| |
| ▲ | cesarvarela 2 minutes ago | parent | next [-] | | I wish he kept a lower profile. His public behavior risks overshadowing the work SpaceX is doing, work that could benefit humanity in ways we can’t yet fully anticipate. I wish we had more Elons pushing us toward a "future that looks like the future," as he said. | |
| ▲ | sockaddr 8 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | Elon-types won't "dig us out" of our mess. Removing parasitic elements in government spending and policy will. This starts with politics. We first need a healthy, educated, engaged, and safe population. All else follows. These are all things Elon actively works against. You aren't part of his future. | | |
| ▲ | bko 7 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | I don't know, government waste and most policy sucks. But there's no reason we can't do stuff or even try. For instance, take Tesla. It wasn't anything revolutionary. Any auto manufacturer could have invested in battery technology and building a compelling EV, but they didn't. Same with manufacturing in America. Every manufacturer took as given that they have to outsource manufacturing to oversees and components to third parties. But it didn't have to be that way. It takes someone naive and optimistic enough to try something different. | | |
| ▲ | boplicity 7 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | It's easy to forget that Tesla was made possible almost exclusively through government incentives. This is something that most people seem to have forgotten: Tesla exists because the government created incentive programs that paid in cold hard cash. Musk took advantage of those programs, and Tesla absolutely would not have been nearly as successful (and likely not existed) without it. | | |
| ▲ | bko 6 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | This is incredibly overstated. There are "incentives" for all sorts of activities. These incentives were available to all manufacturers. We should have "incentives" to produce electric vehicles and manufacturing in America. Insane not to. And these incentives are often "you would normally have to pay us X million in taxes, but we'll let you pay less". When the alternative is something not being built and no tax revenue, it makes sense. And a lot of subsidies were to buyers of EVs | |
| ▲ | woah 15 minutes ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | The biggest miracle of Tesla is that they somehow got liberals to argue against government incentives for electric cars | |
| ▲ | fastball 6 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | As much incentive as the oil & gas industry receives? | |
| ▲ | Game_Ender 6 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | The government should find ways to strategically invest in developing major industries. The market for them is global and China has/will have a bigger internal market than the US, so without intentional development we'll get a continued industrial consolidation that is bad for the US and the world. I have robotic lawn mowers and vacuum cleaners made by Chinese companies partly because an intentional policy from China's government to grow these capabilities locally. | | |
| ▲ | dgellow 5 hours ago | parent [-] | | The current administration is literally cutting all those strategic investments |
| |
| ▲ | YetAnotherNick 5 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | What was the incentive and was that specific to Tesla? | |
| ▲ | Rover222 4 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | This is such a braindead take. Ford could have taken advantage of those same EV incentives. Any other new startup could have too. Tesla got nothing special. |
| |
| ▲ | dgellow 5 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | > It takes someone naive and optimistic enough to try something different. You mean Martin Eberhard and Marc Tarpenning, right? | | |
| ▲ | jvwww 4 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | Tesla would be nothing without Musk. That doesn't take away from Eberhard and Tarpenning; they started the company after all and are great engineers. But it would be nothing without Musk. | |
| ▲ | Rover222 4 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | [flagged] |
| |
| ▲ | bigyabai 6 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | > Any auto manufacturer could have invested in battery technology and building a compelling EV, but they didn't ...because Tesla sold luxury vehicles at relatively low volume. By the time Elon reneged his "$25,000 EV" promise, China was ready to export vehicles that actually hit that price point. The only thing preventing Americans from driving affordable EVs is Elon's federal protectionism. Is that really progress? | | |
| ▲ | decimalenough 6 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | The Model Y has shifted over a million units every year since 2023 and sits at the top of many "world's best selling car" rankings. Obviously it's not a cheap car, but it's still mass market, not luxury. | | |
| ▲ | bigyabai 6 hours ago | parent [-] | | It's only mass-market in the US because of subsidies and tariffs. Chinese EVs change the equation entirely. Outside the US protectionist bubble, Tesla is seen as a luxury brand and their inability to deliver a $25,000 EV doesn't help. | | |
| ▲ | decimalenough 6 hours ago | parent [-] | | As of March 2026, the Model Y is the best selling car in China. https://teslamagz.com/tesla/model-y/tesla-model-y-becomes-ch... Also South Korea, Australia, the EU, etc. | | |
| ▲ | torginus 5 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | I guess it's to Tesla's advantage that unlike most manufacturers, they don't make a million different models which end up dividing sales. | |
| ▲ | manytimesaway 5 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | No it's not.
