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From the astronauts themselves: "We don’t feel abandoned, we don’t feel stuck, we don’t feel stranded.” [1]
[1] https://edition.cnn.com/2025/02/13/science/boeing-starliner-...
Good for them, but let's be honest: It does not give a great picture that they are still up there after more than half a year.
They've never been "stuck" up there in the sense NASA couldn't get them home asap. NASA just decided to instead use them to do normal ISS duties and put them as part of the standard ISS rotation. It seems they're okay with that.
You do realise they were supposed to return on the next crew rotation in Feb?
Which was on a Crew Dragon that the delivery is late on.
So that's on Musk's company. Now that looks bad. They can't even rescue them because SpaceX are running late.
I am not sure what you are trying to tell me. Do you agree that it does look bad?
I think it was fairly clear. The real issue is somewhere else. Perhaps your perception of bad is wrong.
This is some weird mental gymnastics. They were supposed to be up there 30 days and it’s winding up to be over 280 days due to Boeings failures with starliner. The fact that SpaceX can fill those shoes with a comparatively tiny amount of notice is super embarrassing for Boeing.
Secondly, NASA announced in December that SpaceX will return them in Boeing’s place in late March, which SpaceX is still on-time for. SpaceX is having to shuffle stuff around to accommodate this because they didn’t plan for having to pick up Boeing’s slack. Why don’t you go ask Boeing how long they’d take to get another unscheduled Starliner up there. It’d be literally years.
If you would please edit out swipes from your HN posts as the guidelines request (https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html), we'd appreciate it.
Your comment would be fine without that bit. (Well, the "Why don't you go ask Boeing" is also a little swipey.)
That's fair, sorry dang. I strive to follow the guidelines well and sometimes I slip up. I'll do better.
"Great picture" sounds pretty subjective to me, but Suni Williams served a turn as commander of ISS and performed her eighth (wow) spacewalk while she's been up there. I imagine Wilmore is having fun too.
It sucks for the guys who were scheduled to go up and had their trip postponed (not to mention Boeing shareholders) but otherwise, everything seems cool. You can certainly spin it to look any way you want, but using words like "stranded" and passing political conspiracy theories is lame.
(the difficulty NASA of the Mir-era would have had in adapting to something comparable to this is something to contemplate)
If you planned to visit Antarctica and your return trip got cancelled and your month long trip turned into nearly a year, then yeah I think most anyone would say you were stranded in Antarctica
If you had a month long trip to antartica. Your ship broke and there is others you can take back. But since your ship broke your boss ask if you want to keep doing that for longer since priorities will change. You say you're cool with it and appreciate the opportunity to do something incredibly unique for longer.
Anything goes wrong, you can return at any time. You're not able to stay, there are plans that can bring you earlier, but again, you're cool with it.
The only people not cool with it are political goons and the guy who owns a ship company that would benefit wildly on a "rescue mission". Even if fabricated.
And I believe the astronauts are less stranded than researchers at McMurdo since getting out of Antartica in bad weather is harder than getting down from the station in the standby capsules.
Are they stranded? technically yes. Do they need rescue? no.
Saw an interview with one of them on American national TV news. She did not seem the least bit unhappy.
Great. The least we can do is call Musk & co out on their lies. Even if it feels like a full-time job.
Yes, "I have bullet in my body but, cough-cough, I don't feel it needs to be removed yet - just need to show that this other guy is lying!"
One would be surprised to find out how many humans live with foreign objects embedded in their body, for removal is riskier than the object left in body as it is.
Like dead worms in their brains.
I'm risking going too off topic with this one, but how did we get to the point where a public (policital?) figure can call someone "fully retarded" in front of the world and not face any backlash? Especially someone with great achievements, that has been to the ISS multiple times, and so on.
A few years ago this would have likely resulted in a defamation lawsuit, public backlash, criticism in news...
In a civil society he shouldn't have lasted past calling someone a pedo in public.
Most CEOs would have been ejected from their companies pretty damn quickly. Why not Musk?
His companies don't have great governance ratings because the board is stuffed with family members, friends and his divorce lawyer as General Counsel (that last one sounds like satire but isn't).
... Wait, really? That's absurd.
