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HN isn't just broadly a tech discussion site, but is largely focused on the SV/Bay Area startup culture scene that PG and YCombinator play a big role in.

The fact is, the current authoritarian political movement in the USA is being largely funded and driven by political extremists in our own community, who have become billionaires through tech, and are using their significant resources to inflict their personal fantasies on the rest of the world, without it's permission.

By all accounts, our own Peter Thiel hand selected the current vice president for his position. The very person that today claimed at a press conference that ICE agents have "absolute immunity" and are therefore presumably allowed to murder anyone they want in cold blood without any recourse or accountability. Elon Musk's involvement here needs no explanation.

Musk, Thiel, and their ilk that are often referenced by labels such as "Dark Enlightenment," "Techno Fascists," and "Neo-monarchists" are from and part of our community. Many of us were or still are engineers and business leaders that work or worked for or with them to give them the power and resources they now have. Some of us are even likely working at places like Palantir, developing government surveillance tech designed to accelerate the systematic dismantling of privacy, freedom, and democracy.

To now pretend that this has nothing to do with us and we don't talk about things like this when people are being shot in the street, and murderers are being protected by a corrupt government that was in part selected and installed by our own community is morally reprehensible. As a community, we need to take some responsibility here, and not censoring uncomfortable facts will be a good starting point.

Moreover, hacker culture is rooted in a historical ethos of freedom, anti-authoritarianism, and inclusion. If any of that ethos still persists, it goes completely at odds with the current status quo, where we refuse to talk about this issue, while members of our community continue to inflict widespread harm on the world.

I think it’s little appreciated that high CO2 levels cause cognitive impairment, and with the same amount of (often very poor) air exchange, higher outdoor concentrations can push indoor spaces to levels that cause impaired cognition and poor sleep. I’ve already been seeing this in my home, and will often open windows even when cold just to keep co2 levels reasonable. One solution that can help is an external air heat exchanger, which can exchange air with the outdoors without compromising your homes heating and cooling like an open window will do.

Noticeable cognitive impairment starts in the 700-1000ppm range, whereas it is very common for homes to reach 2000-3000ppm, especially when in a closed bedroom.

I took the article as meaning white collar tech jobs that will go away, so those people will need to pivot their career, not humans.

However, it does seem like time for humanity to collectively think hard about our values and goals, and what type of world and lives we want to have in an age where human thought, and perhaps even human physical labor are economically worthless. Unfortunately this could not come at a worse time with humanity seemingly experiencing a widespread rejection of ideals like ethics, human rights, and integrity and embracing fascism and ruthless blind financial self interest as if they were high minded ideals.

Ironically, I think tech people could learn a lot here from groups like the Amish- they have clearly decided what their values and goals are, and ruthlessly make tech serve them, instead of the other way around. Despite stereotypes, Amish are often actually heavy users of, and competent with modern tech in service of making a living, but in a way that enforces firm boundaries about not letting the tech usurp their values and chosen way of life.

American pickups are very practical for what they are designed for. Your 4 cylinder hatchback is not going to pull a 20,000lb trailer up a steep grade, or haul enough lumber to frame in a house, or a 7,000lb bed full of gravel. While there are very visible idiots in the USA that drive big trucks for aesthetic reasons, there are also plenty of farmers, contractors, etc. that need them as a practical tool to haul heavy loads. For them, it’s not an oversized car but a smaller and more economical alternative to a large commercial truck.

You need to look deeper, what is actually happening is much more egregious than what you are labeling "comic book tier villainy." Ideological purges of competent people following the law, being replaced with incompetent sycophants willing to follow illegal orders have been completed at almost every level of government. Check out this podcast on the purge of immigration judges that were still willing to hear valid asylum cases from brown skinned people, as they are required to by law: https://www.thisamericanlife.org/868/the-hand-that-rocks-the...

