> Politically, HN skews pretty heavily right

If you truly believe this, you're living in a bubble. Economically it might be pro free markets, but socially it's heavily "progressive" -- see any discussions about Omarchy, LGBTQ, Elon, or Trump.

I’m entertained by how far left one must be to think HN “leans pretty heavily right”. Even the most die-hard socialist should be aware enough to find that funny.

I think media, social and traditional, has really done a number on people’s perspectives. I’m not sure why ideology replaces self-awareness.

Die-hard socialists often consider "liberals" to be soft-core right wingers. I'm not sure there's an objective center, it's all a matter of perspective.

Yes, this is basically correct. I drew a diagram [1].

[1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50164265

lol, DSA as center huh? Interesting take. How fascinating that there is no far left according to you.

I'm socially progressive but economically conservative. That's why, whenever there's a tough situation where compromise is needed, I always compromise on the side of "let the free market run amok".

Every time Musk comes up there are a bunch of people excusing his behavior just like what is happening with Huang.

Leftism begins with anti-capitalism. This is so far beyond the American (or even European) Overton window. The American political mainstream is a choice between center-right and far-right.

Politics is about economics. All of the so-called "culture war" issues (eg LGBT rights, bodily autonomy, etc) don't make you left wing if you are still an avowed capitalist. The success of the Republican Party hinges on the success they've had in propagandizing culture war issues to avoid talking about economics. And the establishment Democrat Party is complicit because they have the exact same paymasters.

On this issue you see a ton of people in the comments saying "yeah but Jensen made so much money" as a reason why he shouldn't suffer the consequences. If making money has primacy in your decision making well... you're right wing, definitionally.

As other commenters have noted, every time Elon comes up there are a ton of HN defenders, despite him being a complete fascist (in technical terms, not a pejorative) and doing the Nazi salute on national TV (twice).

> Economically it might be pro free markets, ...

Well, first there's no such thing as "free markets". Second, you're basically saying "capitalism". As I said, right wing.

> and a billionaire

That means he can’t have any affairs with anyone who isn’t a billionaire without it turning into sexual harassment due to the imbalance in power?

> basically hushed with an NDA, and probably a big payment

So depending on how big the payment the alleged victim might be pretty happy with the outcome?

I mean if the board believes that the actions of the CEO resulted in financial damage to the company it’s up to them to investigate and deal with it. I just don’t get the whole morality police angle as long as the affair was between consenting rational adults.

> Politically, HN skews pretty heavily right.

I've found HN to be pretty hostile to DOGE (whereas conversation is usually respectful even for fringe viewpoints; something special happened here).

One may interpret this as the Overton window having shifted quite a bit over the last several years. As in "HN skews pretty heavily right" can be correct *and* it can also be true that the wackadoo faction of the right has dominated the discourse for a while.

To spin it another way: if we ignore the rise of the faux-libertarian (you know, the more typical brand now, libertarian but all for a strong military and christian nationalism), I'd argue that the typical HN skews more old school small-l libertarian on the right wing spectrum. That's quite a bit different from the MAGA, christian nationalist, style of right wing politics that has been in vogue lately.

But DOGE is the wet dream of a libertarian from any era. If anything it's a bone that Trump threw to libertarians. It's not especially MAGA imho.

On paper yes, but anyone with half a brain saw that the opposite was true in real life. They went in, made things worse, didn't save any money, and absconded with a lot of private data. My recollection from that time period was the tenor here shifted rapidly from generally positive to generally negative.

Yeah but on HN in particular I never recall anything positive or hopeful at the beginning. I may have missed or forgotten about it though.

DOGE was less popular than most of the admins stuff, and more scandalous at various levels (the stuff they did cut was fairly popular, they didn't manage to cut the stuff people might have really seen as wasteful, they went about accessing data in strange ways, some of the employees were quite young and looked unqualified).

I don't think you can assume much just by knowing somebody disliked them.

lol, do you think it is a coincidence that going after DC’s money was met with more media attention than other things? I don’t.

The things they got the most attention for like USAID weren't really core dc money. if anything I think they failed to really touch federal programs much in the end, but they did wildly swing at other stuff (like infamously just word searching to cancel research grants etc).

That's totally fair, nobody is happy with DOGE at this point and a lot of people were skeptical and nervous as it was happening. I just don't recall anyone popping in to say "damn it, they're doing it wrong!".