While the headline is focused Microsoft the bigger story is the wanton violation of human rights, privacy and using this data in risk scores which I’m certain gets used in automated kill chains by Israel.
Storing phone calls en mass and using ai to target people based on what they say, is tech imho. This is like what Snowden revealed about PRISM, only stored on Microsoft’s servers and it’s used to kill people.
So it isn't tech focused, because that use of tech is a politically controversial and ethically questionable?
Yeah, no that is not how this works. We in tech also need to be able to talk about about how the systems we build impact the world. And if we only talk about the positive sides, we are not getting the full picture.
This is a story on how technology is used to in a systematic human rights abuse and a massive systemic government sanctioned privacy breach is being facilitated by a major tech company.
It's scary how this is actually being called out as a problem of capitalism ... when anyone can look up history and see communists were actually doing this in 1946. Not just phones, they were doing it on the street, going as far as sending out people to listen in on conversations everywhere. Makes sense, I guess: there were barely any phones to tap when communists started doing this.
In case you don't know mass phone tapping didn't start in the US until decades (plural) later.
Not that I have experienced socialists/communists reacting positively to being proven wrong much before. Even when proven wrong by their own historical record (yes, they PROUDLY published they were doing this in 1946, after all, that's what Marx instructed them to do). Yes, the need for mass surveillance of the masses is actually in Marx and Engels's work.
In fact it was a part of Marx's work in much the same way as you are arguing it here: he was falsely accusing capitalist and bourgeoisie of mass surveillance, even while he was trying to do it himself. But yeah, Marx is Marx. His whole work, a pamphlet discussing massacring the bourgeoisie ... when, of course, both he himself and his family (up and down, his parents, he himself, his wife, his children) were very much part of the "hated" bourgeoisie. But, of course, in his mind he was excluded. He himself was very much not the evil he was trying to fight, and that every description he published said otherwise ... Very on-brand for communists, that.
I would really much want to see which Marx (with Engels or not) writings advocate for mass surveillance.
I would also like to see a reference of when did he call for a bourgeoisie massacre.
Then I suggest you actually read the manifest. Oh, I should probably declare you technically correct. He does not call for a massacre, just a violent revolution. These are technically not exactly the same. They turned out the same in practice though.
Violence has been used for good ends such as deposing monarchies and ending slavery. Marx argues that capitalists are akin to the new kings. Witnessing billionaires funding the destruction of democracy, I wouldn’t say he’s wrong.
And you refer to Soviet Russia as if that’s supposed to represent socialism and communism. In fact there are many different kinds of socialists and communists, many who support democracy and oppose authoritarian governments. In fact many such people opposed the Bolsheviks and were killed by them. It’s simply not true that being socialist or communist entails supporting totalitarian government.
You know as well as I do that when Marx discussed "capitalists" he did not mean the rich. He meant what we now call the middle class. Managers. Engineers. Store owners. (Small) company owners. Factory owners. Smaller landlords. Perhaps upper middle class, but not the real rich, the families. He saw what everyone else in their time (correctly) saw: that larger land owners were mostly outside of cities, and were well on the way to inevitable bankruptcy. That the uber-rich are very different, and aren't rapidly bankrupting themselves is not something Marx foresaw.
Only the governments themselves, who are of course also very, very, rich would retain their wealth. And quite a few governments in his time were individuals or families, but he didn't see them as the enemy, kind of, but not as the "source" of the evil of capitalism. Of course, communists aren't against a very, very rich government. The Soviets initially offered to make Tsar Nicolas II the leader of international socialism. Only when he kept refusing did he become the enemy.
And then the "that wasn't true communism" argument! Thank you. I kind of agree: most other communists were MUCH worse than the Soviets, and especially lacked most of the redeeming qualities the Soviets retained from imperial Russia.
In fact, I miss that about the Soviets. The Soviets were going to conquer Europe, provide housing and jobs for everyone, and get everyone to work and back each day on rocket powered trams. Seriously. Today's socialists just seem to want to destroy everything, which will then encourage Gaia to save the world and care for everyone. The Soviets were very much going to exploit nature to make everyone rich.
Never mind that even the ancient Greeks knew better: the godess Gaia is a Titan who massacred, and then ate people. Men, women, children. Especially children. She was the embodiment of natural disasters, of the primal, absolute force of nature. She killed to save nature, true. But also just for fun, because it is her nature. Especially children. Especially lost children. She was like almost all Titans: considered completely amoral, not necessarily evil, but she needed to be fought, even destroyed, not for fun, because otherwise a LOT of people would die.
