It's pretty depressing that on a corner of the internet that's supposed to be a gathering of tech/geeks/nerds/stem people, discussing topics that "good hackers would find interesting", it's seemingly impossible to have a single thread about something like this that isn't almost entirely negative or political bickering.
It’s unfortunate, but if you’re blaming the people in the thread for this, I think you’re directing your energy in the wrong direction. Focus on the people who foment and benefit from this division and distraction instead. If you want people to appreciate the bigger picture, you can’t keep forcing them to live on a shorter and shorter term outlook. The HN that you’re presumably nostalgic for existed in a time when there was a lot more fat on the bone, and every efficiency hadn’t been extracted for nebulous benefit to the average person.
Is there really less "fat on the bone" though? What metric are you tracking for that and what are the historical norms?
"forcing them to live on a shorter and shorter term outlook" -> social media?
Rather than assigning blame I think it's fair to ask the people here to behave. Maybe it's not their fault they spend their day doom scrolling and have the attention span of a cat but they do have agency to change that. [EDIT: This is an attempt at humor]
Isn't "Focus on the people who foment and benefit from this division" asking for politics? The way we get at "those people" (and let's not even argue about who they are) is to regulate ourselves (or for the moderators to do that) and have a more substantive and positive discussion regardless of our perceptions.
> Is there really less "fat on the bone" though? What metric are you tracking for that and what are the historical norms?
It’s just my experience over the last 15 years. If it doesn’t align with yours, that’s nice to know.
> "forcing them to live on a shorter and shorter term outlook" -> social media?
Sure, but it could be lots of other things like 24hr news or the emergence of the gig economy.
> Isn't "Focus on the people who foment and benefit from this division" asking for politics?
No it’s not, it’s asking for agency, personal accountability and self-awareness, as you yourself allude to. If that means politics for you, that’s up to you. I don’t imply to “get at” anyone, but to do best by ourselves instead of doing best by those who benefit from dividing or distracting us.
> It’s just my experience over the last 15 years. If it doesn’t align with yours, that’s nice to know.
I know it's the narrative that times are bad. But me, my coworkers, my neighbors, my local mall, etc. all seem to be doing really great. And look, moon mission! I would think that there are a lot of people in tech who are doing better than ever. We've also seen layoffs and I know it's hard for people to find a job. This is why I'm asking for metrics because I don't think it's actually as clear as the narrative that this is the worse over 15 years. The pandemic was pretty bad? We had the financial crisis? Gas prices were a lot higher in 2021 ... I guess as they say perception is 99% of reality ...
How often do you find yourself wondering how you'll be able to pay rent and your car payment during the month? What happens if you need to get dental work? Does that shift your calculus for expenses day to day? Not it in 2021 or whatever, but like this past week?
I've had a long career in tech and so for me and I assume people like me these are not concerns. I'm not doubting what you describe is the experience for many people.
I'm not American but I work with many Americans who are doing really well (also long careers in tech).
I'm old and I own my house but when I was younger I never leased a car, I always bought used cars that I could afford. So the question of making a car payment wasn't there. I always saved and compared prices in good times and bad times. I rented a cheap enough place to have enough safety margin.
Anyways, being a software engineer through the golden era of software engineering is not your typical person experience.
I still think we need to be more data driven in how we evaluate the state of the economy. The parent was suggesting it's the economic difficulties faced by people on this forum (presumably many in tech) that lead to shallow and political discussion and it's hard for me to gauge that.
tl;dr depending on old you are the bootstraps >>
"when I was younger I never leased a car, I always bought used cars that I could afford. So the question of making a car payment wasn't there. I always saved and compared prices in good times and bad times. I rented a cheap enough place to have enough safety margin."
were still there. They've been notably missing/further and further out of reach depending on where you started these past 15 years. I would argue actually closer to 20.
I’ve been there. I have friends who have been there in the last month. None of them reacted by projecting onto space exploration or science. It’s absolutely a choice as to what one channels one’s frustrations onto.
As I was typing my reply I did pause to think about whether I am being part of the problem. I still decided to reply. My excuse is that I'm not the one who brought politics into this and I feel ok pushing back against that once others do.
