What’s striking is how often these ‘small’ surveillance tech stories trace back to the same state-aligned ecosystem. When Israel does it, it’s treated as a complex security issue. When another ‘bad’ country does the same thing, we immediately call it espionage. And almost on cue, the discussion drifts anywhere except the uncomfortable fact that it’s the same ecosystem from the same country showing up again.
it’s a tough infosec situation because the tel aviv-haifa corridor in israel has an enormous amount of computer science R&D going on that gives US companies a competitive advantage.
for example, annapurna labs in haifa develops the technology behind AWS’s nitro cards, which run the hypervisor, block storage, and networking in every EC2 server.
Fair enough. I guess it's fine to be spied on to make sure US companies have that competitive advantage you mention. As its all in a good cause, I'll take the Samsung phone!
To be fair, us over in Europe have been uncomfortable for a while due to the US surveillance apparatus having total dominion over the underlying systems that run our countries.
So, its a little bit tone deaf to hear these complaints from Americans honestly.
We’re told that we’re uncompetitive (yet when rising startups happen they’re bought out before being too large)- we’re told that we shouldn’t run on anything except US SaaS and US cloud providers.
I’m not saying that you specifically make these arguments, but the zeitgeist on HN definitely centres on this notion.
So, please forgive me for not taking this as seriously as you’d like me to.
You are asking the “wrong” question!! If you are Gabriele Nunziati you will be fired immediately!!
For context: https://www.eunews.it/en/2025/11/05/italian-journalist-fired...
When Israel does what, in this case? Write software?
Spyware*
> When Israel does it, it’s treated as a complex security issue. When another ‘bad’ country does the same thing, we immediately call it espionage
Israel is in a bit of a unique situation, where they are surrounded by some number of religious fanatics that wouldn't mind seeing them genocided off the planet.
They live under existential threat. Oct 7 was very recent.
If only Israel wasn't committing a genocide itself, and hadn't treated the Palestinian people like lesser beings for decades, maybe things would be different.
Maybe, I think an honest request might be to put yourself in the shoes of either side of that conflict in a genuine way.
Isreal was founded and immediately descended on by almost the entire the Arab world, and we can say they were justified in doing so: but it doesn’t take away from what happens when that is your founding.
Palestinian suffering is real, but we only really care because they’re losing. If Israel was as evil as people say then there wouldn’t even be a gaza, it hurts them more that they didn’t commit a genocide like the Rwandans did, or Bosnia or, for a more modern one: Rohingya’s, which only lead to international sanctions on named government officials… no lasting sanctions of any kind by the west.
If I sound supportive of Israel here it’s only because I’m trying to balance the narrative, they’re clearly a superior force and should have a higher standard applied, but anyone who supports either is doing so half blind.
They are both “right” in what they are doing, or at least they have sufficient cause to feel that way.
Also, I’m aware this is unpopular so I expect that many will reflexively flag this. Empathising with your enemy is what we should be asking everyone to do, and it’s harder than you think.
This narrative about the founding of Israel is false.
Israel was founded in the middle of an offensive when it was "descended upon by the Arab world". That was a defensive reaction to Israel's brutal Plan Dalet, an invasion and occupation of Palestine, which extended far beyond what the UN had drawn up.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plan_Dalet
And then they destroyed 500 villages, ethnically cleansed Palestine of three quarters of a million of Palestinians and never let them return.
They went around with detailed lists of people identified as Arabs in each village, rounded them up, set fire to the villages, and then blew up the rubble. How can you believe that is the act of a legitimate state? It is quite simply evil. Nazi-level shit.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nakba
This was not an operation that was sanctioned by the UN's partition plan (which was ridiculous and at odds with the UNs founding principles of self-determination to begin with) it was just retconned into being a legitimate action.
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I mean, it's literally the same thing that happens when past genocides are bad, but when they happen today from an ally of the west... "it's complicated". Except this time happens on the technological side rather than the humanitarian one
> an ally of the west
Remind me again of all the help Israel has provided the USA/the West that they are considered such a great (the greatest, in fact) ally?
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This is a dog whistle. Jumping straight to trying to minimize antisemitism when that wasn’t mentioned is a way to continuously chip away at the real challenge of antisemitism worldwide.
The phrase "dog whistle" is also itself a dog whistle that signals where you stand on discussing particular issues in the open.
Only someone trying to silence any dissent to their position would use platitudes like this rather than addressing why the OP mentioned antisemitism out of nowhere.
I recently bought a cheap android device because I needed to test something on Android. The setup was about 3 hours of the device starting up, asking me questions, installing apps I explicitly told it not to, and then all sorts of other apps and OS updates trying to do their thing seemingly at once. I wasn't even transferring data, just a brand new phone, new google account.
What a horrible experience you get with some providers and phones.
It's to the point that I think there should be some sort of regulation that involves you getting a baseline experience on the OS rather than a bunch of malware out of the box.
