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Microsoft Employees Pressure Leadership to Cancel ICE Contract

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Re: Microsoft Employees Pressure Leadership to Cancel ICE Contract

#101

Post by TeMPOraL »

adjkant wrote: post #82
TeMPOraL wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's honestly a great way to live a fulfilling life without having to address the bigger problems in the world personally. I thought it's a great way to actually address the bigger problems in the world personally. Because most political involvement is precisely the opposite of effective helping. Politics is arguing that climate change is a communist/leftist/whatever invention. Tech is launching a satellite letting…

What politics in the US government currently is or what it is in a typical discussion between two people on the street does not define politics. I'm also not talking political science. I'm also talking morality, not just politics. Your grievances seem to be about the current political climate rather than politics generally. I'm with you on the political climate currently for sure. Given HN's opinion of itself, I'd ho…

We seem to be in agreement after all. I wish there were two simple, distinct words - one for what you meant by "politics", and one for what I meant.

My gripe isn't with US political climate though - it's the same thing everywhere, at every level. The same issues apply to New York and San Francisco, and to my hometown of Kraków. They apply to my country of birth, Poland, and they apply to every other country in Europe, and to EU. My problem is with the facet of politics that involves ingroup-outgroup mentality, appeals to emotion, following ideologies, and doing literally everything else except solving problems at hand. This is what I wanted to never see tech mixed up in.

You're very right that doing tech inherently involves a lot of moral choices about what to work on, how to work on it, and how to use the result.

Re: Microsoft Employees Pressure Leadership to Cancel ICE Contract

#102

Post by sheepmullet »

adjkant wrote: post #40
danjayh wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This situation in particular is more complicated than the media portrays. Separating children from parents is obviously bad, and needs to stop. Zero tolerance for illegal crossings, on the other hand, is probably actually good. The prior policy of letting anyone with children go & handing them a court date heavily incentivized human trafficking of children, because a child was a golden ticket into the USA (and indeed…

The basic problem with that line of thinking is that most don't think immigration is such a large problem that we must have a zero-tolerance policy that does such harm. Immigration is a highly politicized issue that in reality has limited effects. Yes, it's more nuanced than "this is evil", but it's pretty inhumane and overly nationalistic / American-centered if you ask me.

> is that most don't think immigration is such a large problem that we must have a zero-tolerance policy that does such harm.

According to who?

I don't think that's true at all. I think immigration is the most important policy to get right.

Re: Microsoft Employees Pressure Leadership to Cancel ICE Contract

#103

Post by mschuster91 »

Ntrails wrote: post #89
jadedhacker wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Child concentration camps run a lot smoother on Office 365, now on Azure! EDIT: Anyone that collaborates with ICE from this point forward is complicit. In a just world, collaborators, ICE officers, and high officials would be tried in the International Criminal Court. Following orders or making money was not an acceptable defensible at Nuremberg, nor will it be in the coming future when the US loses enough internatio…

Why on earth would you want to prosecute the supermarket where ICE buys loo roll? The builders merchant who sold them fence posts? I mean, the hyperbole is real here - because there's zero chance the international courts prosecute any US citizen - but if they did it's not going to be the people who sold them spreadsheet software.

> Why on earth would you want to prosecute the supermarket where ICE buys loo roll? The builders merchant who sold them fence posts?

In mafiya/organized crime, (serial) murder cases it's common to prosecute knowing supporters as "aiding in criminal activities". The supermarket cashier selling loo rolls to the ICE may not be a "knowing supporter", but the fence post seller certainly is.

As for the people involved: there won't be justice, not as long as the US has nukes and refuses any international control.

Re: Microsoft Employees Pressure Leadership to Cancel ICE Contract

#104

Post by Certhas »

jgaa wrote: post #76
bkor wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Governments will always do evil. Not to everyone, all of the time - but they are by nature evil. If a lot of people assume this, then eventually behaviour happens according to the expectation. Within Netherlands I assume the government is usually there to make things better (though there are exceptions). What is considered better might be completely different, but still, it's assumed to be better. I've since have a…

>> Governments will always do evil. Not to everyone, all of the time - but they are by nature evil. >If a lot of people assume this I come from Norway - by many assumed to be among the most human and decent countries in the world. When a refugee storm hit Norwegian borders a few years ago, the cabinet assigned Antichrist herself, Sylvi Listhaug, to deal with it. It would not surprise me if Trump's advisers had her mi…

It's quite a leap from: "Any government will do things that I consider evil" to "Governments [...] are by nature evil." Especially as context suggests you don't mean this to read "Governments are by nature capable of both evil and good." [1]

The former is almost trivially true, at least in the narrow reading supported by your examples, mostly a function of their size. The latter a vast sweeping philosophical generalization that is backed up by nothing.

