Inconel

Also, why the need to make up a false story to make China look bad? There are plenty real issues that make China look bad. Before I get accused of some anti-China bias, the same could be said of the US. If I wanted to make the US look bad I'd focus on any myriad of foreign policy or domestic concerns that show it's failings before I concocted a story that would soon be discovered to be a fabrication.

I don’t want to get too specific in my role but I was able to go from a very entry level position at SpaceX, let’s say something along the lines of kitchen/cafeteria/janitorial/facilities staff, to a much more technical position working on actual launch vehicle hardware. I know I’m not the only one that’s moved up from those positions into our technician roles. It actually happens somewhat regularly. I can’t imagine this being the case if all of our lower level positions were outsourced to contractors.

Isn't it fairly standard practice to separate children from their guardians when they are detained by law enforcement? We can of course have a discussion about whether this is warranted or not, I'm of the opinion that it isn't in the case of non violent offenses, but I would assume it happens fairly regularly to white people who are accused of breaking the law.

With regards to police violence, it definitely does disproportionately affect minorities, and in particular black men, but I feel in general the government is pretty good at turning a blind eye to police brutality and prosecutorial overreach even when it affects whites.

Based on my direct experiences with racism and discrimination due to my skin tone and national origin, I'd find it fairly insulting for you or any other poster here to lecture me on what racism is and how it affects people. I like to think I have a pretty good understanding of it, and not just from academic studies, but from my own experiences. For the record the tweets I've read from Sarah Jeong seem wholly unacceptable to me, and quite racist.

Edit: If we're going to use the logic that religious views should be protected due to their inherent "stickiness" relating to family and culture, and other aspects out of one's immediate control, I'm not convinced that other ideological views are any less "sticky" and thus not equally worthy of protection.

I've looked through your profile and you always seem to provide good explanations so I'd love to hear your thoughts. I hope you can believe me that this is a question asked in good faith.

Additionally, even if you did want to recreate a Saturn V, the designs themselves aren't going to get you very far. Most of the tooling has been lost likely along with much of the institutional know how, especially on the technician side of things. I'd be very surprised if you could recreate a functioning Saturn V for a lower cost than designing an entirely new launch system.

Also, and this was particularly true when we where in much more cramped quarters on the production side, I would run in Musk on occasion in my area and he knew way more about the intricacies of my work, and the equipment I was using, or complaining about, than I would have assumed considering all the things he's responsible for.

Also, maybe someone with more vacuum experience can chime in but what's the preferred material choice for an upright vacuum? Plastic seems pretty perfect to me in that it has good impact resistance and probably won't scratch or damage furniture/walls too much. I know aluminum is quite the rage in the consumer electronics world but I doubt that would make a good choice. I bet carbon fiber would be nice although the price would increase a few hundred percent.

I guess the only thing I still take issue with is the notion that so much can be inferred not just from which topics people comment on but which ones they don't. Especially if that inference comes with the tacit accusation of Nazism.

Again, going by my own experience, I tend to be pretty limited in the topics I comment on. There are a couple of reasons for this. First, I don't have a ton of time to browse HN so the most likely topics for me are those that are on the front page long enough for me to see. Second, I'm no where near knowledgeable enough to comment substantively on the more technical topics, which leaves me with the more social/political ones. At the same time I don't want to get into the habit of commenting extensively and only on those topics since I don't think that's good for the community. Thirdly, if I'm being honest here, my lack of education and poor writing ability is a constant source of embarrassment, I try very hard to formulate my ideas into coherent comments and I suspect it takes me much longer to do this than it does for the average HN user. I try not to make quick low effort comments, but the alternative requires a pretty serious time commitment on my part.

The main point I'm attempting to illustrate here, possibly quite poorly, is that I already feel I have to be very careful in my commenting. This isn't a bad thing, it's arguably what makes HN's comment section so much better than anywhere else I've found, but after your comments I now also feel like in addition to making sure my comments aren't too political, or that I'm not only commenting on political topics, and that my arguments are actually coherent, again all good things to think about when engaging with a community, I now also have to think whether someone might mistake me for a Nazi because I commented on one topic and not on another.

This of course is by any measure a pretty meaningless hardship, there are much bigger worries in life, and while I don't think I add much to the HN community, I think we should be extra careful when accusing others of being Nazis. It carries a fairly heavy social penalty, in most places at least, and rightfully so, and can make people more hesitant to speak. I'm not saying this is something you've done, in fact I usually recognize your username and you definitely aren't guilty of this, but I've seen quite a few comments over the last few weeks implying that anyone standing up for certain free speech rights, and in this case I'm specifically referring to government action regarding speech not corporate action, is siding with Nazis.