I remember back when the iPhone came out, this was perhaps the most noteworthy aspect of it, at least to me. We were so used to phones coming with crap on them and tightly coupled to the carrier. If the carrier didn't want something on the phone, it never got there. So Apple comes along and says "Hey, AT&T, we will make you the exclusive carrier for the iPhone iff you leave the entire experience under our control."
There were lots of downsides to that deal, of course, but I appreciate that it broke the carriers' exclusive control over mobile phones.
"I was so happy to get locked into a different eco system" is all I hear.
You wouldn't get a phone in 2007 that didn't lock you in to something; the question is whose ecosystem you'd prefer to deal with.
I remember the Verizon crapware phone experience well.
I would say their comment had a lot more nuance and thought put in to it than yours did.
I mean sure, but Androids been following Apple's lead, not tother way tround.
This is why custom ROM support is the first question I ask when buying a new Android phone
That would make Samsung's business model not viable. :D
I haven't bought an android device for a few years, but the last time I did, it was also a very cheap one for testing. I chose an "Android One" to avoid all these issues. Is something like that still an option?
Your best bet might be one of the Pixel "a" series, which are Google's budget-oriented models. Stock vanilla Android with as little bloat as you can hope for.
Sounds like a Samsung phone... no end of dark patterns and pushing Bixby AI and whatever else. And then once you have the phone set up you get to spend the next 10 minutes uninstalling a load of pre-loadded apps that you didn't want.
Fortunately Android is a pretty diverse range and Samsung is just one player. I had much more user-friendly experiences with Fairphone and Motorola.
Sounds like the average carrier locked Samsung device experience in the US. Oh you didn't want Clash of Clans installed? We'll reinstall that for you next OS update. Running updates through carriers was a serious mistake.
Running remote updates in general was a serious mistake. Other manufacturers are no better and give you all kinds of crap for their income streams at the expense of your convenience whilst claiming the opposite.
The last time I saw an update that just fixed security bugs and improved performance was... never.
I took this seriously and thought back to the most recent actually-useful-bugfixes-and-security-improvements release that I can remember. OSX Snow Leopard perhaps?
Wasn’t that also Apple’s last paid OS?
I was wondering why this thankfully hasn't been my experience until you said "carrier locked"... I always buy unlocked. Does that really make a difference?
Yes, the carriers load up the phones with apps that you cannot remove (at least not without rooting the phone).
You can usually disable them, but they are still there.
Well dang, that's another good reason to buy unlocked :P
Cheap devices get subsidized by shitty adware. The cheaper the device, the more likely that it's full of terrible adware.
Consumers often have a choice, at least between "filled to the brim with crap" and "a modicum of crap", by choosing between buying their phone from a store or from a carrier. Carriers have better deals but shovel their phones full of the worst apps you can imagine. Still, people will buy the crap-filled experience that makes you want to tear your hair out because they like the idea of scoring a better deal.
Nothing like unadulterated greed combined with short-sighed consumer behaviour at scale to drive a market segment into an awful race to the bottom.
> subsidized
What's a better word here? Adverts cost the consumer, however I'm sure the consumer doesn't get equal recompense. Theoretically a SmartTV with adverts costs less money ("subsidised" due to price competition), but is the consumer actually ($,time) better off?
The costs are invisible and the consumer cannot actually measure the costs (the vendors do measure profitability but this is not legible).
I reckon most people are terrible at judging the value of their own time (especially children and retirees).
The premium devices still have the bloatware.
Yeah, even the iPhone bundles/bakes in google junk
My guess is, those auto installs is exactly how they keep the costs down, by subsidizing the cost with getting paid by companies to auto-install garbage.
It's the same with Smart TVs, they've gotten so cheap because of all the other slimy stuff the manufacturers do, like sell your watch data, or pre-install apps.
This is not a valid cause. They spend insane amounts of money on advertising and also make insane amounts of revenue. Don’t think “them keeping the cost down” is relevant in this context.
The problem is that you do not get the option to pay off the subsidy to get a clean install.
I suppose the "paying off the subsidy" is to buy a more expensive phone. Or getting a Google Pixel. I've heard those are as much stock android as possible.
I agree, and that's the exact point I would make. The problem though, is I want a small phone with a headphone jack (and a physical keyboard, but that's orthogonal to the point).
Many OEMs sell their flagship as a shiny glass slab with only BT or USB-C for audio, and ship 3.5mm jacks and other "antiquated niceties" like a uSD card reader, on their lower-end models.
It's difficult to square the circle of "I want these specific features, but on a phone that's not working against me (any more than modern phones already do)"
The "Sony Xperia 5 V" (I have the previous "Sony Xperia 5 IV") has a headphone jack, takes a uSD card, and is somewhat compact. (And no silly camera cutout in the screen, it's in a reasonably small bezel.)
EDIT: also see the Xperia 10 VII for a phone that isn't 2 years old (I haven't been keeping up, I buy phones to use for 4+ years)
According to the specs it's 154 x 68 x 8.6 mm and 182 grams, so it's more compact than most phones of 2025 but not really compact. My Samsung A40 is smaller and lighter but it's 4 years older.