It was the most sold during March, but that's it. Local sources (https://www.autohome.com.cn/hangye/showroom/) tend to show that it's Xiaomi / Geely that's leading the race in 2026. Additionally, sales numbers doesn't correlate with the brand image of Tesla : it is a luxury brand, no matter how you put it. | | |
| ▲ | dnautics 4 minutes ago | parent | next [-] | | So you're technically correct, but IIUC Tesla is still the most delivered (customers taking delivery) EV brand in China. Draw what conclusions you will from that fun fact | |
| ▲ | decimalenough 4 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | You're talking brands, I'm talking car models. And your own source lists the Model Y as the #2 best selling model cumulatively for 2026, behind only the Geely EX2 (星愿), which is a third of the price. Also, you seem to be implying it's somehow a bad thing to have a luxury brand image with mass-market sales, but that's a pretty rare thing to pull off and it's also the key to huge margins. See also: Apple. Look, Musk is a despicable human being, but the Model 3/Y has been a ginormous hit and it transformed the global EV market. Does he deserves all the credit for pulling this off? Of course not. But you need to stick your head pretty deep in the sand to pretend that a) it was not a success, and b) that Musk had nothing at all to do with it. |
|
|
|
| |
| ▲ | 6 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | [deleted] |
|
| |
| ▲ | ryandvm 8 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | We just need more leeches. | | |
| ▲ | throwaway894345 6 hours ago | parent [-] | | Yep, it's crazy that people can correctly recognize that corruption is responsible for the current situation but fail to recognize that adding more corruption will not deliver us from it. |
| |
| ▲ | WalterBright 5 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | > We first need a healthy, educated, engaged, and safe population. All else follows. The requirement is economic freedom, from which everything follows. | | |
| ▲ | wyre 34 minutes ago | parent [-] | | In what way? There is nothing inherent about economic freedom that leads to a healthy, educated, engaged, and safe population, in the same way there is nothing inherent about a healthy, smart, and safe population that leads to economic freedom. The US is one of the most economically free places in the world, and always has been, yet obesity is at all time highs, gen Z is the first generation to score less on standardized tests than the generation before them, and civilians killed by law enforcement is at an all time high. Economic freedom is a very important pillar to a healthy and thriving society, but acting like it is a panacea is wrong. Economic freedom at it's extreme will only lead to a weakening of the middle class and consolidation of wealth among those holding the most wealth. | | |
| ▲ | WalterBright 9 minutes ago | parent [-] | | Free markets mean the only way to make money legally is to provide a product or service that other people want to buy. And people want to be healthy, educated, engaged and safe. In other words, it takes advantage of the inherently selfish nature of people to make others better off. > obesity is at all time highs Obesity is a choice. I know people won't like me writing that. I know it is very hard to lose weight. It's still a choice, though. I don't see how making people less free would change that. > gen Z is the first generation to score less on standardized tests than the generation before them The government is the primary institution that provides education, not the free market. > civilians killed by law enforcement is at an all time high I don't see how that is a result of economic freedom. > Economic freedom at it's extreme will only lead to a weakening of the middle class The US was much more economically free in the 1800s than now, and the middle class became the dominant class, by far. > consolidation of wealth among those holding the most wealth. Wealthy people get that way in a free market by creating products and services that other people want. In other words, they do not "consolidate" wealth, they create it. |
|
| |
| ▲ | tootie 3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | This is almost certainly false. The vast majority of government spending goes directly to people that need it or debt service. There is very little outright fraud as DOGE quickly learned. The only meaningful target for cuts is military. And the only solution to debt is higher taxes. | |
| ▲ | Dig1t 3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | I don't know, I'm sure you'd say Europe is a far more healthy, educated, engaged and safe place (by typical metrics), but they are not building anything like this and probably never will be able to approach anything close to it. In fact they have technologically stagnated in basically every way and are completely reliant on China and the US for technology. SpaceX is 85% of all mass to orbit for the entire planet, then it's China, and Europe is <5%. The next people to set foot on the moon will likely be Americans, and they will be put there by SpaceX rockets. | |
| ▲ | watwut 8 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | They will try to dig us out of the hole they created by their previoua digging. | |