In the last week there were massive purges of regional ICE leadership all around the country, replacing them with more militarized border patrol people, because they have been reluctant to use excessive force. In a 60 minutes interview in the last week, Trump openly stated that he thinks ICE still isn't being violent enough. These purges are not just happening in the government- private universities and companies have been extorted, or attempted to be extorted into performing ideological purges. Take a look at the outrageous letter Trump sent Harvard, demanding that they replace half of their faculty with those in personal political ideological alignment with him, subject to external review by someone he appoints.

Yes, ICE is entering communities and just violently beating up people unprovoked- there are literally hundreds of videos of it that I have seen, on Instagram in particular- including from the ACLU. Look at what happened in Wilder Idaho, where they detained every man, women, and child at a massive public horse racing event, and shot rubber bullets, zip tied, and handcuffed children while sadistically beating their parents in front of them- long high res videos of it are all over.

People absolutely have a legal right to 'heckle' or protest government sponsored violence in their communities, and are being brutalized or detained for exercising their 1st amendment rights, by masked agents refusing to identify so they cannot be held accountable, regardless of their crimes. No, it is not unreasonable to expect federal agents tasked with enforcing immigration law to be mentally capable of reading passports or birth certificates proving citizenship- border agents do this for a million people entering the USA legally every single day.

You seem to be unaware of what is happening right now on the streets- there are thousands of videos all over social media you should spend a few hours watching. Peaceful citizens minding their own business are being terrorized and beaten by unprofessional and violent masked goons at a massive scale. The perpetrators are hiding their identities and often refusing to even look at documents proving someone is a citizen. In the detention centers people are being brutalized- left to sit for days in human shit, diabetics denied insulin, bright lights on 24/7, and food and water provided only as rewards for desires behaviors. Congress is denied their legal right and responsibility to tour the facilities, allowing them to hide human rights abuses. The cruelty and sadism of the tactics used is ratcheting up every week, and any agents that try to act lawfully are purged. Victims have no recourse- the DOJ and legal system are blocking victims from being able to even press charges, allowing these abuses to continue with no recourse.

I'm not sure about citizens being deported other than children of non-citizens together with their parents, but they are deporting huge numbers of people here legally on visas, green cards, and valid asylum claims. They revoked visas of some 6,000 college students - mostly for political "wrongthink" and then sent ICE agents after them, when it's actually legal in the USA for them to remain with a revoked student visa as long as they arrived legally, and illegal to detain or deport. They've also arrested and detained hundreds of citizens, that they absolutely knew were citizens, for peaceful protesting and video taping their illegal activities.

The context is the question of if human rights are universal or only for certain privileged groups

Absolutely insane Orwellian doublespeak... being against fascism, what our country fought for in WWII, is now "terrorism" and equal rights regardless of skin color, as guaranteed by the US constitution is now "race extremism."

It’s more complex than that- initial drafts of the declaration of independence were more explicit about literally covering all people, and even had a rant about how slavery was unethical, and they compromised by cutting these in order to get enough consensus to make it happen at all. Thomas Jefferson himself was a hypocrite- he wrote a lot about how slavery was wrong and should be ended, all the while owning slaves himself.

Anyways, I think it’s perfectly reasonable to nowadays take that philosophy and apply it universally. Just because it was done unfairly and hypocritically in the past is no excuse for us to also be hypocrites nowadays.

Per thousands of videos on social media, it doesn’t matter what your rights are anymore, if you try to ask for them ICE will just become even more sadistic and violent, and the DOJ/government will refuse to cooperate in bringing them to justice for denying you your rights- you have no rights or recourse anymore even as a citizen. Moreover, the agents are masked and refuse to self identify as the law requires so you will never be able to say who violated your rights- they are hiding their identities because they are committing crimes. They are not police that follow laws, they are state sponsored white supremacist terrorists.

It is unreasonable to pretend this movement in the USA is even remotely content with strictly enforcing current immigration law, or welcoming to legal immigrants. The foundation of the movement is based on fundamentally dehumanizing and hating immigrants- with blatantly dishonest rhetoric like “they’re eating our pets” and discussion of how to revoke 100% legal full US citizenship by widespread denaturalization under dishonest and fabricated accusations. Just yesterday there was an unconstitutional executive order with a motivated misinterpretation of the law that aims to deny citizenship to US born children.