Serendipity happens. Maybe you almost want this https://liliputing.com/zinwa-q27-prototype-brings-classic-bl... Keyboard but it seems no 3.5" jack.
I actually ordered the Q20 revival by the same team back in May or so! Very excited, should ship this week
I bought a USB-C to 3.5mm jack for around $20. It works well but does tend to get caught on things more easily than a pure jack.
As well as easily getting misplaced…
And easily internally shorted, leading to the dreadful 'wiggle around in your pocket until the headphones are detected again, and then press play again'...
I must admit, I don’t get the wish for 3.5mm headphone jacks in 2025. Already six years ago, with a phone that actually still had a headphone jack, I bought myself for just a few euro a Bluetooth DAC (a FiiO) that had superior sound quality to any phone’s audio-out that I had ever used. With a Bluetooth DAC (or with any USB-C to 3.5mm converter that costs pennies) you can still use whatever wired headphones you want to use.
Physical keyboards were nice back in an era when the web welcomed longform text, and I miss my Nokia N900. Nowadays, though, the web ecosystem that one typically uses from a phone is a cesspool, and for serious things I’ll just use my real computer.
I have a similar FiiO gadget and it makes less sense for me than a direct wired connection to the phone. It's a relatively bulky device that needs to be charged way too often, also it reduces voice call quality (like any other BT Classic device).
I'm conflicted about this matter. I use a Bluetooth earpiece on my phone because it's more convenient: you can move around a room with the phone on a table, no pockets, and you can wear and unwear t-shirts and sweaters. When I can't find the x with the earpieces I plug in in a wired one.
On the other hand a wired headphone always work, had maybe better quality and almost surely a better latency. I use one of them when doing calls from my laptop.
Bluetooth wastes batteries / alter soubd.
> I bought myself for just a few euro a Bluetooth DAC (a FiiO) that had superior sound quality to any phone’s audio-out that I had ever used.
I hate the 3.5'' jack myself (see below), but I can already tell you that mentioning some unscientific definition of "superior sound quality" that likely no one amongst us is humanly able to distinguish is not going to win any minds over. Proponents of 3.5'' like it because it is ridiculously simple to use, intuitive, cheap, doesn't have a lot of things that can go wrong (e.g. no batteries) and despite that is overall effective.
The reason I dislike 3.5'' is because the _socket_ part (i.e. the part on the expensive device) wears out very quickly, becoming fragile and generating distracting artifacts even with slight cable pulls/movements, as the springs in the connector start to fail. This annoys me to no end, much more than any issues with other interfaces.
Talking about “superior sound quality” in the context of mobile phones isn’t controversial, it’s not like a home-stereo audiophile snake oil debate. It is well known that DACs are an area where mid-range and low-end phone makers have cut corners, choosing chips that are quite flawed for anyone who uses their phone to listen to music where pristine sound quality is valued.
pretty much why I switched to iphone. I used pixels before for the same reason but good luck getting your pixel warranty honored outside the united states
I've heard this theory before, but is an individual data point really worth enough to make this argument?
You need to think about the aggregate data. Whole trends can be seen in almost real-time.
Here’s a made up example, and it’s probably not even the best one. - Show Teckno-Detectives shows a “Cameo” of Grapple’s newest mixed-reality glasses. The data shows that 3.9 million additional people watched the episode. Investment firms who pay for the data notice and buy extra Grapple shares to cash in on the expected sales bump.
its not just your data point its everyones data point
This is true, it’s not an individual datapoint. When smartphones, like the iPhone, originally debuted carriers had a conniption fit because they couldn’t preload a ton of garbage apps to help subsidize the cost. Apple has been able to avoid this, but for your average smartphone this is absolutely how both the manufacturer and carrier are able to sell them so cheaply.
Every experience may not be as bad as the one the OP had, but it’s surely well within reality. Both carriers and handset manufacturers are glad to sell anything and everything about someone to make a quick buck. They’ve literally been doing it for 25+ years.
> they've gotten so cheap because of all the other slimy stuff
Not really, they've gotten so cheap because the individual components they are made of have become much cheaper due to economies of scale.
The same thing happened with computer monitors, and those don't ship with the bloatware.
Compare monitors to TVs of similar spec, in price and bloatware.
I suspect the apparent reduction in price on these devices is a lot less than what they earn from the slimy stuff.
But the premium devices (especially TVs) are starting to do this too now via software updates. I had to turn off a bunch of crap in the settings on my LG CX TVs some time ago. Now they are just off the internet and can only connect to my NAS.
Nah its the corporate greed and disregard for avoiding amoral behavior at the first place, since clearly its punished much less than rewards are (just look at all the slaps on the wrist of FAANGs and similar), then followed by race to the bottom with the price.
Economies of scale do bring costs of everything much further than stealing user's data can, but good luck explaining some long term vision to C-suites who only care about short term bonuses.
Name and shame please. I'm shopping for a cheap first phone for my 13 year old.