Capitalists according to Marx are those that own the means of production, not the middle class.
> larger land owners were mostly outside of cities, and were well on the way to inevitable bankruptcy
He saw them as a declining class that would eventually merge with the industrial bourgeoisie. He didn’t predict their inevitable bankruptcy.
> quite a few governments in his time were individuals or families, but he didn't see them as the enemy, kind of, but not as the "source" of the evil of capitalism
Again, inaccurate. His view is that the state is an apparatus of the capitalist class structured to protect its property and interests. The state and the uber-rich are the primary enemies of the working class, in his view.
> Soviets initially offered to make Tsar Nicolas II the leader of international socialism. Only when he kept refusing did he become the enemy.
Citation needed. Are you just fabricating things? The Bolsheviks ideology was based on the idea that there would be a proletarian revolution that would dismantle the old capitalist and aristocratic order, which the Tsar represented.
> that wasn't true communism" argument!
There are many different varieties of socialism and communism. In fact many societies long into pre-recorded history have been peaceful, leaderless and without money - communist. Yet it would be a mistake to call those societies Stalinist for example.
> get everyone to work and back each day on rocket powered trams. Seriously.
Soviet plans were never that fantastical. Fabrication.
> the godess Gaia is a Titan who massacred, and then ate people. Men, women, children. Especially children
Gaia isn’t typically represented that way. She is not a Titan but mother of the Titans. Maybe you are thinking of Kronos.
Capitalism is just a reflection of people being self-interested which you can't prevent without being authoritarian which will inevitably leads also to surveillance.
> Capitalism is just a reflection of people being self-interested
I don't think that's the case. I think most people are not self-interested, or at least not in the selfish sense. I think most people are more than willing to sacrifice _some_ direct personal gain for better community gains.
The problem is that capitalism only allows selfish self-interest to flourish, so it incentivises even the more community-oriented people to always put themselves first, a lot of the time even in detriment to their immediate vicinity.
Capitalism is a form of authoritarianism in that it really only serves a few, and everyone else is just constantly fighting for survival.
> being authoritarian which will inevitably leads also to surveillance
Poverty reduction has largely been the result of China’s mixed economy not unbridled capitalism. Guided markets have played a role there - but that’s because they were guided. We don’t have to accept the authoritarianism or any of other effect of markets, simply because markets have played a role in some of the positive outcomes of the past. In fact for the last 50 years in the global north, roughly the same timeframe, productivity has continued to grow but most of that growth has accrued to the wealthiest and relatively little of that benefit has been seen by the median worker.
To say it’s identical is an overstatement, but markets have been part of China’s policy, and part of the policies many other formerly impoverished counties. Without government policy intelligently choosing how to utilize markets (which is what happened in most of these formerly impoverished countries like the “Asian tigers”), markets alone could not have have brought the gains that they did. Markets have many downsides to them as well. Additionally non-government, non-market factors like unionization contributed to the rise out of poverty as well. And in the global north, “markets” have been fairly ineffective at raising the standard of living for the median worker. They have been effective at enriching the already rich however, contributing to wealth power-concentration and de-democratization.
no it is an identical plot on the graph, not an overstatement at all.
The standard of living for the median worker has improved significantly in forty years let alone two hundred, lifestyle inflation is definitely rapid as you would expect with progress, wage growth has outpaced inflation for everyone but public sector workers.
Bad as things may seem now, we are all richer than ever before.
Was already flagged. I vouched it and it became unflagged. Now it's flagged again...
(I don't think every story about this conflict should be on HN by the way, as a "major on-going topic". But IMHO this particular story seemed like a good one as it intersects with tech and is something actually new, at least to some degree).
There's a "vouch" button on flagged comments and some flagged stories, which will unflag a story. I'm not entirely sure under which conditions it's available on flagged stories (it's almost always there for flagged comments). I think it probably gets disabled after it got flagged → vouched → flagged, or something? You need at least 500 (or more?) reputation points regardless.
In the documentary (in the form of cinéma vérité) The Act of Killing (1), the director learnt about "anti-communist" massacres in 1965 Indonesia, which was sanctioned by a regime whose successors were still in power in the modern times. He compared the atmosphere of the country as if he came to Germany 40 years after WW2, but with the Nazis having won it. He talks to some of the killers, and he found them not even regretful, but boastful - throughout the documentary, he learns that if they admitted they were wrong, they'd be having to admit to themselves that they murdered a lot of innocent people, so they'd rather construct a fantasy world where they're the good guys.
