If you're suspicious of Kingston linking to a fake Kingston store then I'm afraid you've reached a level of paranoia I don't care to argue with.

So... they pay less tax than most of their workers.

So? Google's profits, after the taxes they pay, get passed on to their shareholders who then pay more taxes. There are reasonable arguments that its silly to tax corporations at all, and reasonable, mostly logistical, arguments for taxing them. There's no particular reason to compare corporate tax rates to personal ones though. Despite popular myth corporations are not people.

Your assertion that Google pays no taxes at all is just wrong. Why are you even worth replying to when you just make things up?

Usually when people say "community ownership" they mean some imagined loyalty that doesn't have anything to do with actually owning anything.

I have no idea what this guy cares about, but he is using words to mean what they actually mean.

Just taking SpaceX specifically,

- Falcon is a giant step in reducing cost to orbit
- Raptor is a very good engine design, considerably better in many respects than anything previous
- the Starship program has already created and successfully tested the world's largest booster, by quite a bit, that also happens to be one of the most efficient AND is reusable.

Slashdot hates Elon Musk, for some good reasons and some bad reasons, but the pearl clutching over a couple of failures is pretty silly. Even if Starship itself ultimately fails, which it probably won't, the booster seems to be a big success and is extremely useful on its own. All of SpaceX a failure? Lol. The entire commercial space industry a failure? LOL.

the whole approach of the tech industry isn't suitable to the endeavor of putting people in space.

I don't know what this means. Do you mean the software industry that people call "tech?" If SpaceX worked like that they'd have sold payload to Mars on the Star Hopper. Meanwhile, the private space industry HAS delievered people to space. If I'm not mistaken it's the US's *only* way to get them there, no?

Ah. So we've gone from "BS excuses" to some qualifications.

Building rockets is harder than hitting the compile button. There is some risk, that is managed as well as possible. Failures are not "BS excuses" anymore than your inability to write a perfect bug free, syntactically correct program the first time.

Clicking that link gives me a "where to purchase button." Clicking that and selecting "USA," which I assume you're from, gives a list of reputable dealers, plus some online ones like Amazon. Clicking the Amazon link takes me to Kingston's Amazon store. That's buying directly from Kingston.

"community sharing in the ownership of Figma"

Did your brain not parse that properly? The way you share ownership of a company with the public is by, surprise, selling shares the the public.

How do we know what the actual cost of a Falcon 9 flight is?

Because they put their price list on the Internet.

https://www.spacex.com/ridesha...

https://www.spacex.com/media/C...

They're private companies. They do that because they need to in order to maintain their funding.

This is as opposed to government organizations that do things like build rockets in chunks in Utah so they can ship them by rail to Florida where they can be bolted together with o-rings that leak in the cold. Or build giant space planes because it's gotta have wings big enough to land back at the same secure launch facility after a single orbit because reasons. Or {inspiring} {inspiring} and beat the commies who have super rockets and want to kill us all. Also to maintain their funding.

You can't do big projects without hype, fear, greed, or shadowy ulterior motives because humans are the way they are.

So? Literally everything anybody does is "standing atop a mountain of taxypayer funded R&D."

Ever hit compile and have your program not work? Ever hit compile when you were pretty sure there were errors but wanted to find out where they were?

What are your BS excuses for those failures?

Google's average global income tax rate over the last 10 years is apparently 26%.

Google is an investor in Commonwealth Fusion. I expect this deal isn't about Google actually getting 500 MW in 2032, but a method to a) give CF more money and b) to demonstrate confidence in them. Probably there are some tax advantages over just giving them more money.

Yes, that is Canada's position regarding the US.

Country A is very large and powerful and likes minding other people's business, in many ways.

I'm not sure what you're talking about, but it's not what I'm talking about.