I mean I get the idea and all, but considering half the internet runs on AWS is this even feasible? Your day-to-day internet use would be crippled. Wouldn't it be better to spend the effort on writing letters to politicians or better yet campaigning yourself? (I'm assuming this is being posted because of the prime day walkouts today)
Indeed, there is nothing inherently wrong with AWS.
On the broader topic, what's wrong with people spending money on things they want? We live in a free country. If you have money, and want to buy junk with it, more power to you. It's your money. Do whatever you want with it. As far as vices are concerned, I would rather someone derived satisfaction from binge shopping than the alternatives (gambling, alcoholism, drugs, etc. etc.), since those have far more deleterious effects on society.
"what's wrong with people spending money on things they want?"
It depends on what they're buying. Many people would consider unethical the buying of children or child pornography, for instance. Bans on ivory, whaling, and trading in endangered species have gained ground in recent years.
Some arguments for what's wrong with those are that the former exploit people who are unable to defend themselves or even realize they're being exploited, while the latter cost the lives of sentient creatures and reduce biodiversity by causing extinctions. Now, whether you find any of those arguments persuasive depends on your own values. Some people see nothing wrong with exploitation or species extinction. It's really difficult to argue against them. Either you share certain fundamental values with the rest of us or you don't.
Philosophers study such ethical issues in nauseating detail, but I've yet to see how any of their arguments would be persuasive to someone who doesn't already share their core values.
I've toyed with the idea of setting up a no-FAANG VPN that implements these restrictions based on the ip networks advertised by the relevant ASNs. This would provide more complete coverage, and be useful as a testing tool, allowing you to verify that your own web properties still function without assets being loaded from a global active adversary.
It still doesn't actually block everything on those clouds. I can go get my own ASN, run my own edge server (or use a small CDN company not on your list) and use whatever I want on the back end for database, queue, backup, storage, compute, etc. All you'll know my IP is where the edge node is.
A VPN would still be effective at suppressing the tracking effects of all the "like buttons" while also revealing issues such as jquery being loaded off a CDN that also directly hosts content for 40% of the web.
For users wanting to thwart pervasive CDNs from receiving packets every time they visit almost any site on the web, it's matters less if a service they visit is using an amazon resource on the back end; as long as all services aren't using the same database backend, this puts e.g. AWS back in the position of only having a little of your consumer/browsing information instead of nearly all of it.
The attempt is also incomplete. I suspect this would miss ranges advertised through AWS's BYOIP (https://docs.aws.amazon.com/AWSEC2/latest/UserGuide/ec2-byoi...) option. It would definitely miss ranges advertised through companies' own datacenters and serviced in the backend by AWS.
We could start by shunning AWS content when their $200k+ salaried employees are posting their latest announcements on HN while their unsalaried, not-employed coworkers in the warehouses are sprinting to and from a piss break trying not to be fired.
I have found their list to be out-dated. I have to use bgp lookup sites to fill in the blanks. There are many ranges and small blocks they leave out that are not hosted in their datacenter directly.
I wonder about the low level labor in data centers. Swapping disks and servers. I imagine they have a lot of the same tracked-time-pressure that retail pickers do? But I've never read about it one way or the other either.
As an experiment, you could always put their ranges into your IDP / IDP / firewalls and just get summary data for how many packets / flows / bytes are transferred to/from AWS. (Rather than outright blocking)
Oh boy, another one of the daily anti-FAANG posts. Amazon is evil and should be boycotted - usually coming from people who shop at WalMart and invest in companies like BP (i.e. my in-laws).
Good luck blocking AWS - and whatever percentage of the internet running on it.
Yeah and I posted that openly. They’re actually the smallest of the FAANGs in my portfolio. I’m invested heavily in tech, banking, energy, and retail, including WalMart.
It’s hilarious and sad that my post caused you enough grief to dig up content from my post history as if that makes any of my points less valid.
I would think efforts like this are less about completeness and more about creating a media event around the fact that ICE uses AWS to do harm to people.
ICE uses AWS to help take into custody people who have deportation orders. Can anyone explain why this is even remotely controversial? What is the alternative, open borders? no deportation ever?
The idea behind these actions is to pressure ICE into abiding by international human rights laws in its handling of detained immigrant children. To me, that seems like a very reasonable thing-to-care-about.
Boycotting IBM may have saved lives at Nazi concentration camps if it was attempted... (IBM assisted Nazis in processing big data (of their time) during most of WW2)
But would it? When the war started, IBM was already established in Germany, and upon the US placing trade ban, the German branch essentially split out and worked independently, to be reintegrated into the mothership after the hostilities have ceased.
Yeah let's get into the weeds on this WWII stuff when there are currently concentration camps in the USA where people are being tortured and dying. Out of here with this.
As a person who came to America legally, as an Immigrant, I seriously do not want this. How is this at all fair to those of us who had to work so hard and wait so long to get in?
Being in the country and using its services isn't free. It's unfair because low (or no) income immigrants are a burden on everyone in the country.
