InnovateFPGA: Wrong Strategy Drives One of the Best FPGA Dev Contests to Crisis
cacm.acm.org
cacm.acm.org
> It can be said that there were no Russian projects this year, but I was very unpleasantly surprised by the negligence of the moderators who allowed several projects from Ukraine to use the contest platform for unworthy political statements and posting spam links to resources unrelated to the contest.
But then I considered that maybe it is best when a writer is candid about things that potentially bias their assessments, or could be perceived to. Maybe better than reading an assessment of X, and it later turns out that the writer had an undisclosed conflict of interest, or entirely separate reason for being upset about X.
(BTW, I don't know the exact nature of the "political statements" from Ukraine, but I suspect I'd find it hard to blame someone whose country is being invaded, for calling out for help however they can. And I could imagine moderators being hesitant to censor some things. I think most all of us want peace and prosperity for everyone, and have especial empathy in some situations.)
Author shows astounding lack of empathy to the people being killed just for being of different nationality than the author. Naturally author also doesn't understand that other people do have such an empathy.
I really can't identify any specific point in time when most of the Russians have become the Russian Nazists like that author. They openly support and celebrate destruction of Ukraine and genocide and ethnic cleansing of Ukrainians, and they do it based on their perception of themselves as "master nation". In many respects it is like Germany back then - the 192x chaos resulting from the lost war and empire crash gradually transformed into full blown nazism by 1939 and the same way the chaos of 199x in Russia (i left in 2000) resulting from the lost war (Afghanistan and Cold War) and empire crash gradually transformed into full blown nazism by 2022. Even the Reichstag fire which gave Hitler such a power has exact historic parallel - FSB blowing up civilian apartment buildings across Russia in September 1999 which brought Putin into such a power.
But as all Russian parallels, it is really farce, because those parliament was mostly communist and Nazi.
And to be strict, because of this confrontation in Russian power, they have not invade Ukraine before 2014 - was too engaged on their internal problems.
that one is different. The Reichstag fire was a terrorist like event. The 1993 Russia parliament shooting was an open confrontation between different political forces which controlled different government branches.
> because of this confrontation in Russian power, they have not invade Ukraine before 2014 - was too engaged on their internal problems.
not really. Russia didn't invaded Ukraine until 2014 because it had absolutely no enough power to do it. Any noticeable political confrontation that you point too ended by the early 200x. The economy was in pretty weak state until about 2008. Russia was flexing its muscles gradually - Chechnya, later Georgia and only after that it felt capable of attacking Ukraine. For example Russian forces even in 2008 were in pretty bad shape, and the campaign would have probably been a disaster if Georgia army was in any reasonable shape.
I'm not sure about such difference. As I remember, nsdap got few places in Reichstag, so it was legal political force, even considering it's littleness.
And from experience of young democracies, there deputy usually have immunity.
Fire-raising could being considered as just light offense, or even accident, not crime.
BTW, command military to shoot on parliament is 100% terrorism, if not exists real threat for which need so much power.
These things are easy seen from experience living under invasion. But I could suggest easy duck test for terrorism - it is crime, with political demand, nothing less.
Crime appear, when clearly seen violence or murder, or large quantities of illegal drugs or other illegal substances (it depends on country and on exact drug, but approx, 10grams of heroine is crime, and 0.1g is not).
Returning to Reichstag, after elections, there was three win parties - two communists and nsdap.
Knowing communists, I don't think, they could prove violence, or fabricate other signs of crime, and other subjects was not interested in declare deputies crime, and conduct all need bureaucracy procedures, so we have light offense at most.
Your data is outdated for about 90 days, on some things for more than 15 years.
- Before February 24, we also think, that Russian army is second in world, etc.
But now we have 100% reliable info from real war, that Russian army is in reality soviet army from 1960th, they have only few dozens prototypes of modern weapons, so this is not making much difference.
And Russian army is extremely incompetent and demotivated.
In reality, they accounted to behavior seen in Ukraine in early 1990s and partially in 2014 - all Ukrainian military just surrendered that time, because was order to surrender from president and top officers.
Also in Ukraine exists very strong collaboration forces - daughter of Russian Orthodox church and communists party (after 2014 their deputies created few new parties, rebranded to not associate with prohibited communists symbols).
For Russia circumstances was excellent in 1990th, but after 2004 each day they become weaker and Ukrainians become stronger. For example, before 2005, communists every year conduct processions in Kiev, but on 2005 they said, they have too few people (for street fights vs nationalists).
For Ukrainian army, after 2014 it becomes extremely motivated and incorporate best modern practices - use drones for intelligence, and use starlink for communications, and use tablets with special software for control - for organization level this much superior to NATO and is like US army in late 1990th.
Only problem still unresolved, that Russia have ~5 times more quantities of armored vehicles, artillery and air units; and Russia have large number of military ships and even submarines, but Ukraine have nearly zero size navy.
Georgia is tiny country, approx TEN TIMES smaller than Ukraine, so it is miracle they have even moderate success in resistance.
1. Clearly, he's upset about inappropriate treatment of Ukrainian citizens. (Fine - so am I.)
2. He's also upset at being forced to use Azure IoT frameworks when most FPGA applications don't need (or can't use) them.
For some reason, he's chosen to bury (1) until the end of the post, and amplified (2) to compensate. However, (2) may be completely moot: the current InnovateFPGA rules have an "OR" where he claims an "AND". The rules state:
"Solution submission must use content platforms including Analog Devices plug-in boards, Azure IoT Central *OR* Azure IoT Hub"
"Also, among the requirements there was: 'Contestants will utilize the Terasic DE10-Nano FPGA Cloud Connectivity Kit, with Analog Devices plug-in cards, *AND* connected to the cloud using selected Microsoft Azure Cloud Services.'"
The whole post seems to rest on pretty shaky territory, and I wouldn't be surprised to see it disappear. After all, if InnovateFPGA is the wrong venue for "ugly political antics", how is blog@CACM any better?
Welcome to corporate advertising.
But.. why not step up to the stage and organize, or volunteer to organize, this competition yourself? You seem to really enjoy the engineering space around it and clearly have opinions on where it should go.
Watching your most-liked competition going down the drain and just.. standing by? Maybe you don't have enough time/energy/bandwidth, but come to think of it.. the current organizers probably don't have it either.
All the best with winning. And organizing. We need people like you to keep fun projects like these going!
(PS: I am not involved in any way with iFPGA)
Maybe get a sponsor, Microsoft for example, oh wait.
And for them really interest app for FPGA are radars, or something for weapons, all others are not considered value. With very cheap FPGA, radar algorithms are not viable.
Because he is Russian. They all coursed by post soviet illness "initiative is punishable".
Ukrainian are also suffered by these things, but Ukraine from 2004 slowly building self-government system and real civil society, with people rights, like USA.
To be honest, not all Russians are same, but from 2000 works artificial selection - all active, initiative persons flee from Russia, and stay only passive, cautious, who accepted to live under totalitarian junta government.
- Russians centuries raised as Nazi, in belief that they are superior nation, who control largest territory in the world and interfere behavior of British empire.
They even invent theory, that they are Great Russians, but Ukrainians are little Russians (for other nations also created such pseudo-scientific namings and narratives), and they use this theory as grounding to demand obedience from other neighborhood nations.