Even cried during the court session... :-)
"A former Tesla lawyer broke down in tears during Elon Musk's compensation lawsuit" - https://qz.com/elon-musk-tesla-pay-lawsuit-todd-maron-185121...
"...It wasn’t just Maron. Musk had a 15-year relationship with Ira Ehrenpreis, who chaired the committee that determined the CEO’s compensation. Antonio Gracias, another member of the compensation committee has a 20-year business relationship with Musk, and they’re such good friends that the two even go on vacation together..."
He has good contacts with the MIC, provides Starlink in Ukraine, works on missiles, has friends who work on drones.
He also is the right wing voice that keeps the culture wars theater going and will reduce workers' rights even further.
Therefore, the uniparty likes him. The only issue where he ever had to recant was Israel.
It's part of the Anti-DEI push.
Anything polite is wrong, and calling names is just 'being honest'.
The logic goes :
"the truth doesn't care about your feelings,
so if I hurt your feelings,
then I must be saying something true"
Ooh this is a nice way of putting it. Affirming the consequent.
It's the same one creationists use: They used to laugh at Galileo, and they are now laughing at me, therefore I must be right.
I think it's more about using the language that is close to people. When you listen to Trump's speeches, he's virtually the only high-rank politician who speaks in a way that voters can understand. Politicians created their own lingo that only themselves and those actively interested in politics can understand, and using phrases like "he's a retard" solves this problem.
Another facet of the same fallacy: "A difficult choice is one that helps some while hurting others, but someone wise has to make them. Therefore, if I make a choice that helps some while hurting others, I must be wise."
I see this often when people declare "you can't help everyone!" as an axiom. This is also strongly connected with, though I'd argue slightly separate from, "suffering builds character, therefore it's good if I make someone suffer".
Because "owning the libs" is basically the entirety of the right's ideology. It doesn't matter if it's calling people names, firing park rangers or cheering on Putins war, if it pisses off the libs, it must be great.
Reminds me of the old saying that republicans would happily let someone shit in their mouth if it meant that a liberal had to smell their breath.
Shitting your pants to own the libs!
The news realized that amygdala-bait drove "engagement". (I loathe that term used in its corporate sense)
The US right wing realized that the firehose of lies could overwhelm their opposition.
trump showed he could mock a disabled journalist and not have his approval drop.
musk showed he could defame someone and get away with it in court.
I don't have much hope that any of this will change soon.
Someone already forgot the "pedo guy" saga..
I can totally imagine him saying “okay, retard, you asked for it…” and sending up a Crew capsule next Wednesday.
Edit: not endorsing the usage of the word, just saying it seems well within the realm of a possible reality.
Was any plan made/ proposed since Jan 20?
That won't happen because they are late on delivering it. The mission was supposed to be Feb but has been pushed back to late March 2025. If SpaceX don't screw it up further that is.
Musk is trying to talk over this.
He called someone a retard a few days ago for thinking (correctly, in case I have to spell that out for Musk fans) that the government uses SQL.
I thought both the technical content and character of that statement were worth discussing here but it got flagged:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43078219
He did also do three Seig Heils behind the president's seal at the end of a political rally, so there's that too.
He got away with a Nazi salute [1,2] at the white house, why do you think the R-word would scare him?
[1] https://imgur.com/a/BQO6lBo
[2] https://imgur.com/a/WAflimH
As I feel like having to point out every single time this is mentioned because I know exactly how people try to relativize this:
Yes, he tried to use plausible deniability by talking about how "his heart goes out" to people right before doing this gesture, but you know exactly what this looks like and you know that this is not a gesture commonly used to express that sentiment anywhere in any cultural context that would explain this.
This means there are exactly two scenarios in which this is not intended to be a Nazi salute:
1) Elon Musk is incredibly unaware and despite Twitter (including his replies) being overrun by people blatantly Nazi-posting (as in, literally posting videos of the Third Reich or Adolf Hitler and expressing admiration for that era and its sentiments) and him himself having made "jokes" before that suggest sufficient awareness to recognize this gesture for what it looks like - SOMEHOW he is gormless enough to have come up with a gesture that completely by accident unintentionally looks like a Nazi salute and used it multiple times without realizing what it looked like.
