I seem to recall they even had a spat on Twitter the other day, which was highly out of character for one of them.
You don't have to "be a fan of pg" in order to post on HN. That should be clear from any thread that mentions him.
On Elon Musk:
- By most measures one of the richest and most influential persons in the world
- Owner of X
- OG member of the PayPal mafia
- Spent millions on Trump's election
- Official member of the new administration
- Makes two (not one) Nazi salutes on public television
But no, discussing what this means or implies does not satisfy one's intellectual curiosity.
In this case the call is clear because the inputs to the discussion are provocative, inflammatory, and intense; and there's almost no information. Discussion will break down along partisan lines. Nobody will come to any new conclusion or persuade anyone. They'll just say things they would have said before, only more strongly. That's the kind of dynamic we hope to avoid on HN.
That said, I have to call out 'almost no information'. There are videos and photos from multiple angles of Elon making this salute, very intentionally, in a very specific way, stylistically matched both times. Seems like a heck of a lot of information is being ignored and too much graciousness is being given that would not be in any other situation. Elon has endorsed extremely right wing German nationalist party, has come as close as humanly possible to publically aligning with 'white replacement theory' as possible, interacts with nazis/white nationalists on Twitter. Be honest, you wouldn't give two recorded on video seig heil passes to anyone else as 'almost no information'. Dude. Come on. Look at the multiple angles. Confusion on this is forced confusion because people don't want to admit the reality.
This is flat out untrue. And it's a self-fulfilling prophecy if you don't allow people to collate the information there is.