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Honest question: How is this relevant to Hacker News? As a non-American i was rather bewildered to find this here. Is there a serious overlap between gun enthus
by lutoma 6y ago
Honest question: How is this relevant to Hacker News? As a non-American i was rather bewildered to find this here. Is there a serious overlap between gun enthusiasts and the IT community in the US?
- Teknoman117 6y agoI'm an American working as a software engineer for a tech company and I'm a gun enthusiast. Do I carry one with me? No. Do I have any set up for home defense? No. Do I enjoy shooting high power rifles at the range on the weekend? You bet I do. FWIW I own more tech stuff by value than guns, so, there's that.
- dfxm12 6y agoI don't think it matters where you're from, I don't see how hackers/start up entrepreneurs would be particularly interested in this story or how this even gratifies one's intellectual curiosity, either. But I feel that way about many articles that find their way to the front page. I checked the comments expecting that I missed some interesting context, but I didn't. In any case, it's not too much of a burden to flag/hide and move along.
- arkitaip 6y agoHN is much more conservative and libertarian than you might think.
- aksss 6y agoI think this is part of being very systems-oriented and technically-minded. Appreciating the liabilities and brittleness of systems but also the fallibility of men and their aspirations/intentions. The focus on garbage-in/garbage-out, the primacy of an “RTFM” ethos of learning and understanding obscure phenomenon that affect outcomes. Probably some degree of being perpetually frustrated with a “user community” that can’t be bothered to really appreciate how things work spills into policy discussions.
- mhh__ 6y agoE.g. criticise the Orangeman and watch the downvotes pour in. Criticise his opponents, or have some contrarian defence of him, not much happens.
- pluto9 6y agoI don't doubt that you've seen examples of that, but I've seen plenty that go the other way. Heavily downvoted comments that are only slightly defensive of him, and others that rise to the top for bashing him when it isn't even relevant to the conversation. It really depends on the thread. Different topics attract different crowds.
- tluyben2 6y agoI saw a lot of downvotes and defenses like you say, but the down votes, as far as I have seen, were on rants or reddit type blurbs about Trump which people do not like here. And the defenses were well thought out. Anyway that is what I have seen; i started checking because I thought it weird there are so many Trump supporters on here (might still be the case: as eu person I also find it strange there are a fair amount religious people on here; I do not mind, I am just curious to things I do not expect to find).
- mhh__ 6y agoThe average vocal HN commenter on these matters are much more likely to be a fairly conservative techno-republican than elsewhere on the internet e.g. nearly every thread I've seen on the Capitol Riots (apart from the main one, which after being flagged and restored had an influx of fresh blood) has some kind of smarmy "ah yes but what about the (black people) looting and murdering in the summer". Similarly any thread on gun control shows just how much some Americans view gun violence as a mere cost of doing business so they can own an assault rifle.
- haunter 6y agoYou can put this question pretty much under every 2nd post on the front page Anyways there are lot of SV entrepreneurs on HN so an (old) american company sold to a European (especially from the former Eastern block) is always relevant. Also HN is much more than an "IT community" I think, much more diverse
- KAMSPioneer 6y agoI'm originally from the Great Plains area (center of the US and, in fairness, a rather conservative region) and work IT. I'd say about half of my American coworkers were some level of gun user (from "I own one and know how to use it" to "don't tell my wife I bought another one").
- mikestew 6y agoI would probably fit the description of "typical West Coast liberal" were it not for the Colt 1991 factory customized we have in the gun locker (along with a couple other boom sticks). Reformed Midwesterner who didn't sell all of the guns after the conversion. Don't carry that Colt, and don't even shoot it much anymore, but the story does interest me because I can admire fine mechanical things, and it is good to know that Colt isn't going to some private equity firm like Remington.
- jbob2000 6y agoI’m so torn on guns. If you had asked me about them when I was younger, I would tell you that I don’t think they have a place in society and that we should ban them. But as I’ve aged, I see class structures and the power of the elites much more clearly. I see how systems can be more violent than people. And that individuals do not have a lot of power these days because society is filled with so many systems. Owning a gun returns some power to the individual. I don’t want my power for defense given to the police, I want to control that power. I don’t care if the situations I want it for will never happen, I want the comfort of having that power.
- chordalkeyboard 6y ago> Owning a gun returns some power to the individual. I don’t want my power for defense given to the police, I want to control that power. I don’t care if the situations I want it for will never happen, I want the comfort of having that power. This, exactly. But also: > we should ban them. That “we” does a lot of heavy lifting to obscure that fact that the prohibition of guns consists of people with guns telling other people when they may and may not have guns.
- mikecoles 6y agoMicrocontrollers to webapps. Security and networking in between. The prior things pay the bills. Guns are for pleasure. Long range shooting beats meditation and yoga.
- foofoo4u 6y agoI do think there is a large overlap with American IT workers and gun enthusiasts. I happen to be one of them. But I do agree with your comment. As much as I may find the topic "Czech gunmaker CZG buys Colt" interesting, I believe it does not belong on Hacker News. Little by little Hacker News is turning into reddit. There is a reason why I come here and not reddit. The mods should take this post down to ensure the integrity of Hackers News.
- tpmx 6y agoWhen you say IT workers, do you mean mostly the people we used to call sysadmins? (The term "IT worker" doesn't translate well globally.)
- foofoo4u 6y ago"IT" is an overloaded term, so I don't blame the confusion. When I say IT, I am referring to jobs like Software Development, sysadmins, technicians, data scientists, etc.
- blaser-waffle 6y ago"IT" in this context I suspect refers broadly to "tech". But yeah, the in-industry definitions are that "IT" is business-side support & project roles, while CS / Dev are coders.