> First, are you not doing just that - blaming the people here for making you unhappy?
I don't think so?
> Second, you're welcome to demand this, but they/we are just as welcome to tell you to piss off.
If the majority of people around here just want to argue politics non-stop and turn everything into that there's little I can do.
I use https://hackersmacker.org to mark them with a red dot so I can skip those comments. It's like slashdot's friend/foe system (including social aspect). There are also plugins that allow blocking and filtering users.
I'm, personally, here to interact with people interested in tech. I feel no shame in curating my experience to fit that. If I wanted to be saturated in politics, I would make a Reddit account.
> if you’re blaming the people in the thread for this, I think you’re directing your energy in the wrong direction
Much of the current environment is driven by the SF Bay Tech Elite/Culture.
Peter Thiel funded and enabled Curtis Yarvin, whose work was the backbone of the modern alt right, project 2025, etc. Plenty of tech VCs/elite are investing huge amounts in fighting effective government, pushing models of city states immune from regulation, policing the discourse, and more. Musk gets more press coverage than most but tons of folks who are either on HN, are connected to startups talked about here, etc. are primary forces driving what America has become.
Choosing one (deliberately ambiguous) line to label the comment “entirely political” is the kind of thinking that explains why tribalism has been so effective.
"Focus on the people who foment and benefit from this division and distraction"
is a political statement. It says: "don't talk about the actual issue, instead let's go after the enemies, we know who they are." It doesn't say "let's find them", it assumes we know who they are.
Division and distraction are the actual issue though. And I didn’t say you have to go after anyone, only be mindful of them (see my reply to another comment). I left plenty of room in my words to project your own approach, because I care about the outcome, not how people should achieve it in their own particular world. If in your world that means “politics” you do you.
I would be more depressed if, looking at the current political landscape this corner decided to be entirely alienated or oblivious to the environment in which this massive achievement is made.
Nixon wasn't in office yet, but he did have his campaign manager got to Vietnam and promise the VietCong a better deal if they walked away from negotiations, which lead to FIVE more years of war and countless lives lost for nothing other than a point to talk about on his soap box
The difference seems to be that Nixon may have been crooked, but he was largely competent. He operated on experience, expertise, and causal reality. Our current political situation is largely free of facts, knowledge, or causality. Much of the corruption that happens today is in plain sight and basically ignored. The goal is governance through depoliticization and post-truth infotainment.
Note that Nixon was actually impeached by his own party and would have been removed for what would now be a single day of news cycle, only on a few networks/papers, and completely ignored by a major political party.
Nixon was on track to be impeached, convicted, and thrown in jail. The people were demanding it. His resignation was basically a "you can't fire me, I quit!" moment. Ford's pardon of Nixon was and remains controversial.
I think the tech world is fundamentally difference, though I'm not old enough to experience it in '69. I don't believe we had tech moguls who built enormous wealth and realized they could by the influence they couldn't muster with social influence, and that has made the world net-worse.
What’s the point of focusing on one aspect of the world?
Taken as a whole, the 60’s were far more intense and violent. The Vietnam War. The draft. The Cuban Missile Crisis. Racial inequality and protests. Several major assassinations. Nixon in the White House. And that’s just the US.
The world is net-better even if certain areas still need improvement. But there’s really no point to hyperfocusing on just the things that are worse.
I don't believe we had tech moguls who built enormous wealth and realized they could by the influence
Didn't this just describe the robber barons of the Gilded Age? Moguls and oligarchs of the day, yes. Amassed their fortunes on the emerging frontier technology of the time, I'd say so. Wielded enormous power over political discourse and essentially owned the law makers of the day. Rhymes, for sure.
It doesn't really matter whether you live in a democracy if the the very issues that are even allowed to be voted on are decided by an elite, wealthy and politically connected group.
I don't think is a fair question because the expectations are wildly different. The 80s and 90s transition gave us expectations of policy, peace and progress that were very different than the 60s.
69 had two things going on for it, the war was not news and on its first signs of being scalled back, Nixon had announced a retraction of force for September (but ended up extending the whole thing to 75) and this would be the first moon landing, there was nothing like it.
