago
      It's true, but it gets fuzzier when the tool is a service. If Autodesk has a cloud component, it's up to them whether they vend that component to fossil fuel prospectors or miners.
judge2020 6y ago
Autodesk trademark UDRP dispute incoming.
- gruez 6y ago
  AFAIK that only works if the domain's used in "bad faith", whatever that means. Considering that there are gTLDs that literally intended for criticizing companies (eg. .gripe and .sucks), I'd say he's fine. edit: read a few lines down on the wikipedia article and it says the factors for determining bad faith are: > Whether the registrant registered the domain name primarily for the purpose of selling, renting, or otherwise transferring the domain name registration to the complainant who is the owner of the trademark or service mark; > Whether the registrant registered the domain name to prevent the owner of the trademark or service mark from reflecting the mark in a corresponding domain name, if the domain name owner has engaged in a pattern of such conduct; and > Whether the registrant registered the domain name primarily for the purpose of disrupting the business of a competitor; or > Whether by using the domain name, the registrant has intentionally attempted to attract, for commercial gain, internet users to the registrant's website, by creating a likelihood of confusion with the complainant's mark. I think he should be fine
  - mdonahoe 6y ago
    FWIW, I definitely thought that domain name was going to be advertising a new Autodesk mapping product.
  - swimik 6y ago
    They used the logo and font as well. My very first impression was actually that this is an Autodesk site.
- atonse 6y ago
  I was genuinely confused at first. I was thinking "this this their marketing page for the coal vertical? or is this people talking about them not doing it" – and the language made it more clear.
pphysch 6y ago
Where is this movement coming from? Makes a difference if it's an Autodesk competitor vs. an independent environmentalist. Edit: looks like it's from an independent designer based in Europe.
- hobofan 6y ago
  As long as the facts are true, it really doesn't make a difference (morally).
  - pphysch 6y ago
    Even if Autodesk products just get replaced by a competitor's? And the environmental campaign were to conveniently ignore that? Just a hypothetical. It's certainly been done before. Hence moral outrage is an effective tool for mass manipulation.
    - hobofan 6y ago
      My intention was to clarify it as "moral" was mainly to contrast it to "legal" (which depending on jurisdiction I would assume it might not be). And what is wrong with invoking morals? If people think that acting "sustainable" is important according to their morals, why not alert them that someone is deceiving them in that aspect? If a competitor has put significant effort into actually being sustainable, while Autodesk is just using the term like that, publicizing it in this way just adds transparency for decision making. If a competitor is just as bad as Autodesk, publicizing it would just sensitize everyone to the problem and likely blow up into their face later. Why do you think it would make a difference if a competitor pushes the message (as long as the message is true)?
      - pphysch 6y ago
        > Why do you think it would make a difference if a competitor pushes the message (as long as the message is true)? Because then it comes off as a cheap-shot to gain more clients and not an antifragile movement to make headway in the current climate disaster. It has the potential to corrupt and cause real long-term damage to such movements if they are only used as means to profit financially in the short-term. Again this is totally hypothetical in this case. I think vigilance is required even in what are facially "morally pure" causes.
sprayk 6y ago
To everyone trying to read all the text near the beginning but having the scrolling get wonky: you aren't supposed to read all of the text, it seems to just be in the background, and the only thing you are supposed to read is in the center of that... page... the part that goes "Autodesk describes 20 years..." To make matters even worse, every time you scroll, it pushes a new page onto my history. Author is not making it easy to consume the info they are providing.
- RangerScience 6y ago
  I encountered weird scroll boundaries between sections (could not have a section split halfway down my window, basically) but otherwise ran into no problems.
rgovostes 6y ago
Aside from this, Joanie Lemercier is an artist who creates remarkable works with generative/procedural techniques, projection mapping, plotters, virtual reality, etc. https://joanielemercier.com/gallery/ https://joanielemercier.com/gallery/
013a 6y ago
I understand the frustration behind this, and it makes me angry as well. But Autodesk shouldn't be the target of this anger, and this seems like a ton of effort just to vilify an incredibly small component of the problem. Instead, focus on the companies actually responsible, and the governments who both let them do this and refuse to make meaningful investments in deploying green technology. > Autodesk is partly owned by fossil fuels investor BlackRock (8.3%). This is straight-up propaganda. Blackrock, like Vanguard, owns a large portion of every public company. But, I bet they singled out Blackrock because Coal is a black-colored rock, and someone who wouldn't know any better may mistakenly think Blackrock is some company that specifically invests in non-green technology.
mediaman 6y ago