| ▲ | guywithahat 7 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | [flagged] | | |
| ▲ | teachrdan 7 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | > He was involved in DOGE, which did nothing but catch fraud and cut worthless spending. Elon wasn't just involved with DOGE, he was responsible for it. And Elon said he would cut $2 TRILLION in federal spending before ultimately claiming just $110 billion in savings -- which the GAO found he lied about. Considering out budget deficit is about $2 trillion, even his inflated claims are a rounding error. (To say nothing of the fact that a lot of it was NOT useless spending. For example, Elon ended a program to fund countries in Central America to stop the spread of screw worms. Now screw worms are projected to cost $1.8 billion in damage to Texas alone.) > while Elon encourages reporting on X Elon has a track record of banning journalists on Twitter / X, the everything app, when they criticize him. Literally the opposite of encouraging reporting on X. > We need more "Elons", people like him are actually helping dig us out of this mess. I would encourage you to start reading independent news sources and forming your own opinions, rather than uncritically believing everything people in power feed to you. Otherwise you end up saying things online that are trivially disprovable. https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2026/08/09/gao-repor... https://www.nbcnews.com/science/environment/flesh-eating-scr... https://www.forbes.com/sites/markjoyella/2024/01/09/elon-mus... | |
| ▲ | platevoltage 7 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | Conservative media even barely talks about DOGE because of how bad the optics are, and how much of an utter failure it was. | |
| ▲ | krapp 7 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | >Isn't that an Elon thing? He was involved in DOGE, which did nothing but catch fraud and cut worthless spending. It did nothing of the sort. Finding someone still pushing this line in 2026 is like seeing a thylacine in the wild. One can only stare in awe. |
|
| |
| ▲ | stackghost 4 minutes ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | >We'll need a few more of "him" to dig us out of this situation I reckon, but overall I still hope it's possible. Can you explain why you think the US needs more corrupt, authoritarian Nazis and not less? | |
| ▲ | 7 minutes ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | [deleted] | |
| ▲ | rurp 7 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | Few Americans have done more than musk to destroy state capacity and to enable corruption on a massive scale, all while enriching himself to an unprecedented degree. That's great for him and his cronies that he has gotten so wealthy doing it, but he's been a huge net-negative to most humans. I get that rockets are cool and a lot of people in the tech bubble think that starlink is the greatest thing ever, but most people don't care about that nearly as much as they care about seeing their children die from preventable diseases he cut the funding for or getting violently ill because he drove thousands of food inspectors and researchers out of a job. Handling the enormous federal debt that he continues to play a part in worsening is going to very painful in the long run. | | |
| ▲ | ineedaj0b 3 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | so insanely out of touch. go chat with any AI. You don’t need AI to get psychosis! | |
| ▲ | ryandrake 5 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | Exactly. I actually laughed out loud at OP's comment. Elon Musk has never done anything to benefit the broader "us." The idea that "we" need people like Musk to "dig us out of this situation" --a situation that rich men like Musk put us into in the first place-- is absolutely ridiculous. Billionaires don't "dig" anything except the foundations for things that are going to make them even more money. | |
| ▲ | consensus1 5 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | So where is the guy who is respectful to the government and compliant with regulations that is out there building millions of EVs, rockets, and massive satellite constellations? If he existed I could respect your argument. But in reality the only guy who seems to be able to build a modern mass manufacturing company in the US is the trillionaire who runs roughshod over all forms of government oversight that gets in his way. That should tell you something about where the problem lies here. Elon Musk isn't the problem, he is the symptom. The problem is that it is basically required to be ruthless and corrupt to get anything done in this country at the scale, price, and timeline needed to be commercially viable. The solution is less regulation and bureaucracy, not more. | | |
| ▲ | micromacrofoot 4 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | he's in china working on trains and renewable energy rockets and wifi satellites are only solving problems because corporations have sucked public infrastructure dry for generations | | | |