From 1969 to today, we're waaaaay better. But from 6 months ago there is clearly an elephant in the room taking a lot of attention.
The top comments complaining about other comments complaining about stuff really shows how negative internet discourse is hard to avoid. I don't think these comments are bad (meta-discussion is a good thing in general) but they also seems to embody that same negativity.
This comment also isn't positive and the cycle continues. I agree that people are often too negative and this is a good example of how that negativity is contagious.
I don’t think the criticisms on HN are related to Artemis’ imperfect concept and technical design.
They’re almost exclusively related to political reasons. “There are problems in the world, therefore I can’t enjoy this” is flawed reasoning and isn’t even something that they apply to any other interest. It’s just special pleading.
> I'd love to read your family member(s) criticisms; anywhere to do so? The perspective of a former NASA employee could be fascinating.
Personal emails? These aren't the kind of people to blog.
If you want a brief summary they, like many, feel this whole thing is a farce due to how the project has be designed and spec'd. I think smarter every day did a wonderful youtube video comparing what kind of documentation and planning they had for the past launches, and how it sure as shit doesn't look like they're anywhere near that right now (he's much nicer about it). NASA is doing their best, but the simple truth is the actual "landing" plan feels like it vomited out by a bunch a suits who don't understand reality and wanted headlines.
A decent anecdote from the discussion that summarizes feelings:
One of them got to spend a week in Cape Kennedy due to winning an Essay contest and met Frank Borman. To quote him
> The topic of the essay was, What is man's future in space?
> I believe that, had I written, 55 years from now we will beat the Chinese to the Moon, I would not have won.
There's just so little science here though, to expect the audience on HN to get excited about redoing something 65 years later for the purpose of political grand-standing and nationalism while the world literally burns and so many are hurting... I'd be more upset if a bunch of insulated tech nerds obliviously continued to along their easy trajectories without a though of everyone else. We may not be the 1% but we're definitely the 5%
Opportunistically venturing out of Africa is one thing. Sending a couple people around a distant and desolate rock, while the homeworld burns due to unforced errors, is another.
Alternatively, if we don't become a multi-planetary species, we will be exterminated by a meteor. There's enough excess to do a bit of species saving multi-tasking.
For an alternate perspective, the development for this (which includes future launches) was only 80% the cost of ~500 miles of railway in California! [1]
> when we cannot sustain ourselves on the rock we evolved on.
The population is as big as it has ever been, and growing. Hunger index is steady [1], with low scores concentrated in the usual failed African states. We are sustaining ourselves just fine, by all metrics.
There are future problems, but there are also future solutions. A surprise meteor from the blackness of space has no solution. Both are bad. Multiple efforts for multiple problems can take place at once. One does not negate or even influence the other. Corruption in our government it's a much bigger money sink, and risk to our future, than a moon mission.
It is possible but you have to cultivate it. There is no mechanism here that automates it, so it’s up to each author’s sentiment to shape the outcome as they see fit.
Submit threads that are apolitical and guide conversations to be positive.
I think it would have been much better, if the nation that launched that mission did not in the same time start a war... I personally simply cannot separate these two things.
These people existed in the Apollo era just not on a website. We weren't exactly living in a utopia then either and you'd have difficulty convincing some folks to be excited about space exploration then too.
Some people feel their outlook on the world takes precedence. And they'll shit in other people's celebrations to get their point across. Best to downvote or ignore them and embrace what nuance you can find.
This is never the problem with people talking this stuff. People don't naturally obsess about these things. It indicates that there are political problems.
I like how most people's reactions at this point are "yeah, whatever", as if it's every day that humans observe the far side of the moon with a naked eye through a window :). We do know what it looks like and we have photos from the surface, yes, but seeing the reaction from real people who're actually there does hit different, at least for me
I just need to say it's an extremely huge bummer how much cynicism and negativity there is about this mission. Is it perfect? No, of course not. Neither was Apollo.
We are all painfully aware of the things that make it imperfect.
Am I losing it? They can’t be seeing the far side of the moon right now, because they haven’t adjusted course to go round the far side of the moon yet…
So does this suggest the BBC is wrong and it’s the side of the moon we’re used to seeing, but just it’s “dark”?