There's even a musical segment of the documentary (he convinced the people to reimagine their doings in the style of 50's Hollywood movies they loved) where actors playing the victims thank the killers for saving them from godlessness and sending them to heaven: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o-ta9To14yw
I wonder how many of the genocide-defenders and genocide-enablers (not to mention genocide-executioners) will have similar PTSD...
What's the fiduciary duty here for Microsoft C-suite when it is supplying infrastructure and services that assist in underpinning war crimes, ethnic cleansing and genocide?
There are a number of big name tech companies associated with similar through their collaborations with the Nazi's, IBM etc. Did that have any effect on those companies that might inform what could happen to Microsoft and others?
While the headline is focused Microsoft the bigger story is the wanton violation of human rights, privacy and using this data in risk scores which I’m certain gets used in automated kill chains by Israel.
Right. However this is a tech/science focused news site so let's keep it that way.
Storing phone calls en mass and using ai to target people based on what they say, is tech imho. This is like what Snowden revealed about PRISM, only stored on Microsoft’s servers and it’s used to kill people.
So it isn't tech focused, because that use of tech is a politically controversial and ethically questionable?
Yeah, no that is not how this works. We in tech also need to be able to talk about about how the systems we build impact the world. And if we only talk about the positive sides, we are not getting the full picture.
So why is it flagged?
Why is this flagged, and why can’t I vouch for it?
It's not [dead], which means vouching already worked.
Why am I downvoted? Here are some links:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43134721
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43744890
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43538728
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43268468
> Why am I downvoted?
I would guess that it's because you said "already worked" which people probably read as meaning that it is now visible in /news.
This is a story on how technology is used to in a systematic human rights abuse and a massive systemic government sanctioned privacy breach is being facilitated by a major tech company.
This story should not be flagged.
It managed to get 105 upvotes despite being flagged. It’s important, relevant and clearly resonating with the audience here. Very shameful to bury it.
I don‘t understand why this flagged.
Today it's Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank.
Tomorrow it's you.
Also known as the imperial boomerang.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Imperial_boomerang
In the context of surveillance or in the context of a genocide ?!
I must assume you mean the first one, because Israel would not survive without the US
North Korea survives just fine without the US. Nukes are enough.
[flagged]
For some people "you" is not the US. So both could apply.
Its already you, but capitalism. It'll be this soon enough if republicanism continues.
It's scary how this is actually being called out as a problem of capitalism ... when anyone can look up history and see communists were actually doing this in 1946. Not just phones, they were doing it on the street, going as far as sending out people to listen in on conversations everywhere. Makes sense, I guess: there were barely any phones to tap when communists started doing this.
In case you don't know mass phone tapping didn't start in the US until decades (plural) later.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mass_surveillance_in_East_Germ...
Not that I have experienced socialists/communists reacting positively to being proven wrong much before. Even when proven wrong by their own historical record (yes, they PROUDLY published they were doing this in 1946, after all, that's what Marx instructed them to do). Yes, the need for mass surveillance of the masses is actually in Marx and Engels's work.
In fact it was a part of Marx's work in much the same way as you are arguing it here: he was falsely accusing capitalist and bourgeoisie of mass surveillance, even while he was trying to do it himself. But yeah, Marx is Marx. His whole work, a pamphlet discussing massacring the bourgeoisie ... when, of course, both he himself and his family (up and down, his parents, he himself, his wife, his children) were very much part of the "hated" bourgeoisie. But, of course, in his mind he was excluded. He himself was very much not the evil he was trying to fight, and that every description he published said otherwise ... Very on-brand for communists, that.
I would really much want to see which Marx (with Engels or not) writings advocate for mass surveillance. I would also like to see a reference of when did he call for a bourgeoisie massacre.
Then I suggest you actually read the manifest. Oh, I should probably declare you technically correct. He does not call for a massacre, just a violent revolution. These are technically not exactly the same. They turned out the same in practice though.
Violence has been used for good ends such as deposing monarchies and ending slavery. Marx argues that capitalists are akin to the new kings. Witnessing billionaires funding the destruction of democracy, I wouldn’t say he’s wrong.