| ▲ | api 4 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | I think the root of the problem is “vetocracy.” We’ve created a system where small minorities can hold everything up, sometimes for ideological reasons and sometimes for financial reasons. The classic case of the latter is homeowners opposing all home construction to raise their property values, but it happens in other areas too. Vetocracy isn’t democracy. It’s a tiny minority having veto power. So yes the only person who succeeds in such a system is a human battering ram who can just bash their way through it by being a manic asshole with insane force of will. There should be tons of Elon Musks, including nicer ones, but nice people get vetoed. | |
| ▲ | thrance 8 minutes ago | parent | prev [-] | | You're a fool if you think billionaires have any positive effects on the economy or the average quality of life. Infrastructure and public services are crumbling, and the money that could fix them have been rerouted to government contractors like Musk, who charge exorbitant amounts for very little in return. No billionaire's providing education, healthcare, housing or anything that matters. He didn't become a trillionaire by selling stuff, but by having another billionaire in office running the show. After Musk and Trump, the debt is higher than ever while poor people are getting poorer. Oligarchs are the only beneficiaries of this falling Empire. You're right, Musk is a symptom. And the government is serving people like him, there is no amount of regulation or deregulation that will change that. |
| |
| ▲ | throwaway894345 6 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | Lol why is this downvoted? There is no dispute that he spent hundreds of millions of dollars to elect Trump and seat himself in government while his companies are financially dependent on government programs and contracts. This is an obvious conflict of interest, and also completely on par with all of the other corruption we're seeing from this administration. |
| |
| ▲ | nyc_data_geek1 8 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | We need to tax all of "him" out of geopolitical relevance to fund a new New Deal, like we did after the first Gilded Age. | |
| ▲ | watutalkinbout 7 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | Musk is a marketing genius. | | |
| ▲ | guywithahat 7 hours ago | parent [-] | | I don't think he's known for his marketing, he's known for his engineering | | |
| ▲ | fatal94 7 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | This sums up my and many others timeline of his understanding of engineering diciplines: https://mastodon.social/@rodhilton/109572674700288958 | | |
| ▲ | ralfd 5 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | That link is from 2022 presumably about the twitter purchase. People like the guy in the link thought Twitter would go offline hard after firing almost all of the company, instead Elon was right and there was so much fat to cut. | |
| ▲ | hparadiz 7 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | Posts like this is why HN is made fun of now in circles where real engineering happens. In reality you would not be able to follow what he's talking about because it would be well over your head. | | |
| ▲ | elar_verole 6 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | Just watching him play POE should show you he's not the genius you think he is | | |
| ▲ | hparadiz 6 hours ago | parent [-] | | Just proving my point here. Trying to win an argument because vidya. |
| |
| ▲ | doc_ick 4 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | At one point didn’t he say there was no sql in Twitter? I can follow that all the way to the dumpster that statement is. | |
| ▲ | jcranmer 6 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | In reality, you would not be able to follow what he's talking about because he's making stuff up and hoping your inability to understand him comes across as genius rather than bullshit. | | |
| ▲ | WalterBright 5 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | I bet that Russian rocket engineer who spit on Musk is regretting it now. | |
| ▲ | hparadiz 6 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | [flagged] | | |
| ▲ | jcranmer 6 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | Sorry, I'm too busy trying to check an algorithm to convert floating-point numbers to strings for correctness to deal with people playing the "I'm a rocket scientist, therefore everything is easy to me" card. And yet somehow Elon isn't that (see his most recent SpaceX, where he quite literally uses that to justify his competence to build orbital data centers). | | |
| ▲ | hparadiz 6 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | Classic HN software eng. "I know everything about everything because I can cast a float to a string" | | |
| ▲ | jcranmer 6 hours ago | parent [-] | | Thank you for putting words into my mouth that I didn't say. Especially when they're quite literally the opposite of my message. Although, given that I pointed out that Elon literally did the exact same thing, why do you trust him when he does it? Or is it simply that you're unaware that he does stuff like that? | | |
| ▲ | WalterBright 5 hours ago | parent [-] | | > why do you trust him when he does it? His companies have made many monumental engineering achievements at his direction. | | |