I'm looking at HMD or Motorola.
I kind of like Motorola in the cheap android phone space. I have a moto-g stylus in my pocket now, and it's big (which I like), has a heaphone jack, and has an sd-card port. I thought I'd like the stylus, but I rarely use it.
It pre-installs some games, but you can uninstall them. The only thing it forces on you is a weather app which you can deactivate but not uninstall.
SpyApps everywhere.
Hopefully one day we not only have open software, open hardware but also reproducibly guaranteed secure systems. Now I don't have any idea how this could be verified (and no, Microsoft's "Trusted Computing" is not what I have in mind), but I hope we'll see to this eventually.
If you don’t trust a centralized authority you need decentralized governance…
"Decentralized governance" is just feudalism. What you need is a re-envigoration of democracy. Democracy works, but we have to engage with it positively, both as citizens and as politicians.
we've alreaaaay seen that decentralization is an abstract, butnot a reality.
There will always be a move towards centralization when a project gains enough converts because the bulk of concerns are exactly the same but we don't have n+1 people willing to do the necessary legwork to secure.
As such, just like REST apis and their N+1 query problem, forcing everyone to have a security conscious posture is never going to happen.
You absolutely need centralized authorities; what the real argume is about is how that authority is selected, changed and intermediated. The same way we argue about how a stable RAFT algorithm operates.
Move on from this "decentralization is all we need" argument. It's failed and failing.
It will be excluded from any popular OS and will end up a niche thing that no one will use. The issue is the hegemony of big tech companies over the regulations to shape it however they like, and in return they provide the surveillance to legislators.
So a Unity owned bloatware company being used by Samsung is now somehow controversial because it was founded in Israel? Am i reading this right?
Getting upset “because Israel” is not the controversy you think it is. Serious war crimes were committed in the Israeli pager attack.
Israel used its tech sector to commit those war crimes.
It’s only a controversial story, anyway, to those who think that the pager attack was ‘a perfectly acceptable way to wage war’, and the counter to that argument is: are you sure you would be willing to have this same technique, or similar uses of at-scale consumer devices being subverted by a nation state, applied to you?
For those of us who see the war crime nature of that pager attack, Israeli companies can no longer be trusted with supply-side delivery of mobile devices. Or, indeed, with components to be used in such devices, hardware or software.
This has significant relevance to us here on HN, who have to deal with the potential subversion of devices some of us deploy, at massive scale.
Or would you be okay if some state that was hostile to your own decided to just pack malfeasant activities into devices that almost everyone in your neighborhood/company are using?
The willingness to just roll over and let rogue states commit heinous acts is one thing; staying alert of potential threat vectors, at massive scale, is another.. and after all, isn’t this “hacker” news?
A targeted attack on members of Hezbollah, which was designated as a terrorist organization by 27 countries, including one where I live as they were shelling Israel with rockets that killed amongst others 12 druze kids in 2024.
Yeah, totally a war crime against innocent civilians.
> Former CIA director Leon Panetta labeled last week’s deadly pager explosions in Lebanon a form of “terrorism.”
> “I don’t think there’s any question that it’s a form of terrorism,” Panetta said on “CBS News Sunday morning.”
https://thehill.com/policy/international/4893900-leon-panett...
I don't take anything Leon Panetta says as gospel, but the fact that someone like him says this shows how the position is not ludicrous in the way you and other similar replies are painting it.
It wasn't a targeted attack since they had no way of knowing where the pagers would end up in the second-hand market, as they were only activated years later.
You’re telling me pagers used by a terrorist organization ending up in the second-hand market.
What do you know about Lebanon and Hezbollah?
How do people end up making such unfounded, unbiased claims so confidently??
> You’re telling me pagers used by a terrorist organization ending up in the second-hand market.
Four children were killed and dozens of _innocent_ bystanders were injured.
> What do you know about Lebanon and Hezbollah?
It's a conflict that's been going on for 30 years that I can remember and I don't think that more kinetic operations are going to accomplish anything other than fomenting an actual genocide.
Did you think gatekeeping was going to work? This conflict has spilled out into the broader world. If it were strictly contained to Lebanon and only implicated Hezbollah then you might have a point. We're well past that.
> How do people end up making such unfounded, unbiased claims so confidently??
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/09/18/world/middleeast/israel-e...
>Four children were killed and dozens of _innocent_ bystanders were injured.
Compared to thousands of Hezbollah members. Literally one of the most targeted large-scale attacks of all time. There are effectively zero other military means that would have been even close to as selective and discriminant. Would you prefer they drop a 500lb bomb on each of their houses instead?
The pagers killed a total of twelve people; which included four children.
That's a pretty awful ratio.
The pager detonations were weak enough to be effectively nonlethal unless you're especially vulnerable. That's how you end up with such a low death to injury ratio in the first place.
So per the KPI metric you've chosen, making it more lethal and more dangerous to bystanders would have been better.
Even among the injuries, you're still looking at an awful ratio, since Hezbollah had mostly migrated these devices out of their combatants in favor of newer models, and they were mainly in the hands of civilians.
