
Autodesk and coal mining - wcerfgba
https://autodesk.earth/
======
bArray
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.

~~~
onion2k
_We should all look to change ourselves before trying to change other people -
lead by example and others will follow._

This is an epic false equivalence that tries to suggest everyone has an equal
impact and an equal voice. That's obvious nonsense. People who are good asking
people who are bad to stop what they're doing is quite reasonable, especially
on an objectively measurable topic like the environmental impact of mining.

Honestly, the suggestion that _software_ shouldn't be treated as a political
issue is something I never thought I'd see being argued in a relatively
intelligent and enlightened community like HN. Software runs the world. It's
_obviously_ political. From governments embargo'ing the sale of strong
encryption to companies EULA'ing their products to stop them from being used
to design nuclear weapons how could you _possibly_ imagine software as "just a
tool"? Of course it isn't.

~~~
PeterisP
There's the big gap between what's done and what should be done. As you say,
software has been politicized, "From governments embargo'ing the sale of
strong encryption to companies EULA'ing their products to stop them from being
used to design nuclear weapons" it's not being treated as a tool but it
_should be_ , these restrictions that you mention are nonsensical and should
stop.

If someone really, really wants to treat their software as political and
restrict how their software can be used, that's their right, I don't like it
but that's permissible - however, if someone (like Autodesk in this example)
wants to treat their software as an apolitical tool that's free to use for any
purpose, good or bad, by all people, good or bad, then that is also their
right, absolutely morally permissible and to my mind morally _preferrable_ to
trying to politicize the tool and trying to limit its use.

------
mediaman
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.

~~~
wcerfgba
Systemic change is an emergent property at the level above individual actions.
If Autodesk chose not to supply a mining company, sure the mining company
could go and find another software supplier. However, if multiple companies
refuse to sell software to the mining company, then it becomes much harder for
the mining company to acquire software and do their business. This would be an
example of systemic change at the market level.

------
abakker
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
> 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
Calling for a tool manufacturer to be responsible for how a tool is used is
absurd.

~~~
shadowgovt
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.

~~~
driverdan
How is it fuzzier? If someone stores illegal content on Google Drive should
Google be prosecuted? Of course not. And in this case we're not even talking
about something that's illegal.

~~~
shadowgovt
It's not whether they should be prosecuted, it's about what their ethical /
moral stance is on the topic. Some people think cloud services should be like
fire or water; available to everyone agnostic of what they choose to do with
it. But that's a moral stance, and one reasonable people can have disagreement
over. Google employees, for example, pushed company leadership on weather they
were comfortable with the notion the company would provide machine learning
services to the US military for target identification purposes in drone video.

Software as a service gives technology companies incredible power, and it is
possible that in a world of potential existential risk to humanity, it is
power they should leverage. Possible. I have no idea if it is a good idea.

------
gruez
> \- 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/blackr...](https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2020-01-14/blackrock-
has-green-plans)

~~~
pydry
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.

~~~
b1ur
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.

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

------
013a
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.

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

------
RcouF1uZ4gsC
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
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.

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

~~~
brutusborn
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
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.

------
ogre_codes
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
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
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.

------
rgovostes
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/)

------
pphysch
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
As long as the facts are true, it really doesn't make a difference (morally).

~~~
pphysch
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
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
> 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.

~~~
hobofan
I for one would welcome that. Companies that _actually_ act sustainable
gaining headway over companies that don't sounds like a win-win to me.

> 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.

If they are only claiming to support the movement, and don't act according to
it (like Autodesk does), that's what damages the movement. I don't see how a
company that acts exactly like the movement wants to is damaging it.

------
zdw
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
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.

------
bassman9000
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.

------
motohagiography
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
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
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.

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

------
judge2020
Autodesk trademark UDRP dispute incoming.

~~~
gruez
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
FWIW, I definitely thought that domain name was going to be advertising a new
Autodesk mapping product.

------
jijji
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.

~~~
Apocryphon
[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-
au...](https://gizmodo.com/how-google-microsoft-and-big-tech-are-automating-
the-1832790799)

------
doctorhandshake
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.

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

------
bgorman
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
>> 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.