The unfairness is that the bar for participation is being significantly lowered to the point where it risks the social safety nets for everyone. It's unfair to both native citizens and naturalized ones.
Instead of punching down on the literally the most vulnerable people in our society, why don't you direct energy at all the wealth being accumulated at the top? That situation is much more harmful for our social safety net.
My family came here legally as immigrants as well. We just showed up at points in time where the only requirement was that you not have TB.
I understand that things were hard for you, and therefore you want them to be hard for everyone else. But I hope you can eventually see that your view is one based on jealousy, envy, and hatred; and that it is not based on any sort of sense.
I also came to America legally, and that was the second time I legally emigrated from one country to another. As an "experienced immigrant", I've lost count of how many times I've come upon the astonishingly selfish attitude your comment espouses.
Make no mistake, I'm also against completely open borders without deportation, for a variety of reasons. "Fuck you, got mine" is not one of those reasons.
Seeking asylum in America IS legal. What's happened with the Trump admin is they've essentially made traditional routes for seeking asylum nonviable, so people cross the border, and if they get apprehended then instead of being released and assigned a court date like they used to, they're being held indefinitely in concentration camps.
let's say 350 million people have the means + desire to move to the US over the course of a year after the borders open. i think that's low, but whatever.
how do you propose that the "delicate" infrastructure of the US can handle a clean doubling of population over the course of 1 year?
There are approximately 500 million that want to come. It would be interesting to see how we would solve the housing needs while making their immigration economically viable for both them and the country as it exists today.
Not at all viable when you consider the cost of requisite social services to support such an initiative, which is one of the myriad reasons why no country has ever considered the option.
I have read all the comments below yours and as an immigrant in an Africa country I wonder why no one says anything about why we want to be immigrants in the first place. I have noticed this debate tends to be about Europe, US and Australia and it seems the world has given up on holding dictators to task. I know it is hard but surely as mostly IT people on HN we know you have to fix the root cause. For the record I think it is healthy to have both pro immigrant and also listen to concerns of those against immigrants.
Why do people always make the"legality" argument. Just because something is legal, doesn't mean something is right. The Holocaust was quite legal, at the time.
Putting people in concentration camps and letting them die there (ICE) should not be legal. This does not even touch on whether deportations should be.
Congress has put ICE and CBP in a pretty impossible situation, they have refused to extend funding for months (since February at least) to fund further border enforcement to stop illegal border crossings, while simultaneously refusing to pass any legislation to further fund the detention centers.
Your implication that they must stop patrolling the border lest they become literally Hitler, is patently absurd and an affront to people who suffered through the Holocaust.
Would you please stop posting in the flamewar style and please not use HN for ideological battle? Those things are destructive of what we're trying to do in this community, and your comments have been noticeably more inflammatory than the others I've seen in this thread. You've also done it recently elsewhere.
> usually coming from people who shop at WalMart and invest in companies like BP (i.e. my in-laws)
If one takes a moral stand, must one then take every moral stand? I avoid using Google products because I think they're an unethical company, but arguably Apple is too. Am I obligated to just not use a smartphone?
When you're boycotting company A for doing bad thing X, but then using the services of company B for doing bad thing X, then that's hypocritical. If company B were doing different bad thing Y, then that's a different story.
>usually coming from people who shop at WalMart and invest in companies like BP
What weird mental gymnastics are you trying to pull here? You know someone who hates Amazon and invests in Walmart/BP? So what? That doesn't mean there isn't a legitimate reason to hate Amazon.
"ugh, another one of the daily anti-violent crimes posts. Rape is evil and should be boycotted - usually coming from people who jaywalk and overcook their steaks."
They know someone who hates Amazon but shops at Wal-Mart and invests in BP, and is projecting all of that only everyone who has a negative view of Amazon.
The second sentence of the post clarifies that this is motivated by a one-day boycott in solidarity with Spanish workers striking for improved labor conditions--not by the belief that "Amazon is evil and should be boycotted." Either you didn't care to read up to that point or you're being intentionally obtuse.
Reminds me of about three years ago, a buddy who does Cybersecurity for a very large military base was tasked with blocking AWS from their network due to porn.
He found it quite humorous, warned them of the consequences, got everything in writing(including his warnings), and executed his orders.
The base commander was not amused and the blocks were removed in about 12 hours. Unfortunately, the responsible party never suffered more than egg on their face for the stupidity.
They tried to shift blame to my buddy, but he had dotted his i's and crossed his t's. He did get a nice one-on-one with the Base Commander, where he was able to lay everything out.
There is a large community of people here in the US who block every company that does bad things.
Yes I'm talking about the Amish. But even in Amish society, there is politics and people who do Bad Things. Fortunately there are plenty of uninhabited mountaintops left that one can go and live on to maintain a clean conscience. But if we do that, then aren't we turning our backs on the world by not helping it? So now we'd need to come back to civilization and live amongst the unwashed masses once more.
There's no way to live a perfectly good and blameless life.
