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Delete FROM users WHERE location = 'Iran';

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Re: Delete FROM users WHERE location = 'Iran';

#181
post #17

Imagine if your country was added to this block-list, and all your data is wiped. Is there nothing you can do at this point? It feels like I have to own all my data and not trust companies before it's decided I can no longer access my own data.

Yes, you should own your data and do not trust companies. There are a lot o cases when SaS companies used their position to squeeze money from customers. If they are allow do do so, they also be used by their governments to push on other governments.

Re: Delete FROM users WHERE location = 'Iran';

#182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm contradicting the claim. Prisoners aren't slaves. They could be enslaved, but they aren't. They are never sold into slavery and almost never compelled to do any work. This is the opposite of being "literal slaves". They are literally not slaves. ...unless you believe that before the 17th century, everyone in the world was literally a slave? It was legal to enslave them too.

3/4 of prisoners in the US endure forced labor according to the ACLU: https://www.aclu.org/news/human-rights/captive-labor-exploit...

That link doesn't say 3/4 of prisoners. It says 3/4 of incarcerated workers. Incarcerated nonworkers aren't counted at all.

It also doesn't say that they report being compelled to work. It says they receive benefits from working that they don't receive without working. The fact that voluntary workers get their sentences reduced doesn't convert them into involuntary workers.

Re: Delete FROM users WHERE location = 'Iran';

#183

It's a sad story all round. I hope the world gets more decentralised, so that people get less caught up in the politics of others. I can't remember the exact quote, about world war 1 or 2, but it was along the lines of "war is when people who don't know each other fight, for people who do know each other". Hits hard.

> I hope the world gets more decentralised

It's not looking too likely. You have Google's planned app developer verification, the UK's Online Safety Act, the EU's plans to interfere with E2EE, EU privacy rules causing sites to be riddled with popups, money laundering rules making banking increasingly more tedious, power concentrated in the hands of a few nation-state sized tech companies, countries becoming more authoritarian even in the West.

As an anecdotal example, I'm currently living/travelling between various EU countries, where a few years ago I would have expected a great deal of online freedom. Instead I now have to constantly change my VPN exit point to get around various restrictions depending on what site I'm using and what they have decided to block based on location.

If we can't even get these things right in the so-called free democracies of the West, what hope is there for the world in general? I'd like to be optimistic about this, but it's hard to find reasons to be.

Re: Delete FROM users WHERE location = 'Iran';

#184
Do I understand right that if I use a cafe's free wifi, and the cafe's suspiciously cheap service provider routes the connection through Iran so it appears as if my connection is coming from that country, then GitLab and perhaps other companies will ban my account?

Re: Delete FROM users WHERE location = 'Iran';

#185
post #64

>Iranian IPs are blocked here, due to your decision to arm Russia with drones so that they can indiscriminately massacre civilians. The "your decision" in that response is really off-putting. I know the law is what it is with sanctions like this. However, it is a failing of basic human empathy to blame other common citizens of a country for the actions of their government while we almost certainly do not endorse all…

It's especially objectionable and condescending since the author of the blog comes from a democratic country selling weapons to a genocidal state, as are most of us here.

[flagged]

Re: Delete FROM users WHERE location = 'Iran';

#187
post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I used to agree with this line of reasoning, but then I saw that the same process was used to block war crimes investigators from using Microsoft's software.

Does that affect the reasoning? Even though I think it is profoundly wrong, I am not going to risk 20 years in prison for something realistically nobody is going to care about.

> nobody is going to care about

Obviously untrue. Iran has 90 million citizens, and multitudes of that number do care out of principle. I am not trying to change your mind, but hope you would be more precise in your language next time to describe why you don’t care.

Re: Delete FROM users WHERE location = 'Iran';

#188
post #148

These sanctions are not really effective. I think Cuba is the country that has had them for the most amount of time and... Nothing changed. Instead they force them to develop in house tech which may be better for them in the long term

The sanctions on the Mullah regime have prevented financing of more proxies. There is a direct correlation between loosening enforcement and lifting such sanctions and increased support for Hezbollah, Hamas, etc. It's preposterous to claim that they do not work.

>The sanctions on the Mullah regime have prevented financing of more proxies.

Less funding of proxies just means Israel gets away with killing more civilians without consequence.

Re: Delete FROM users WHERE location = 'Iran';

#189

These sanctions are not really effective. I think Cuba is the country that has had them for the most amount of time and... Nothing changed. Instead they force them to develop in house tech which may be better for them in the long term

Ukrainian sanctions work. Ask a russian about the price of fuel. The European sanctions are more of a joke. I you want to Ukraine to win donate to them directly instead of waiting for the cowardly politicians to get their act together.

> Ukrainian sanctions work.

The only reasonable definition of "work" is "stop the thing that motivated the sanction from happening". With that definition, sanctions rarely work (or if they do, not in a very effective way). Russia is still at war with Ukraine. Iran is still developing nuclear weapons. North Korea did develop nuclear weapons.

Re: Delete FROM users WHERE location = 'Iran';

#190

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This frustrates me as well. It is so incredibly common, yet it never passes even basic scrutiny. For one, even in typical modern democracies, the active administration is chosen by like a third of the voting population via a first-pass-the-post system or a close analog of it. It's easy to ignore this when things are going okay, but becomes very uncomfortable all of a sudden when that changes. And this is to say nothi…

> the active administration is chosen by like a third of the voting population Not really. The number of people who might change their minds and thus swing the result either way is indeed small. But it isn't accurate to say they are the ones that choose . The people in guaranteed states/counties still choose; it's just that almost always choose the same answer. But even that doesn't mean they can be ignored. They can…

I meant that if one checks "who voted for this", one will find that it's at best the half of a poor voter turnout, so around 30-40% of the overall voting population. Often even that is generous.
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