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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.

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?