This site seems to be equal parts dishonest and confused. Dishonest because they point out that Autodesk, a publicly traded company, has a portion of its stock owned by Blackrock, one of the world's largest investment companies. Not only does Autodesk have no control over who its investors are (anyone can buy stock!), but Blackrock owns pieces of lots of things, and is not primarily in the business of owning fossil fuel companies. Confused because this is such a weird and unproductive way to go about advocating for fixing climate change. Let's think this out, since the activist chose not to. Suppose Autodesk does what he wants and says "we will not sell you Autodesk products." What will the mining company do? They have many options. They may hire a mechanical design company that already has Autodesk licenses to do the work for them. They may use a different CAD package. (The activist suggests this is an invalid point, but doesn't explain why; there are many CAD packages available and it's clear they can choose another one.) There is no endgame in which this writer's ultimate goal, even if it were wholly achieved, makes any positive difference to the environment. What's the point? It's a waste of time. Advocate instead for systemic change that stops coal mining from being cost effective and will cause systemic diversion of capital away from coal and toward greener sources of energy. That can take the form of carbon taxes, or regulation on toxic mining effluents, or advocating for subsidies of green energy, et cetera. Each of those has an endgame that, if successful, makes a meaningful and positive impact on our planet's climate. Unlike this effort.
- basch 6y ago
  >Blackrock owns pieces of lots of things, and is not primarily in the business of owning fossil fuel companies. [...] Confused because this is such a weird and unproductive way to go about advocating for fixing climate change. Blackrock and Vanguard are a promising, scary, and potentially very effective way to go about climate change change. Blackrock has, in the past, taken a passive approach, not exerting its ownership to change the direction of companies. That is changing. >Climate change has become a defining factor in companies’ long-term prospects. Last September, when millions of people took to the streets to demand action on climate change, many of them emphasized the significant and lasting impact that it will have on economic growth and prosperity – a risk that markets to date have been slower to reflect. But awareness is rapidly changing, and I believe we are on the edge of a fundamental reshaping of finance. >Given the groundwork we have already laid engaging on disclosure, and the growing investment risks surrounding sustainability, we will be increasingly disposed to vote against management and board directors when companies are not making sufficient progress on sustainability-related disclosures and the business practices and plans underlying them. https://www.blackrock.com/corporate/investor-relations/larry-fink-ceo-letter https://www.blackrock.com/corporate/investor-relations/larry... As others have said, talk is cheap, we will see how they act on their new strategic direction. Maybe they continue to be their own version of a vampire squid or giant refrigerator perpetually keeping us unchanged and frozen in the past, or maybe they will be an NGO that both offers shared ownership of capital and votes wisely for the preservation of the planet.
zdw 6y ago
One of the radical freedom bits of open source software licensing is that anyone could use it no matter how heinous their goals are. There are attempts to work around this like the JSON license "The Software shall be used for Good, not Evil.": https://json.org/license.html https://json.org/license.html A commercial company selling licenses, and therefore profiting off "bad things" is a bit less neutral, as this website shows. But what if an OSS developer accepts a patchset from a "bad guy", what then? That contributed code has value... but we're getting into the whole "how was it created", which could invite comparisons to other scientific results produced in morally questionable ways, like through animal or involuntary human testing. Ethics is hard.
- baggy_trough 6y ago
  Since there's no objective universal definition of good and evil, how can you rely on your ability to use code under such a license? It doesn't matter what your project is - if the licensor wants to, they can find some way to describe it as evil. So, in my opinion, those licenses are themselves unethical.
hannob 6y ago
There's a background article on Drilled news that's worth reading: https://www.drillednews.com/post/computer-aided-destruction-autodesk-coal-climate https://www.drillednews.com/post/computer-aided-destruction-...
ogre_codes 6y ago
I was reading on Autodesk's site a while ago about how they have software that can turn drone footage into 3d plots and use those plots to and estimate inventory based on the size of piles. They didn't explicitly say it was for coal, but after reading this "article/ thing" it seems like that is one of the biggest and most obvious use cases. Also, as many others have pointed out, this site is bad. I wasn't quite sure initially this link was posted to call Autodesk's policies into light or as an example of terrible web design and scroll capture gone horribly wrong.
- abakker 6y ago
  most of that drone related survey work is actually for things like gravel, or earth-moving processes for construction. It is also not particularly difficult or novel, and solved well by several different packages. For construction, it is often used to estimate the amount of soil fill / drainage rock, etc that is used or needed or removed during site modifications. An example would be that if you need to haul away a lot of dirt, you pay per truck. Better estimating the amount of dirt means you don't accidentally book too few or too many trucks, this saves cost both in timing - avoiding delays, and in budgeting.
  - mediaman 6y ago
    Absolutely correct. Coal is such a tiny, tiny portion of the "we need to figure out how much stuff is in this pile" market. Companies need that information both to keep their books in order (what's the dollar value of our inventory of gravel?) or to know whether they have adequate or excess supply of materials for their operations (do we need to slow down our procurement of sand?). There are several companies in the market that use either drone footage or in some cases just a phone camera to estimate volumes of piles of stuff.