I'd rather do this with Cloudflare. Amazon may be naughty but CF is just evil: trying to normalize a MITM-as-a-service protection-racket as a business model is bad for everyone involved.
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[ 0.16 ms ] story [ 162 ms ] threadOn the broader topic, what's wrong with people spending money on things they want? We live in a free country. If you have money, and want to buy junk with it, more power to you. It's your money. Do whatever you want with it. As far as vices are concerned, I would rather someone derived satisfaction from binge shopping than the alternatives (gambling, alcoholism, drugs, etc. etc.), since those have far more deleterious effects on society.
> in solidarity with striking workers in several fulfillment centers in Spain
It depends on what they're buying. Many people would consider unethical the buying of children or child pornography, for instance. Bans on ivory, whaling, and trading in endangered species have gained ground in recent years.
Some arguments for what's wrong with those are that the former exploit people who are unable to defend themselves or even realize they're being exploited, while the latter cost the lives of sentient creatures and reduce biodiversity by causing extinctions. Now, whether you find any of those arguments persuasive depends on your own values. Some people see nothing wrong with exploitation or species extinction. It's really difficult to argue against them. Either you share certain fundamental values with the rest of us or you don't.
Philosophers study such ethical issues in nauseating detail, but I've yet to see how any of their arguments would be persuasive to someone who doesn't already share their core values.
For users wanting to thwart pervasive CDNs from receiving packets every time they visit almost any site on the web, it's matters less if a service they visit is using an amazon resource on the back end; as long as all services aren't using the same database backend, this puts e.g. AWS back in the position of only having a little of your consumer/browsing information instead of nearly all of it.
The attempt is also incomplete. I suspect this would miss ranges advertised through AWS's BYOIP (https://docs.aws.amazon.com/AWSEC2/latest/UserGuide/ec2-byoi...) option. It would definitely miss ranges advertised through companies' own datacenters and serviced in the backend by AWS.
Also, Just because someone does not have in demand skills does not mean that they should be subjected to poor treatment.
It's not like any legitimate company could keep their IP address ranges private (other than by using seemingly unrelated shell companies) :)
Good luck blocking AWS - and whatever percentage of the internet running on it.
> Disclaimer: I’m own about $500K in my portfolio in Amazon.
It’s hilarious and sad that my post caused you enough grief to dig up content from my post history as if that makes any of my points less valid.
How is it unfair?
The unfairness is that the bar for participation is being significantly lowered to the point where it risks the social safety nets for everyone. It's unfair to both native citizens and naturalized ones.
I understand that things were hard for you, and therefore you want them to be hard for everyone else. But I hope you can eventually see that your view is one based on jealousy, envy, and hatred; and that it is not based on any sort of sense.
Make no mistake, I'm also against completely open borders without deportation, for a variety of reasons. "Fuck you, got mine" is not one of those reasons.
Germany's refugee crisis is a good example of the pros and cons.
how do you propose that the "delicate" infrastructure of the US can handle a clean doubling of population over the course of 1 year?
Not at all viable when you consider the cost of requisite social services to support such an initiative, which is one of the myriad reasons why no country has ever considered the option.
Putting people in concentration camps and letting them die there (ICE) should not be legal. This does not even touch on whether deportations should be.
Your implication that they must stop patrolling the border lest they become literally Hitler, is patently absurd and an affront to people who suffered through the Holocaust.
Also I'm talking about deportations (and the associated camps, whatever you want to call them) is a separate issue from border control, in my opinion.
If you wouldn't mind reviewing https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and taking the spirit of this site to heart when posting here, we'd appreciate it.
If one takes a moral stand, must one then take every moral stand? I avoid using Google products because I think they're an unethical company, but arguably Apple is too. Am I obligated to just not use a smartphone?
I've met people who would argue "yes." Not sure that I agree with them, though.
Just because you can't save the world doesn't mean you can't start somewhere.
What weird mental gymnastics are you trying to pull here? You know someone who hates Amazon and invests in Walmart/BP? So what? That doesn't mean there isn't a legitimate reason to hate Amazon.
"ugh, another one of the daily anti-violent crimes posts. Rape is evil and should be boycotted - usually coming from people who jaywalk and overcook their steaks."
He found it quite humorous, warned them of the consequences, got everything in writing(including his warnings), and executed his orders.
The base commander was not amused and the blocks were removed in about 12 hours. Unfortunately, the responsible party never suffered more than egg on their face for the stupidity.
They tried to shift blame to my buddy, but he had dotted his i's and crossed his t's. He did get a nice one-on-one with the Base Commander, where he was able to lay everything out.
Yes I'm talking about the Amish. But even in Amish society, there is politics and people who do Bad Things. Fortunately there are plenty of uninhabited mountaintops left that one can go and live on to maintain a clean conscience. But if we do that, then aren't we turning our backs on the world by not helping it? So now we'd need to come back to civilization and live amongst the unwashed masses once more.
There's no way to live a perfectly good and blameless life.