| ▲ | jcranmer 4 hours ago | parent [-] | | His companies making those achievements is not the same as he personally making those achievements. He does have some talent in being a CEO of a company and inspiring employees and investors. But also don't oversell that: only Tesla and SpaceX have been successes, and he's had to have them bail out is other failed companies: SolarCity, Twitter, and xAI. The Boring Company also doesn't seem to be particularly successful either, and he never got around to building a company to build Hyperloop in the first place. | | |
| ▲ | WalterBright 4 hours ago | parent [-] | | The Boring Company is profitable. > His companies making those achievements is not the same as he personally making those achievements. Those achievements wouldn't have happened without him. > He does have some talent in being a CEO of a company and inspiring employees and investors. SpaceX employees are top shelf engineers and scientists. Being able to do that makes Musk a great CEO. Can you name any other CEO who has been able to do anything like what Musk's companies do? |
|
|
|
| |
| ▲ | WalterBright 5 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | I implemented float-to-string for my compiler's printf back sometime before 1985. It's a medium difficult problem. Once you understand engineering, transferring that skill to another engineering discipline is not that hard. For example, the equations for Newtonian mechanics, electronics, beam design, rotating inertia, etc., are interchangeable. > his competence to build orbital data centers Since nobody has yet built an orbital data center, nobody is competent at it yet. | | |
| ▲ | nrr 4 hours ago | parent [-] | | > I implemented float-to-string for my compiler's printf back sometime before 1985. It's a medium difficult problem. It might have been medium difficult back in 1985, but the state of the art has progressed in the intervening 40 years. The constraint of correctness makes things trickier because it further imposes three requirements: completeness, uniqueness, and determinism. Unless the implementer has the skill to prove these properties about the algorithm they've implemented, such an implementation is likely not to achieve those requirements. | | |
| ▲ | WalterBright 3 hours ago | parent [-] | | There was no test suite for it available that I could use for correctness checks, so I did what I could. I also implemented IEEE 754 floating point in asm. For that I did have an exhaustive test suite, and passed it 100%. | | |
| ▲ | nrr an hour ago | parent [-] | | We didn't have this definition of correctness until 1990 (due to Steele and White), and it wasn't until the past decade or so that we got a published algorithm (most recently, I think, Dragonbox, due to Jeon when he was still working on his PhD at UCSD), with mathematical proof[0], that satisfied all of the requirements of being complete, being unique, and being deterministic. (Though, Steele-White expresses these slightly differently, as preserving information, having the shortest possible output, and rounding correctly. Completeness, uniqueness, and determinism seem to be equivalent and are easier to prove.) -- 0: Available at <https://fmt.dev/papers/Dragonbox.pdf>. It's pretty easy to understand either with a numerical analysis background or after having worked through volume 2 of Knuth's TAoCP. | | |
|
|
|
| |
| ▲ | BenzeneDream 6 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | What an odd comment. You think because he is the CEO of a rocket company that naturally he is beyond making stuff up and talking BS? Have you ever watched an interview of his? And why are CEOs as smart as engineers now. This isn't Twitter. You don't have to suck up to him. He won't ever see this. |
|
|
|
| |
| ▲ | krsw 7 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | He doesn't build anything. Everything he's done has been acquisitions that he tries to astroturf as founding. | |
| ▲ | scubbo 5 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | He is (inaccurately) known for his engineering _because of_ his marketing. | |
| ▲ | watutalkinbout 7 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | As I said, he's a marketing genius. Or maybe "was" is more accurate. | |
| ▲ | nrmitchi 7 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | *financial engineering | |
| ▲ | potatototoo99 6 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | See? Great marketing, he is not an engineer. |
|
| |
| ▲ | micromacrofoot 4 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | If it wasn't consolidated largely to a singular "him" we could be doing more of these, see: FDR's New Deal By this method the money largely comes from the government and is captured into private interests, literally hollowing out the government tax base for corporate power | |
| ▲ | throwaway894345 6 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | > economically meaningful for our nation 3,000 short term jobs doesn't put a dent in the thousands of jobs he has cut, not to mention the losses to our economy due to the tariffs, immigration policy, and deficit spending that he caused. > We'll need a few more of "him" to dig us out of this situation I reckon I'm of the impression that you can't corrupt your way out of corruption. | |
