Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

4k NASA employees opt to leave agency through deferred resignation program

kcrw.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

451–460 of 774 posts

Re: 4k NASA employees opt to leave agency through deferred resignation program

#451

Post by derriz »

pseudo0 wrote: post #415
derriz wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Household wealth inequality has also fallen significantly in Ireland. Longer term statistics are more difficult to find compared to income inequality but see Chart 3 here - https://www.centralbank.ie/statistics/statistical-publicatio... - provides a 12 year time series which proves this. Irish property prices are and have risen considerably - but "600%", I think, is a somewhat dramatic way to present the increases -…

The source I linked shows the Ireland housing index going from around 33 in 1995 to over 180 in 2025. That's an over 6x real return, which equates to a rate of return of over 6.5% after inflation . Looking at the CEIC data you linked, which is not inflation-adjusted, it shows household income increasing from just under $20k in 2003 to around $40k in 2023. Plugging that into the CAGR formula you get a 3.5% nominal ann…

Yes I made a mistake in my calculation - household income (from that CEIC data) rose 4.1% per annum between end of 2012 and the end of 2023.

Your graph comes from BIS data - picking 1995 as starting point is a little unfair as that's exactly when house prices started to rise - if I measure from 1990, the rise (using BIS nominal nominal to make comparison easier) is 5.1% per annum.

But yes house prices have risen faster than household incomes. Like pretty much everywhere else in the world.

> And your other link makes it clear that the change in wealth distribution is really just a side effect of the housing bubble

The claim I was contesting was that wealth inequality had increased in the last few decades. It has not - it has decreased significantly.

Re: 4k NASA employees opt to leave agency through deferred resignation program

#452

Post by [deleted] »

nomel wrote: post #437
supplied_demand wrote: post #435

Earlier quoted context omitted.

== What you end up with will always be better than what you started with.== That is quite the absolute statement. Could you share some data to back this up?

Sorry it wasn't clear enough, but I was paraphrasing Jim Keller. See the several Lex Fridman episodes with him, where he talks about it. The success with his projects would probably be the data you're looking for.

[deleted]

Re: 4k NASA employees opt to leave agency through deferred resignation program

#453

Post by mulmen »

ACCount36 wrote: post #403
camcil wrote: post #205

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I worked as a civil servant for a decade and a half in various capacities up until a couple of weeks ago. I'm the last person that would tell you that there isn't plenty of fat that could be trimmed. Slicing at random, multiple delayed resignation opportunities, and threatening cuts to benefits, however, is doing the opposite. Those that are skilled enough and in demand, or like me lucky enough, to quickly find other…

People who should be fired are the very people who would be the best at justifying why they shouldn't be fired. Not at all by a coincidence. "Slicing at random" could actually outperform most other methods, as long as it's truly random. You can weasel your way out of a firing based on vibes or performance reviews - but you can't convince an RNG that its roll was wrong.

Slicing at random would leave the same ratio of worker types. Random slices have the potential to cause enormous damage by removing critical contributors while also creating exploitable power vacuums. The actual solution is to just continue operating the way NASA has been operating because it's not actually a problem.

Re: 4k NASA employees opt to leave agency through deferred resignation program

#454

Post by matthewdgreen »

lupusreal wrote: post #358
matthewdgreen wrote: post #260

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We need to have a viable heavy rocket launch capability in the US at any given time, at very least just in case we detect an asteroid on a collision course. Right now that seems to fall entirely onto Falcon 9 (and Falcon Heavy), but the max payload weight even for Falcon Heavy seems much lower than the planned payload for SLS. Someday Starship may fix this, but we don't know if it will -- or if the final version will…

> We need to have a viable heavy rocket launch capability in the US at any given time Well we don't have that. SLS isn't it and never will be. The most SLS can be is a heavy lift rocket that can be used once every few years with a lot of upfront notice. Certainly not "launch capable" at "any given time".

I don’t think “at any given time” means we have an asteroid intercept mission sitting around on standby, although that’d be nice. I think it means “the capability exists and can be rushed to readiness over a series of weeks or months, at virtually unlimited cost.” Not sure that’s possible any other way. I would be fine with canceling SLS once good heavy lift alternatives are available, though.