But then the astronauts are saying it’s weird seeing the moon in a whole new light (excuse the paraphrasing pun).
It's interesting to me how cautious NASA is being with Artemis II. I wrote about the risk / mortality calculation behind this, but everything from the trajectory, the decision not to do an orbital insertion, the checkout in high-Earth orbit is very cautious.
I wish this mission took greater risks. Or, just at least go as far as Apollo 8, but stay for a bit longer, and try out new things. It would be fun to take a finicky low mass radio telescope experiment to the far side of the moon.
Just some humans doing proper awesome human stuff and being good people advancing international brotherhood and scientific advancement.
Love seeing our Ontario native Jeremy Hansen on the microphone, and those two flags properly positioned beside each other.
I'm not a Christian today, but was raised that way. This is the hopeful message I want to see on this day, and the true meaning of the symbol. Hope for all humankind. Working together.
Anybody know if the O2O laser uplink / downlink is working? From what I understand its sort of a test and not guaranteed (depends also on weather near the ground stations).
how are they broadcasting in what seems like near real-time? i don't have a whole lot of understanding on the topic, but if they're seeing the dark side of the moon then i assume they don't have line of sight to Earth. it makes me feel pretty rotten about some SQL queries i have knocking about.
So they let them just wear hoodies in space now? Or are these fancypants space hoodies that cost a quarter mil and weigh a couple grams less? Or does that level of weight reduction not matter because the rocket is nowhere near maxed out?
I'm going to be VERY disappointed if there's no Pink Floyd music or commentary from the Artemis mission. Particularly now. Life's short, and one can't be serious all the time...
Wallis and Gromit would be a partial substitute, but the boomers are still around.
Incredible achievement but I'll be honest — if you showed me this photo without context I would have no idea it was the far side. Just looks like the Moon. Also didn't realize we could capture an image like this in what I assumed was total darkness.
On one of Apollo missions they've read from Bible, Book of Genesis [1]. I wish they did something like that here - and I'm not even a Christian, let alone religious. They did relay some beautiful message [2] though.
433 comments
"forcing them to live on a shorter and shorter term outlook" -> social media?
Rather than assigning blame I think it's fair to ask the people here to behave. Maybe it's not their fault they spend their day doom scrolling and have the attention span of a cat but they do have agency to change that. [EDIT: This is an attempt at humor]
Isn't "Focus on the people who foment and benefit from this division" asking for politics? The way we get at "those people" (and let's not even argue about who they are) is to regulate ourselves (or for the moderators to do that) and have a more substantive and positive discussion regardless of our perceptions.
> Is there really less "fat on the bone" though? What metric are you tracking for that and what are the historical norms?
It’s just my experience over the last 15 years. If it doesn’t align with yours, that’s nice to know.
> "forcing them to live on a shorter and shorter term outlook" -> social media?
Sure, but it could be lots of other things like 24hr news or the emergence of the gig economy.
> Isn't "Focus on the people who foment and benefit from this division" asking for politics?
No it’s not, it’s asking for agency, personal accountability and self-awareness, as you yourself allude to. If that means politics for you, that’s up to you. I don’t imply to “get at” anyone, but to do best by ourselves instead of doing best by those who benefit from dividing or distracting us.
> It’s just my experience over the last 15 years. If it doesn’t align with yours, that’s nice to know.
I know it's the narrative that times are bad. But me, my coworkers, my neighbors, my local mall, etc. all seem to be doing really great. And look, moon mission! I would think that there are a lot of people in tech who are doing better than ever. We've also seen layoffs and I know it's hard for people to find a job. This is why I'm asking for metrics because I don't think it's actually as clear as the narrative that this is the worse over 15 years. The pandemic was pretty bad? We had the financial crisis? Gas prices were a lot higher in 2021 ... I guess as they say perception is 99% of reality ...
I'm not American but I work with many Americans who are doing really well (also long careers in tech).
I'm old and I own my house but when I was younger I never leased a car, I always bought used cars that I could afford. So the question of making a car payment wasn't there. I always saved and compared prices in good times and bad times. I rented a cheap enough place to have enough safety margin.
Anyways, being a software engineer through the golden era of software engineering is not your typical person experience.
