Thread on person of the year: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35056098
Thread on Twitter saga: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35055839
Apparently a large subset of the community felt those posts should be removed from the front page, but didn’t feel obliged to explain why. It’s like Elon is becoming a radioactive element for this community’s health too.
Edit: This submission also briefly showed as flagged sometime in the last 20m
I get why people are exhausted, but the desensitization is dangerous on its own - when there are no consequences, people escalate their behavior... and Musk already has intervened to make Starlink less usable for Ukraine. I don't want that to continue.
and here you are perpetuating the fake shit about Elon that gets everyone engaged. Elon doesn't want Starlink to be directly used on weapons to kill people. Would you also fault the World Nuclear Association for being willing to provide uranium to power Ukraine, but refusing to provide the same material for nuclear bombs? He has a right to determine whether he wants his technology to be used directly for offensive war efforts. He is still providing Starlink for general military operations and communications. He just doesn't want it directly enabling weapons.
You're raising an argument for why it is in your view justifiable for Elon to do this, but that doesn't make the basic elements of what the commenter above said false.
Nuclear weapons are far more destructive, and indiscriminately destructive, than the use of satcomms with conventional weapons, so I think that choice of comparison is hyperbolic and unreasonable. This seems more like Garmin sending GPS units to Ukraine but refusing them to be issued to tanks, and as much as Elon has the right to determine the use of the technology his firm is donating to Ukraine, people have the right to criticize his choice to do that. Ukrainians will die because of this decision, and it is fair for people to criticize the choices that lead to that result.
Edit: I can't reply any further so I will just reiterate in reply here. Ukraine is using starlink for war, so making starlink unusable for weapons is making it less usable for Ukraine's use case, defending their country from invasion. How you choose to morally equivocate the invaders to the defenders is your decision, but it doesn't make what the commenter above said "fake" and it doesn't insulate Elon from criticism over his own decision.
> Ukrainians will die because of this decision
And Russians would die if he made the other decision. Even if Russia is on the wrong side here, killing a bunch of 20 year old soldiers while they sit around in mud doesn't help much. They're still humans and I also wouldn't want any part in killing humans.
No, because Ukraine needs to kill russians and destroy their war machine. Musk's actions prevents this.
>And Russians would die if he made the other decision.
Great!
Ah, I can reply now. You added this to your reply after I made my edit to my own comment responding to your earlier remarks, so I'll make my additional reply directly here.
This view of war reads like naivete to me - the naivete that can develop if you've only learned about war on TV and on Wikipedia, from far away where everything is abstract. I would invite you to talk to some veterans of war, victims of invasion, refugees from combat zones, and consider revising your perspective.
My in-laws who fled century-old farms in face of an invading army would strongly disagree with your view on what would or would not help end this war. Abstract moral relativism over individual soldiers hasn't saved any children from being kidnapped to Russia.
Assuming you enjoy a comfortable existence in a first world country, you unfortunately play an indirect part in killing humans every day. Our first world system drives less fortunate humans towards death every day to operate, and the people who really, deeply do not want any part in that are spending their lives working for the less fortunate in places outside the first world. But by advocating against the measures Ukraine could use to defend itself, you are playing your own part in allowing Russia to continue mounting a bloodthirsty war of conquest.
The starlink "star shield" program with the US DoD says otherwise. Every satellite company wants a piece of the DOD's many billions a year spent on geostationary and other services, launches.
Perhaps this is laudable if true, however I havent seen this actually used in any justification for not allowing the use of starlink (by people involved, not internet commentators). Its also a bit of a stretch to call anything the Ukrainians do here as "offensive war efforts" when they're defending themselves from annihilation. Who-invaded-who is kind of an important part of this story.
One test for this would be: is the discussion substantially different in that thread? The answer is clearly no.
> It has everything to do with the current rage drama, as everyone knows.
no, I didn't know that until there was a comment about it and another post on Hacker News. The discussion I saw seemed within reason.
Internationally he might be most known for this, but in Iceland he is known for far more. I have no doubt people will laugh with him in the next end of year comedy show about this incident, and then continue supporting him in his disability activism.