It's also not true. Apples valuation is around $365 billion, Denmarks _GDP_ is around $370 billion per year.
I'd argue a sovereign country's assets are essentially invaluable, but in Denmark's case there's the interesting historical fact that the US government offered to buy Greenland several times (and always being rebuffed by the Danes), so at least there's an estimate for the value of that island alone: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proposals_for_the_United_State...
> If the United States wants it for the strategic value of its property, both on land and offshore, and to project military power, the answer is that a value of $500 billion is not overly rich
EDIT: I got the numbers wrong. Apple Inc. is currently valued at over $1 trillion (I used Apple's total assets from their Wikipedia page) and they mention Denmark's net worth which is indeed in that ballpark. I'd still argue that you can't compare the valuation of a company to the net worth of a sovereign country.
Let's go by the price of land in Denmark. 25,000 Euros per hectare in 2009. That's for agricultural land.
Greenland does not support agriculture, but it does have natural resources, and can have a good strategic value. So let's say it's 10,000 Euros per hectare, a good discount.
It would cost 2.6 trillion Euros, or 2.9 trillion US Dollars.
Everything has a price, I wonder if that would be acceptable for Denmark and under what conditions.
It's so stupid to say that, and clearly only people obsessed with money actually believe it. We're killing the planet in the quest for ever more money, and tons of people have absolutely no interest in more money. They want more time and more health.
Sadly, it is true. And "price" doesn't only mean money. Maybe a country wants a longer shoreline in exchange for a piece of mountain land or something.
Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen called the idea of selling Greenland “absurd,” in public, which in the world of diplomacy is a sharp rebuke for President Trump mentioning the idea.
The Danes went on to say, in a further humiliation on the world stage, that we are past the point in history of buying and selling lands and people, sending Trump off with a red card.
Everything does not have a price, and even exploring the idea that the people of another nation’s protectorate can be traded like hockey cards will only lead to more embarrassment.
p.s. If America wants Greenland, the easiest way would be to simply ask the people of Greenland, who have their own flag and government.
It’s a matter of speculation how they would feel about the prospect of being treated as America has treated Puerto Rico, but that would be their decision to make for themselves.
This reminds me of a 'news' organization that promoted the pseudo-scientific book "The gendered brain" (which could be described as Peak Blank Slate Fantasy), including a fawning soft-ball interview with its author where she said that research into her claims would be unethical, because nothing says good science like "just comply with what I said". That same media then went on to put that book on their 'recommended reading of the year'.
That 'news' organization was, of course, The Guardian.
When I was working in the mobile industry, I was told repeatedly that a 100% FOSS phone would be impossible. Not only is the existing tech proprietary and patent-encumbered, even if somehow you could get past that your GSM radio must be certified before going to market. And if your radio is FOSS-based that means an end-user can toy with the baseband, therefore you will never get your cert, period. The stuff at the lowest level must locked down before being allowed on a public mobile network.
This is what caused me to totally dump nvidia. Their new cards require signed drivers to enable boosting behaviour, and they are unwilling to build and sign the nouveau driver. It's not like it's hard to set up a buildbot...
You would need to certify each signed release. Most likely, you wouldn't make a signed release for each PR, because of the time and expense involved, until you got to the point were changed were few and far between.
All major Hollywood movie studios pro-actively doctor their scripts to make them China-compliant, and you think basketball is somehow going to do better?
On a related note, this thread went from #6 on the front page to #105 (as of right now) in mere minutes. Maybe the mods, who are quite willing to pop in and tell people off whenever someone mentions astroturfing or censorship, would like to explain how a very recent thread with high upvote and comment count can sink so fast all by itself? It's not like users can downvote threads on HN. Threads mentioning China in a bad light tend to de-rank at astronomical speed, for some mysterious reason...
There's a flamewar detector that gets triggered usually through chat behavior which leads to thread suppression, i.e. upvote to comment ratio, maybe the level of toxicity in comments according to number of controversial down-voted comments.
Beware: TheGrayZone is an 'alternative news' Web site. The type who claims that Uighurs internment camps are anti-Chinese propaganda, Maduro criticism and opposition are US-funded anti-Venezuelian propaganda, etc. Just skim their site and you'll get the idea pretty quickly.
Moreover Taiwan's transition to democracy was 'indigenous', as it was never effectively colonized by the West (barring some isolated outposts), therefore defeating all the silly talk of "democracy is a cultural norm imposed by the West and is not compatible with Chinese culture" that pops up every now and then, including in this thread.
>> Most of the complaints about the US focus on comparatively small mistakes
Taking down democracy in Iran. Supporting dictators in Latin America and Africa and assisting them in hunting down democracy activists. Financing terrorism in Angola for two decades. Fabricating an incident in order to attack North Vietnam, killing 3 millions people. Supporting "Asian Hitler" Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge. Tacitly supporting Pakistan's genocidal attack against Bangladesh. Selling weapons to the terrorist regime of Iran, and then using the money to support terrorists in central America. Fabricating a threat in order to invade Iraq (hundreds of thousands of dead, millions displaced). Supporting terrorist groups in Syria. Waging undeclared wars in (at least) seven countries at the moment.
>> The good the US has done is also radically beyond any good that China has done.
"Dear members of the jury, I know what you are thinking: well it looks like this guy did napalm little children in Vietnam, and did sell weapon to terrorists, and did support violent dictators. But I urge you to take a second look at my client; consider all the occasions where he DIDN'T murder women and children, that ought to count for something! And there are also instances where he DIDN'T support some dictators and terrorists. Also he gives to charity. I rest my case."
I had the same question while reading TFA. The Khoisan ethnic group split from the main population an estimated 150k years ago, and although their clicking language is peculiar I don't think they have any issue with recursive grammar.
Denmark is a really nice country. Also, it is not a superpower.