RcouF1uZ4gsC 6y ago
I bet Autodesk products are also used to design airplanes and cars which contribute to climate change. I bet they are also used to design plastic containers which also contribute to plastic pollution. Software is a tool. It is the responsibility of the user not the writer of the software. If we get away from that principle, we would do ourselves great harm. Do you want the word processor companies to be responsible for what people write? Do you want encryption software companies responsible for what people encrypt?
- shadowgovt 6y ago
  To the extent Autodesk software suite is a tool that is buy-once-and-use, that's true (sort of... they're still legally curtailed as a US company from selling directly to terrorists, etc.). To the extent Autodesk is a service, it's up to the company whether they want to provide, for example, cloud services to fossil fuel prospectors or coal mining operations.
bArray 6y ago
I don't want Autodesk to become political, they provide a tool, not a (political) ideology. I'm sure Autodesk products have been used to design bombs, weapons, great polluting machines and what not - but it has also been used for some truly inspiring stuff. Autodesk is like a hammer, it's not the hammer manufacturer's fault in how their product is used. Do we want hammers to be restricted to only those whose political ideologies align with ours? The dangerous part is, we already see essential services such as payment processors taking political stances (blacklisting customers based on their political beliefs). Autodesk's PR response is awful, to be completely honest if they were going to go down this route, they should have just remained quite. Their real mistake was to have a commitment to environmental impact. It could have been re-worded to have a green company infrastructure and to actively support green projects with tools and grants. We should all look to change ourselves before trying to change other people - lead by example and others will follow.
- doctorhandshake 6y ago
  This logic does not hold up. Let's say you sell hammers, and a person walks into your store and says 'I'd like one hammer please — I'm going to go bash my friend's skull in'. Would you sell it to them?
  - troydavis 6y ago
    > This logic does not hold up. Let's say you sell hammers, and a person walks into your store and says 'I'd like one hammer please — I'm going to go bash my friend's skull in'. This is called a "Faulty analogy" or "False analogy": https://examples.yourdictionary.com/false-analogy-examples.html https://examples.yourdictionary.com/false-analogy-examples.h..., https://www.txstate.edu/philosophy/resources/fallacy-definitions/Faulty-Analogy.html https://www.txstate.edu/philosophy/resources/fallacy-definit... In this case, you've equated two things because they can both cause some amount of harm, but have ignored the quantity of harm, the existence and quantity of positive benefits, and the presence of stated intent.
    - onion2k 6y ago
shadowgovt 6y ago
This page appears to have a bad certificate configuration. What is the content?
bgorman 6y ago
A companies purpose is to make money for its shareholders. If the companies goal becomes anything else, decisions become extremely arbitrary. Perhaps Autodesk should stop supporting car manufacturers who produce internal combustion engines. Perhaps Autodesk should stop support modeling single-use products. Perhaps Autodesk should only support its products being used in countries with "democracy". Perhaps Autodesk should open source all of their software, otherwise Autodesk could be a front for the NSA. /s If people want actual change in the world, the correct solution is to try to shame large companies, smaller companies will just take their place. Instead work on technologies that make "unethical" practices obsolete.
- phkahler 6y ago
  >> A companies purpose is to make money for its shareholders. As a blanket statement that is false. The purpose is whatever the founder(s) wants. If shares are sold then agreements have to be made which may or may not involve changing the purpose.
doctorhandshake 6y ago
Autodesk (as an entity) and every other thing on this planet that relies on the ecosystem to remain more or less as it is has a responsibility to do their part to oppose climate change. It's that simple. There should be a site like this for every corporation and government that is significantly contributing to environmental degradation.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
motohagiography 6y ago
This reeks of an astroturfing campaign by an activist fund in support of getting control of the board, as a means to strip the company of its assets and the quality of life the employees enjoy. This isn't earnest. Cui bono?
- orbital-decay 6y ago
  Yeah... why are they singling out a certain software development company, in the first place? Trying to shut the coal mining industry down by pressuring one of the software suppliers with an organized mob rage campaign makes no practical sense, from an environmental activist perspective.
joanielemercier 6y ago
Thanks everyone for the very interesting conversation, I made this site and am still working on this project. Another interesting read that confirms that none of the policies are actually enforced, and autodesk attempts at "sustainability" is just PR as a smoke screen. CEO is actually misleading customers, employees and investors. Feel free to ask me any question or precision.
bassman9000 6y ago
There's absolutely no indication whatsoever on - who owns this page - what's their proposal for replacing coal As such, hard pass. Yes, coal is bad. Yes, we have to replace it. But, at a minimum, be frank about who you are, and what's your end game. Otherwise we can think this is a hit piece by the competition.