Re: 4k NASA employees opt to leave agency through deferred resignation program

#455

Post by const_cast »

Yeul wrote: post #86
spicyusername wrote: post #4

Wow, that's terrible news... I just don't understand why this is something people would want.

Even the US is not exempt from economic rules. Trump and the rich want less taxation. The deficit cannot grow infinitely. Something has to be cut.

The Rs do not give a flying fuck about the deficit and to even so much as imply otherwise is nothing short of dishonesty. We're well past the point of giving benefit of the doubt on proven, and obvious, lies.

Re: 4k NASA employees opt to leave agency through deferred resignation program

#456

Post by [deleted] »

nomel wrote: post #437
supplied_demand wrote: post #435

Earlier quoted context omitted.

== What you end up with will always be better than what you started with.== That is quite the absolute statement. Could you share some data to back this up?

Sorry it wasn't clear enough, but I was paraphrasing Jim Keller. See the several Lex Fridman episodes with him, where he talks about it. The success with his projects would probably be the data you're looking for.

[deleted]

Re: 4k NASA employees opt to leave agency through deferred resignation program

#457

Post by const_cast »

admissionsguy wrote: post #84

Good, space program run by the government was very wasteful for many decades.. scientific missions were nice but also a bit of extravagant luxury

Yes, nothing more extravagant than... science? What a... luxury? Really? This is the take we're going with? Okay.

And, on the topic of "extravagant luxury" - nobody is saving any money. Do you think you're gonna get a check in the mail with the "savings" we get from cutting NASA? Come on.

The reality is that we're cutting everything and our debt is skyrocketing. We're not saving anything, we're actually losing money at a more rapid pace. You're being robbed by republican fiscal policy.

It's a lose-lose. Maybe maaaaaaaaybe, if we were REALLY saving a TON of money these cuts could be justifiable. But, we're not. We're saving -2 Trillion dollars. Baby that's your tax money.

Re: 4k NASA employees opt to leave agency through deferred resignation program

#458

Post by Hikikomori »

scoreandmore wrote: post #439
stogot wrote: post #389

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Side note: Inconvenient Truth documentary might have actually been more widely accepted if it wasn’t a political ad for Al Gore

There’s the problem. It wasn’t a political ad for Al Gore, it was published 8 years before he ran. It just so happened he was actually interested in improving things and leaning on smarter people for policy, but that made half the country go “Eeeewww… facts! Elitism!! we want someone dumber we can have a beer with for president!” That was literally an argument in the 2000 election: who would you rather drink with. Th…

Something something Florida recount and now those people are in trumps cabinet and even in the supreme court. The federalist society has been subverting democracy for a long time.

Re: 4k NASA employees opt to leave agency through deferred resignation program

#459

Post by unnamed76ri »

ceejayoz wrote: post #399
unnamed76ri wrote: post #376

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The federal government is 36 trillion in debt. How do you run things worse than that? No private company or citizen would survive blowing up their finances as bad as what the federal government has been doing for decades.

Most folks with a mortgage are in a similar spot - long term debt at low rates in excess of annual income - and we can’t print money. Government isn’t a business. It can’t declare bankruptcy and it can’t price half the country out of the market. If you’re really a deficit hawk, this admin should be appalling to you.

It does

Re: 4k NASA employees opt to leave agency through deferred resignation program

#460

Post by bluGill »

nomel wrote: post #442
viraptor wrote: post #438

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Entrenched ways are not the same as institutional knowledge. You can have one without the other. Some things are not written down but executed as part of common knowledge, and if you drop enough people you'll have to relearn it the hard way.

> Entrenched ways are not the same as institutional knowledge. I disagree, fundamentally. Institutional knowledge is a set of "truths" that are respected, so necessarily prune the solution space. The only way to get those pruned branches back is to disregard it , by reconsidering, and re-traversing that solution space.

Heving been there 95% of the time you just learn the hard way whp theeold timers did it that way in the first place - and most of the rest you just make a different compromise that has different tradeoffs but isn't better.
Post reply on HN