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The amount of absolutely insane engineering that happens on these mission is outstanding all on its own- then you go and add stunts like this, and it makes you

The amount of absolutely insane engineering that happens on these mission is outstanding all on its own- then you go and add stunts like this, and it makes you realize something: The folks doing this stuff are just like the rest of us. They're hackers, but they have billion dollar stuff to hack on. And, they're likely far better at it than the rest of us. Still, we're cut from the same cloth. Love it.

varispeed 4y ago
- randrews 4y ago
  Why is it whenever someone says something unifying and wholesome like gp, someone like you isn't too far behind to remind everyone to feel bad about themselves?
  - mathgladiator 4y ago
    Bitterness is deep in some.
    - randrews 4y ago
      Yep. Not to mention it's objectively not true: I worked at NASA for years, most people working there aren't rich, it pays less than most other engineering jobs. One of my parents worked there and we weren't rich when I was growing up. Nobody was paying for private schools or tutors or things... I had a stack of cheap books from a used bookstore and a handful of surplus nonworking computers that would have been thrown out.
      - dqpb 4y ago
        > I had a stack of cheap books from a used bookstore and a handful of surplus nonworking computers that would have been thrown out. And a parent who worked an NASA. I agree I don't think excessive privilege is responsible for success in technical fields. But it sure doesn't hurt to have friends or family members already on the inside.
        randrews 4y ago
        Of course, that is definitely how I got that first job. But I know plenty of people who got engineering jobs without parental help, and also plenty of people born into privilege who didn't make it as engineers even with the help. The idea that the only way to get here is to start rich is just wrong, and offensive to those of us who didn't. You don't need rich parents, and there's no royal road to tech if you have 'em.
        giomasce 4y ago
        A parent working at NASA is a great advantage for entering tech not because they could open a door for you, but because they would help you creating a receptive mindset much before you'd actually start reading books. Or maybe it wasn't the case for you, but it definitely was for me. My father is a programmer, my mother a maths teacher. My mother's parents both were maths teacher, at different school levels. You can guess it was easy for me to have mathematical and computer concepts presented and explained every time I fancied them. I could develop and nurture my love for STEM much before it was a matter of actually reading books on my own. It's not mechanical, of course; my sister never particularly enjoyed maths and went on to become a nurse. That's fine, of course; but clearly the road would have been harder for me if I wasn't born in an environment which valued maths and science as naturally interesting. My mother's siblings have all finished the university, and so have my cousins on my mother's side (or are still going to the university). Among my father's siblings, he's the only one who finished the university, and coincidentally of my cousins on my father's side the only who finished university are my siblings and I. Of course I don't pretend this is statistically significant, but I think the real privilege with culture is not the money or somebody who makes it easier for you to get a job, but rather being born in an environment that stimulates your desire for culture.
        randrews 4y ago
        Other than general supportiveness of my interests, neither of my parents were in a position to do that. There are a lot of things where, if I had had someone knowledgeable sit down with me for an afternoon, I'd have been years ahead of where I'm at. I could have learned Pascal or C about five years earlier than I did, if someone had helped me set up Turbo Pascal and write a hello-world in it. Could have been breadboarding things earlier if I had known some basics like "which holes are connected in a breadboard." I really did just figure out most things on my own, through trial and error or old books. In an environment where most people either didn't care what I did or actively discouraged that kind of experimentation. Which is why I don't have a lot of patience for that argument up there: no, it's not privilege, anyone can do it, just most people don't.
- mathgladiator 4y ago
  Why point this out? The mantra 'comparison is the thief of joy' feels needed.
- jacquesm 4y ago