112 points by wcerfgba 6y ago

so let me get this straight, a software company should try to regulate the coal mining industry? thats like santa claus regulating the toy industry.

shadowgovt 6y ago
SaaS gives software companies a lot of practical leverage.
Apocryphon 6y ago
https://logicmag.io/nature/oil-is-the-new-data/ https://logicmag.io/nature/oil-is-the-new-data/ https://gizmodo.com/how-google-microsoft-and-big-tech-are-automating-the-1832790799 https://gizmodo.com/how-google-microsoft-and-big-tech-are-au...
doctorhandshake 6y ago
A company should operate ethically. It's not that complicated.
joanielemercier 6y ago
Autodesk should just respect their own policies and enforce them. They don't apply their own "code of conduct" either. http://autodesk.earth/#Change http://autodesk.earth/#Change

gruez 6y ago

> - Autodesk is partly owned by fossil fuels investor BlackRock (8.3%). They're the biggest investment company by NAV, so of course they're going to be invested in fossil fuels. This is the same blackrock that says they would begin to exit certain investments that "present a high sustainability-related risk" earlier this year[1], so I'm not sure why the hate. [1] https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2020-01-14/blackrock-has-green-plans https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2020-01-14/blackr...

spacegod 6y ago
This is hilarious. I think the author assumed Blackrock was a coal investor because of their name.
pydry 6y ago
It's well past the point where divestment could be motivated by environmental concern. Coal is a loss maker. If you're getting out now it's a profit driven decision.
- sq_ 6y ago
  Well, at least they're getting out, even if it's not driven by true environmental concern. BlackRock taking that step seems like it has/will set the stage for other, smaller organizations to follow.
- b1ur 6y ago
  Yeah, I'm conflicted on this. Obviously I'm happy that companies are moving away from unsustainable practices, but less than pleased that they see it as unsustainable financially as opposed to environmentally. Which leads me to believe that they would embrace an equally ecologically-destructive practice if it was forecast as profitable for the next 50 years.
hobofan 6y ago
> I'm not sure why the hate I'm still in the camp of "I'll believe it when I see it". > Fink doesn’t own that $7 trillion of assets, he manages it as a fiduciary for others, and it is obviously wise for him to say that this initiative is client-driven. But it’s also helpful for him if that’s true. This letter will get attention, and if BlackRock’s biggest and most vocal clients think it’s bad then they might take their money from BlackRock and give it to some other, less environmentally committed manager. Or the investors don't actually think that it _is_ good, just that it _looks_ good to publish such a statement (and not actually enforce it), the same way that Autodesk is just parading "sustainability" as a marketing statement.