| ▲ | archagon 3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | Musk killed hundreds of thousands of impoverished people through the reckless and illegal wood-chippering of USAID and promotes and finances white supremacy and far-right politics around the world. This is who we should be celebrating? What a pathetic cult of personality this creep has built around him. Personally, I can’t wait for the political pendulum to swing back hard so that he can be torn to shreds by the judicial system. (Where will he try to flee, I wonder? Back to South Africa? Will he try to pull a Carlos Ghosn? Man’s gotta dream…) | |
| ▲ | btmiller 7 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | Discounting challenges to your beliefs by burying your head in the sand is certainly a choice. | |
| ▲ | UltraSane 9 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | Musk has done a huge amount to put us INTO this situation. | | |
| ▲ | ericmay 8 hours ago | parent [-] | | Which situation did Elon Musk put us in to? Can you elaborate? When did this situation start? What happened? What did he personally do that put us in the situation? | | |
| ▲ | mbgerring 7 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | He personally ran the department that eviscerated funding for basic scientific research in the United States | | |
| ▲ | thegrim33 6 hours ago | parent [-] | | You could have just posted the numbers to easily make/prove your point, but you didn't, and everyone knows why you didn't. Because the numbers don't align with what you're saying. But if enough people like you say it's true, I guess that makes it true, data be damned. | | |
| ▲ | jryan49 5 hours ago | parent [-] | | Here ya go https://www.nature.com/immersive/d41586-026-00088-9/index.ht... Something like 25% cut in new grants. 50% cuts to NSF... You could have just as easily found the data... | | |
| ▲ | WalterBright 5 hours ago | parent [-] | | I did a word search on that article (it's impossible to read with its idiotic presentation), and "musk" is not mentioned. | | |
| ▲ | mbgerring 4 hours ago | parent [-] | | Are you being serious? Are you actually not aware that Elon Musk ran the federal government department tasked with cancelling federal grants and firing government employees in 2025? How is it possible that you are not aware of this? | | |
| ▲ | WalterBright 4 hours ago | parent [-] | | Present some evidence that he cut NSF spending. | | |
| ▲ | jryan49 4 hours ago | parent [-] | | A quick Google search will show you... https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2025/04/26/nati... You're just willfully ignorant | | |
| ▲ | WalterBright 3 hours ago | parent [-] | | Asking for evidence is not "willfully ignorant". People making claims have the onus of backing them up. Anyhow, the link to the canceled projects is: https://airtable.com/appGKlSVeXniQZkFC/shrFxbl1YTqb3AyOO?jnt... I looked at maybe a dozen at random, and only one seemed to have anything about scientific research. Of course, that is not a complete survey, but none of them looked important. I'm sure there are a few that are important. Which one(s) do you think are most important? | | |
| ▲ | nrr an hour ago | parent | next [-] | | I might be biased, but everything under the Division of Mathematical Sciences in the MPS directorate is important. Math is one of those weird fields that tends to touch everything else even if not directly, and it's impossible to know prima facie which areas of research will be useful downstream to the sciences and engineering. | | |
| ▲ | WalterBright 28 minutes ago | parent [-] | | I can go for that, as long as the research proposals are actually about math research. | | |
| ▲ | nrr 20 minutes ago | parent [-] | | The stuff in Airtable seems to be. The lion's share of what's there is research that has applications to, like, sensors and robotics and AI, even if the abstracts themselves don't state that, likely because the PIs behind those proposals aren't aware of those applications of their work. (Just to illustrate how mathematicians can sometimes embody the archetype of Hans Guck-in-die-Luft: I had someone tell me once that there were no applications of ODEs or PDEs to the sciences or engineering.) |
|
| |
| ▲ | keeda 26 minutes ago | parent | prev [-] | | Are we looking at the same link? I scrolled through a bunch of them and I could not find a single one that was NOT related to scientific research. The UI is horrible so I can't link anything on that page, but here's what I see when I click that link: https://i.imgur.com/LzwDuKl.png (Edited to add, these are the abstracts, because I can't fit both in one screen /facepalm: https://i.imgur.com/yQKHViO.png) Maybe there's a different filter or ordering being applied somewhere? |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
| |
| ▲ | chinathrow 8 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | Funding DJT while he was running for office? | | |
| ▲ | 5 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | [deleted] | |
| ▲ | ericmay 8 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | I'm not sure what situation we're in (can someone describe it please?), but did that situation only start the day Trump took office again after being elected by the American people? | | |