And you refer to Soviet Russia as if that’s supposed to represent socialism and communism. In fact there are many different kinds of socialists and communists, many who support democracy and oppose authoritarian governments. In fact many such people opposed the Bolsheviks and were killed by them. It’s simply not true that being socialist or communist entails supporting totalitarian government.
> Violence has been used for good ends such as deposing monarchies and ending slavery.
Under this paradigm it's miraculous that we tolerate hundreds of years of oppression and racism from the whites peaceably.
If you call for bloody revolution and simultaneously identify yourselves as the villains, don't be surprised when we come busting down your doors.
You know as well as I do that when Marx discussed "capitalists" he did not mean the rich. He meant what we now call the middle class. Managers. Engineers. Store owners. (Small) company owners. Factory owners. Smaller landlords. Perhaps upper middle class, but not the real rich, the families. He saw what everyone else in their time (correctly) saw: that larger land owners were mostly outside of cities, and were well on the way to inevitable bankruptcy. That the uber-rich are very different, and aren't rapidly bankrupting themselves is not something Marx foresaw.
Only the governments themselves, who are of course also very, very, rich would retain their wealth. And quite a few governments in his time were individuals or families, but he didn't see them as the enemy, kind of, but not as the "source" of the evil of capitalism. Of course, communists aren't against a very, very rich government. The Soviets initially offered to make Tsar Nicolas II the leader of international socialism. Only when he kept refusing did he become the enemy.
And then the "that wasn't true communism" argument! Thank you. I kind of agree: most other communists were MUCH worse than the Soviets, and especially lacked most of the redeeming qualities the Soviets retained from imperial Russia.
In fact, I miss that about the Soviets. The Soviets were going to conquer Europe, provide housing and jobs for everyone, and get everyone to work and back each day on rocket powered trams. Seriously. Today's socialists just seem to want to destroy everything, which will then encourage Gaia to save the world and care for everyone. The Soviets were very much going to exploit nature to make everyone rich.
Never mind that even the ancient Greeks knew better: the godess Gaia is a Titan who massacred, and then ate people. Men, women, children. Especially children. She was the embodiment of natural disasters, of the primal, absolute force of nature. She killed to save nature, true. But also just for fun, because it is her nature. Especially children. Especially lost children. She was like almost all Titans: considered completely amoral, not necessarily evil, but she needed to be fought, even destroyed, not for fun, because otherwise a LOT of people would die.
Quite a lot of factual inaccuracies here.
> He meant what we now call the middle class.
Capitalists according to Marx are those that own the means of production, not the middle class.
> larger land owners were mostly outside of cities, and were well on the way to inevitable bankruptcy
He saw them as a declining class that would eventually merge with the industrial bourgeoisie. He didn’t predict their inevitable bankruptcy.
> quite a few governments in his time were individuals or families, but he didn't see them as the enemy, kind of, but not as the "source" of the evil of capitalism
Again, inaccurate. His view is that the state is an apparatus of the capitalist class structured to protect its property and interests. The state and the uber-rich are the primary enemies of the working class, in his view.
> Soviets initially offered to make Tsar Nicolas II the leader of international socialism. Only when he kept refusing did he become the enemy.
Citation needed. Are you just fabricating things? The Bolsheviks ideology was based on the idea that there would be a proletarian revolution that would dismantle the old capitalist and aristocratic order, which the Tsar represented.
> that wasn't true communism" argument!
There are many different varieties of socialism and communism. In fact many societies long into pre-recorded history have been peaceful, leaderless and without money - communist. Yet it would be a mistake to call those societies Stalinist for example.
> get everyone to work and back each day on rocket powered trams. Seriously.
Soviet plans were never that fantastical. Fabrication.
> the godess Gaia is a Titan who massacred, and then ate people. Men, women, children. Especially children
Gaia isn’t typically represented that way. She is not a Titan but mother of the Titans. Maybe you are thinking of Kronos.
You are making so much stuff up. My god it’s insane. Then you act like people haven’t read the super short Manifesto so you can continue your lies
Capitalism is just a reflection of people being self-interested which you can't prevent without being authoritarian which will inevitably leads also to surveillance.
> Capitalism is just a reflection of people being self-interested
I don't think that's the case. I think most people are not self-interested, or at least not in the selfish sense. I think most people are more than willing to sacrifice _some_ direct personal gain for better community gains.
The problem is that capitalism only allows selfish self-interest to flourish, so it incentivises even the more community-oriented people to always put themselves first, a lot of the time even in detriment to their immediate vicinity.
