This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
Remember: today it's "just" the Palestinians and you may not be affected or care. But tomorrow, it could be you.
Yep. If you ever shared a political opinion, that could put you on someone's naughty list. If that someone gets a position of power and decides they want to attack, well, you could be the next metaphorical Palestinian.
Voting on Lemmy isn't private (and is probably for sale on closed platforms) so just upvoting an opinion might be enough to get you on some lists.
I have always been pro-privacy, but in a kind of lukewarm, "I wish someone would do something about this" way.
What has finally pushed me to ditch services from large corporations over the past couple of years is not really a concern for privacy, its a drive for self-sufficiency.
As basically the last stepping stone, as of a couple of weeks ago, my email, calendar and contacts are self-hosted, and it's just... So freeing.
This is what I fear the most with these platforms. They have these shitty automated moderation systems that can just decide to delete everything you have there on a whim. Already common on places like youtube and facebook, but it just keeps getting worse. Every site is pushing users into signing in with their google/microsoft/whatever accounts.
Remember the guy who lost access to his smart home when amazon banned him for no reason?
It isn't even on a whim. They get pressured to act on "anti semitism" and define that to mean anything that offends Zionists.
well it wasn't for no reason, it was for stupid reason, which is different, but i agree with your sentiment.
if you are depending on a platform where you are the goods being sold, not the customer, you shouldn't be surprised if you are taken of the shelf on a moment's notice.
everyone has a choice.
well it wasn't for no reason, it was for stupid reason, which is different
Yeah, guess I ovesimplified a bit. For anyone not aware, it was one report of racism towards a delivery driver.
The accusation was completely false, and even if the guy actually were a racist pos, remotely disabling devices he paid for and owns is not a good road to go on.
So what you're saying is, that there is now an easy way to delete your MS account?
This is the final nail in the coffin for me. My next PC is going to be a Linux machine.
Your current PC can become a Linux machine by lunchtime. What are you waiting for?
The last time I used a Linux PC was around 2012 with something called "Egyptian Hax" that my sister set up because she wanted me to play NetHack, so a guide would be a great start. I'm aware that WINE has gone through some vast improvements, but beyond that I don't really know where to start, what distro would be good for me, or anything else.
Edit: not getting mocked for admitting my ignorance would be a huge encouragement as well, tbh. It's hard not to be resentful when a community is hostile to new members. Calling someone a slur for not already being a part of the in group is a great way to keep people from joining. 👍
Start with Linux Mint. It should be a very pleasant and straightforward experience right out of the box, and is just in general very beginner friendly. I recommend to create a live USB (basically, download the ISO from the Mint website, then use something like Balena Etcher to put it on a USB stick). You can then boot off that stick, and try Mint out to your heart's content, without risking your Windows install or data at all.
Can I ask, what are the programs you wager you'll have to emulate through wine?
Installed? Sure, you can do that by lunchtime.
Getting it set up? Making sure all your drivers are working right? Troubleshooting issues? Finding alternatives to programs you need that don't work on Linux? Especially for someone who has never used Linux before? That will take much longer.
Why wait? Install it now. I would recommend Mint as a beginner distro.
Why do people keep recommending Mint as a starter distro? Maybe if your computer is a toaster, but it lacks tons of modern features. Seems like a one way track to people thinking Linux sucks. Fedora KDE edition is a way better beginner distro for a halfway decent PC.
I use Mint and I like it. It does everything I need it to do.
What keeps people away from Linux, or at least it helped keep me away, were people arguing with each other about distros like a mini-OS war within the OS wars and it makes the whole thing sound like it's a lot more trouble than it's worth.
Most people's computers are "toasters" because most people's computers are used for things like web browsing, word processing and maybe a few games. They don't need the modern features, they need something that works better than a Chromebook and isn't super bloated.
I don't understand why it's so mainstream to equate Palestine with Hamas. It's as if there is an actual conspiracy going on to to support this genocide. Is it because it's so easy to say you're antiemetic if you oppose "the Jews"?
