Ah, there’s where all the anti-AI posts went! I thought everybody on this site had drunk the kool aid, but it’s just any criticism doesn’t make the front page any more. Thanks, much appreciated.
plus it might divert eyeballs from all the truly critical news about which AI startup got how much in funding to do something 100 other companies are doing.
If that were the case there would never be any topics on HN about housing, healthcare, education, elections, war or tariffs, yet the "/best" page says otherwise.
This is a discussion forum for intellectual curiosity operated from the investment exhaust of a capital market participant. A recent, adjacent analogy is Jeff Lawson taking his Twilio winnings to buy and operate The Onion. The economic mechanizations are usually underpinnings to something more valuable. HN would still be valuable if YC closed up shop tomorrow (and I personally argue, of greater value than the accelerator; value is subjective of course, so opinions will differ on this). Stay curious.
The collapse of a representative democracy into a corrupt dictatorship similar to Russia should interest anyone who intends to invest money into this economy.
Why would you invest millions and years of your life into building a company if the administration can just decide to take your intellectual property [0] because you made them angry?
Why would you spend effort developing hardware and a domestic manufacturing process if the administration can just declare 100% tariffs on your critical components? Especially when your competitors can just pass off a little bribe and get special treatment: [1]
> Cook and Apple aren't walking away empty-handed. Companies that "are building in the United States," like Apple, won't be subject to a forthcoming 100% tariff on imports of semiconductors and chips, Trump said.
There is a reason you don't see world-changing companies arise from states with so much corruption. A free market requires neutral governance - no special treatment or favorites. With this new administration, the US market is looking much more skewed than in the past few decades, and that will have severe consequences for domestic innovation and research.
It certainly should, however large numbers of people in the technical community are welcoming it with glee. This isn't even reactive to the mob boss, this has been coming for years.
Meanwhile palantir is training AI models that assassinate journalist. Ethics are a major part of tech, we can make decisions that distribute billions in relief or execute millions.
Out of curiosity, is there a way we can request a mod to manually unflag this? I see comments in this thread have been killed, so I'm not sure why this is still flagged 3 hours later when it seems clearly relevant to HN?
A military deploying to the capital of the richest country on earth where most tech giants reside is important for tech.
Email them via the contact link at the bottom of the page. They're pretty responsive, though for political topics they're reluctant to unflag them because the discussions are often fruitless (just a bunch of people shouting at each other).
It's flagged for the same reason that posts describing the genocide Israel is doing in Palestine get flagged: the absolute intolerance of those in power to any dissenting opinions.
We've had multiple threads about Gaza that have spent many hours on the front page in recent months, including two about two weeks ago. It's not viable for us to give front page time to every major development in that terrible situation, but we also think it's important for HN to not act as if it's not happening.
I spend a fair amount of time flagging stuff in those threads that's outright anti-Semitic or propaganda, and if that goes on too long I just flag the whole post and move on. It's one thing to have an in-depth discussion about colonialism, the history of the surrounding Arab states and early Zionism, ongoing Israeli politics, the Jewish diaspora, etc. It's quite another to engage in a fruitless moral oneupsmanship (neither the Palestinians nor the Israelis will wake up suddenly and say "Oh, HN has decided we're to blame; I guess we'll call the whole thing off"), or to reckon not at all with the fact that the destruction of Israel (through boycott, invasion, or minority democratic status) leads to the murder of horrifying numbers of Israeli Jews. As with pretty much all war I'm disgusted by what Israel is doing. I don't see that as a reason to drum up anti-semitism or casually imply the destruction of Israel and the attendant murder of millions of people would be a net good.
So, that's why I flag that stuff. I also think it's pretty absurd to think that HN censors opinions. I and others constantly criticize SV bigwigs like Marc Andreessen (can somebody ask ChatGPT how many goddamn 'e's are in his name, Jesus Christ) and Paul Graham, lots of tech-skeptic stuff gets posted here and makes it to the front page.
I am sorry you experience antisemitism, this bs should have disappeared long long long ago.
> As with pretty much all war I'm disgusted by what Israel is doing
We are too! The same way we decried the despicable genocidal actions Germany did on the Jewish population during WW2, we now decry the despicable genocidal actions of the state of Israel on the population of Palestine.
> (neither the Palestinians nor the Israelis will wake up suddenly and say "Oh, HN has decided we're to blame; I guess we'll call the whole thing off"
Only one side is actually doing genocide at the moment, and that's Israel. Israel should stop the genocide and either engage in a war without war crimes, or better yet, stop annexing foreign territories and stop the war altogether. I appreciate your "there are two sides to every conflict" point, but there is only one side currently shooting at civilians at aid sites, stopping food from reaching the civilian population, and killing journalists.
> I appreciate your "there are two sides to every conflict" point
Nope, deliberately not saying this. I super don't care what the "whose fault is this" tally is. I'm only interested in saving lives and figuring out what's next.
