This is incredibly narrow black and white view, it's full of mental gymnastics, leaping to conclusions and putting words in their mouths. I know that HN is collectively biased against MS, but this particular piece is poorer than usual.<p>The original premise for getting away from their services is the PRISM slide. Microsoft is one organization in that list. The others are Google, Yahoo, Facebook, PalTalk, YouTube, Skype, AOL, Apple. To focus on one and pretty much leap into blaming them for ICE's abuses is unobjective and incredibly biased. ICE does not exist in a technological vacuum devoid of FB, iPhones, and Skype.<p>If author truly cares they should either drop all companies mentioned or do the civil thing and be objective in their assessment. I predict that the likely conclusion will be: all large companies are complicit and that it's entirely a gray area. It's entirely possible to be good and evil at the same time.<p>Large companies often work as a loose collection of departments most of whom don't know what anyone else is doing (the nature of growth), so they end up with situations where leadership has certain focus topics and some management has other focus topics. What changes over time is marketing and the narrative that companies want to push out.
> providing Windows NT to aircraft carriers like the USS Yorktown.<p>Navy vet here:<p>USS Yorktown (CV-10), an Essex-class aircraft carrier commissioned in 1943 (museum ship since 1975)<p>You mean:<p>USS Yorktown (CG-48), a Ticonderoga-class cruiser commissioned in 1984 (awaiting scrapping)<p>Via <a href="https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_Yorktown" rel="nofollow">https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_Yorktown</a>
I'm actually fairly undecided on the GitHub/ICE thing, largely because it doesn't make logical sense to me as something we should be doing in general (this is an open invitation for someone to provide an explanation, if they're so inclined…) The crux of my issue with it is that even if we assume "ICE is bad" GitHub makes software that is generally useful to everyone. Why are we asking for <i>this particular contract</i> to be cancelled? Will doing this help improve the situation in any way? Why are we mad at GitHub specifically, and not e.g. McDonalds which ICE might order food from, or Staples which ICE buys office supplies from? I fail to see why we should just arbitrarily ask certain companies that provide generally useful services to stop interacting with entities we disagree with…
Main points since the article renders strangely for me on the iPhone:<p>Collaboration with US military for conducting mass murder<p>Collaboration with NSA for illegal mass spying on innocent people<p>Collaboration with ICE who runs concentration camps<p>Drop Microsoft. Drop GitHub. Drop LinkedIn. Drop Azure. Drop Windows.
If the facts check out then this article might be what is needed to reboot the anti-MS movement. Well written and adequately furious.<p>Problem: is there are list of companies that are not providers to the US military and/or ICE, i.e. companies that do not take such jobs because of moral stances? If there are none then what are we left with?
I agree on most/all points. There are many more suspicious issues about MS and how they treat you data.<p>A small inconsistency worth pointing out: the author has a linkedin link in his bio...