Sorry if this comment is somewhat rambling.

With regards to the algolia link about the "Google diversity memo" that was actually really interesting to me for two reasons. First, I too am somewhat surprised at the number of upvotes some of those articles received, to be honest some of them seem really poorly reasoned irrespective of how one might feel about the whole issue, and secondly, because despite visiting HN daily, and usually checking in a couple of times a day, I can't remember seeing many of those articles. Is there any way to tell how long they remained on the front page?

I don't want to imply that programmers sit in front of their computers all day and slack off browsing HN, but it wouldn't surprise me if many people who are in front of a computer do check in quite often. In my case, I usually only check in during the morning while I eat breakfast, and at night before I go to bed. I don't have access to the internet at work, occasionally I'll browse on my phone during lunch. And I usually only go through the first 50 or so submissions. From my experience, the type of articles that stay on the from page long enough for me to see them, read the article, read the comments, and formulate a coherent response, are either articles that are super interesting to the community or somewhat controversial, since these get the most votes. This obviously biases the kind of articles I usually comment on. I only bring this up to express that their may be a pattern in my commenting that would suggest I'm trying to push a very specific agenda, I hope this isn't the case, but that this might actually be greatly influenced by the kind of content I'm exposed to based on it's position on the front page.

You make a very good point with regards to the difference in treatment between some of the people you list. I've noticed myself falling into that trap personally, and I think it was partially due to none of those people being particularly sympathetic in my eyes. This made it much more difficult to spot any bias that may be occurring in the comments.

Again, personally I tend to fall on the side of the government having less ability to restrict speech but it doesn't really bother me if companies want to restrict the kind of speech their employees can engage in at work, or what kind of speech they'll allow on their platforms. This gets trickier in cases where the companies might have businesses that approach what I would consider a utility, but that's a different topic, and really that has more to do with regulating companies as utilities.

I'm not positive in this, but I do suspect that if stories like the one you linked found themselves on the front page for hours at a time, perhaps if some Googlers tried to unionize and they were all fired, we would probably see quite a few people be defensive of their right to speech. I doubt we would see a complete overlap, but it wouldn't surprise me at all if we would see some overlap in the posters defending their speech rights with those defending the speech rights of neo-Nazis. I suspect we might also see some posters who think all Nazi speech should be outlawed but think this kind of unionization related speech should be protected.

You're of course correct that these topics do tend to bring out the trolls, but on a site like HN I tend to find it relatively easy to identify trolls, even if not through a specific post they make, a quick glance through their posting history often reveals whether they are engaging with the community in good faith.

I'm sorry but I'm really having a hard time understanding your reasoning here. Are you really suggesting that the majority of people on HN who are defending the right to free speech of the neo-Nazis we saw in Charlottesville are doing so because they actually agree with the message those neo-Nazis and white supremacists are spewing? If this is what you believe, then please just come out and say that anyone defending this type of speech is in fact a neo-Nazi. You talk about mechanisms that undermine an honest debate but in the very next sentence you essentially argue that anyone in support(I'm adding an edit here to clarify: I mean support for the right to this kind of speech, not support for it's actual content) of this kind of objectionable speech is a Nazi in disguise. That certainly seems like undermining the debate to me. I don't like this kind of character assassination in disguise. Either be willing to call people out as Nazis and white supremacists, and back up your assertions, or give them the courtesy that they might be taking a stand in defense of a principle they actually believe in regarding speech, even in cases where they disagree with contents of said speech.

I personally don't believe a reasonable person can be a neo-Nazi and thus I have very little interest in arguing or engaging with these types of people. When it comes to free speech I tend to fall on the side of having fewer restrictions on speech, although even here my views aren't really set in stone and do change on occasion. With that being said, unlike my views on Nazism, I do think reasonable people can disagree on the issues of where to draw the line on speech. Again, while I personally fall into the less restrictions camp, I don't think its unreasonable for someone to want restrictions on certain types of speech and thus I don't automatically assume those arguing for these restrictions are authoritarians in disguise. If you think this makes me a neo-Nazi I would prefer you just come out and say it, this is of course in the interest of "honest debate".

Edited for spelling and grammar.

I'd also add that your response was far more nuanced than the poster I was originally responding to, which is why I was asking for clarification in the first place.

Slightly tangential, but what's the generally accepted definition of "techbros"? I see the term used quite often but never really understand who exactly it applies to, it just seems like a nonspecific putdown. I don't work in SV though so I could just be out of the loop.

Edit: To clarify, I understand that you were referencing their hate crimes database and that I brought up their list of people they label as extremists, and while the two things aren't the same, my point was to highlight that not everyone sees the SPLC as infallible.