- lazycrazyowl 6y agoIn my opinion Hacker News isn’t strictly an IT community but a platform that focuses on technology, startup culture and entrepreneurship that allows followers with a mix of technical obsession, business ambition, and aspirational curiosity to discuss among themselves to have some sort of intellectual reasoning.I may be wrong.
- pjkundert 6y agoThere is a large overlap between any serious engineering discipline and firearms enthusiasts. The engineering and physics involved in building/tuning guns and shooting accurately is very interesting. Furthermore, the "renegade" spirit required to reject the status-quo and push the envelope in science and engineering attracts quite a few of the same types of people. Finally, the idea of "banning" guns -- which every basically qualified engineer or physicist should be capable to building from readily available materials and tools -- makes them even more interesting. If for no other reason than to illuminate preposterous and insulting nature of the idea. IMHO. ;)
- gambiting 6y ago>>There is a large overlap between any serious engineering discipline and firearms enthusiasts. Again, surely you mean in the US? All engineers I have ever worked with or met are almost the exact opposite of this. IMHO ;-)
- calyth2018 6y agoCanadian. I think it's interesting. Canada buy some stuff from Colt Canada, apparently, occasionally require designs to be manufacturered by Colt Canada for service rifles, such as the one used by the Rangers in the North. If CZ ends up picking up Colt Canada too, seems like they'd be in good hands.
- nucleardog 6y agoThey did. The purchase was of Colt Holdings which is the parent of both Colt USA and Colt Canada.
- ashtonkem 6y agoSome European countries have more guns than you’d think. Iirc it’s estimated that some countries like Switzerland have more guns per capita than some US states (New Jersey is usually the lowest per capita). The difference is in gun culture. Very few Europeans identify with guns as much as Americans occasionally do.
- setr 6y agotake a look at https://animagraffs.com/how-a-handgun-works-1911-45/ https://animagraffs.com/how-a-handgun-works-1911-45/ and tell me this ain't ENGINEERING
- NoOneNew 6y agoDont forget the hundreds of years of engineering required just to get to the 1911. It's not like the 1911 was pooped out one day. Pistol and revolver engineering is amazing for the fact reliability and predictability are the forefront of needs. Everything else is technically optional. It's and industry that's standing on the shoulders of giants without a doubt. To be faaaaaair, without Colt's revolutionary wheely gat, the 1911 may not have happened when it did. Let that marinate.
- aksss 6y agoFor certain, but let’s not forget that the time period of the late 19th-early 20th century represented a flowering of innovation and invention across all areas of life and tooling that is arguably very unique in human history. That spirit and the thinking that was applied in such diverse areas is staggering, and as I read more about it (say, 1868-1915ish?) the more I’m convinced it’s very under-appreciated.
- NoOneNew 6y ago>That spirit and the thinking that was applied in such diverse areas is staggering, and as I read more about it (say, 1868-1915ish?) the more I’m convinced it’s very under-appreciated. HELL YEA! Seriously, that time period was just dumped with brilliance in its own right, especially in engineering. It's so amazing what accomplishments were made with such basic tech. I mean seriously, the basic machine shop these days is FAR more advanced than what was available to the engineering cats back then. But those folks were spitting out brilliance like we use toilet paper after a pre-pandemic taco Tuesday. There's a part of me that thinks our general mindset to engineering, learning and research is fundamentally different compared to that golden era of science and engineering. Honestly, I think it's for the worst. We're too subservient to technology rather than being the ones holding the chains and whips to the machines. That's going to be our downfall. Being switches to the machines and not knowing when to switch them off.
- blaser-waffle 6y ago> Is there a serious overlap between gun enthusiasts and the IT community in the US? Anecdotally, but yes. Same with cars, AV & musical gear, other technical-ish stuff. I chalk it up to technical / engineering mentalities, disposable income, and US culture. Give nerds money and the ability to blow stuff up... and they'll blow stuff up.
- vmception 6y agoRelevance: A) A pulse on market frothiness B) A pulse on who is opening their purse and looking C) National security implications from the foreign purchaser of American munitions creator D) C but with Eastern Europe. A lot of Silicon Valley is funded by funds with Russian general partners using British Virgin Islands entities which have Russian limited partners who made all their money with all the underpriced public assets in Russia, aka Oligarchs. Our salaries in a lot of startups come from Russian oligarchs. We consider that controversial because so much energy is also spent vilifying Russia and their money and its also hilarious that we are making them wealthy too, while they provide the capital to make us wealthy. So people pay attention to other constructive ways of getting Russian money into US assets. Soviet Union and satellite states are just too obvious. Even though one might as well use the Cayman Islands or British Virgin Islands. E) No national security implication and just liking CZG and their quality control, and how that affects the general Czech gun image and brand. F) Americans have a general consensus in favor of gun use, gun trading, gun modification, for vary wide ranges of reasons. Similar to computers and tinkering. So it will be rare to find a US-centric forum that fairly often posts culture related articles that would ignore this. So this headline is a perfect storm. To the top, boys!
- yongjik 6y agoNot me, but a large fraction of the HN community is ideologically libertarian-leaning, and they like guns. (From my experience, I don't think US IT workers are particularly pro-guns any more than average Americans.)
- wwww4all 6y agoEarly computers were created to calculate ballistic tables for artillery fire support in military. Most of the innovations in computers and tech are direct results from military arms research. Silicon Valley didn’t just sprout from nothing. There were lots of engineers in the area that worked to support military contract making weapons, and their kids started computer companies.
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- Guthur 6y agoConsidering the number of comments, yes. Seems more relevant than the homeless grant article tbh. For the record I don't mind either article and clicked on both.
- wbl 6y agoHard SF in the 1970's had a strong libertarian turn, which included much firearms. See also stickjocks.