coldpie 6y ago

I want to read this but I literally cannot figure out how to scroll the webpage.

brutusborn 6y ago
I was very surprised to read your comment, since my last thought after using the website was literally "that website was really nice and simple." Just goes to show how different user experiences can be. Scrolling worked fine for me. I'm using chrome on a samsung phone if anyone is interested :)
- dx87 6y ago
  In Firefox on a desktop, sometimes one "tick" of the scroll wheel jumps down an entire page, sometimes just a few inches, and the scroll wheel stops working until the page is finished moving. You also can't scroll up once you get to the bottom of the page.
- grogenaut 6y ago
  There's no scroll bar for me on desktop, however the middle mouse scroll worked. This is likely what happened to GP.
lsaferite 6y ago
I hate websites that think they know better than me how I should read a web page. The idea that as soon as I scroll the bottom of your 'page' of content you think it should auto-scroll so the 'next page' is at the top is asinine. I wanted to scroll the page just enough that the focus of my reading is in the center of my screen, but it kept insisting that it jump to the next 'page'. Worse still is that it treated it like a new page of content by monkeying around with the page history. That means when I get to the bottom of the web page and want to go back to the previous web page (HN), I really needed to hit back multiple times instead.

larrywright 6y ago

This website is awful, at least on mobile. I’d like to read this, but the site seems actively hostile towards that goal.

abakker 6y ago

I understand the POV here, but as a user of autodesk products, I don't want Autodesk to turn away the revenue they need to keep making products I use. products are an ecosystem and if the product gets worse or updates get slower then the whole ecosystem suffers. I will bet that a large number of green energy plants (solar, wind, etc) are designed using Autodesk tools, and a large amount of sustainable manufacturing as well. Not to be too reductive, but companies that make wrenches, welders, milling machines, steel, trucks etc. are all complicit in the same thing. Autodesk probably has provided services and tools which make this coal mine more efficient than it would have been otherwise, too - many of their products are designed to make engineering and manufacture more efficient. I do agree, though, that their PR department and their actual response to the issues have been poor. I am thankful that we don't judge ever business merely by their PR; most are not that good. disclaimer: I do not work for autodesk but I do own some small amount of autodesk stock because I like their products and use Fusion360 for free as a hobby machinist and woodworker.

coldpie 6y ago
> Not to be too reductive, but companies that make wrenches, welders, milling machines, steel, trucks etc. are all complicit in the same thing. We're literally talking the end of life on this planet as we know it. The companies you mention are also complicit in creating the upcoming climate-caused world wars and their executives should similarly be held responsible. If you think this position is extreme, you are not paying attention.
- driverdan 6y ago
  Calling for a tool manufacturer to be responsible for how a tool is used is absurd.
  - shadowgovt 6y ago
    It's true, but it gets fuzzier when the tool is a service. If Autodesk has a cloud component, it's up to them whether they vend that component to fossil fuel prospectors or miners.

judge2020 6y ago

Autodesk trademark UDRP dispute incoming.

gruez 6y ago
AFAIK that only works if the domain's used in "bad faith", whatever that means. Considering that there are gTLDs that literally intended for criticizing companies (eg. .gripe and .sucks), I'd say he's fine. edit: read a few lines down on the wikipedia article and it says the factors for determining bad faith are: > Whether the registrant registered the domain name primarily for the purpose of selling, renting, or otherwise transferring the domain name registration to the complainant who is the owner of the trademark or service mark; > Whether the registrant registered the domain name to prevent the owner of the trademark or service mark from reflecting the mark in a corresponding domain name, if the domain name owner has engaged in a pattern of such conduct; and > Whether the registrant registered the domain name primarily for the purpose of disrupting the business of a competitor; or > Whether by using the domain name, the registrant has intentionally attempted to attract, for commercial gain, internet users to the registrant's website, by creating a likelihood of confusion with the complainant's mark. I think he should be fine
- mdonahoe 6y ago
  FWIW, I definitely thought that domain name was going to be advertising a new Autodesk mapping product.
- swimik 6y ago
  They used the logo and font as well. My very first impression was actually that this is an Autodesk site.
atonse 6y ago
I was genuinely confused at first. I was thinking "this this their marketing page for the coal vertical? or is this people talking about them not doing it" – and the language made it more clear.

