Weird that the story you linked disappeared, and I definitely would expect that post to stay around as you mentioned. I have noticed a lot of aggressive flagging of political stories, which is frustrating given that the political landscape right now is extremely volatile and has big implications for everyone and everything. All the typical tech stuff is less interesting at this time.

As for YCombinator - not sure about them specifically but lots of tech billionaires are for invading Greenland or at least coercing them. Joe Lonsdale (Palantir co founder) recently said in an interview that he views it as frontier land (rather than someone else’s sovereign state). Probably the rare earth minerals would help investors involved in chips or AI.

People there wondering too https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46670811

I like HN when it is leans toward "a place for everyone to talk about tech". Not so much when it derails into "a place for technologists to talk about anything".

> Does YCombinator have any interest in this?

https://x.com/garrytan

I get the impression that the front page algorithm likes upvotes but dislikes comments. Not sure if anyone knows?

It can be found on the 'active' page

https://news.ycombinator.com/active

The link to that page plus others can be found in the 'Lists' link in the footer

https://news.ycombinator.com/lists

Yes, the engineers should not be discussing the purpose of the tools they are making. That makes the process much more efficient

Points vs comments. If there's lots of points on a story but only a few comments, it won't stick around. Or maybe its the other way around? (see below)

There is an automated flame detection mechanism. Don't know how it works. probably some kind of count of downvoting of comments?

Users manually flag.

Most political stories are flame bait; the discussions are low quality.

Most politics is off topic, but if a story has been discussed and this one has for almost a year, posting more about the same story with little change won't add much to the conversation.

E.g. I commented about this story 10 (ten!) months ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43212206 and do not feel the need to share my thoughts each and every time the story comes up again, although I did 5 months ago. Maybe in 5 months time I will do so again but not every day!

Users do not want to see the same story permanently on show for discussion - they want novelty.

Users tend to not like: Emotions. Propaganda. Accusations of conspiracy. Less thoughtful and more thought terminating comments.

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You can find better and more answers by the site moderator @dang on why things slip off the front page by using the search box at the bottom of the page.

It’s easy enough to avoid clicking on articles containing “Greenland”, “ICE”, etc. if you don’t want to talk about those things. Is it also necessary to make sure that none of your fellow nerds talk about those things either?

I consider tech workers to be “my tribe” and am curious to know what others think about what’s happening in the world around us.