It's convenient to make up your own facts, yes? NOAA's mission, as established by several congresses, is rather more than weather forecasting.

https://www.congress.gov/crs-p...

The agency’s history dates to 1807, when the Survey of the Coast—a precursor to NOAA—was established. In 1970, President Nixon created NOAA as part of a broader reorganization plan.

In its current form, NOAA’s responsibilities or functions are divided among six subagencies, or line offices: National Environmental Satellite, Data, and Information Service (NESDIS); National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS); National Ocean Service (NOS); National Weather Service (NWS); Office of Oceanic and Atmospheric Research (OAR); and Office of Marine and Aviation Operations (OMAO).

In July 1970, President Richard M. Nixon sent Reorganization Plan No. 4 (hereinafter referred to as the reorganization plan) to Congress.6 In the reorganization plan, President Nixon proposed the creation of NOAA to protect life and property from natural hazards, better understand the total environment, and explore and develop ways to use marine resources in a “coordinated way” within DOC.7 Most Members of the 91st Congress supported the reorganization plan.8 Under the terms of the statutory authority under which the reorganization plan was submitted, the plan went into effect on October 3, 1970.9

https://www.noaa.gov/our-missi...

NOAA's Mission: Science. Service. Stewardship.
1. To understand and predict changes in climate, weather, ocean and coasts.

2. To share that knowledge and information with others.

3. To conserve and manage coastal and marine ecosystems and resources.

I replied to a specific post. You seem to want to make some statements that are tangentially related to what I said then, when presented with compelling counterarguments, change the subject and talk about the article?

Count me out.

Can you create a storefront on Amazon that is linked to by Kingston?

"Sold by Amazon" means Amazon bought the thing from Kingston and is now selling it to you. Are you accusing Amazon itself, not one of it's random third party sellers, of selling counterfeits? If you can prove that you can probably get a pretty good payout.

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.

Oh come on.

We've been saying "Thanks, Biden!" for years as a joke, and you blue haired legbeards always got riled up with your "source????" and "citation needed???" cries.

(FWIW I don't support Trump and have never voted Republican).

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?