pphysch 6y ago

Where is this movement coming from? Makes a difference if it's an Autodesk competitor vs. an independent environmentalist. Edit: looks like it's from an independent designer based in Europe.

hobofan 6y ago
As long as the facts are true, it really doesn't make a difference (morally).
- pphysch 6y ago
  Even if Autodesk products just get replaced by a competitor's? And the environmental campaign were to conveniently ignore that? Just a hypothetical. It's certainly been done before. Hence moral outrage is an effective tool for mass manipulation.
  - hobofan 6y ago
    My intention was to clarify it as "moral" was mainly to contrast it to "legal" (which depending on jurisdiction I would assume it might not be). And what is wrong with invoking morals? If people think that acting "sustainable" is important according to their morals, why not alert them that someone is deceiving them in that aspect? If a competitor has put significant effort into actually being sustainable, while Autodesk is just using the term like that, publicizing it in this way just adds transparency for decision making. If a competitor is just as bad as Autodesk, publicizing it would just sensitize everyone to the problem and likely blow up into their face later. Why do you think it would make a difference if a competitor pushes the message (as long as the message is true)?
    - pphysch 6y ago
      > Why do you think it would make a difference if a competitor pushes the message (as long as the message is true)? Because then it comes off as a cheap-shot to gain more clients and not an antifragile movement to make headway in the current climate disaster. It has the potential to corrupt and cause real long-term damage to such movements if they are only used as means to profit financially in the short-term. Again this is totally hypothetical in this case. I think vigilance is required even in what are facially "morally pure" causes.

sprayk 6y ago

To everyone trying to read all the text near the beginning but having the scrolling get wonky: you aren't supposed to read all of the text, it seems to just be in the background, and the only thing you are supposed to read is in the center of that... page... the part that goes "Autodesk describes 20 years..." To make matters even worse, every time you scroll, it pushes a new page onto my history. Author is not making it easy to consume the info they are providing.

RangerScience 6y ago
I encountered weird scroll boundaries between sections (could not have a section split halfway down my window, basically) but otherwise ran into no problems.

rgovostes 6y ago

Aside from this, Joanie Lemercier is an artist who creates remarkable works with generative/procedural techniques, projection mapping, plotters, virtual reality, etc. https://joanielemercier.com/gallery/ https://joanielemercier.com/gallery/

013a 6y ago

I understand the frustration behind this, and it makes me angry as well. But Autodesk shouldn't be the target of this anger, and this seems like a ton of effort just to vilify an incredibly small component of the problem. Instead, focus on the companies actually responsible, and the governments who both let them do this and refuse to make meaningful investments in deploying green technology. > Autodesk is partly owned by fossil fuels investor BlackRock (8.3%). This is straight-up propaganda. Blackrock, like Vanguard, owns a large portion of every public company. But, I bet they singled out Blackrock because Coal is a black-colored rock, and someone who wouldn't know any better may mistakenly think Blackrock is some company that specifically invests in non-green technology.

mediaman 6y ago

This site seems to be equal parts dishonest and confused. Dishonest because they point out that Autodesk, a publicly traded company, has a portion of its stock owned by Blackrock, one of the world's largest investment companies. Not only does Autodesk have no control over who its investors are (anyone can buy stock!), but Blackrock owns pieces of lots of things, and is not primarily in the business of owning fossil fuel companies. Confused because this is such a weird and unproductive way to go about advocating for fixing climate change. Let's think this out, since the activist chose not to. Suppose Autodesk does what he wants and says "we will not sell you Autodesk products." What will the mining company do? They have many options. They may hire a mechanical design company that already has Autodesk licenses to do the work for them. They may use a different CAD package. (The activist suggests this is an invalid point, but doesn't explain why; there are many CAD packages available and it's clear they can choose another one.) There is no endgame in which this writer's ultimate goal, even if it were wholly achieved, makes any positive difference to the environment. What's the point? It's a waste of time. Advocate instead for systemic change that stops coal mining from being cost effective and will cause systemic diversion of capital away from coal and toward greener sources of energy. That can take the form of carbon taxes, or regulation on toxic mining effluents, or advocating for subsidies of green energy, et cetera. Each of those has an endgame that, if successful, makes a meaningful and positive impact on our planet's climate. Unlike this effort.

