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Microsoft cutting crucial link to Gaza, Palestinians say

bbc.com

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Re: Microsoft cutting crucial link to Gaza, Palestinians say

#161

Post by racional »

readthenotes1 wrote: post #158
bhouston wrote: post #8

Was this decision made in Redmond or in Israel? Microsoft has offices in Israel and these offices are likely responsible for things happening in Israel, Gaza and the West Bank. Israel is currently at "war" with Gaza and having Israeli employees of Microsoft having the ability to disable anyone's account calling civilians in Gaza is pretty horrible. Is Microsoft via Skype and Hotmail participating in what Israel's lea…

Why did you put quotes around "war"? It may be other things, but it's definitely not just a "reaction", "retaliation", or "police action"...

[flagged]

Re: Microsoft cutting crucial link to Gaza, Palestinians say

#162

Post by monocasa »

invalidname wrote: post #153
monocasa wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That statement was from less than a year ago.

The whole war has been going for 9 months. Things change fast. It was a stupid statement by a stupid/evil government, but facts have changed quite a while back in relative terms.

You said "[t]he "complete siege" ended ages ago."

This specific statement was less than a year ago, from the IDF, about instituting a complete siege.

Re: Microsoft cutting crucial link to Gaza, Palestinians say

#163

Post by invalidname »

monocasa wrote: post #162
invalidname wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The whole war has been going for 9 months. Things change fast. It was a stupid statement by a stupid/evil government, but facts have changed quite a while back in relative terms.

You said "[t]he "complete siege" ended ages ago." This specific statement was less than a year ago, from the IDF, about instituting a complete siege.

People use the word "ages" to indicate a significant amount of time. In the context of this war it's correct. This obviously didn't refer to the literal meaning of ages when discussing a 9 month war.

It seems to me you're trying to nitpick on a minor choice of words instead of the substance of what I said.

Re: Microsoft cutting crucial link to Gaza, Palestinians say

#164

Post by nh23423fefe »

racional wrote: post #161
readthenotes1 wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why did you put quotes around "war"? It may be other things, but it's definitely not just a "reaction", "retaliation", or "police action"...

[flagged]

this sophistry is why i hate politics on HN.

Re: Microsoft cutting crucial link to Gaza, Palestinians say

#165

Post by anigbrowl »

nh23423fefe wrote: post #164
racional wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

this sophistry is why i hate politics on HN.

But it matters. Hamas are non-state actors; if the conflict is legally characterized by Israel as a war, then prisoners have POW rights. Nobody is entirely sure at this point exactly what Israel's legal position is, which is going to have complex ramifications given that Israeli officials have already been charged by the ICC.

https://lieber.westpoint.edu/israels-declaration-war-hamas-m...

Re: Microsoft cutting crucial link to Gaza, Palestinians say

#166

Post by ben_w »

ghaff wrote: post #101
pjc50 wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

However, if they've adversely affected an EU resident or even worse an EU national, the DMA forces them to allow an appeal and recourse.

I'm not familiar with what army the EU has to enforce that recourse. Ultimately, rights depend on the threat or actual application of force.

The combined armies of every member state of the EU, if it came to that.

Well before that point, they can just go through a normal court process because the EU has been empowered by the governments of each member state to write such legislation.

Re: Microsoft cutting crucial link to Gaza, Palestinians say

#168

Post by ben_w »

ghaff wrote: post #123
pjc50 wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Microsoft have to choose whether to operate in the EU. There's been a long struggle between conflicting rules of US unaccountable intelligence access vs. EU privacy law ("safe harbour") that is relevant here. https://blogs.microsoft.com/on-the-issues/2015/10/06/a-messa...

Honestly, the day may come when some US corporations decide operating in the EU is more trouble than it's worth. I don't really expect that--it's a big market--but it could happen.

Naturally — one cannot be a servant of two masters, and some US legislation does at least seem to be incompatible with EU legislation: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Max_Schrems

Same is of course true for Chinese companies deciding to not bother operating in the USA, or UK companies deciding it's not worth the effort to operate in Argentina.

But it's not likely to be a big deal if it does, because software … how can I put this?

The saying goes "the first 90% takes half the time, the second 90% takes another half of the time, the third 90% puts you over-budget", etc. but that same effect also means it's easy to catch up most of the value even with something relatively mediocre.

Re: Microsoft cutting crucial link to Gaza, Palestinians say

#169

Post by tamimio »

psychoslave wrote: post #40
pgt wrote: post #3

This is why I have my own domain and control the MX records on the DNS on it, so that I can reroute email to a new email provider, if needed (I pay for Fastmail). Another nice thing about having a catch-all on own domain is that you can sign up to each service with a unique email address, e.g. @ , which makes it easy to see if any services ever sold your address.

You can even put @ . Let’s note however that even "owning a domain" is an illusion of control, as IANA is ultimately a retainer of uncle Sam. I don’t know if there is any functional distributed alternative that promote more autonomy to end users that can works out of the box (or even just a few basic install steps away) in most digital terminal out there.

> Let’s note however that even "owning a domain" is an illusion of control

That’s not true. It’s definitely not complete control, but it’s far more “sovereign” and independent than having a user account with some corporation that can change its ToS overnight. To seize a domain, a lengthy legal process is needed. Not to mention, you can choose a domain that doesn’t fall under a specific country’s jurisdiction or choose a registrar company located in another country. For example, you can register a domain like .ch or .no, and a legal US order won’t be effective, especially if you didn’t use a US-based registrar. Furthermore, you can host your own domain name (1). It isn’t entirely safe, but the process and efforts to seize it are far more complicated than a click in an MS dashboard. Unless that person is doing something extremely illegal, no one will bother.

(1) https://blog.technitium.com/2022/06/how-to-self-host-your-ow...

Re: Microsoft cutting crucial link to Gaza, Palestinians say

#170

Post by jmward01 »

In order to maybe stop a few from engaging in acts that may harm people we actually harm many and accept it as collateral damage. It is doubly unfortunate that when it comes to Palestinians 'collateral damage' in all forms is acceptable for even the most trivial of potential gains.
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