

Fidel Castro retires - hollywoodcole
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/7252109.stm

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davidw
Important world news, which is why it's on cnn.com and pretty much every other
news site out there. Pretty much irrelevant to hackers.

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michael_nielsen
I voted this story up. The question I try to answer in deciding whether to
upvote a story is this: is the story important to hackers? Castro retiring is
a major event. It's not on a par with the fall of the Berlin Wall, say, but
it's more important than nearly everything that's gone on in the US Primaries,
to pick an example. My guess is that it's more interesting to most hackers
than the unoriginal me-too lists of "Top ten mistakes startups make" that
still regularly populate Hacker News.

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hugh
I personally tend to try to apply the standard of whether it's of importance
or interest to hackers in particular, rather than to human beings in general.

Major news stories are, of course, of importance to everyone, but I personally
would rather have a hacker news which is focused on hacker-ish stuff.

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ntoshev
Thank you, it is a nice Bayesian point of view.

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huherto
I think it is sad that we are discussing weather or not the story should be in
HN. I would rather like to see a smart discussion on the actual event from all
the smart people here. For starters: what is going to happen to cuba now?
Should the embargo end?

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hugh
I can't see that it should end immediately -- the conditions under which it
was started are still in place. However, it's probably a good opportunity to
start negotiations with whoever takes over -- a gradual lifting of the embargo
in exchange for democratic reforms, release of political prisoners, a
timetable for free elections etc.

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mariorz
The conditions didn't change (ergo the embargo failed in it's intent) only
causing more economic problems for the people you claim to be trying to save,
and you want to keep it up?

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hugh
No, I want to see it lifted, in exchange for democratic reforms.

Whether or not it was a good idea in the first place, it's in place now, so
lifting it is one of the few carrots which the US can offer the Cuban regime.
It seems silly to give up that carrot without extracting some sort of
concession, particularly as the post-Fidel government may be more amenable to
compromise.

If the US were to unilaterally lift the embargo without any movement by the
Cuban government then it's not clear whether that would accelerate or
decelerate the cause of human rights. However, making a deal has got to at
least be worth a try, assuming our goal is a Cuba where people can speak
freely, travel freely, own property, vote in freely contested elections, use
the internet, and start businesses (to bring the topic back round to something
marginally relevant to HN).

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mariorz
Yes those are our goals, but they will not be achieved by maintaining an
embargo as the last 40? 50? years have shown... You can't just force or
pressure countries into "democracy", that is not the way it works, there are
more than enough examples in recent U.S. history that hint at this...

Even if you could, the whole premise of the embargo is flawed I think.. it
only makes the cuban government look like a "martyr", in this case to the
imperialist whims of the U.S. etc.

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thaumaturgy
Ah, I see that PG's advertisement for news.yc has worked, and Reddit has come
for a visit.

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lsmith
Whether it's interesting in its own right or not is not the issue. The subject
matter is of a political nature, and doesn't really afffect or concern the
technical community moreso than any other demographic group. Shouldn't this
sort of thing be left to mainstream sites? In any event, most readers proably
check other news sites, so this just seems redundant.

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mdemare
This is indeed big news. He's been in charge for almost half a century. Now
what? Will his brother manage to keep control? Considering his age everybody
must be plotting to take over the reins. Slow reforms or another revolution?

The Economist has more background:
[http://www.economist.com/daily/news/displaystory.cfm?story_i...](http://www.economist.com/daily/news/displaystory.cfm?story_id=10715023&top_story=1)

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ayc
Don't forget to notify, when Bush retire :)

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simplegeek
This is just so boring, I (and I guess others too) don't give a flip if he's
retiring or whatever! There is no point in posting this to HN, everyone knows
that the we don't like such stories here. Hence, the debate is futile.