And all of this is ignoring the blatant international law violation against booby trapping. This was very clearly a war crime.
For future reference, the specific articles:
Common Article 3; GC I Art. 12 & 18; GC III Art. 13; GC IV Arts. 27, 32 & 51; AP I Arts. 48, 51(2–5), 57 & 54; CCW Amended Protocol II Art. 7(2) of the Geneva Conventions.
The point is that such preposterously stupid military means are not preventing the continuation of blood-shed, and if you are saying that exploding pagers are a perfectly acceptable means of executing military goals, then .. whats next .. are Israeli citizens expected to live under the continuous threat of exploding vibrators and vaporizers, now, too?
Does the IDF issue vibrators to their soldiers?
I wouldn’t be surprised to learn they do, but that’s not the point. If not vibrators, then wireless headphones or e-book readers .. the list of devices now potentially ‘acceptable for use in acts of violence by hostile actors’, set by the Israeli precedent, is near infinite.
Second hand market? lol are you serious? It was a closed system used by Hezbollah there are no pager networks operating in Lebanon.
So every bomb/missle ever is a war crime because there is no way knowing 100% that no civilian ever can be hurt? Heck even guns aren't guaranteed to never miss and hit a bystander. So anything more serious than a stick is a war crime?
The “War on Terror” has addled peoples minds so harshly that the notion that there is actually a legal way to wage war seems preposterous - however, there is a “legal means by which to wage war” which does in fact protect you, citizen, and you should learn about it - because when your representatives (and by proxy: you) violate those laws, you become personally liable for the repercussions that other victims will prosecute on you, and your nation state:
https://www.icrc.org/en/law-and-policy/geneva-conventions-an...
If ‘no bomb/missile ever is a war crime’, then .. there is no such thing as “terrorism”, either. (Although the argument could be made that there is no such thing as ‘terrorism’ at all, and that indeed, the word terrorism is merely a propaganda crutch used to justify atrocities against so-called ‘lesser cultures’ deemed inferior by the same institutions which used to use the ‘n-word’ to justify their atrocities in decades past, too, before that became difficult to do ..)
You can indeed commit war crimes with sticks too, though, incidentally.
You have to lose the war in order to be so prosecuted. So, the important thing about war crimes is not to lose once you've determined that you've committed them.
I'll start to believe this sort of fantasy when the people who win wars begin investigating and prosecuting themselves for the crimes that they committed or suborned.
The "legal way to wage war" is only relevant when you are waging war against an army. Hezbollah is not an army, it's a terrorist group. It attacks civilians. It doesn't wear uniforms. It ignores the laws of war.
Says you, and that is too easy:
“The IDF attacks civilians. It uses perfidy to indiscriminately attack the civilian population of its enemies. It, too, ignores the laws of war.”
There is no way to continue justifying acts of terror being committed by your in-group, without also become equivalent to the terrorist of your out-group.
That is a lie. The IDF does no such thing.
False. The truth is that the IDF does indeed do such things at massive scales.
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27 out of 190 countries is far from “international consensus” and does not legitimize attacks on the group in sovereign territory. don’t justify the security hack as legitimate. If Israel penetrated a security perimeter of a group that breach becomes a threat to all people everywhere
Hezoballah group itself defies the Lebanese government and the Lebanese sovereignty
Hezbollah is part of the political system in Lebanon
Tell me you don't care about the Geneva convention without telling me you've probably never read the Geneva convention.
Extra-judicial murder through out of control deployment of weapons via subterfuge is terrorism, also. The idea that it was a 'targeted attack' is risible. Civilians died in those indiscriminate attacks - which were terrorist in nature and deed.
Except yes, indeed, we label it a war crime, in civilised society - and we seek justice for the war criminals in terms of prison sentences. Not dismemberment and maiming.
You can justify atrocities all you want. Getting called out for war crimes is the price to be paid for such 'cleverness', however.
Or else, you know, everyone will start doing it, not just those who have deemed themselves uniquely worthy of the act .. and we can't have that now, can we...
> indiscriminate attacks
Literally the most discriminate attack against an enemy embedded within a civilian population in history.
Literally a violation of Common Article 3; GC I Art. 12 & 18; GC III Art. 13; GC IV Arts. 27, 32 & 51; AP I Arts. 48, 51(2–5), 57 & 54; CCW Amended Protocol II Art. 7(2) of the Geneva Conventions.
Common Article 3 was breached by carrying out lethal attacks against persons taking no active part in hostilities (including off-duty medics and civilians) without individual assessment; GC I Articles 12 and 18 were violated when medical personnel and facilities were hit by exploding devices carried by wounded or off-duty health workers; GC III Article 13 was infringed because many victims instantly became hors de combat through injury yet were subjected to further maiming by shrapnel designed to cause maximum harm; GC IV Articles 27, 32 and 51 were contravened by the indiscriminate killing and mutilation of civilians (including children and bystanders) and by imposing collective punishment through mass, simultaneous detonation regardless of individual status; Additional Protocol I Articles 48, 51(2–5), 57 and 54 were violated through the failure to distinguish combatants from civilians, the inherently indiscriminate and disproportionate nature of detonating thousands of devices in populated areas, and the use of treachery/perfidious means to kill; finally, Amended Protocol II to the CCW Article 7(2) was directly breached by transforming ordinary civilian pagers into prohibited booby-traps specifically designed and constructed to contain concealed explosives.