  I did just that. A screwdriver was my soldering iron, I recycled the solder and the rest of the parts from circuit boards salvaged from old electronics found in the garbage. Electronics can be as cheap or as expensive as you want it to be, and there is a small chance that you will learn faster at the ultra-cheap end because you are essentially reverse engineering all kinds of stuff.
  - varispeed 4y ago
    At some point you need tools like an oscilloscope and back then it was out of reach. You can hack away basic stuff, sure, but it's not really possible to do more advanced stuff. Also when you spend time "reverse engineering" the basics, privileged people already can research more complex things. You are always way behind and usually end up as a tech fixing laptops, while privileged kids go to NASA.
    - jacquesm 4y ago
      I ended up getting into software (I saw it as infinite parts) and the 'rich kids' ended up becoming doctors and lawyers. I'm really happy I didn't end up like them, though, of course we do need doctors (lawyers: not so much). Electronics was - and is - an engineers game and I personally don't care about whether someone came from a wealthy background or a poor one, jealousy is only going to get you so far, grit, perseverance and smarts will count for at least as much as pedigree in a somewhat meritocratic environment. For the start-up lottery it's a different thing, there your parents will pretty much determine the outcome because if you are already rich you can take much bigger risks. But having a scope or wanting a scope so badly that you'll build your own (I recall hand-drawing the scale for my first VOM, and converting a small BW TV to a low frequency scope) isn't going to make huge difference and building your own test gear (at least, the basic versions of them) will give you a huge degree of insight into how it all works. Fixing laptops doesn't require electronics knowledge beyond replacing units, much like being a car mechanic. BTW, when I eventually did get a 'proper' scope (a nice dual beam 60 MHz Tek from a surplus store) I found that the difference between 'no scope' and 'crap scope' was a lot larger than between 'crap scope' and 'good scope'. I still have the Tek :)
- dtjb 4y ago
  Maybe for previous generations. Today there are unprecedented public and private campaigns and grants to bring STEM opportunities to low-income schools.
- mendigou 4y ago
  I worked for years at ESA and at least there this was not true at all. Most of us came from pretty normal backgrounds and had a passion for engineering. It's definitely not a place where "money ambitious" people go. It's not particularly well paid compared to other engineering jobs (and I think this is even more true at NASA). What we all had in common was fierce passion and a sense of fulfillment that I haven't found anywhere else yet.
- jwrallie 4y ago
  The are some families that had been wealthy for generations, but there are also some that worked hard so that their children could do what they could not. Eventually this builds up. You could argue that to have the vision of planning ahead for the children's life is a kind of cultural privilege, but then you could also argue that this can be learned from observation and introspection. There are still some groups of people that have some advantages when trying to do this compared to others, this have been changing over the years. The point is, there is privilege but it's not the single factor and maybe nor the most important one.
digitalsushi 4y ago
If they're simultaneously just like us and far better at it than the rest of us I believe there is a mutual exclusion here ...
- ravi-delia 4y ago
  Same class != Same level. I think most math people feel a sort of kinship with mathematicians past and present, but I can't pretend I'm any good
  - germinalphrase 4y ago
    Likewise, it can also be difficult to recognize just how good someone is unless you are bad/average at the same thing.
- stickfigure 4y ago
  Dunno, sometimes they screw up in dumb ways too: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mars_Climate_Orbiter https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mars_Climate_Orbiter
eevilspock 4y ago
I don't think a Mars mission compares in any way to what most SV hackers do, whether they do it for profit (especially the ignoble kind, ad revenue) or for the common good (open source dev). Not just in scale and timeframe and budget, but in how the organization (or lack of organization in the case of many open source projects) operates. Also, your application of the word "hacker" to their simply having to adopt to circumstance or be able to update priorities and approaches pretty much takes all the meaning out of the word, because your loose meaning pretty much applies to any endeavor, from business to war to parenting to love.