I still think we need to be more data driven in how we evaluate the state of the economy. The parent was suggesting it's the economic difficulties faced by people on this forum (presumably many in tech) that lead to shallow and political discussion and it's hard for me to gauge that.
were still there. They've been notably missing/further and further out of reach depending on where you started these past 15 years. I would argue actually closer to 20.
https://www.census.gov/library/publications/1970/demo/p60-72... https://www2.census.gov/programs-surveys/nrs/tables/time-ser... https://www.thezebra.com/resources/home/housing-trends-visua... https://www.visualcapitalist.com/charted-american-income-vs-... https://www.healthsystemtracker.org/chart-collection/u-s-spe... https://www.cms.gov/data-research/statistics-trends-and-repo... https://usafacts.org/articles/how-much-is-spent-on-personal-... https://www.visualcapitalist.com/cp/life-expectancy-vs-healt... https://educationdata.org/average-cost-of-college-by-year https://educationdata.org/average-student-loan-debt-by-year https://www.ascd.org/el/articles/is-the-stem-job-shortage-ov... https://issues.org/what-shortages-the-real-evidence-about-th... https://www.bls.gov/opub/mlr/2015/article/stem-crisis-or-ste... https://www.whatjobs.com/news/shocking-entry-level-job-exper... https://ncses.nsf.gov/pubs/nsb20198/s-e-labor-market-conditi... https://issues.org/stem-workforce-shortage-data-hira/ https://listwithclever.com/research/home-price-v-income-hist...
>> Rather than assigning blame I think it's fair to ask the people here to behave
First, are you not doing just that - blaming the people here for making you unhappy?
Second, you're welcome to demand this, but they/we are just as welcome to tell you to piss off.
> First, are you not doing just that - blaming the people here for making you unhappy?
I don't think so?
> Second, you're welcome to demand this, but they/we are just as welcome to tell you to piss off.
If the majority of people around here just want to argue politics non-stop and turn everything into that there's little I can do.
> There's little I can do
I use https://hackersmacker.org to mark them with a red dot so I can skip those comments. It's like slashdot's friend/foe system (including social aspect). There are also plugins that allow blocking and filtering users.
I'm, personally, here to interact with people interested in tech. I feel no shame in curating my experience to fit that. If I wanted to be saturated in politics, I would make a Reddit account.
> if you’re blaming the people in the thread for this, I think you’re directing your energy in the wrong direction
Much of the current environment is driven by the SF Bay Tech Elite/Culture.
Peter Thiel funded and enabled Curtis Yarvin, whose work was the backbone of the modern alt right, project 2025, etc. Plenty of tech VCs/elite are investing huge amounts in fighting effective government, pushing models of city states immune from regulation, policing the discourse, and more. Musk gets more press coverage than most but tons of folks who are either on HN, are connected to startups talked about here, etc. are primary forces driving what America has become.
>
Focus on the people who foment and benefit from this division and distractionyour comment is entirely politcal, i.e. contributing more to the problem.
qui bono? we for sure don't bono.
is a political statement. It says: "don't talk about the actual issue, instead let's go after the enemies, we know who they are." It doesn't say "let's find them", it assumes we know who they are.
Note that Nixon was actually impeached by his own party and would have been removed for what would now be a single day of news cycle, only on a few networks/papers, and completely ignored by a major political party.
Taken as a whole, the 60’s were far more intense and violent. The Vietnam War. The draft. The Cuban Missile Crisis. Racial inequality and protests. Several major assassinations. Nixon in the White House. And that’s just the US.
The world is net-better even if certain areas still need improvement. But there’s really no point to hyperfocusing on just the things that are worse.
>
I don't believe we had tech moguls who built enormous wealth and realized they could by the influenceDidn't this just describe the robber barons of the Gilded Age? Moguls and oligarchs of the day, yes. Amassed their fortunes on the emerging frontier technology of the time, I'd say so. Wielded enormous power over political discourse and essentially owned the law makers of the day. Rhymes, for sure.
It doesn't really matter whether you live in a democracy if the the very issues that are even allowed to be voted on are decided by an elite, wealthy and politically connected group.