Capitalism is a form of authoritarianism in that it really only serves a few, and everyone else is just constantly fighting for survival.
> being authoritarian which will inevitably leads also to surveillance
That's exactly where capitalism is taking us.
>or at least not in the selfish sense
Wasn't a requirement, self interest doesn't imply malice.
>capitalism only allows selfish self-interest to flourish
How's that then?
>Capitalism is a form of authoritarianism in that it really only serves a few
You're cooked, market liberalisation has led the world from >80% in poverty to <10% in under 40 years, even removing huge entities like China.
Poverty reduction has largely been the result of China’s mixed economy not unbridled capitalism. Guided markets have played a role there - but that’s because they were guided. We don’t have to accept the authoritarianism or any of other effect of markets, simply because markets have played a role in some of the positive outcomes of the past. In fact for the last 50 years in the global north, roughly the same timeframe, productivity has continued to grow but most of that growth has accrued to the wealthiest and relatively little of that benefit has been seen by the median worker.
as I said if you remove china from the data the trend is identical.
But regarding China specifically it has been the gradual transition to a more market led economy.
To say it’s identical is an overstatement, but markets have been part of China’s policy, and part of the policies many other formerly impoverished counties. Without government policy intelligently choosing how to utilize markets (which is what happened in most of these formerly impoverished countries like the “Asian tigers”), markets alone could not have have brought the gains that they did. Markets have many downsides to them as well. Additionally non-government, non-market factors like unionization contributed to the rise out of poverty as well. And in the global north, “markets” have been fairly ineffective at raising the standard of living for the median worker. They have been effective at enriching the already rich however, contributing to wealth power-concentration and de-democratization.
no it is an identical plot on the graph, not an overstatement at all.
The standard of living for the median worker has improved significantly in forty years let alone two hundred, lifestyle inflation is definitely rapid as you would expect with progress, wage growth has outpaced inflation for everyone but public sector workers.
Bad as things may seem now, we are all richer than ever before.
Gates: [smirks] All right...
I shall amend my flawed recollection of the facts: it was a chuckle, not a smirk.
https://www.theverge.com/news/643777/microsoft-bill-gates-st...
Probably the same smirk he gave his (former) wife when she asked exactly how he knew his friend Jeffrey Epstein.
this will probably get flagged in a couple of hours
Was already flagged. I vouched it and it became unflagged. Now it's flagged again...
(I don't think every story about this conflict should be on HN by the way, as a "major on-going topic". But IMHO this particular story seemed like a good one as it intersects with tech and is something actually new, at least to some degree).
It's flagged again. What's vouching?
There's a "vouch" button on flagged comments and some flagged stories, which will unflag a story. I'm not entirely sure under which conditions it's available on flagged stories (it's almost always there for flagged comments). I think it probably gets disabled after it got flagged → vouched → flagged, or something? You need at least 500 (or more?) reputation points regardless.
I have >1800 reps and I've never seen that
It's only on [dead] items, not [flagged]. Sometimes it's [flagged][dead] but the only thing that matters for allowing to vouch is if it's [dead].
In the documentary (in the form of cinéma vérité) The Act of Killing (1), the director learnt about "anti-communist" massacres in 1965 Indonesia, which was sanctioned by a regime whose successors were still in power in the modern times. He compared the atmosphere of the country as if he came to Germany 40 years after WW2, but with the Nazis having won it. He talks to some of the killers, and he found them not even regretful, but boastful - throughout the documentary, he learns that if they admitted they were wrong, they'd be having to admit to themselves that they murdered a lot of innocent people, so they'd rather construct a fantasy world where they're the good guys.
There's even a musical segment of the documentary (he convinced the people to reimagine their doings in the style of 50's Hollywood movies they loved) where actors playing the victims thank the killers for saving them from godlessness and sending them to heaven: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o-ta9To14yw
I wonder how many of the genocide-defenders and genocide-enablers (not to mention genocide-executioners) will have similar PTSD...
1) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4kJZb2Q1NmE
What's the fiduciary duty here for Microsoft C-suite when it is supplying infrastructure and services that assist in underpinning war crimes, ethnic cleansing and genocide?
There are a number of big name tech companies associated with similar through their collaborations with the Nazi's, IBM etc. Did that have any effect on those companies that might inform what could happen to Microsoft and others?
I think the consequence was mostly that IBM made a lot of money.
[dead]
[dead]