All your examples show is that there are instances of them failing to live up to your ethical standards (which it seems I largely share). Would you rather have no laws than imperfect laws? No justice than imperfect justice?

[1] That would make it a non-sequitur that you would single out governments but are OK with individuals and corporations using your software.

Re: Microsoft Employees Pressure Leadership to Cancel ICE Contract

#105

Post by reustle »

jgaa wrote: post #45

Governments will always do evil. Not to everyone, all of the time - but they are by nature evil. When I wrote the War FTP Daemon in 1996, as freeware, this became a problem to me. I did want to give away my work for free, but I did not want any government agency to abuse it. So I came up with a solution - a GPL license with an additional clause - that the government - any government - could not use it for any purpose…

Out of curiosity, wouldn't the gov just ignore the license if they really wanted to use it? Is anyone really going to stop them or even say something?

Re: Microsoft Employees Pressure Leadership to Cancel ICE Contract

#106

Post by adjkant »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #101
adjkant wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What politics in the US government currently is or what it is in a typical discussion between two people on the street does not define politics. I'm also not talking political science. I'm also talking morality, not just politics. Your grievances seem to be about the current political climate rather than politics generally. I'm with you on the political climate currently for sure. Given HN's opinion of itself, I'd ho…

We seem to be in agreement after all. I wish there were two simple, distinct words - one for what you meant by "politics", and one for what I meant. My gripe isn't with US political climate though - it's the same thing everywhere , at every level. The same issues apply to New York and San Francisco, and to my hometown of Kraków. They apply to my country of birth, Poland, and they apply to every other country in Europ…

Here's the thing: that "how to use the result" part means that you have to get involved in politics as known by common definition and all its mess, inefficiency, terrible campaigning, and more. It's a game of slowly moving things by inches (not to say that radical thinkers and politicians don't have their effects, but rather they help pull towards a side).

You clearly care about the morality and would want to have political action based off it (in so that it was effective, etc). So given that, why is time spent on changing political mechanisms and enacting change using new technology any less important than the tech itself? In fact, why isn't it more important than the tech? I'm not trying to make the case for one side here, but more tease out that no matter the sad state of politics everywhere right now, it's still crucial to taking the tools to have any effect.

I can't say I know the specific path to change, but I think it's important we value the problem and not dismiss politics as a whole. I personally am interested and have stuff on my reading list for the role of technocratic government setups over democratic decisions for certain fields/areas of government like infrastructure. If you work and discuss ways to fix a political system you do a lot more than trying to stay out - who are you then leaving all those decisions to?

Going back to the original thread, you said this:

> I thought it's a great way to actually address the bigger problems in the world personally

If you ignore the political side, it doesn't matter if you invent the cure for cancer if all the politicians decide to burn your paper upon reading it.

Re: Microsoft Employees Pressure Leadership to Cancel ICE Contract

#107

Post by sheepmullet »

dagmx wrote: post #36
star-castle wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>we should readily engage in political discussion You must mean political lecturing, because 'discussion' implies more than one side, which means hearing from more than one side, which means not censoring or aggressively punishing voices apart from one side, which means "giving a platform to hate". Where 'hate' is one them magical words that is taken literally and figuratively at the same time, whichever is tacticall…

Discussion involves multiple views not multiple sides. Not every discussion needs to be adversarial or black and white. Discussions can be constructive with all members on the same side talking about ideas . Most development discussions that happen daily are just that, constructive with people throwing ideas around. For example if we are discussing the best design pattern in a c++ API , and someone comes in and says…

> but I think anyone arguing for the detainment of children is not adding anything of value to the discussion or humanity and is worthy of being disregarded with reason.

I think it is a sensible policy.

Can you articulate why you think it is any worse than child services putting a kid into foster care when the parents go to jail for any other crime?

