Of course it's flagged again. I know it's politics. It's also technology.
We have a tech company CEO, telling a foreign minister of a country, one of the biggest US ally in EU: "Be quiet, small man. You pay a tiny fraction of the cost. And there is no substitute for Starlink." Hell of a sales pitch for critical, national security grade, equipment.
Given the history of Musk lies, it's pretty certain that Poland / EU is actually paying the whole cost of said Starlinks.
It's also pretty sure that EU countries buying US military equipement is about to end. Even from Poland, which historically was buying a lot of US made equipment, against the wishes of EU.
If you wanted to piss off a favorable to you Eastern European country, you would be hard pressed to find a better way than saying 'Be quiet, small man'.
The flagging of articles critical of SpaceX/Tesla are pretty interesting. Every now and then one breaks through to the front page, but an amazing about get flagged.
It's hard not to see the connection of YCombinator to Musk, maybe just a lot of people here are happy to defend him.
This reminds me of Galileo - the U.S. tried everything they could to kill this "European GPS". It is pretty clear today that giving up on it would have been a catastrophic mistake. Europe should not risk make the same mistake with critical infrastructures ever again. It is time for Europe to build.
> The frequency initially chosen for Galileo would have made it impossible for the US to block the Galileo signals without also interfering with its own GPS signals. [...], but they have since reached the compromise that Galileo is to use different frequencies. This allows the blocking or jamming of either GNSS without affecting the other.
This is just crazy. The speed at which the US reputation gets burned is simply mind blowing. Americans might think that nobody pays attention, but everyone does. The Finns are already evaluating how to do without weapons systems that the US could potentially “switch off”. Ditto for anyone having F35s.
The consequences of the antics of this administration (and Musk is part of it, no doubt) will be very far reaching. One of the more obvious consequences being the loss of credibility.
Poland is the most pro-US country in Europe. They spend a large portion of their GDP on defense and are staunchly anti-russian because of centuries of bad interactions.
In any reasonable world, US and Poland would be greatest allies. If there is any good sign that the giant is losing it's position (and does so willingly), this is it. As an european, I hope that all the strong words from European leaders will finally turn into actions and we will take a stronger and more sovereign place in the world.
My hope is that this will go beyond Europe. The free world - advanced economies without the US - are the largest economy in the world taken together. Thirty percent ahead of the US.
I'm far from being anti-American, I'm European but travel there all the time. I probably spend about 10-20% of my time there. There's so much I appreciate in that culture. And yet, today I feel more Japanese or Taiwanese than American.
I still hope they get their act together, but we're not as weak without them as their current leadership thinks.
When being a paying customer is not good enough, and the CEO sees fit to point out the power they have over you by providing a life critical service, that seems like a solid sign that your business is more than a little deranged and you are a liability.
Rubio> "And say thank you because without Starlink Ukraine would have lost this war long ago and Russians would be on the border with Poland right now," Rubio added.
Everything would be settled if people just remembered to say "Thank you" a little more!
Thank you USA and in particular the president and DOGE for allowing me to write this post.
Do you have a link to the one where Rubio supposedly said: "And say thank you because without Starlink Ukraine would have lost this war long ago and Russians would be on the border with Poland right now,"
- "Thank you, Marco, for confirming that the brave soldiers of Ukraine can count on the vital internet service provided jointly by [USA] and [Poland]. Together, Europe and the United States can help [Ukraine] to achieve a just peace."
How can he be trusted with any governments data? He's shown that he intends to influence elections and force procurement of his own companies once inside.
Plenty of videos from both sides indicating that Russians are also using starlink inside Ukraine. Less verifiable are claims that Russia relies heavily on it, with no alternative; while Ukraine at least has some backup communication options available.
But how is that so? Why isn't there some whitelisting process for terminals used inside Ukraine? Or, hell, even analyzing the signal should tell starlink roughly what side and how far from the front it is.. That should have been a massive news story, it's been happening for years already.
But instead we skip straight to the timeline where all pretense of allyship goes out the window. At least EU space/rocket Industry might get a boost of funding out of this all.
