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".
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.
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.
I'm here for ASCII characters rendering pipelines, scientific breakthroughs, experimental filesystems, random wikipedia links, monospaced fonts, etc., not for silly politics.
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!
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?
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.
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.
This isn't even more outrageous than other things Trump has said. It would be if he actually invades, but he won't...