The use of treachery/perfidious means to kill is particularly disturbing, since it sets the precedent for similar means to be used in retaliation, very likely to result in yet more unjustifiable acts of terror.
You're really playing up the false narrative that the spicy pagers were indiscriminate, which just isn't factually accurate, they were sold exclusively to terrorists and used exclusively by terrorist organizations for communications, there weren't any non-terrorist affiliated medics that got caught up in the attack from my understanding. Even in cases where they were detonated in populated areas bystanders were essentially unaffected due to the design of the explosive payload.
Literally everything you’ve stated is false:
“sold exclusively to terrorists” - false.
“used exclusively by terrorist organizations for communications” - false.
“weren't any non-terrorist affiliated medics ” - false.
“bystanders were essentially unaffected due to the design of the explosive payload” - false.
Prove your claims are not logical fallacies.
And then .. Go ahead, read the CCW articles I’ve quoted. It is clear you are either ignorant of their significance and relevance to this case, or arguing in bad faith in order to protect your selected in-group.
Every war is extra-judicial. It's not the own you think it is. Even if they wanted to do it through the justice system, they couldn't as Israel doesn't have jurisdiction over Lebanon. That's why wars happen.
People set such a ridiculous high bar for Israel that it would prevent any war if any other country would be held to that standard.
> deployment of weapons via subterfuge is terrorism
Yeah, sure, lying to terrorists is even worse terrorism.
No “high bar” is being set - the precedent for all nations to use the international legal system is there.
Not as many nations massacre civilians and/or feel compelled to murder children at massive scales in their self-defense, however.
Speaking of standards.
“Lying to terrorists” is just weasel-words for committing massive violations of Common Article 3; GC I Art. 12 & 18; GC III Art. 13; GC IV Arts. 27, 32 & 51; AP I Arts. 48, 51(2–5), 57 & 54; CCW Amended Protocol II Art. 7(2) of the Geneva Conventions.
>Extra-judicial murder through out of control deployment of weapons via subterfuge is terrorism, also.
No? The slave workers in Nazi germany who purposely fucked up equipment to get german soldiers killed were not committing a war crime. Sabotage is legitimate warfare. The french people getting the trust of german soldiers and then slitting their throats were not committing war crimes.
>Civilians died in those indiscriminate attacks - which were terrorist in nature and deed.
Civilians die in every war because war is messy and the geneva conventions, which only considered prisoners of war until the 4th, do not prevent civilian causalities. They are not intended to. The Geneva conventions were updated after world war 2 and were STILL not made to prevent things like the London Blitz or infrastructure attacks, and indeed things like Russia trying to freeze Ukraine to death by blowing up it's electrical infrastructure is not a war crime.
If hezbollah are legitimate combatants, then they have to wear a uniform during hostilities to be protected by the conventions/protocols/hague. If they do not wear a uniform, they are considered defectors to lawful war and have less protections than actual combatants.
If China puts backdoors in all the chips we buy from them, and we build weapons with those chips, and China pressed a button that self destructs all things made with those chips, that is also not a warcrime.
War crimes are pretty much only treating POWs incorrectly by doing medical "experiments" on them or genociding them. If you are not a POW yet, the Geneva conventions don't say much about you.
Do you people think anyone would have signed a treaty that says "You can't kill more than 1 innocent person per bad guy"?
>Tell me you don't care about the Geneva convention without telling me you've probably never read the Geneva convention.
Big words from someone who doesn't seem to recognize that they geneva convention they've "totally read" doesn't say what they seem to think it says. Please quote the part where blowing up a civilian with your target is called a war crime
>sabotage is legitimate warfare
Show me the Article in the CCW which supports this claim. And do you mean sabotage against civilian infrastructure, or military materials? Again, show the Article, either way.
>If hezbollah are legitimate combatants, then they have to wear a uniform
Yes, true. Just as those responsible for the pager attacks had to identify themselves as combatants, also.
> If China puts backdoors in all the chips we buy from them, and we build weapons with those chips, and China pressed a button that self destructs all things made with those chips, that is also not a warcrime.
If this were to occur, it would be considered a war crime under one or more of the following articles:
- Perfidy (Art. 37 AP I)
- Indiscriminate attack (Art. 51(4) AP I)
- Excessive incidental civilian harm / disproportionality (Art. 51(5)(b) AP I)
- Treachery (broader Hague prohibition)
- Superfluous injury or unnecessary suffering (Art. 35(2) AP I)
- Failure to take feasible precautions (Art. 57 AP I)
Any of these 6 violations can constitute war crimes.