I am an academic scientist and many of my coworkers are foreign born and all here legally with green cards or visas. These are brilliant people with PhDs developing tech that is massively stimulating the US economy. Every single one of them knows they are unwanted by this current administration and political movement and is making family preparations for forced deportation. I noticed about half of our foreign postdocs suddenly needed to “visit home” this month, and I expect many are terrified and don’t plan to return. A similar terror to what trans people are facing, as discussed here. New hires have been refusing prestigious job offers for lesser offers in other countries.

The core of the movement is driven by hatred and dehumanization of specific groups of people- any particular immigration policy is only secondary and a first step.

Focusing on the immigrant aspect alone is also not appropriate here, when they are systematically implementing the entire philosophy and systems of fascism in all other aspects as well.

Just when his work seemed like it was about to come back around and start to make sense, he would throw you for another loop that was the furthest thing from making any sense- and as a result could consistently create a set of childlike wonder, curiosity, and awe that are rarely experienced by adults nowadays.

Like a zen koan, the unexplainably of it could consistently shock the viewer back into experiencing the entire breadth of human emotion and experience that is outside of rational understanding.

David Lynch's work was mind blowingly creative and original work in a sea of boring media made by committees trying to extract a little more profit from the same few banal formulas over and over.

I'm shocked and grateful he was able to fund and produce things that were so weird and fascinating. The owls are not what they seem.

As a teenager I took an intro CS class at a community college, and the instructor had us design a simple cpu instruction set, and write our own VM and assembler that worked and let me write and run assembly programs. It was shockingly easy, and it was amazing how much is demystified computers for me.

I feel like one could learn every level of computing this way- from designing a real cpu for a FPGA, to writing a simple OS and programs that run on it. This stuff is all shockingly simple if you just want it to work and don’t need all of the extra performance and security modern computing needs.

TSA will punish you for opting out of anything. If you're lucky, the least they will do is hold you up a long time so you have a good chance of missing your flight. I've also had them sexually harass me, and confiscate (e.g. steal) legal items in retaliation for opting out of things I had the legal right to opt out of. They know people are in a hurry and won't do anything about being treated unethically or illegally, because calling them out would require missing your flight.

When I opted out of the scanner once, I had to wait about 20 minutes, and then the TSA agent comes over to do a "pat down" instead, but is going inappropriately slow and squeezing my body, and saying things like "I'd bet you opted out because you like this." I regret not immediately calling them out and filing charges.

Farmers are - and have been for most of history - some of the Most technical people on the planet… probably more so then your modern “hacker” that probably couldn’t actually disassemble and repair most of the things they own and use.

I spent a summer working on a 3rd generation family farm, and it was one of the most technically competent workplaces I’ve ever seen. The owner had a degree in agricultural engineering, and dozens of patents from farming equipment he initially invented for his own use. Much of the equipment they used day to day was designed and built on site and they had a full machine shop, electrical shop, etc. Modern equipment like combines are so complex, automation heavy, and unreliable that they are usually operated by master mechanics that also weld, code, and are otherwise primarily technical people. When those multi-million dollar machines break- which happens daily- they are losing money fast and need to fix it immediately, right there in the field.

The idea of farmers as uneducated non-technical people is an ignorant stereotype held by urban people that have no clue what farms are really like.

Controlling invasive species is not just some sentimental thing about preserving the purity of nature. Invasive species can massively destabilize an ecosystem- wiping out huge numbers of other species, and destroying natural resources humans depend on for economic livelihood. It is hard to predict the severity of the end point, so best to head it off as aggressively and early as possible.

Why are so many mission critical hardware connected systems connected to the internet at all or getting automatic updates?

This is just basic IT common sense. You only do updates during a planned outage, after doing an easily reversible backup, or you have two redundant systems in rotation and update and test the spare first. Critical systems connected to things like medical equipment should have no internet connectivity, and need no security updates.

I follow all of this in my own home so a bad update doesn’t ruin my work day… how do big companies with professional IT not know this stuff?