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Microsoft has fired two employees who organized an unauthorized vigil at the company’s headquarters for Palestinians killed in Gaza during Israel’s war with Hamas.

The two employees told The Associated Press they were fired by phone call late Thursday, several hours after a lunchtime event they organized at Microsoft’s campus in Redmond, Washington.

Both workers were members of a coalition of employees called “No Azure for Apartheid” that has opposed Microsoft’s sale of its cloud-computing technology to the Israeli government. But they contended that Thursday’s event was similar to other Microsoft-sanctioned employee giving campaigns for people in need.

“We have so many community members within Microsoft who have lost family, lost friends or loved ones,” said Abdo Mohamed, a researcher and data scientist. “But Microsoft really failed to have the space for us where we can come together and share our grief and honor the memories of people who can no longer speak for themselves.”

Microsoft said Friday it has “ended the employment of some individuals in accordance with internal policy” but declined to provide details.

Google earlier this year fired more than 50 workers in the aftermath of protests over technology the company is supplying the Israeli government amid the Gaza war. The firings stemmed from internal turmoil and sit-in protests at Google offices centered on “Project Nimbus,” a $1.2 billion contract signed in 2021 for Google and Amazon to provide the Israeli government with cloud computing and artificial intelligence services.

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[-] semperverus@lemmy.world 44 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago)

The goalposts have moved to hopefully their final position

  • 99% of my games don't work! I'm not switching!

  • About half of my games don't work, I'm not swiching!

  • 20% of my games don't work but the ones that do are all perfect, I'm not switching!

  • 10% of my games don't work and Valve is pushing for functioning anticheat with EasyAntiCheat and BattleEye, i'm not switching!

  • You are here → 0.1% of my games don't work because of holdout companies being assholes and going out of their way to specifically block Linux despite the massive success of the Steam Deck, I'm not switching!

At some point you have to ask yourself if it's the companies thats holding you back or if it's really actually you who are holding yourself back. Switching is gonna always require some kind of sacrifice or another, and currently that sacrifice has never been this minimal.

Either that, or you are just the kind of person who enjoys being a contrarian and has no interest in actually contributing anything meaningful.

[-] gaael@lemmy.world 5 points 9 months ago

Well, actually Linux is shit productivity-wise. Setting up the system and messing with it is easy and fun, trying new open-source alternatives is great, and all my games work without a hitch. I just can't seem to find the time to get actual work done !
/s

[-] Ganbat@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 points 9 months ago

I still dualboot because I have games that don't work right, but every instance of that in my case seems to be problems with DXVK. In some cases, but not all, I've noticed it severely degrades performance, and in others, it seems to break certain features, such as streaming video. I actually had one game that I finished about 90% of before I encountered a sequence with a projector playing a video with important information. That would only display on Windows without DXVK, which was... unpleasant.

Of course, the most extreme DXVK problem I ever encountered was about two years ago, but I can't remember what game it was. What I do remember, however, is the extreme and rapid flashing it caused as the visuals horribly corrupted. IMO, DXVK functionality seems to still be one of the bigger hurdles.

[-] semperverus@lemmy.world 6 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago)

So the projector thing isnt from DXVK, but rather from the Windows Media Foundation library. Basically, there are a bunch of video codecs that are completely illegal to reimplement locally because of the patents on them.

The good news is that Valve is working on a major workaround, and just pushed it out to Proton Experimental recently. They've had okay-to-good support for video codecs up until recently (they pushed out some fixes for it right around after you had that problem), and now it should be moving towards great-to-perfect.

[-] Veneroso@lemmy.world 2 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago)

So which Linux distribution is the most pro-Israel?

I think that I need a little more convincing.

(Obligatory and huge /S)

(Also probably Oracle Linux because of course)

[-] semperverus@lemmy.world 3 points 9 months ago

Interestingly, the Linux foundation had to remove several Russian maintainers recently because of the sanctions.

I have not looked into the details on the matter, but from what I gleaned it seems like they did not want to (don't punish the individual for the sins of their government), but were made to. Linus Torvalds apparently made a statement on the matter that I still need to go read.

I could be very very wrong on this and am open to being educated.

[-] grubbyweasel@sh.itjust.works -3 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago)

Relax. Choice of operating system is entirely a personal one and you're turning it into some kind of obligation.

There's no goalposts to move because it's not a debate. You've never spoken to that person before and all you know about them is that they don’t personally feel ready to switch. Don’t be cringe

[-] vala@lemmy.world 8 points 9 months ago

It can be a political decision tbh.

[-] grubbyweasel@sh.itjust.works 3 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago)

its a personal decision that can be made for political reasons i.e. none of your business quite frankly, and i say this as a Linux user myself

[-] semperverus@lemmy.world -3 points 9 months ago

I think that talking about how you want to switch but then claim the thing you want to switch to sucks because of totally fabricated reasons is cringe.

I don't think everyone should switch, but i do think that people walking around spouting out bullshit that they clearly have no idea about should be called out and shut down.

this post was submitted on 26 Oct 2024
719 points (95.8% liked)

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