In deference to comments made, I've removed most of the information I originally posted. I included titles and web domains, but now I quote just the HN references.
There have been several previous posts of this story. Here are some.
Except for one with 7 comments there are no discussions in them. A lot of articles with identical topic are usually posted on HN, yet the only relevant ones are those with activity. Others fade automatically.
Do you have a purpose with your fullscreen comment?
I also think that the continuous submission of the same new from different sources is a problem. (But I usually only post a “previous discussion” when one of the old versions have a lot of comments, or a very interesting comment.)
Most of them are only a rehash of the original new, without any additional information. Sometimes it’s worst, and every rehash lost a part of the information and add some hype. The guidelines advice to submit the original version.
The problem is that a lot of interesting technical new are only submitted once, and they are lost in the infinite streaming of almost-dupes.
In the last days I saw a few: “Earthlike planet”, “Fuelband”, “Codebabes”, “Atari ET”
This story went to the HN top and then dissapeared, after few minutes. Earlier something very similar happened to at least one of the posts you listed. I wonder why?
We buried it as a dupe of https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7647958, which covered Musk's news conference. The ULA suit wasn't mentioned in the title of that post but it was discussed quite a lot in the thread.
Points and time determine the position of a story. But if a moderator decides that he wants to, he can flag the story for a certain amount of position, 20, 40( next page )... You will probably only find such story only if you dig quickly enough using more.
It is an effective way of removing content. Deleting it would cause uproar, but that way the story fades almost unnoticed even to the commenters who noticed it.
There are also similar methods employed for specific users.
SpaceX is a private sector success story-- as long as you ignore that they get most of their revenue from government contracts. For a libertarian, he sure likes taking tax money.
As a libertarian, I object to many of the taxes I pay.
As a law-abiding citizen, I pay them anyway.
As a pragmatist, I seek to find as many ways to reduce my tax obligation as I can (401k, house ownership, charitable deductions, etc.)
As a libertarian, I would seek to recoup as many of the tax dollars I've paid in as possible. Even if I disagree that those taxes should have been levied in the first place, I see nothing hypocritical in trying to put them to the most effective use possible, versus say, being used to drone strike suspected terrorists without due process.
I'm not sure what your specific objection with his actions are, but there's no inherent hypocrisy in believing laws ought to be different than they are while still abiding the laws we're subject to.
A CEO's leanings are relevant when they are clearly stated, and inspire a large part of his strategy -- to take a similarly controversial subject in the US, imagine the CEO of a gun-maker “against weapons”; that would come off as hypocritical.
I don’t think that there is such a thing as being “against weapons” though. Some people don’t think that one should profit from the use of deadly force; in that case, not using a significant portion of that company’s profits to repair damages from misused weapons would be callous. In most cases, weapons manufacturer are direly aware of the issue with what they sell, and try to make better quality devices to prevent them. Namely, a policeman friend told me that Glocks (could be another brand, I know very little about firearms) were appreciated by her colleagues who do a lot of pursuits because they don’t tend to accidentally fire when they drop from their holster, a rare but potentially tragic event. Glock makes money from that fear, hopefully invest to mitigate it.
I know government processes better, and as someone who could be seen as a socialist, I agree with Musk on one thing: government is expensive. Unlike him, I think it’s generally cheaper than private companies or charity. However, in the industries where Musk operates (transport), his entrepreneurial talent makes his contribution much cheaper. He doesn’t like public money to be wasted — that’s his publicly stated “political leanings” and one that has motivated SpaceX existence. I don’t think it’s very controversial, actually (no one likes to waste money) but it is relevant. What he asks for is to have the ability to lower it.
Therefore: yes, his leanings matter. In that case, and probably a majority of his projects that are government-funded, they are so because it is cheaper to have Musk’s company do it. Which is good. I’m not a US tax payer, so I shouldn’t care so much, but I would say: there isn’t a contradiction with trying to improve what you think is broken. If he was asking to prevent competitors from entering the market for government-contract, there I could see an issue.
This will likely be un popular: but surely we praise SpaceX when they are trying to sue the government to get some of that sweet launch contract business; but we will say nothing whn they are launching satellites designed to either kill or spy on anyone by launching more tentacles of the octopus!
"launching satellites designed to either kill or spy on anyone by launching more tentacles of the octopus!"
Satellite designed to kill? I think that's more a plot line to a movie. I don't think we've launched, or are planning to launch any killer satellites.
And, with regards to "spy on anyone" - isn't it generally considered that transparency is a good thing for geopolitics? The physics of satellites/optics are such that you don't really need to worry about satellites personally spying on you beyond the resolution of a vehicle...
> you don't really need to worry about satellites personally spying on you beyond the resolution of a vehicle..
"The IMPROVED CRYSTAL's sophisticated electronics provides sharper images than the KH-11, comparable in quality to the best of the film return satellites, with a resolution approaching ten centimeters. "
You have to be doing something really wrong for satellites to catch you. They aren't overhead on demand so you only get snapshots, and they work on very large things.
There have been several previous posts of this story. Here are some.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7648105 (some discussion)
Here are others, without significant comments:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7648225 / https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7648748 / https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7649108 / https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7649218 / https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7649504 / https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7651066 / https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7652383 / https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7653026 / https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7654433 / https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7654821