It's completely normalized racism. America has been institutionalizing Islamophobia for years to justify their invasions of the Middle East where we kill millions of ~~innocent civilians~~ "terorrists"
Before the 2000's a lot of that manufactured hate was directed towards Asians because we needed to justify war crimes in Japan, Korea, Vietnam, Laos etc.
I don’t understand why it’s so mainstream to equate Palestine with Hamas
Decades of Islamophobic propaganda combined with a strong American economic interest in Israel might have played a role.
Basically we spent 20 years fighting "terrorists". So now it's really easy to paint one side or the other as the "terrorists". And thanks to Islamophobia pushed by mainstream TV shows and Movies, if you get painted as a "terrorist" then everyone in your country is also a "terrorist".
The word is in quotes because very few of the groups fought by regular forces (regular infantry as opposed to special operations) were actually international militant NGOs like Al Qaeda. Mostly they were local militias mad at the coalition forces for their own reasons, like "Why did you kill my kid in an airstrike!?!", or "I like the Taliban because they pay me really good for the poppy you torched. Also, you torched my livelihood in a country that has no safeguards against starving to death." And even the Taliban, ridiculously evil bastards that they are, were never an AQ like group. They were concerned solely with taking back Afghanistan.
All of this nuance was lost on anyone who didn't read the actual reports coming out of these countries though and many of those reports were classified. So all most people got was their favorite action and/or police drama shoveling the idea that all muslims are terrorists. With a side of Fox News villifying any brown people they could find.
So now, Israel walks in, sees all this, screams "terrorist!" and shoots the nearest Gazan kid. Predictable results were predicted many times by academic scholars.
Damn, thats some google level behavior.
What the fuck, MIcrosoft.
No, it's standard corp level behavior that's beholden to government censorship and propaganda when it doesn't fit the narrative. You can substitute any big tech company in the US for Google. They all do this. It's why the government is not a fan of TikTok, they don't have that same level of control over the flow of information.
They don't want the stories of the Israeli atrocities commited in Gaza to be leaked to the world.
Friendly reminder to not use freemail accounts (Hotmail, Gmail, Yahoo, etc) for anything important. It's very hard to get any sort of support as your account is seen as low-priority. Also, always use your own domain so that it's easy to move to a different provider in the future, without having to change your email address.
FastMail and MXRoute are good options. MXRoute has good Black Friday sales and all their plans include unlimited email address and domains (you're just limited by total disk space).
Microsoft's paid plan is decent too. $70/year for a personal account or $100/year for a family account (up to 6 people) and it includes the Office suite, 1TB cloud storage, and email.
Or if you have a little more money, there's the Proton pass which comes with VPN, Email, Drive, Calendar, and Password Manager. All protected under swiss privacy laws. They have a free tier of their drive with 5GB storage so you can collaborate on other people's documents without needing to pay yourself, and they have a $120/yr US Tier for 500GB for 1 person, and a $288/year US Tier for 3TB for up to 6 people. If you don't need that much storage and don't care about anything other than the email, they have a 15GB plan with just email and calendar for only $48/yr US.
This is not an ad, I am a real person with no connection to Proton except a deep respect for their business, and an even deeper hatred for Microsoft
Probably the first time they have paid attention to Skype.
Meanwhile we get banned here for saying war crimes bad.
Here? On Lemmy? Where did you get banned for saying that?
Imaginationland.
How dare you speak ill of Daddy War Crimes
Guess that officially adds Microsoft to the BDS list? Unless it's already on the list.
don’t ever forget that microsoft is evil
It's all to stop terrorism!
So much bs in the name of justice is just laziness
Just capitalism playing along with genocide - no different than they did seven decades ago.
Fuck Microsoft and all Big Tech corporations
Every now and then, I'm reminded that Skype is somehow still alive.
one does not become dependent on tech giants without a critical loss at some day, no matter whats the "reason" for it and they tend to do weird stuff within or without laws...