| ▲ | sailfast 7 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | Yes. Predictability is extremely important for markets and planning and general welfare. He doesn’t have to randomly declare things on a Thursday that haven’t changed for decades and create anxiety among (you name it community or industry) just to stay in the headlines. Donald Trump has destroyed predictability, as well as any semblance of functioning, predictable government. Trump is an extremely influential and powerful unilateral executive - in all the wrong ways. Evidence you say? I guess tariff policy and a completely arbitrary war with Iran that roiled markets, just to name a couple from this year. | |
| ▲ | watwut 8 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | And Musks money and twitter takeover did a lot of work to convince Americans vote for Trump. Then Musk joined the administration and continued digging the hole | | |
| ▲ | ericmay 8 hours ago | parent [-] | | Ok. The OP wrote: > You're being down-voted (and so shall I) but I think you're right. Despite all the animosity towards him, Musk is doing things that are economically meaningful for our nation. In the context of the US building big things, ramping up manufacturing, doing Space exploration, &c. and the person I replied to wrote: > Musk has done a huge amount to put us INTO this situation What situation did he put us in to in this context? Did he put us in to the situation where we are building bigger things now? Are you saying that there was a situation that we were put in to and that situation only started when Trump was elected and prior to that we were... what? Building big things and trying to restore manufacturing and now we're also doing that under Trump? Someone here should be specific about what they're talking about instead of just "Musk bad Trump bad". Yea they're both morons or whatever but what exactly are we supposedly criticizing here? Just that Trump got elected? Ok that's a boring conversation let's switch back to talking about manufacturing and building big projects in America. | | |
| ▲ | kijashdkujdfhas 7 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | It'd be nice if his companies paid the tax they owe. https://itep.org/elon-musk-spacex-tax-breaks-doge/ | |
| ▲ | njovin 7 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | I'll bite. Things we had in December 2024 that we no longer have today, all of which contribute to the success or failure of major initiatives: - 2.9% inflation
- Billions of dollars of grants for state-run energy projects
- NATCAST
- Healthy & stable funding for the sciences
- Competent leaders at the federal and military levels to oversee large complex projects
- Healthy partnerships with allies Specific actions that have been taken by Trump (backed by Musk) that caused us to lose the above: - Starting an unnecessary war with Iran
- Cancelling grants for energy projects specifically in blue states
- Imposing nonsensical tariffs on trade partners
- Starting a full-blown trade war with Canada
- Alienating other allies, ex. starting a middle-east conflict without any alliances (excl. Israel)
- Specifically closing NATCAST because "illegal"
- Gutting of science funding by DOGE & others
- Removal of competent leaders & prioritization of loyalty over competence when choosing staff I have a hard time taking anyone seriously when they bring up anything about Trump having a positive impact on manufacturing in America. For 4+ years he's been lying to the American public about how tariffs work and claiming that US consumers paying more taxes to the US gov't in the form of tariffs is going to 'return' manufacturing to the US. We have almost half a million unfilled manufacturing jobs in the US - explain to me again why this is a capacity problem? | | |
| ▲ | 5 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | [deleted] | |
| ▲ | ericmay 6 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | There's nothing to really bite on here - the OP said Elon Musk put us "in this situation" - I'm still looking for a definition or answer on what exactly this situation is. Is it a situation in which Trump is simply president? OK but Trump himself nor Musk are responsible for the previous decades of manufacturing capability destruction in the US, as an example. If it's just complaining about Trump/Musk then yea sure let's complain about them in a different topic, but the OP was talking about Musk building big things and he undeniably has (or his companies have, rather). |
|
|
| |
| ▲ | chinathrow 8 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | What are you talking about? | | |
| |
| ▲ | yieldcrv 7 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | fun fact, voters cause election consensus, not spending not spending ensures no voters know who you are, but the most spending doesn't result in the most votes funny prisoner's dilemma for partisans, well, more amusing if you sell ad space | | |
| ▲ | nrmitchi 7 hours ago | parent [-] | | > voters cause election consensus, not spending This is potentially one of the most out of touch comments I've seen here in a while, and that's saying something. | | |