>“War crimes are pretty much only treating POWs incorrectly by doing medical "experiments" on them or genociding them.”
Okay, this is just plain, ignorant, crazy talk.
>”Please quote the part where blowing up a civilian with your target is called a war crime,”
Additional Protocol I to the Geneva Conventions and from the Rome Statute of the ICC.
I'm not american and I'm horrified to read such comment, what kind of deranged logic is that? The prevalence of this mindset in the country with the biggest military is the main culprit behind all the sufferings around the world. Absolute facepalm.
Which deranged logic are you referring to?
Also America is behind all sufferings in the world?
That’s some amazing interpretation of reality
It harmed and killed civilians. 28% of the victims killed were civilian. An additional 4,000 civilians were injured - disfigured, permanently disabled, etc.
The method was a war crime. You appear to be defending war crimes as justifiable.
Less than a dozen people were killed. "28%" is 3 people.
And it is absolutely not the case that 4000 civilians were injured. 4000 people, perhaps, but the exceedingly vast majority were actual targets and not bystanders.
42 people were killed
4000 civilians were injured
There were two waves of attacks. You're ignoring the second one.
The radios are even less likely to have ended up in the wrong hands than the pagers.
I want to see good evidence that the "4000" were indeed civilians, and were indeed injured. Because so many of the examples of "this innocent doctor" etc. etc. ended up with Hezbollah themselves eventually announcing their name and rank within the organization and giving them an official funeral.
Hezbollah is a terrorist organisation. All of its members appear at first glance to be civilians. That's why terrorist organisations love western media and their absurd gullibility: any member killed can be painted as an "innocent civilian".
I mean the world takes the view Israel is occupying and slowly invading more regions of Palestine.
I didn't make it up, the Balfour declaration makes it pretty clear, so if you're upset natives are attacking you what's your point exactly.
Anyway, point is Israel has almost always lied throughout it's genocide against Palestinians. The IOF has lied or distorted the truth in almost every statement, one which always comes to mind is the attack on the Christian hospital.
The Israeli government are liars, they have a whole online army dedicated to misinformation and the 5 D's. For them lying is just another effective weapon of war which must be utilised.
You won’t be able to argue with facts against Israel haters, unfortunately. :/
Not on HN, not other places.
They all know best while living a world away from the region.
Who are these “Israel haters” on HN you’re referring to?
There are plenty of us on HN who believe in the Israeli peoples’ human rights just as seriously as we support those of the children of Gaza, too.
Those of us who actually care about civilized society, human rights, and international law also consider that there are plenty of Israeli citizens who are, themselves, victims of their own states acts of terrorism as well.
You are responsible for the crimes of your state, citizen. No amount of chicken-waving is going to absolve you of that fact.
The point of discussing the heinous nature of the pager attack is to prevent the precedent set by that attack from taking further victims.
It is not in the interests of Israeli citizens to have their war-crime committing state subjugate their societies’ commercial institutions to commit further atrocities.
Can't agree more. it's really easy to be the judge of Israel when you are far away from here and the only war you've experienced is on TV and movies. what's even funnier is that some of the comments here are made by people living in the US, who hasn't fought a defensive war since WW2, started more wars than any other country even though it's protected by almost a trillion dollar military budget and two oceans. oh, and it pretty much eradicated native Americans.
Nobody is going to argue that the USA is a force for good in the world when it comes to starting one stupid, evil war, after the other. If the USA is good at one thing, its dropping bombs on innocent human beings every twenty minutes for the past twenty odd years. The question is, though, in which interest is it committing those crimes?
Oh, and .. who are you referring to as “people living in the US”, and by what means are you certain of this fact? HN is an international community.
Some of us don’t see national identity and just want the mass murder of children to stop, whatever it takes.
When you increasingly lose the court of public opinion, you resort to this sort of gaslighting.
Because the Israeli Hasbara is now failing at this gaslighting strategy, you're leveling ad hominems towards people who see this as what it is - decades of war crimes and a humanitarian crisis.
So either come up with a proper argument, or stay quiet. Gaslighting us into thinking we're being biased, or that we're ill informed, just isn't going to work anymore.
The war crime is when Hamas and Hezbollah fire rockets indiscriminately into Israel to kill innocent civilians.
Any and all means are and will always be justified to prevent that.
Prosecute All The War Criminals, But Start With YOUR OWN FIRST.
Only then will you have the moral altitude required to gain the support of the rest of the world in prosecuting “their” war criminals.
Agree that is a war crime.
It is also a war crime to carry out what is known as the Nakba - ethnically cleansing and displacing hundreds and thousands of Palestinians. It is a crime illegally occupy land that does not belong to you. It is a crime to maintain an apartheid state. It is a crime to hold 'prisoners' without any charges It is a crime to rape said prisoners. It is also disgusting to have a society that riots when said rapists are called out for their actions. It is a crime to continually bomb and kill Palestinians for just existing. It is a crime to continually kill Palestinians for no reason via 'mowing the grass' exercises It is a crime to crime to kill Palestinians when they peacefully protest It is a crime to indiscriminately bomb Gaza because some Palestinians have had enough of being subjected to sub-human conditions.
