It’s unclear to me when and how exceptions are made to this policy, but there have been plenty of “world news” stories on Ukraine / Russia lately.
Here are a few I posted that made it to the front page:
* Russia's top bank quits Europe due to sanctions: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30528503
* Russia Makes Calling Ukraine War an 'Invasion' a Criminal Offense: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30556430
* Russians are trying to flee – data from Google Trends: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30568557
* Russia to restrict Facebook access for 'censoring' its media: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30469237
I know there have been many others. You could also try searching for ‘Ukraine’: https://hn.algolia.com/?q=ukraine or ‘Russia’: https://hn.algolia.com/?q=russia
Re:An update on the threat landscape
by tediousdemise on Monday March 07, 2022 @07:21PM
(#30595067)
I think war is an interesting new phenomenon, similar to a pandemic. It's a black swan event that warrants discussion.
Discussion, sure. Discussion here, not necessarily.
Dunno if I’d call it a black swan event. Prediction markets like Metaculus were at 50% way before the invasion and 75% days before; Tho most of the pundits didn’t see it coming: https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/ukraine-warcasting?s=r
"Off-Topic: Most stories about politics, or crime, or sports, unless they're evidence of some interesting new phenomenon. Videos of pratfalls or disasters, or cute animal pictures. If they'd cover it on TV news, it's probably off-topic."
It's not unusual for top breaking stories to get flagged off the HN front page, simply because they're top stories that are broadly covered in the mainstream media.
Now, niche responses to ongoing current events (like the InfoSec, supply chain, or technical aspects of the Ukraine invasion) are another matter, and I've seen several of them on the HN front page recently.