HN user
Did they really break the law? I’m not a fan of Apple and their aggressive walled gardens and general hostility. But I feel like the tax optimization with Ireland is well known to everyone and wasn’t an issue until now. It seems dishonest to go back and demand retroactive taxes afterwards. And I bet they aren’t the only company in this situation so are they being singled out unfairly?
I think big tech deserves anti trust regulation and action because it is good for a competitive market that actually puts customers first. They’re too big and powerful and abuse their power to hurt fair competition. But I think the type of aggressive action you’re talking about - and the motivation to do it solely to weaken America - will open up a lot of destructive actions back and forth.
America choosing to spend less money on Ukraine, pushing for resolution to a conflict that has resulted in mass deaths for Ukrainian males, and renegotiating tariffs doesn’t deserve the kind of hysterical overreaction I’m seeing from Europeans. In the end, if it escalates to open warfare on each other’s economies rather than a reset of trade agreements, it’ll damage both the EU and US to China’s benefit.
Thanks for sharing. That’s a much longer list than I expected. It certainly looks like they have lots of manufacturing capabilities. I do wonder if they’re the right company for software and AI, however that figures into defense.
Boeing still makes really good planes in general. The 737 Max is very popular still, with 300 orders even after the Alaska door incident. Sure the Airbus equivalent got twice the orders in that time, but my point is Boeing is still highly respected and trusted by airlines. The 777X is very anticipated by airlines flying long routes, and has over 500 orders. And Boeing still makes the F18 super hornet.
It’s not unsafe for anyone to visit the US either. Unless you’re violating the law in some way, like presenting false documents or overstaying a visa - in which case there would be consequences like in any other country. Sure mistakes can happen on rare occasions, like in any country, but “arbitrary” detention isn’t a thing. That’s just sensationalism from a biased news media that has no idea why anyone was denied or detained, since that isn’t public information.
What is happening now: people being critical of Trump are being rejected, legal visa holders are being detained because of the scale of the abuse.
The agencies don’t reveal reasons why someone was denied or detained, so there is no evidence whatsoever that someone was detained for being critical of Trump. The claim that this happened is from Philippe Baptiste, a French minister for higher education who has been attacking America continuously in a bid to attract researchers from the US.
Yes absolutely. It’s odd to see people here suggesting Mexico as an alternative based on safety of travelers. It’s a giveaway that they’re simply being opportunistic in attacking America due to their opposition to the administration, rather than anything actually safety related.
As an example, this article from 2025 about a family of foreigners being shot dead also lists numerous other recent examples of tourists being killed, and links to those stories:
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/01/01/world/americas/americans-...
Those aren’t even the only ones, and physical harm isn’t the only type of crime foreigners can experience in Mexico either. Moving a conference there for safety makes no sense whatsoever.
Left on all sides is far left. It’s as left as their categorization goes. Unless you also agree that breitbart is not far right just because it is classified as right.
This is just misinformation. Requiring factually accurate sex information to be submitted is not the same as discriminating against some group. It’s just common sense.
EDIT - response to defrost’s comment below:
The Australian passport doesn’t require fatally accurate information per your own link:
Customers who identify as a gender other than male or female (intersex, indeterminate, unspecified, non-binary) may request that the gender in their ATD appear as X.
Sex isn’t a matter of “identifying” as something. It’s a biological reality. Progressive gender ideology cannot alter these facts, and it is unfortunate it has found its way into the identification documents of some countries.
Except the link you're responding to is literally linking to reports of threats to safety.
Typically when you break laws in a country, for example violating the terms of a visa, you face consequences. For everyone else, there’s no issue. But none of this is a “threat to safety”. Again, this is activist hyperbole.
We know more than enough to point out that it shouldn't have happened at all.
You don’t know any real details. You just have vague claims from individuals that likely were breaking the law, and partisan news media amplifying their claims with zero investigation. There is no evidence of why these people were questioned or detained. We know at least a couple of the cases involve explicitly violating immigration law - visa overstays, attempts to cross the border after a denial, working while on a travel visa, etc.
The Guardian is a centre-left outlet, not a far-left outlet.
This index unironically puts countries that practice government censorship in the category of full democracies. Sorry but this isn't a democracy index - it's just a progressive index.
