On the other hand, if they had NOBODY's information, it might really level the playing field.

But the problem I have with them is the way they mash information together with little to no concern for it's accuracy.

New corporate speak. Customer = stalking victim.

Most founders aren't scum. Just the ones who call themselves that. Other people call it "starting a business" and they call themselves "the schmuck who thought this was a good idea."

Hookers and blow didn't get any cheaper. Nor did the private jets to put them on.

That sounds like what he's going for. "I can't legally post it, but I can tell someone else how I did it if they'd like to post it."

This is a clear "violation" of the claims I have thrown at me that there could never be an economically viable means to synthesize hydrocarbon fuels.

Don't believe anything you read on the Internet. Gasoline synthesis exists and costs about twice as much as digging it out of the ground currently costs. That's generally not "economically viable" unless you take into account the external costs of the dug out of the ground type, or if you've got special requirements. The US Navy is very interested in synthesizing jet fuel so they don't have to haul it around in tankers, for example.

Things like CO2 are technically toxic, but in pretty high concentrations. Their real hazard is remote and hard to grasp for lots of people.

Hot hydrogen chloride gas is a a bit more immediately and obviously toxic. As in, it turns into hydrochloric acid in the air. And in your lungs.

Recycling is taking a used product and turning it into something else useful.

Incineration is burning waste to get rid of it.

Turning plastic into usable gasoline is absolutely recycling.

The ghost of the space shuttle. Not the happy memory of the space shuttle's greatest success.

Because if you burn a billion each test that means a lot fewer tests than if it's $10 million.

Two or three failures doom a lot of rocket development programs. One of the first comments on this story currently is someone casually asserting that SpaceX "desperately needed" this flight to succeed, while at the same time crediting them for having the balls to leave off heat shield tiles and test the limits of controllability during reentry.

They can do that because they don't "desperately need" their test flights to succeed, even after several failures. Deciding to build mass production capabilities for your rocket before you've finished designing it is a risky move, but it does mean tests involve just taking the next one off the assembly line.

is not currently ready for commercial payloads

First, they don't care.

Second, why not? The only thing they haven't actually demonstrated is recovering the second stage. Nobody has demonstrated that.

It should be possible to crack the short hydrocarbons into proper precursors for more plastics.

Those issues are only known to people who care because they already read. Libraries are obsolete but reading has never been easier or more convenient.

A few years back, I read a good book on Freemasonry, that my mother-in-law bought me for Christmas. Before that, I don't know, I think it was a different Freemasonry book my mother bought me, but if I add up all the books I've enjoyed reading, it's under 10, and I wouldn't be surprised if it was under 7. That total includes everything I remember reading from grade 1, until now, and the reason? Most books are boring, and long, and if I have a couple of hours to spend doing nothing, why invest that into the pointless journey of bad character development?

In grade 4, I had a meeting with my parents and the teacher (Ms Brown), to discuss why I didn't enjoy reading. My mother was crying (of course), and my father was just there, I don't think he really cared. The teacher was very concerned that during "free reading" I would take short form books and read 10 of them, and then summarize them. My teacher honestly thought I didn't know how to read, and was hiding it. I explained in some paraphrased form that I found reading boring, which caused an immediate reaction, that it was my fault that I found it boring.

What did I find boring about it? The waste of engagement, some sloppy, poorly written character spends 100 pages to get nowhere, and you could have just told me in the first page. That triggered an investigation through Special Education because they still thought I was unable to read, but trying to make excuses. The look on Mrs York's face, Special Ed teacher, when I f'ing crushed the entire assessment, was priceless. I ended up by the assessment reading at a grade 12 level in grade 4 (I have no idea how you judge that). I could and can read, I just don't like long format nonsense, and how many of us are in the same boat? How many of us were told we're at fault because we have different preferences?

The question isn't if you enjoy reading, the question is: What do you read, and can you read? If you can't read, that's another topic, but, if you can read, but don't like reading hundredths of pages, when a ten-page summary would have gotten you to the same place, then what's the problem? How many of us read Slashdot every day? How many of us read source X or Y, in the same format? If one paragraph can get me to click a link to a multipage article, why is that not good enough of a metric?

If you enjoy reading, that's wonderful, but why is it an issue when you don't? Maybe you don't dislike reading, you just don't like reading long format styled work.

Your argument is pretty typical of the "qualitative research" I like to tease my soft science colleagues about. You tell a story about "one side" and then tell another story about "the other side" and pretend they're equal. In your case your story about "the left" is pretty questionable too. A reasonably liberal view like freedom of religion and non-descrimination is in no way equivalent to excusing poor treatment of women (or anybody else) in hard core Islam any more than it is to excusing poor treatment of women in hard core Christianity.

In all but a few countries, support for implementing Sharia law is a small minority among Muslims. Support for such a thing is so vanishingly small in the US I couldn't find any polls that even asked.

Yet half of Americans think the bible should influence US law, 2/3 of Christians, and ~90% of white evangelicals.