I like HN when it is leans toward "a place for everyone to talk about tech". Not so much when it derails into "a place for technologists to talk about anything".
You think tech is not going to be affected by this warmongering?
I think it's one of the biggest threats, if not the biggest, for US tech startups wanting to sell to customers outside of the US.
I don't consider myself very politically active, neither are my friends. But we are all looking to detach from the US and its companies. If you are a fledgling startup, in the coming weeks you might just lose out on many of your potential customers.
Exactly! Digital sovereignity is something we talk about a lot in Europe now since Trump is back and it's already causing german states to go full OpenSource and Microsoft-free. Chaos Computer Club called out the national "Digital Independence Day" this year, it's each month's first sunday (https://di.day).
It might not look like much but Trump is also making people realize over here how bad big-tech is for european values and how it's trying to undermine them for profit. This Greenland-thing is a step too much for Europe and seeing how close the techbros are to Trump, that is one thing where we can hurt them, take back our Data.
It is certainly possible that the US tech sector will be affected by the latest US president's brain farts… but I couldn't care less. Not my country. Not my scene.
I'm here for ASCII characters rendering pipelines, scientific breakthroughs, experimental filesystems, random wikipedia links, monospaced fonts, etc., not for silly politics.
I live in Europe and it's interesting to see intellectuals from the US and around the word that are primarily in the tech sector and known to have a broad knowledge of the world debate this topic. Since this could turn out to be the most destructive action of the century so far, considering world economy and maybe also the influence of big tech in europe, i think that is quite valid.
And moderators of big tech companies removing a political post from a front-page of an influential forum while it shows high interest, gratifies my intellectual curiosity even more!
But what to debate? Almost everyone agrees this is stupid, but nobody can do anything.
It's a bit interesting to read the best steelmans, then read how even they're flawed. Apparently the US not only already has a military base on Greenland, but is allowed to build more; and Greenland's resources cost more to extract than they can be sold. It appears there really is no benefit except to anger, scare, and annoy people. What other knowledge or insight did you find?
Surprisingly, there do still appear to be people (or at least one person) here on Hacker News who think America would win and that the EU would simply accept being invaded and do nothing. Like the EU would not decide "fight or die, we
choose fight", nor replace the US with China in trade relationships.
This insight is… the interaction felt like reading a history book, or a novel with an obvious villain.
Feels unreal, like watching 9/11 unfold on TV felt a quarter century ago. Except I get to talk directly to the Other instead of watching translations of their words being quoted on bulletins.
I agree. But when moderation is lenient and everything is allowed, you can't randomly decide to pull the plug on specific topics within a genre that's allowed.
I don't know whether these stories are pulled by HN moderators or flagged by lots of users but there is more than one motive for pulling/flagging stories.
One motive might be to avoid unproductive discussions - many of the comment threads on the Greenland story (which I voted up) were angry and very polarised.
More like the American timeline i.e. "that's the other party I don't like." There is this continual suspicion that if you criticise one lot you must support the other, as if there are only two shows in town.