Or maybe these democracy index things are entirely arbitrary
Some quick math…
Jet fuel is about 7 pounds a gallon. So we’re talking about something like 4000 gallons. A bus is something 40 feet by 10 feet by 10 feet, which is like 20000 gallons. So it’s about a fifth of a school bus.
Still a lot, though!
The US is clearly demonstrating it is an unreliable partner in defence.
This feels like exaggeration to me. How is the US an ‘unreliable partner’? Has any country had parts for their existing defense purchases restricted? This type of reaction to the US choosing to not spend its own taxpayer money or military equipment on a far away conflict doesn’t make sense.
If anything, the truth is the opposite. The other countries in NATO have been unreliable partners that did not meet their spending requirements. For example, Germany, France, and Canada all underspent but benefited from the US taxpayer spending a lot.
Western nations cannot buy into a platform when its supplier might go from being a democratic part of the West to aligning with dictators and autocrats literally overnight.
The US is not aligning with dictators. Pushing for a resolution to a conflict that is costing the world hundreds of billions, not to mention huge amounts of Ukrainian lives, is the only reasonable path. The EU has literally no solution for this conflict - just complaints that America is now seeking resolution and doesn’t want to keep wasting money or lives.
lawfully acquired guns are routinelly used in crimes.
They are literally almost never used in crime. So “routinely” is false. In fact, I would guess that 99.9% of lawfully acquired guns in America are only ever used in lawful ways.
Case in point, republicans support president dismantling democracy
Democracy is not being dismantled. If you’re an American citizen, you still have the right to vote however you want. You can still say what you want and publish what you want. You can protest if you are doing so in legal ways.
If anything, the end of massive censorship in social media, like was seen in the last 10-15 years, is helping democracy. Now you can actually share ideas freely and not get your content or account banned. And the elimination of wasteful spending of taxpayer money on political nonprofits is also helping democracy by not having the government bias politics through this loophole.
Culturally "left" wing and especially socially liberal policies are incredibly popular in Canada
I can see that being true for certain policies and topics. But what about at a more basic level? What do you think of Canada’s shift towards restricting or punishing speech on controversial topics, and giving agencies that regulatory power? Or the tactic of using the financial system to punish protesters? Or significantly reducing firearm rights? To me these seem like not just everyday policy changes but a rethink of basic Canadian law, and it does seem radical relative to what Canada was like not too long ago. I can see why many Canadians who support a more freedom oriented Canada would want to reject the new Canadian regimes or support being part of America, because it would give them back rights or culture or whatever they thought they had.
PS: it sounds like you live in Canada but are more progressive in your politics. I would be curious to have your opinion from that perspective but also hear what you think the strongest argument for the other side might be.
For me LLMs have basically removed any need to visit search engines. I was already not using Google due to how bad its interface had become, but I feel like LLMs at least are more efficient as an interface even if they’re still looking at the same blogspam or unresolved forum posts. My anecdotal experience though, is that I get better answers from LLMs, perhaps because I am able to give them really detailed prompts that seem to improve the answers based how specific I get. Generic search engines don’t seem to do that, in my experience.
The US is the only country that has ever invaded us.
Who is “us”? Surely we need to acknowledge that Europeans invaded Canada in the first place? The “us” that can make claims about having been invaded likely is just the indigenous people of that land. Of course, this applies to America as well. I do wonder what causes all of us to view a certain set of borders as the “correct” one. I also do the same thing.
Yes, we're taking it seriously. It wasn't some one-off tweet.
As for whether Trump’s language about 51st state or whatever is a troll: I think it’s partially that. It’s really more about calling attention to the future of Canada and whether it makes more sense for it to be a part of the US than linger on its own. I don’t think it literally means annexing it through force but more like asking whether it’s mutually good for Canada to also be among the “United States” - just as you could ask that question of whether it should be in the EU.
Trump’s aggressive way of stating this has succeeded in one sense, which is drawing attention to the idea. It has backfired in another sense, which is that it is highly disrespectful and maybe has turned Canadians off that possibility entirely. Or worse, it may permanently push Canada into the arms of China or the EU. So I do agree that it is partially a troll but still destructive.