basch 6y ago
>Blackrock owns pieces of lots of things, and is not primarily in the business of owning fossil fuel companies. [...] Confused because this is such a weird and unproductive way to go about advocating for fixing climate change. Blackrock and Vanguard are a promising, scary, and potentially very effective way to go about climate change change. Blackrock has, in the past, taken a passive approach, not exerting its ownership to change the direction of companies. That is changing. >Climate change has become a defining factor in companies’ long-term prospects. Last September, when millions of people took to the streets to demand action on climate change, many of them emphasized the significant and lasting impact that it will have on economic growth and prosperity – a risk that markets to date have been slower to reflect. But awareness is rapidly changing, and I believe we are on the edge of a fundamental reshaping of finance. >Given the groundwork we have already laid engaging on disclosure, and the growing investment risks surrounding sustainability, we will be increasingly disposed to vote against management and board directors when companies are not making sufficient progress on sustainability-related disclosures and the business practices and plans underlying them. https://www.blackrock.com/corporate/investor-relations/larry-fink-ceo-letter https://www.blackrock.com/corporate/investor-relations/larry... As others have said, talk is cheap, we will see how they act on their new strategic direction. Maybe they continue to be their own version of a vampire squid or giant refrigerator perpetually keeping us unchanged and frozen in the past, or maybe they will be an NGO that both offers shared ownership of capital and votes wisely for the preservation of the planet.

zdw 6y ago

One of the radical freedom bits of open source software licensing is that anyone could use it no matter how heinous their goals are. There are attempts to work around this like the JSON license "The Software shall be used for Good, not Evil.": https://json.org/license.html https://json.org/license.html A commercial company selling licenses, and therefore profiting off "bad things" is a bit less neutral, as this website shows. But what if an OSS developer accepts a patchset from a "bad guy", what then? That contributed code has value... but we're getting into the whole "how was it created", which could invite comparisons to other scientific results produced in morally questionable ways, like through animal or involuntary human testing. Ethics is hard.

baggy_trough 6y ago
Since there's no objective universal definition of good and evil, how can you rely on your ability to use code under such a license? It doesn't matter what your project is - if the licensor wants to, they can find some way to describe it as evil. So, in my opinion, those licenses are themselves unethical.

hannob 6y ago

There's a background article on Drilled news that's worth reading: https://www.drillednews.com/post/computer-aided-destruction-autodesk-coal-climate https://www.drillednews.com/post/computer-aided-destruction-...

ogre_codes 6y ago

I was reading on Autodesk's site a while ago about how they have software that can turn drone footage into 3d plots and use those plots to and estimate inventory based on the size of piles. They didn't explicitly say it was for coal, but after reading this "article/ thing" it seems like that is one of the biggest and most obvious use cases. Also, as many others have pointed out, this site is bad. I wasn't quite sure initially this link was posted to call Autodesk's policies into light or as an example of terrible web design and scroll capture gone horribly wrong.

abakker 6y ago
most of that drone related survey work is actually for things like gravel, or earth-moving processes for construction. It is also not particularly difficult or novel, and solved well by several different packages. For construction, it is often used to estimate the amount of soil fill / drainage rock, etc that is used or needed or removed during site modifications. An example would be that if you need to haul away a lot of dirt, you pay per truck. Better estimating the amount of dirt means you don't accidentally book too few or too many trucks, this saves cost both in timing - avoiding delays, and in budgeting.
- mediaman 6y ago
  Absolutely correct. Coal is such a tiny, tiny portion of the "we need to figure out how much stuff is in this pile" market. Companies need that information both to keep their books in order (what's the dollar value of our inventory of gravel?) or to know whether they have adequate or excess supply of materials for their operations (do we need to slow down our procurement of sand?). There are several companies in the market that use either drone footage or in some cases just a phone camera to estimate volumes of piles of stuff.

