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[flagged]


Obsessively focusing on oppression just because you recognize the name of an area does make you “that guy” and this is not the thread for it.

The reality is that people have a day to day life and right now we are talking about that.


To trot out the old tired phrase : "no ethical consumption..."

Focus on doing what you can and fixing systemic problems, and you'll get way farther that you would by deciding not to work at a company and not much else.


Frankly, we have more leverage to fix systemic problems if we DON'T ragequit one problematic company after another.


Even more so when there aren't really all that many non-problematic companies!


> The reality is that people have a day to day life and right now we are talking about that.

Asking what role Google has as one of the most atrocious in privacy violators, is something that is relevant to the day to day of Gaza.

The fact that you so quickly dismiss their plight the way you do is why this can never be more than a walled garden, and why I honestly think she should see what working in Silicon Valley minded corps is like before she goes any deeper: you want your narrative to be the only one, even while building tools that keep people in that position in their very business model.

Sidenote: I donated to send food via Flotilla that got raided by Isreali forces in 2010, so don't tell me what I think of the situation much less belittle my experiences in such a condescending way.


> why I honestly think she should see

Speaking of being condescending, on what ground do you base your assumption that you know more than she does on the topic? Seems to me someone here needs to question their assumptions, and it isn't the person you're responding to.


...riiiiiiiight

I didn't do any of those things

Now let's talk about what her experience in Europe will be like and all the cool things she should do and see

Not everyone's interest or goal is "using their platform", this thread is about being judged by the merits of their marketable skills

we can all perceive the involvement of big tech in 100 applications simultaneously, including the 2 or 3 government contracts you referred to. this isn't the thread for that and you are trying to shoehorn your platform into it

this isn't apathy on our part, its maturity on our part


> Not everyone's interest or goal is "using their platform", this thread is about being judged by the merits of their marketable skills

Granted, but then one has to ask why her situation makes her so remakable and the exceptional, and the glaring situation becomes obvious: she comes from a region that is in an internment camp due to illegal occupation from a country that uses every surveillance tool at their disposal. My question is simple: what role does Google play here?

> this isn't apathy on our part, its maturity on our part

The rest of your response goes to show you want to treat her like the winner of the hunger games, in some perverted and distorted version of reality, instead of asking how we got here, you're asking the most feckless of questions in a typical Silicon Valley minded manner that is so pervasive their now.

You conflate maturity with malice when you do that, in my opinion, not apathy. You know what you're doing, which makes it worse than apathy because you know how effective it is.

Edit: Came back to this after HN revoked my ability to post, probablt automated response rather than dang's hand, this will be my last response on this matter, as I'm not wasting more time on this:

> Speaking of being condescending, on what ground do you base your assumption that you know more than she does on the topic?

I don't in regards to Palestine, but I saw Silicon Valley go form a cypherpunk based playground from 80-90s with exciting tech made by amateur technologists to the disgusting censorship, cancel culture, lemming zone made up of the privileged class with nothing more than virtue signaling via degrees enter into these corps that it is now working on the most privacy violating technology in what Chamth so aptly described as Silicon Valley and FAANG's practices as the 'intellectual lobotimization' of some the brightest minds we have on Earth.

Take one step out of bounds and that's your career, hell just look at how Google is firing people for having unionized, or even Timnit Gebru's situation is very telling, given he was trying to explain why being a female in tech is rare, let alone why it's even rare and even why daliaawad is unicorn. But that's heavy handed quelling of bad optics, and using sensationalist mob mentality is easier, and this the core premise I want to convey.

It's why I'm asking the question that I did, your erroneous leap in logic and cancel culture practices seem to be redlining as you're ignoring the fact that I got upset because now my question is being blacked out. I was responding to vmception in his dismissal of what he was conveying was a shallow understanding on my part of the situation as he wrote this dismissal:

Obsessively focusing on oppression just because you recognize the name of an area

I'm lost for words, I honestly had a higher opinion of you guys collectively than most of you deserve... I've lived and worked (my own startup) in the valley too, and while I despise what you've built I always respected you individually as I recognize your talents and respect your skills but then I fear your conditioning to respond negatively anytime anyone that deviates from the established narrative is hard to undo.

Even when you're not at work.

I wanted to ask a sincere question from someone with more knowledge than myself on what her perspective is, and instead we've derided this about me and I've wasted 20+ mins responding to the same absurd things that has made me never adopt social media. And got my account frozen from posting, again. But it also underscores what this FAANG and the braoded Silicon Valley 'culture' is really like.

Sorry, daliaawad, I wish we could have gotten to speak... but it's clear this place will never change from it's censorship based roots that Silicon Valley is built upon now, and I hope that makes it clear what you're getting yourself into.

I look forward to your work, and what I'm sure will be a fruitful career.

All the best!

> Frankly, we have more leverage to fix systemic problems if we DON'T ragequit one problematic company after another.

Doesn't make a difference, as Google now goes after it's tech employees that were involved in unionizing, you think making an impact there and 'not ragequitting' doesn't ensure you being blacklisted when you try to resolve the systemic problems from within?

It's the chilling in effect, and from the outside, though I did live in the valley at one point for a short period of time, and as a multi generational Californian I have to say you people have collectively created a perversion of the Californian spirit there for such short term gain then enriched the biggest megacorps: the high poverty, homelessness and now crime rate are reflecting just how deeply rotted your cancer(s) made that place.

Enabled by corrupt politicians, for sure, but it's f'ing disgrace what you people allowed it to become. You've made your bed, and now you have to sleep in it. I just fear it won't be people like you on HN who likely work for FAANG that will suffer the consequences, it will be everyone else as you can afford to just leave.


There are several organizations finding ways to work with software engineers in Gaza, so I don't view it as her being a winner of "the hunger games", I view it as an expanding talent pool. What I like about the approaches that I've seen is that the administrators are finding the interest in software development to be less gendered, compared to other markets, which is something I find interesting.

For me, this thread is seeing one of the approaches come to fruition. I was interested in this thread to see which approach was tried and her experience with it.

This thread isn't about how we got here. This thread is about the privilege of being able to ask "feckless questions" because she is going to be a 19-20 year old in Europe. Many immigrants have their own causes and people they want to support financially, and that's up to her. This thread is about what's new in her life and how her career in the broader software engineering world can develop.


> what role do you think Google plays in the survielence based economy in keeping Gaza in it's horrible plight?

What role do _you_ think they play? I'm not aware of any Google projects to help with government surveillance in Gaza.


> What role do _you_ think they play? I'm not aware of any Google projects to help with government surveillance in Gaza.

I don't know, I don't work for google, and after buying a Nexus 5 I never bought another google product and I adopted DDG very early on as I never left the Mozilla platform... but one has to ask with Google being such a high profile customer for nations state's survielence model what role it plays in allowing Isreal to keep the gross violations in Gaza underwraps is a critical question.

I know throughout the years and several UN inquiries that stated Israel committed war crimes in Gaza was brushed under the rug almost never appeared via most search engines when I tried to look [0], but that is anecdotal at best.

I want to know what she thinks first hand being from Gaza and now working at Google.

0: https://duckduckgo.com/?q=UN+Gaza+war+crimes+isreal&t=lm&ia=...


[flagged]


While they do have such programs, that's almost certainly not what's happening.




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