2) He's just as gormless as in the first scenario but did realize what it looked like and didn't think that's worth apologizing for and instead doubled down by making fun of those calling him out for it.
But even in those two scenarios he is clearly okay with people (especially the far right) thinking that's what he did and doesn't feel like it's worth distancing himself from those who think that's a good thing.
So in other words, either he did a Nazi salute or he is okay with people thinking he did a Nazi salute. Those are functionally and consequentially identical outside the brain of Elon Musk himself.
Personally I think - given how obsessed he is with extremely stale and tired memes and low-effort shitposts - he wanted to do a Nazi salute but also wanted to maintain the thinnest of pretenses that he didn't, just in case it might come back to bite him. He saw that he got away with it and decided to double down in order to mask his insecurity.
And no, those pictures of Democrats holding their hand at a similar angle don't demonstrate anything and anyone who posts them is fully aware of that. This isn't just him deciding to do a weird greeting and ending up in a position that looked awkward, this is him deciding to do a full, forceful motion that could not have looked any other way no matter the angle - and then repeating it to provide a second look from a different angle to eliminate all doubt to what he did. There's only one clip of a US politician or media figure who isn't an open Nazi doing a salute like this I have seen and it's from a Republican who quickly chickens out by waving at an awkward angle - and that's still offering far more plausible deniability because she only did it once.
HN flagged. Musk must have 20 interns flagging his stories here...
It’s a disgrace this is flagged, and more so if this gets buried by the admin. This is a clear cut case really. The astronaut is correct and Musk is on a tirade.
More than astronaut. Aerospace engineer and ESA astronaut, Master’s in Aeronautical Engineering, Ph.D. in Aerospace Engineering, ESA astronaut since 2009, First non-American to pilot a U.S. spacecraft, ISS Expedition 70 commander and Honorary professor.
One day Musk will learn how to run that Python script....
Garry Tan (CEO of YC) has also been calling people retarded on Twitter since the election. What's "retarded" in the actual sense of the word is behaving like a poorly socialized child when you're in your forties and running global companies. I mean, honestly, what the fuck? I can't believe these are our leaders.
(Worse yet, I get the sense this filth has just been welling up inside them for the last few years, and they are positively giddy at the prospect of turning public discourse into Call of Duty voice chat.)
[flagged]
It's really very specifically around Musk-stuff; his fans flag anything that makes him look bad. HN's user-driven moderation system seems to have been basically designed assuming good faith.
In my experience, anything political is flagged.
But this isn’t very political. Astronauts are on the ISS longer than expected. Musk is lying and calling out names. Astronaut points out the lies.
Everything about you-know-who is political right now, and probably will be for quite some time.
Hi dang, I am unsure if flagged entries are still being shown, but this one seems like slam dunk where one party is claiming something without proof and the other is kind of an expert, should that not be visible to most visitors.
Of course I am not aware what the implications for you will be, but sometimes these things can be better for the greater good. One side is clearly using propaganda and the other sets the record straight.
Up to you of course, we talked a bit earlier on emotional responses to posts, and my emotional response is this such a clear lie by you-know-who that it feels unjust.
Thank you in any case for the work you do here!
Posts marked [flagged] are still visible. If it said [flagged][dead] then only users with 'showdead' turned on would see it, but that's not the case here.
Stories that make you-know-who look good get flagged even more quickly, so this is not a one-sided phenomenon.
More at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43111979.
No, but you're definitely not "heterodox" enough.
Whenever there's a Major Ongoing Topic (MOT - https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...), the flood of submissions about it quickly exhausts HN's capacity to host substantive discussions. That goes double when a topic is divisive and enraging, like you-know-who is.
Why? Because curiosity withers under repetition and fries under indignation. (https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...)
When this happens, the community always splits between one subset of users who feel strongly about the MOT, want a lot more of it, and feel like the topic is being censored and suppressed; and a different subset of users who don't want the repetition and don't want the site to be taken over by flamewars. The first subset is typically a minority, but more vocal; the second subset is typically the majority, but less vocal and more inclined to flag the submissions.
(This split has nothing to do with political sides, btw, because the same pattern shows up about any MOT regardless of its political valence. It's true that partisans flag stories that are bad for their side, but that alone isn't sufficient to create the pattern I'm talking about.)