For others or for a new start and how to avoid such in the future (maybe "migrate" your relatives to secure services "before" you get ripped off):
also setting up recovery addresses (if possible) is a good idea, like when one email is unusable for whatever reason, the provider already has a known email address from you to start a recovery process, of course that second email address MUST be out of reach of the provider of the first one, that is, if you have somemailprovider.com address and one at microshits, then microshit buys somemailprovider.com, you have to change everything from that somemailprovider.com to a new one just to stay secure. due to this, your own domain with a connected email service of a random hosting provider comes in handy as you would not have to change all the email adresses but only that random email provider. also if skype/zoom etc does not work for you, there are plenty of other ways to do video talks on the internet. i prefer to be independent for same reasons even though i haven't been blocked yet, i just saw the signs of possible approaching evil because of the shitflow big evil tech produces all the time just to flush their believers view of what would be possible down the drain and choosed independence ahead of losses. following signs like leaving companies with red flags (like just too big, like already robbed their users, like give a shit on their users security, like give a shit on their bugs and blame users while their own big-tech-company-network is pwned by someone unknown for month and such) a more privacy aligned messenger that supports videocalls would be for example matrix, there are multiple clients to choose from and lots of providers to choose from (also self hosting or becoming a provider is possible while for talking to each other it is NOT necessary to use the same provider, but again self-hosting of course is most-secure) one cannot do things securely without knowing a bit about what it is. to learn more about dns, email, matrix or other topics the internet is full of informations, sometimes wikipedia is very helpful and linux user groups exist for talking about stuff and helping each other. the type of support is different and -as i see it - much more efficient, but different, there is no one to do it for you (or you get into the very same dependency trap again) but you are encouraged to learn what it takes to do so and do it yourself.
example prices from a random dns provider: .de 10€ / year .eu 16€ / year
random mail provider imap email 100GB storage 3 € /month
that is having more control over your email than when using big tech, may cost you more or less 4€ per month (and maybe the learning time to set everything up). for matrix server one might use managed services, looking around i found etke.cc with 5€ as a base minimum when you provide your own VPS for it, but with many other options too. maybe the free hosting announced by element.io where i did not look into yet is an option too. i prefer my own domains and servers, but just using separate hosting companies for dns, email and matrix gives a whole lot more control while still beeing a simple and adjustable setup. while matrix does not lock you in into one instance from the beginning (i can chat/call from/to my own account/server to any other account on other servers while beeing able to try this out using a multi-account-client that connects to all acvounts/servers at the same time) they now have bridges so one can use the same client to chat with others on telegram or whatsapp (and others) too, so this is rather the opposite of vendor lock-in. while a matrix hoster could still block your account in error and if you did not use your own domain for your matrix account at the hoster, you could connect to your friends again from another account at another hoster as you would still have their matrix adresses stored in your client. however to securely use matrix one should read about its security mechanisms and what backup keys are and why one should validate new connections.
if you had the loss, at least take advantage of the message/lesson: big tech is too powerful and thus insecure. maybe do three steps in parallel: choose and migrate to smaller providers, more providers each for different things, if one f**ks up, everything else stays in place, thus less stressful on problems. second step in parallel: get yourself into DIY your digital life. every little step into independence is a step more powerful while removing the very same power from big tech to attack the stability of your digital life. third step in parallel: share your problem including the possible solutions, which you choosed and how it went to those you think might take advantage of that information ;-)
This is the best summary I could come up with:
Today, BBC News put out an investigation having spoke to 20 Palestinians living abroad who claim Microsoft has permanently banned them from their systems for calling relatives in Gaza.
Skype might have fallen out of favor for general messaging purposes over platforms like WhatsApp and Telegram, but it remains an affordable service for calling cell phones directly via the web.
Many of the users affected by the bans expressed that Microsoft may be falsely labelling them as Hamas, the terror group behind the notorious October 7 massacre that killed hundreds of concert goers near Re'im in Israel.
Microsoft declined to respond to the accusation, but claimed that it doesn't block calls or ban users based on geographical location.
"Blocking in Skype can occur in response to suspected fraudulent activity," a Microsoft spokesperson told the BBC — potentially implying there's more to the story.
But given how much of our online life is basically handed over to big corporations like Microsoft, who are under no obligation to guarantee access to these services, it is alarming how they can just ban you with no real explanation or transparency.
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