RcouF1uZ4gsC 6y ago

I bet Autodesk products are also used to design airplanes and cars which contribute to climate change. I bet they are also used to design plastic containers which also contribute to plastic pollution. Software is a tool. It is the responsibility of the user not the writer of the software. If we get away from that principle, we would do ourselves great harm. Do you want the word processor companies to be responsible for what people write? Do you want encryption software companies responsible for what people encrypt?

shadowgovt 6y ago
To the extent Autodesk software suite is a tool that is buy-once-and-use, that's true (sort of... they're still legally curtailed as a US company from selling directly to terrorists, etc.). To the extent Autodesk is a service, it's up to the company whether they want to provide, for example, cloud services to fossil fuel prospectors or coal mining operations.

bArray 6y ago

I don't want Autodesk to become political, they provide a tool, not a (political) ideology. I'm sure Autodesk products have been used to design bombs, weapons, great polluting machines and what not - but it has also been used for some truly inspiring stuff. Autodesk is like a hammer, it's not the hammer manufacturer's fault in how their product is used. Do we want hammers to be restricted to only those whose political ideologies align with ours? The dangerous part is, we already see essential services such as payment processors taking political stances (blacklisting customers based on their political beliefs). Autodesk's PR response is awful, to be completely honest if they were going to go down this route, they should have just remained quite. Their real mistake was to have a commitment to environmental impact. It could have been re-worded to have a green company infrastructure and to actively support green projects with tools and grants. We should all look to change ourselves before trying to change other people - lead by example and others will follow.

doctorhandshake 6y ago
This logic does not hold up. Let's say you sell hammers, and a person walks into your store and says 'I'd like one hammer please — I'm going to go bash my friend's skull in'. Would you sell it to them?
- troydavis 6y ago
  > This logic does not hold up. Let's say you sell hammers, and a person walks into your store and says 'I'd like one hammer please — I'm going to go bash my friend's skull in'. This is called a "Faulty analogy" or "False analogy": https://examples.yourdictionary.com/false-analogy-examples.html https://examples.yourdictionary.com/false-analogy-examples.h..., https://www.txstate.edu/philosophy/resources/fallacy-definitions/Faulty-Analogy.html https://www.txstate.edu/philosophy/resources/fallacy-definit... In this case, you've equated two things because they can both cause some amount of harm, but have ignored the quantity of harm, the existence and quantity of positive benefits, and the presence of stated intent.
  - onion2k 6y ago

shadowgovt 6y ago

This page appears to have a bad certificate configuration. What is the content?

bgorman 6y ago

A companies purpose is to make money for its shareholders. If the companies goal becomes anything else, decisions become extremely arbitrary. Perhaps Autodesk should stop supporting car manufacturers who produce internal combustion engines. Perhaps Autodesk should stop support modeling single-use products. Perhaps Autodesk should only support its products being used in countries with "democracy". Perhaps Autodesk should open source all of their software, otherwise Autodesk could be a front for the NSA. /s If people want actual change in the world, the correct solution is to try to shame large companies, smaller companies will just take their place. Instead work on technologies that make "unethical" practices obsolete.

phkahler 6y ago
>> A companies purpose is to make money for its shareholders. As a blanket statement that is false. The purpose is whatever the founder(s) wants. If shares are sold then agreements have to be made which may or may not involve changing the purpose.

doctorhandshake 6y ago

Autodesk (as an entity) and every other thing on this planet that relies on the ecosystem to remain more or less as it is has a responsibility to do their part to oppose climate change. It's that simple. There should be a site like this for every corporation and government that is significantly contributing to environmental degradation.

deleted 6y ago

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motohagiography 6y ago

This reeks of an astroturfing campaign by an activist fund in support of getting control of the board, as a means to strip the company of its assets and the quality of life the employees enjoy. This isn't earnest. Cui bono?

orbital-decay 6y ago
Yeah... why are they singling out a certain software development company, in the first place? Trying to shut the coal mining industry down by pressuring one of the software suppliers with an organized mob rage campaign makes no practical sense, from an environmental activist perspective.

joanielemercier 6y ago

Thanks everyone for the very interesting conversation, I made this site and am still working on this project. Another interesting read that confirms that none of the policies are actually enforced, and autodesk attempts at "sustainability" is just PR as a smoke screen. CEO is actually misleading customers, employees and investors. Feel free to ask me any question or precision.

bassman9000 6y ago

There's absolutely no indication whatsoever on - who owns this page - what's their proposal for replacing coal As such, hard pass. Yes, coal is bad. Yes, we have to replace it. But, at a minimum, be frank about who you are, and what's your end game. Otherwise we can think this is a hit piece by the competition.