As far as I can tell, the above is what's going on with the current MOT, just as it has with other MOTs over the years. So no, moderation isn't broken—or at least not in any way that wasn't broken 10 years ago. The problem is simply that the bulk of the community doesn't want as many threads about this as you do. A certain amount is ok, but that "certain amount" is just far lower than the amount that you, and others who feel strongly about the topic, want.
This leads to a seeming paradox where a topic which is by far the most discussed on HN over a period of weeks or months, at the same time feels completely suppressed and censored to users who feel like it's starving for oxygen. That is the "nobody goes there anymore it's too crowded" dynamic of MOTs.
Considering how awful, nasty, and repetitive these discussions have been getting, I agree with the bulk of the community. We've still been turning off the flags on some of these stories—that's standard practice for MOTs—but only some, and only when there's significant new information (https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&so...) that has at least some chance of a substantive conversation.
Politically passionate users tend to want to go after each other. It's fine to want that, but it's not fine here, because name-calling, snark, and rage are not what this particular site is for. There are other places on the internet to do battle. I know that the strong feelings are justified and that these topics are important—far more important than most of what does make HN's front page—but it doesn't follow that we should just switch off HN's rules. The site would burn to a crisp if we did that, and what good would that do? Scorched earth is uninteresting, no matter what one's passions are.
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
You said "bulk of the community" twice here, what does that mean? Are you claiming that most users don't want to see these threads, and that the flagging system represents it? With how quickly threads get flagged (and seeing how they can even stay on /active for a day or 2 after being flagged) there is clearly not a reasonable quorum of users making these decisions.
I understand that a large number of users choosing to talk about a topic does not mean the topic should remain on HN (which I believe you've said before). But I'd like to see more evidence before you say what the "bulk of the community" wants.
Yes, by "bulk" I simply mean majority.
Those seem like non sequiturs to me. There are a lot of users flagging the posts. Many (not all) are legit users who flag for the right reasons. I know that because I look at their history and see what else they flag.
If you see threads that you think should not stay flagged, you're welcome to let us know about them at hn@ycombinator.com. As I've explained above and in many other places, we're willing to turn the flags off under certain conditions, such as: the thread isn't disastrous, the article contains significant new information, and there hasn't been too much similar material recently.
The current thread, though, is a good example of when we wouldn't turn flags off. This kind of shallow-indignant discussion is not what HN is for.
Thanks for what you do, dang.
But that is not only what is happening from the moderation side is it?
Accounts with years of history, solid karma, and virtually no record of missteps are suddenly being throttled—limited in the number of stories they can post and even in their ability to reply within discussions.
It appears that merely having a story flagged is enough to trigger these constraints. So, if these users weren't throttled before, what changed?
Are they simply falling victim to brigading?
And isn't it a striking irony that fresh accounts, even those with provocative names like "gulfofamerica," can comment freely while long-standing contributors are being throttled?
We rate-limit accounts when we see them posting too many low-quality comments and/or getting involved in flamewars. Those are missteps.
That's definitely not the case.
Nothing changed. The moderation practices around rate-limiting have been the same for many years.
No. "Brigading" implies groups of third-party users, and actions by such accounts have no effect on rate limits.
When people see a post that ought to have been moderated but hasn't, they frequently feel that the mods must secretly endorse it, but by far the likelier explanation is just that we didn't see it. HN has far too much content for us to read it all, and we can't moderate what we don't see. That might be regrettable but it's not a "striking irony", just a mundane limitation.
https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu...
---
Btw, if you're asking about your own account, the problem is that you've been using HN primarily for political battle, which is not only (1) against the site guidelines and (2) the sort of thing we rate limit accounts for, but (3) is actually a line at which we ban accounts (see https://hn.algolia.com/?sort=byDate&dateRange=all&type=comme... for lots of past explanations). You've also been breaking the site guidelines in other ways.
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
Breaking: Can't even escape bullshit off world.
Ad at bottom of article pleads “Why you can rely on the Guardian not to bow to Trump – or anyone”
Why is Trump the only name in the sentence? Seems like they’re bowing to someone.
Who?
Good question