There are lots of Canadians who have felt under attack from within their own country. The ruling regimes of Canada have over time implemented certain policies and ideological values that are a deviation from what was in place before. Not everyone shares those new values, and they feel like the real principles and political culture of Canada has been broken. They’re rather have change, and they see that in America’s rejection of progressive politics. What I’m saying is, to them, it’s not an invasion but a return to normal from a different kind of invasion. I don’t know if it is fringe or not - just explaining the perspective.
If the EU applies the regulations as the group mentioned in the article alleges, it would mean no LLM based tools can be legal in the EU. And then the EU will wonder why they’re lacking entrepreneurs or whatever, without connecting the dots. I hope they instead revise the GDPR.
Regardless of whether the content is offensive or not, I find the idea of a government agency policing this to be unacceptable. Violating free speech principles for content that might be objectifying is just weird moral policing.
Some of what Trump cut is problematic - like research relating to climate or certain medical research. But other research like those relating to DEI or gender were ideological and wasteful. Europe may end up attracting a lot of researchers who were performing the more activist research caught up in these political battles. If so, I doubt it’ll make much difference in terms of useful research produced in the US versus Europe.
I do wonder how they’ll fund this though. European countries aren’t exactly wealthy enough (nor is the US) to spend money on enormous new research programs. How will they decide how much funding to redirect away from other government agencies to this? How will they decide which researchers and which areas to fund and which to reject?
If they have this fear, it is because they have been exploiting the same thing from plants for US and European companies that operate in China
Speaking of which, what happened to the United Health / Change Healthcare breach last year? They claimed it affected 100 million people (https://techcrunch.com/2024/10/24/unitedhealth-change-health...) but the number has been revised even higher since then.
But somehow there’s no news coverage, no outrage, and no consequences for this. Half of America had their medical records stolen due to a lack of two factor authentication, and no one is in jail for it.
For the Americans, daylight savings time also changes the perception of how the days are getting longer.
Interestingly, on the front page right now is a discussion titled "The Origin of the Pork Taboo"
This looks like a bad faith lawsuit to extract money. Given all the discrimination in corporate DEI programs, especially at big tech companies, what actually happened is almost certainly the opposite - white and asian employees were discriminated against, in favor of a set of groups that were seen as under represented. In reality, without the bias DEI programs created, white and asian employees would have probably been hired at higher rates and promoted more quickly.
It’s nice that the EU has given them direction on how to comply. I’m not a fan of many kinds of regulations in the EU - for example rules that require censorship of speech in social media or the extreme bureaucracy of certain countries. But I don’t see how you can argue against something like this. The largest companies are pretty much immune to competition even without all the anticompetitive stuff they do. When you look at how Apple gives its own products and services special treatment, how they rent seek by preventing app downloads, how they prevent browser competition, etc - it is obvious what’s going on. Just like the EU mislabels censorship as preventing harm or whatever makes it sound good, Apple will claim these policies are solely to protect the security and privacy of its customers. Don’t fall for false labels. If anything I would argue the EU can go much further on regulating big tech, and America should copy those ideas to encourage a healthy competitive market.
The locals have just as vehemently rejected being part of the USA.
My comment did not mention the US. The key point is that Greenlanders don’t want to be slaves to Denmark. It’s a euphemism because your comment - and Danes and the EU in general - don’t seem to recognize that colonialism is alive and well in Denmark’s relationship with Greenland. That’s why virtually all the political parties in Greenland support independence.
As for this euphemism:
China isn't trying to buy Greenland
This is just a euphemism to justify the lack of any concern over European economic ties with the authoritarian dictatorship that rules China. If Europe wants to divorce from the US due to its principles, they should first have no business ties with China whatsoever. This thing about Greenland is not even remotely a justification for continued support of the CCP.
From the article:
It shocked him to realize that he now perceives the United States as a greater threat than Iran.
Weird how Europeans / Canadians / extremist Americans don’t seem to reflect on these types of sentiments, of preferring Iran and China over the US, and realize that maybe, just maybe - they are not thinking clearly. These are literally authoritarian dictatorships, while the US is a democracy that supports things like free speech and freedom of religion. These are values that are more strongly supported in America than anywhere else, and are the same types of values that the EU and Canada should be supporting.