69 had two things going on for it, the war was not news and on its first signs of being scalled back, Nixon had announced a retraction of force for September (but ended up extending the whole thing to 75) and this would be the first moon landing, there was nothing like it.
From 1969 to today, we're waaaaay better. But from 6 months ago there is clearly an elephant in the room taking a lot of attention.
This comment also isn't positive and the cycle continues. I agree that people are often too negative and this is a good example of how that negativity is contagious.
There are negative things to observe about this project. They should not be ignored
They’re almost exclusively related to political reasons. “There are problems in the world, therefore I can’t enjoy this” is flawed reasoning and isn’t even something that they apply to any other interest. It’s just special pleading.
If you don't mind me asking, what did they do for NASA?
> I'd love to read your family member(s) criticisms; anywhere to do so? The perspective of a former NASA employee could be fascinating.
Personal emails? These aren't the kind of people to blog.
If you want a brief summary they, like many, feel this whole thing is a farce due to how the project has be designed and spec'd. I think smarter every day did a wonderful youtube video comparing what kind of documentation and planning they had for the past launches, and how it sure as shit doesn't look like they're anywhere near that right now (he's much nicer about it). NASA is doing their best, but the simple truth is the actual "landing" plan feels like it vomited out by a bunch a suits who don't understand reality and wanted headlines.
A decent anecdote from the discussion that summarizes feelings:
One of them got to spend a week in Cape Kennedy due to winning an Essay contest and met Frank Borman. To quote him
> The topic of the essay was, What is man's future in space?
> I believe that, had I written, 55 years from now we will beat the Chinese to the Moon, I would not have won.
For an alternate perspective, the development for this (which includes future launches) was only 80% the cost of ~500 miles of railway in California! [1]
[1] https://www.kabc.com/2026/04/06/high-speed-rail-cost-now-at-...
Doubtful we'll ever establish permanent residency anywhere else when we cannot sustain ourselves on the rock we evolved on.
> when we cannot sustain ourselves on the rock we evolved on.
The population is as big as it has ever been, and growing. Hunger index is steady [1], with low scores concentrated in the usual failed African states. We are sustaining ourselves just fine, by all metrics.
There are future problems, but there are also future solutions. A surprise meteor from the blackness of space has no solution. Both are bad. Multiple efforts for multiple problems can take place at once. One does not negate or even influence the other. Corruption in our government it's a much bigger money sink, and risk to our future, than a moon mission.
[1] https://public.flourish.studio/published_thumbnails/visualis...
Submit threads that are apolitical and guide conversations to be positive.
> it's seemingly impossible to have a single thread about something like this that isn't almost entirely negative or political bickering
I quickly browsed the top 10 comments, didn't see much negativity.
And maybe this is because this is a forum of "tech/geeks/nerds/stem people" that you'd expect some educated and critical comments.
Some people feel their outlook on the world takes precedence. And they'll shit in other people's celebrations to get their point across. Best to downvote or ignore them and embrace what nuance you can find.
https://eyes.nasa.gov/apps/solar-system/#/sc_artemis_2
We are all painfully aware of the things that make it imperfect.
It's still joyous and exciting.
Try to let it be.
So does this suggest the BBC is wrong and it’s the side of the moon we’re used to seeing, but just it’s “dark”?
But then the astronauts are saying it’s weird seeing the moon in a whole new light (excuse the paraphrasing pun).
I don’t understand.
Photo and video gallery: https://www.nasa.gov/gallery/journey-to-the-moon/
I wish this mission took greater risks. Or, just at least go as far as Apollo 8, but stay for a bit longer, and try out new things. It would be fun to take a finicky low mass radio telescope experiment to the far side of the moon.
Love seeing our Ontario native Jeremy Hansen on the microphone, and those two flags properly positioned beside each other.
I'm not a Christian today, but was raised that way. This is the hopeful message I want to see on this day, and the true meaning of the symbol. Hope for all humankind. Working together.
Still think what he said is worth hearing.
https://www.instagram.com/reel/DWvRjeEgecb/?igsh=MXZoYjZobDM...
Wallis and Gromit would be a partial substitute, but the boomers are still around.
[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A4tDZye57D4
[2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ELslc6O4UVk