> But how is that so? Why isn't there some whitelisting process for terminals used inside Ukraine? Or, hell, even analyzing the signal should tell starlink roughly what side and how far from the front it is.. That should have been a massive news story, it's been happening for years already.
It has been a massive news story, with the commensurate 17.5K upvotes and 2500 replies on Reddit all shouting that this is proof that Musk is pro-Russian. In the real world, whitelisting on this scale is very, very hard. Ukraine has decided that having access to it (and it is 110% required for Ukraine to work as a country) is more valuable than the benefit Russia also gets from it. <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40247411>
That doesn't work, as that startup's based in the USA. If you haven't been paying to space policy, the US government is currently *compelling* US space companies to shut off services to Ukraine,
Remember when with each European space launch the Elon fanboys demanded Europe stop "Wasting" money and we should just send them to Elon and depend on hiw whims.
We're tired of funneling people and money into this meat grinder. We want peace, we see a potential peace deal, and you don't want to stop until Russia is "defeated", and we're just saying good luck with that. We don't have the war-lust that you do, and for that, we're "crazy"?
What "potential peace deal" are you talking about? Russia has no interest in peace while they have so many allies in the Whitehouse. Meanwhile they continue to bomb and kill Ukrainians.
What kind of “peace” though? The kind of peace that Bucha got when it was under occupation? Murder of civilians, torture chambers, rapes? Do you even have the slightest idea of the humanitarian catastrophe that this “peace” would be for Ukrainians after three years of fierce fighting?
Wanting to reduce your expense is one thing. But that’s not what you’re doing. You’re actively aiding Russia at the moment. To the point of pressuring private companies to not share satellite data, and threatening to cut off Starlink that Poland is paying for.
Russian leader Vladimir Putin and other Kremlin officials explicitly rejected making any concessions in future peace negotiations or accepting any US, European, or Ukrainian peace proposals and the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs rejected the possibility of a negotiated ceasefire on 6 March.
https://www.understandingwar.org/backgrounder/russian-offens...
Imagine if Russia decided it wanted Alaska, and there'd be a stalemate meat grinder conflict in that area, and your European allies, who've been your closest supporters, were like "just give Putin what he wants bro. Who even cares about a little bit of Alaska? We're tired of supporting you and just want you to make peace, and will coordinate with Russia to knock some sense in you. All this talk of you wanting to 'defeat Russia' is just silly, gl with that"
It's not only about the money either. The even bigger blow is the whole 180 the US government has made, now actively aiding Russia instead of Europe. If it was just about the money, it would be a bit easier to understand (though still a big blow to the mutual understanding of what is worth defending in the world). If it was about the money, the US would happily _sell_ equipment to Ukraine and let the EU foot the bill. That doesn't seem to be the case though.
It's really hard to look away when the collective West is crumbling right in front of our eyes. USAs new regime pulling its support of Europe and making friends with Russia is the biggest existential crisis Europe has faced in my lifetime.
It is indeed overrun with something evil, I had to switch to /active because anything critical of Musk is flagged away from the frontpage in seconds. At this rate the whole Hacker News will be completely irrelevant in a few weeks.
I mean we do get a few of them per week. I think there is a legit danger of too much heated political discussion changing the character of this site. I feel it's about the right dosage?
Anything critical of Musk flagged away? I don't think it's the right dosage at all.
The trouble with erasing tech-relevant political news is the news part of Hacker News. It can and does work on non-news forums, I frequent some of those. But here it looks like ...brigading, or whatever the correct term is, and it greatly diminishes the value of this site.
We have a tech company CEO, telling a foreign minister of a country, one of the biggest US ally in EU: "Be quiet, small man. You pay a tiny fraction of the cost. And there is no substitute for Starlink." Hell of a sales pitch for critical, national security grade, equipment.
Given the history of Musk lies, it's pretty certain that Poland / EU is actually paying the whole cost of said Starlinks.
It's also pretty sure that EU countries buying US military equipement is about to end. Even from Poland, which historically was buying a lot of US made equipment, against the wishes of EU.
If you wanted to piss off a favorable to you Eastern European country, you would be hard pressed to find a better way than saying 'Be quiet, small man'.
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