| ▲ | yieldcrv 5 hours ago | parent [-] | | that view doesn’t make it false | | |
| ▲ | nrmitchi 4 hours ago | parent [-] | | You are claiming (or pretending) that spend (ie, marketing spend) isn't one of, if not _the_, biggest factors in which of a set of options ends up being the winner? In this case you don't get to try the options first. You made a decision based on what you've seen and heard. And you think the advertising budget isn't the key thing? | | |
| ▲ | yieldcrv 3 hours ago | parent [-] | | As I wrote “not spending ensures no voters know who you are, but the most spending doesn't result in the most votes” Did your eyes glaze over after the first line, it’s such a short comment |
|
|
|
|
| |
| ▲ | UltraSane 4 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | The one with the intentionally broken federal government | |
| ▲ | SmirkingRevenge 8 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | One such example - he's using his massive wealth and influence to support fascist political movements that promise mass deportation and "remigration", and even supporting these policies explicitly himself. In the US, his political beneficiaries have managed to "achieve" net negative migration to the US for the first time in 50 years, and the first decline in overall population in US history. If this becomes the new trend (and if Musk gets his political desires fulfilled, it might), the hole is getting much, much deeper while our capacity to climb out is being severely impaired. And oh yea, he killed hundreds of thousands of kids, mostly under 5. |
|
| |
| ▲ | Gud 8 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | He was, until he took a chainsaw to things he didn’t understand. I was a huge believer in Elon musk. I invested and made a lot of money in Tesla before Model S had even entered serial production.
Now? Fuck you Elon, go Peter Beck… | |
| ▲ | miltonlost 7 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | A few more Nazi saluting eugenicists will help us out! Truly we are at the Weimar levels. | |
| ▲ | Rover222 4 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | [flagged] | | |
| ▲ | archagon 3 hours ago | parent [-] | | Ironically, this is the most Reddit-brained kind of comment imaginable. | | |
| ▲ | ineedaj0b 3 hours ago | parent [-] | | Everyone who’s someone has moved to Twitter (or bluesky), even PG does not comment here like he used to. Reddit is dead, the investors know this, their only income source is selling data to AI companies, and discord ate the “build your own community” lunch. Talk with someone from a lab and they’ll tell you weighing Reddit data too highly results in more “hallucinations” so even their product is bad.. All the high signal commenters left Reddit, and they’re leaving here slowly too. |
|
| |
| ▲ | Noaidi 5 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | There is a reason Musk is so rich. He got most of his funding from taxpayers: https://www.moneytalksnews.com/slideshows/billion-and-counti... It is not him, SpaceX is a government funded project yet he keeps all the money. You should be outraged. | | |
| ▲ | vlovich123 4 hours ago | parent [-] | | There's a lot to criticize, but this argument seems extremely misleading to me. The government wants to put things into space. SpaceX says "this is how much we're willing to take to do so" and bids on the government contract to do so. Notably, this is drastically cheaper launch pricing than the Space Shuttle and whatever other venues NASA had. These weren't R&D grants which are more arguable. |
| |
| ▲ | zoomaboom 9 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | Golden Dome might be "economically meaningful" but it will also lead to WWIII so, no thank you. | | |
| ▲ | ericmay 8 hours ago | parent [-] | | No it won't. Separately other countries don't get to dictate our internal policies or whether we decide to build any sort of missile defense system. If we're going to be nuked over it, then oh well they'll get nuked too. Never can we live as hostages to wanna-be dictators and tyrants (Xi Jingping, Vladimir Putin, IRGC, &c.) and if they want to blow the whole world up then so be it but acquiescing to their bullying is simply not an option. If you think it's an option, then we should issue our own nuclear threats and take them hostage instead. | | |
| ▲ | potatototoo99 6 hours ago | parent [-] | | Is your cognitive dissonance that strong that you don't see that if all major countries follow that line of thought all have to have their own golden domes and invite WW3? | | |
| ▲ | ericmay 2 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | I don’t think that’s an appropriate use of the term ‘cognitive dissonance’, but suffice to say, no, if the US develops the Golden Dome as currently described there is no danger of all major countries also developing the same technology and then starting World War III. | |
| ▲ | AnimalMuppet 6 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | How does everyone having golden dome invite WWIII? We can't shoot missiles at them, so therefore let's go start a war with them? What sense does that make? And if we do, how are we going to fight them? By shooting missiles at them? |
|
|
|
|