varispeed 4y ago

randrews 4y ago
Why is it whenever someone says something unifying and wholesome like gp, someone like you isn't too far behind to remind everyone to feel bad about themselves?
- mathgladiator 4y ago
  Bitterness is deep in some.
  - randrews 4y ago
    Yep. Not to mention it's objectively not true: I worked at NASA for years, most people working there aren't rich, it pays less than most other engineering jobs. One of my parents worked there and we weren't rich when I was growing up. Nobody was paying for private schools or tutors or things... I had a stack of cheap books from a used bookstore and a handful of surplus nonworking computers that would have been thrown out.
    - dqpb 4y ago
      > I had a stack of cheap books from a used bookstore and a handful of surplus nonworking computers that would have been thrown out. And a parent who worked an NASA. I agree I don't think excessive privilege is responsible for success in technical fields. But it sure doesn't hurt to have friends or family members already on the inside.
      - randrews 4y ago
        Of course, that is definitely how I got that first job. But I know plenty of people who got engineering jobs without parental help, and also plenty of people born into privilege who didn't make it as engineers even with the help. The idea that the only way to get here is to start rich is just wrong, and offensive to those of us who didn't. You don't need rich parents, and there's no royal road to tech if you have 'em.
        giomasce 4y ago
        A parent working at NASA is a great advantage for entering tech not because they could open a door for you, but because they would help you creating a receptive mindset much before you'd actually start reading books. Or maybe it wasn't the case for you, but it definitely was for me. My father is a programmer, my mother a maths teacher. My mother's parents both were maths teacher, at different school levels. You can guess it was easy for me to have mathematical and computer concepts presented and explained every time I fancied them. I could develop and nurture my love for STEM much before it was a matter of actually reading books on my own. It's not mechanical, of course; my sister never particularly enjoyed maths and went on to become a nurse. That's fine, of course; but clearly the road would have been harder for me if I wasn't born in an environment which valued maths and science as naturally interesting. My mother's siblings have all finished the university, and so have my cousins on my mother's side (or are still going to the university). Among my father's siblings, he's the only one who finished the university, and coincidentally of my cousins on my father's side the only who finished university are my siblings and I. Of course I don't pretend this is statistically significant, but I think the real privilege with culture is not the money or somebody who makes it easier for you to get a job, but rather being born in an environment that stimulates your desire for culture.
        randrews 4y ago
        Other than general supportiveness of my interests, neither of my parents were in a position to do that. There are a lot of things where, if I had had someone knowledgeable sit down with me for an afternoon, I'd have been years ahead of where I'm at. I could have learned Pascal or C about five years earlier than I did, if someone had helped me set up Turbo Pascal and write a hello-world in it. Could have been breadboarding things earlier if I had known some basics like "which holes are connected in a breadboard." I really did just figure out most things on my own, through trial and error or old books. In an environment where most people either didn't care what I did or actively discouraged that kind of experimentation. Which is why I don't have a lot of patience for that argument up there: no, it's not privilege, anyone can do it, just most people don't.
mathgladiator 4y ago
Why point this out? The mantra 'comparison is the thief of joy' feels needed.
jacquesm 4y ago
I did just that. A screwdriver was my soldering iron, I recycled the solder and the rest of the parts from circuit boards salvaged from old electronics found in the garbage. Electronics can be as cheap or as expensive as you want it to be, and there is a small chance that you will learn faster at the ultra-cheap end because you are essentially reverse engineering all kinds of stuff.
- varispeed 4y ago
  At some point you need tools like an oscilloscope and back then it was out of reach. You can hack away basic stuff, sure, but it's not really possible to do more advanced stuff. Also when you spend time "reverse engineering" the basics, privileged people already can research more complex things. You are always way behind and usually end up as a tech fixing laptops, while privileged kids go to NASA.
  - jacquesm 4y ago
    I ended up getting into software (I saw it as infinite parts) and the 'rich kids' ended up becoming doctors and lawyers. I'm really happy I didn't end up like them, though, of course we do need doctors (lawyers: not so much). Electronics was - and is - an engineers game and I personally don't care about whether someone came from a wealthy background or a poor one, jealousy is only going to get you so far, grit, perseverance and smarts will count for at least as much as pedigree in a somewhat meritocratic environment. For the start-up lottery it's a different thing, there your parents will pretty much determine the outcome because if you are already rich you can take much bigger risks. But having a scope or wanting a scope so badly that you'll build your own (I recall hand-drawing the scale for my first VOM, and converting a small BW TV to a low frequency scope) isn't going to make huge difference and building your own test gear (at least, the basic versions of them) will give you a huge degree of insight into how it all works. Fixing laptops doesn't require electronics knowledge beyond replacing units, much like being a car mechanic. BTW, when I eventually did get a 'proper' scope (a nice dual beam 60 MHz Tek from a surplus store) I found that the difference between 'no scope' and 'crap scope' was a lot larger than between 'crap scope' and 'good scope'. I still have the Tek :)
dtjb 4y ago
Maybe for previous generations. Today there are unprecedented public and private campaigns and grants to bring STEM opportunities to low-income schools.
mendigou 4y ago
I worked for years at ESA and at least there this was not true at all. Most of us came from pretty normal backgrounds and had a passion for engineering. It's definitely not a place where "money ambitious" people go. It's not particularly well paid compared to other engineering jobs (and I think this is even more true at NASA). What we all had in common was fierce passion and a sense of fulfillment that I haven't found anywhere else yet.
jwrallie 4y ago
The are some families that had been wealthy for generations, but there are also some that worked hard so that their children could do what they could not. Eventually this builds up. You could argue that to have the vision of planning ahead for the children's life is a kind of cultural privilege, but then you could also argue that this can be learned from observation and introspection. There are still some groups of people that have some advantages when trying to do this compared to others, this have been changing over the years. The point is, there is privilege but it's not the single factor and maybe nor the most important one.

digitalsushi 4y ago

If they're simultaneously just like us and far better at it than the rest of us I believe there is a mutual exclusion here ...

ravi-delia 4y ago
Same class != Same level. I think most math people feel a sort of kinship with mathematicians past and present, but I can't pretend I'm any good
- germinalphrase 4y ago
  Likewise, it can also be difficult to recognize just how good someone is unless you are bad/average at the same thing.
stickfigure 4y ago
Dunno, sometimes they screw up in dumb ways too: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mars_Climate_Orbiter https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mars_Climate_Orbiter

eevilspock 4y ago

I don't think a Mars mission compares in any way to what most SV hackers do, whether they do it for profit (especially the ignoble kind, ad revenue) or for the common good (open source dev). Not just in scale and timeframe and budget, but in how the organization (or lack of organization in the case of many open source projects) operates. Also, your application of the word "hacker" to their simply having to adopt to circumstance or be able to update priorities and approaches pretty much takes all the meaning out of the word, because your loose meaning pretty much applies to any endeavor, from business to war to parenting to love.