The (awful) truth of this is there are no realistic good options. We're not invading, Israel won't allow UN peacekeepers in, surrounding Arab states can't challenge Israel militarily and/or don't want to aid the Palestinians, there is no political will in any country to send troops, and Israel doesn't actually need our support militarily or otherwise so we have no leverage anyway. So, either a given person's naive to this and they have reading to do, or they're aware and using the situation to further their own ends. Maybe that's anti-Semitic propaganda from some Muslim states (Iran). Maybe that's Russian (et al) disinformation ops driving political wedges into the Democratic Party. Maybe it's the DSA demagoguing the issue to (try to) win elections. Maybe that's committed anti-Semites carpeing those diems. All pretty reprehensible; all getting a flag from me. How can I tell? I listen to upstream sources and recognize the talking points.
Also I'm not Jewish! I do have family down the block from where Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh was shot up though, plus a fair number of Jewish friends. Appreciate the sentiment though.
> The (awful) truth of this is there are no realistic good options.
There are. Israel stopping the genocide and building settlements in foreign territories that don't belong to them is a realistic good option.
Do you have something against Israel stopping the genocide it does on Palestine? What's the difficulty to stop shooting people at aid sites and allowing humanitary aid to enter the country? Or is it very difficult to not snipe journalists and bomb hospitals?
> All pretty reprehensible; all getting a flag from me. How can I tell? I listen to upstream sources and recognize the talking points.
Lots of words, yeah war is terrible, yeah reprehensible acts on both sides, yeah the issue is complex. But here are simple facts:
Israel is committing a genocide to the Palestinian population at this very moment. Undeniable. It's not complex to not do genocide, many of us succeed in avoiding to do a genocide on a daily basis. Today I and many other people across the globe didn't participate in a genocide, for example!
Gaza is not a foreign territory. It is part of israel. Israel won it over the course of a series of wars that they won in the last century. Almost all of which were not started by the israelis. If the gazans wanted sovereignty they shouldnt have started and lost so many wars. Losing has consequences.
> there is only one side currently shooting at civilians
The only reason the gazans are not doing this is because they are utterly incompetent, they cant. I dont see how that gives them the moral high ground. As soon as they gain the ability to shoot israeli civilians they will begin to do so again.
Both sides are led by truly despicable governments, no one has any amount of moral high ground in this conflict imo.
> The only reason the gazans are not doing this is because they are utterly incompetent, they cant. I dont see how that gives them the moral high ground. As soon as they gain the ability to shoot israeli civilians they will begin to do so again.
using dehumanizing/racist language as a defense for war crimes unfortunately doesn't fly at The Hague.
Not racist to point out the government in gaza has over and over and over and over and over and over again shown they will never stop until israel no longer exists. The israelis are lucky Hamas is so incompetent, oct. 7th couldve been much worse. The hague is a joke unfortunately, otherwise Hamas wouldve been dismantled long ago.
that's interesting because the government of israel has over and over and over and over and over and over again shown they will never stop until palestinians no longer exist. and that's the same justification they use!
you should ask Israelis if they feel like Oct 7 was a display of incompetence.
Counterpoint: As I understand it, t was Israeli military incompetence and Netanyahu's strategy of backing Hamas over the PA that caused Oct 7.
Oct 7 will never happen again because it shouldn't have been able to happen in the first place had Israel been less busy fomenting Palestinian extremism in Gaza, and beating/killing Palestinians in the West Bank.
There is no justification for the conditions in Gaza today. All I see are Israelis relishing in the suffering of another group of people. And I see Israeli extremists continuing to conflate Israeli Nationalism with Judaism, so that any criticism of Israel is called anti-Semitic.
> Israeli military incompetence and Netanyahu's strategy of backing Hamas over the PA that caused Oct 7.
I was about to make a joke about this to your sibling comment. Completely agree that oct 7 was one of the biggest security fuck ups in modern history, the militants never shouldve been allowed to escape gaza.
There is no defending Israel's actions over the last year. I just hate seeing people hitting the wrong points. The lopsided death count is irrelevant because it is Hamas' fault. The annexation of gaza is irrelevant because thats what happens when you lose a war you started.
Now starving them out and running them over Tiananmen square style, thats pretty relevant I think. Israels actions in the west bank were in many ways even worse until the starvation stuff started. Straight up state sanctioned terrorism happening over there
The lopsided death count is Hamas' fault because they are unable to kill any israelis at all. Hamas dies and Israelis dont = lopsided death count. Thats not a bad thing. As you pointed out, there are many actual bad things going on, so focus on that instead of dumb shit that doesnt matter. Makes you look like an idiot when you complain that Hamas cant kill israelis instead of talking about how theyre starving an entire society to death. Hamas does use human shields and that does make it valid for the israelis to kill the human shields, so again the lopsided death count mostly just serves to remind everyone that hamas doesnt give a shit about their population. That Hamas is not a government anyone wants to live under. Doesnt help their cause. Mass starvation does. You need to convince that the palestinian deaths are unjustified, not that they happened. Death happens in war.
the language that casts all palestinians as murderers who have only failed at their mission of massacring all israelis because of their own incompetence. i quoted it in my reply above.
No one is claiming anything about all palestinains here, just like no one is claiming that all israelis are genociders. But the society as a whole is run by incompetent wanna be genociders just like the israeli society is run by actual genociders.
By some of the top commenters no less. It's absolutely insane to me that people that have zero excuse not to be informed chose to willfully ignore the evidence in front of their own eyes just because the bullshit resonates with their fears.
