Fidel Castro retires

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/7252109.stm

by hollywoodcole • 18 years ago

47 44 18 years ago

news.bbc.co.uk

davidw8• 18 years ago

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.

hollywoodcole4• 18 years ago

If it matters than it isn't irrelevant. No one is forcing you to vote for it.

davidw8• 18 years ago

The set of things that matter, in world terms, far more than what Paul Graham thinks of trolls, or startup school, or memcached is large enough that it could easily crowd out the 'hacker news' without breaking a sweat, as this page suggests: http://www.ft.com/world

I don't see what the problem is with taking this kind of story elsewhere.

It's not a bad story or uninteresting, just that first this one...then a Musharraf one, then another one about the US primaries, and on and on. All of them more important than the regular fare here. And after a while, the value of the site is diluted in terms of its original purpose.

mk• 18 years ago

Maybe it is time for a downvote button.

boredguy8• 18 years ago

Just make sure stories can't go below 1, imho.

michael_nielsen4• 18 years ago

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.

davidw8• 18 years ago

Ok, but by that same standard, the following stories are important too:

- Vote in Pakistan. They've got nukes...

- Kosovo independence has important repercussions in Europe and elsewhere.

- A big tax scandal in Germany, one of the world's most important economies.

- Obama just announced some kind of protectionist tax plan to 'keep jobs in America'.

just to grab a few...

hugh3• 18 years ago

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.

andreyf• 18 years ago

Haha, saw that comment coming a mile away! :)

brent• 18 years ago

Hackers are generally interested in the world around them, particularly things related to freedom (personal, intellectual, or otherwise). It doesn't get much bigger than this. How could this possibly be irrelevant? If its irrelevant to you, you must live in a bubble.

davidw8• 18 years ago

With that as an out, you can basically say that anything goes. I guess 'irrelevant' wasn't the best word. Let's say that I don't think it ought to be here, for the reasons outlined in the other comments.

kajecounterhack• 18 years ago

Whats relevant to the world is still relevant to us hackers. We might be a special population interested in something like MSFT's bids on Yahoo, but we're just as interested, (as you can see by this upvoted thread) in the happenings of the "real" world outside of our digital cages.

simplegeek• 18 years ago

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.

mdemare• 18 years ago

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...

thaumaturgy• 18 years ago

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

huherto• 18 years ago

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?

mariorz3• 18 years ago

The embargo should have never existed.

hugh3• 18 years ago

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.

mariorz3• 18 years ago

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?

lsmith• 18 years ago

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.

ayc• 18 years ago

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

Fidel Castro retires

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