Illegally immigrating to the US is a serious crime but you can't jail the kids for the crimes of the parents.

The best option is to detain the kids until a relative can get them.

We have been detaining kids trying to illegally cross the border for over a decade now - if you have a better solution then voice it.

Re: Microsoft Employees Pressure Leadership to Cancel ICE Contract

#108

Post by TeMPOraL »

reustle wrote: post #105
jgaa wrote: post #45

Governments will always do evil. Not to everyone, all of the time - but they are by nature evil. When I wrote the War FTP Daemon in 1996, as freeware, this became a problem to me. I did want to give away my work for free, but I did not want any government agency to abuse it. So I came up with a solution - a GPL license with an additional clause - that the government - any government - could not use it for any purpose…

Out of curiosity, wouldn't the gov just ignore the license if they really wanted to use it? Is anyone really going to stop them or even say something?

The government isn't an indivisible entity. It's made of lots and lots of people, bundled in very many departments. There's plenty of competition at both individual and department levels. Sure, at the very top, the President himself could just says "fuck it, we're using the software anyway". But most of the time, if someone in the government decided to ignore a license, they'd be risking their job (or possibly freedom).

Re: Microsoft Employees Pressure Leadership to Cancel ICE Contract

#109

Post by Certhas »

cm2187 wrote: post #99
bkor wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The fallacy is about doing nothing because one action might eventually lead to a bad action being taken. The solution is to still take the action (e.g. not working together), while being careful not to immediately go on a witch hunt for any deemed wrong. The response from Microsoft management is good I think. They mention it's just about email, calendar, etc. There's nothing special in providing that. The Google case…

The US constitution is built on the idea that if a power is given it will be abused, and it is this fundamental distrust of any power given and the builtin counterpowers that have made its success over the long run. It is not a fallacy, it should be the first thing anyone should consider when establishing a new authority.

We have an entire huge system of justice and courts built for just that purpose. You are simply ignoring that this is not a new or unique problem but a pervasive and generally solved issue. Eternal vigilance is the price of freedom, but not using the tools at the disposal of our democratic society, when people abuse this freedom to lie and cheat to undermine rational discourse is just dying another death. With how entrenched outright lies are in the US right now (c.f. FOX airing people claiming that the crying children at the border are child actors) it will be a long fight back. And every step of that fight back to rationality will be accompanied by people like you standing aside going "well, their just voicing their opinion. And what's a lie anyway.". Now if this was just the US affecting the US that would be one thing, but with the US remaining the largest military superpower and the largest emitter of greenhouse gases unfortunately it's dysfunctional political discourse is being projected deep into the rest of the world...

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Incidentally when looking up exact quotes for another reply in this thread I found this WaPo article:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/worldviews/wp/2018/01/10...

"Dutch journalists peppered Hoekstra with questions on unsubstantiated claims he made in 2015 about chaos that the “Islamic movement” had allegedly brought to the Netherlands.

“There are cars being burned. There are politicians that are being burned,” he said then, at a conference hosted by a conservative group. “And yes, there are no-go zones in the Netherlands.”

The comments have widely been described as inaccurate, [...]"

Right. 'Inaccurate', not even the WaPo is calling a lie a lie.

Re: Microsoft Employees Pressure Leadership to Cancel ICE Contract

#110

Post by Folcon »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #65
vinhboy wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

HN is very guilty as of this. The insistence that HN should never discuss politics is morality reprehensible. The people in this community creates many tools and products that could help or hurt a lot of people. As such, we should readily engage in political discussion so that we fully understand the impact we have.

The reason HN tries to avoid discussing politics is because it's not suited for productive political discussions, so everything would be drowned in noise. I honestly don't know of any place on the Internt suited for a productive political discussion. I'd join such a space in a heartbeat. Given how politics is both complicated and universally triggers all the bugs in human minds, such a place would have to both struct…

Actually, what properties would such a place have? I keep thinking that a defining problem of the present day is the absence of such a platform.

I'm even willing to dig in and help put something together. I wonder if an ask HN around:

- How people would like to interact with such a system.

- What it would need to have/do to be useful.

I mean is there even a good format for such a thing? Debates for example are explicitly two sided, but exploring a problem rarely is. You need to track what's been tried, why it might have failed, see if it's worth trying again, allow people to suggest amendments which might help.

There's so much there.

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