So if you say 'any and all means are justified to prevent that', then any and all means should be justified to prevent the above, right?
There was no "Nakba". Arab Muslims invaded Israel in 1948. They lost their aggressive (expressly genocidal) war. They left again. That isn't ethnic cleansing. There are heaps of Arab Muslims in Israel. They are a sizeable minority of the population. They've always been part of Israel. The peaceful ones that can coexist with Jews stayed. The ones that are so hateful they could not fathom the idea of living alongside Jews left. That's not ethnic cleansing.
Note by contrast that in most Arab Muslim countries in the Middle East, there is not just no large Jewish minority (as there was historically in all of those places). There are no Jews at all. Literally zero. They were ethnically cleansed. Expelled or murdered.
Israel does not occupy any land. In 1967, once again Israel's Arab Muslim neighbours aggressively and genocidally invaded. They once again were unsuccessful and lost territory. That territory has been part of Israel since then. It is no more "occupied" than western Poland is, which not too long ago was Germany, or western parts of Russia that recently were Poland. Land changes hands in the world, and after 1967 that land was lost.
Why when they aggressively invaded Israel should we care about their territorial claims for land they lost in the aftermath? Why is Israel the only country in the world expected to give up land it took decades ago?
Israel doesn't have apartheid. Everyone in the country has the same rights. Muslims are a minority. Obviously they don't get the same say as the Jews who are a majority. That's how every democratic state works.
The antisemitic and defamatory claims that Israel is deliberately killing Palestinian civilians is without basis.
Thanks for exposing your clear bias. Nothing productive will come of this discussion.
Which of those historical facts you find biased?
Ps humans are biased. Humans need to be able to have respectful discussions
...and destroying or damaging >2/3rds of all structures in Gaza and killing tens of thousands of civilians with airstrikes isn't?
Obviously yes, Hamas and Hezbollah indiscriminately firing rockets at Israel consistute war crimes. I assume you must agree that Israel's systematic targeting of schools, hospitals, mosques, and refugee camps would also qualify?
actually i think those that have the most beef with israel are very much in the region.
jesus, you must be seriously fucked in the head to refer to the pagers attack as a war crime. how much more targeted do you want an attack to be? when was the last time you've heard of such precise of an attack, done in such a scale? the pagers were distributed to members of Hezbollah, what more do you want, how should Israel actually fight terrorists, please do tell, because it sounds like no matter what they do, they are always the bad guys. and I bet you're sitting now, living in a country so far away from all the wars in the middle east, judging, critiquing without a fucking clue what it is like actually living here.
You have, of course, familiarized yourself with this material:
Common Article 3; GC I Art. 12 & 18; GC III Art. 13; GC IV Arts. 27, 32 & 51; AP I Arts. 48, 51(2–5), 57 & 54; CCW Amended Protocol II Art. 7(2) of the Geneva Conventions.
> Serious war crimes were committed in the Israeli pager attack.
which ones?
are you confusing "war crimes" with "nonzero collateral damage"?
> are you sure you would be willing to have this same technique, or similar uses of at-scale consumer devices being subverted by a nation state, applied to you?
no, but it would not be motivated by nonexisting war crimes
it would be motivated by "I prefer my enemy to not succeed at attacking me"
> would you be okay if some state that was hostile to your own decided to just pack malfeasant activities into devices that almost everyone in your neighborhood/company are using?
as I am not in military or in terrorist organization or anything similar, it would not be analogous
if I would be in either then I would not be happy about it happening but it would not a war crime either
You might want to familiarize yourself with this material before commenting further on this thread:
Common Article 3; GC I Art. 12 & 18; GC III Art. 13; GC IV Arts. 27, 32 & 51; AP I Arts. 48, 51(2–5), 57 & 54; CCW Amended Protocol II Art. 7(2) of the Geneva Conventions.
Targeting civilians in a sovereign country is a war crime
"It's a war crime because of a fictional scenario I made up in my head".
From Stuxnet to Pegasus to the 2024 pager attack, Israel has a history of leveraging its tech sector to advance its national security aims through clandestine means (this is not unusual: so does the US, and so does China). If you're a country with not-so-friendly relations with Israel, the company being founded in Israel is absolutely pertinent.
Which _Israeli_ companies were used for Stuxnet or the 2024 pager attack? NSO is not the same as the company from the article since it's explicitly a cyber company.
The more relevant question is, which Israeli companies are currently not involved in covert military operations?
The difficulty in comprehending an answer to this question is precisely why allowing ones military to perform such actions using covert means is so dangerous for a civilian population to support.
War is supposed to be fought in the open in order to protect the civilians.
I suppose when the distinction between soldier and civilian is not so easy to make, the profligate mindset which allows covert, indiscriminate mass murder at scale becomes a norm.
>The more relevant question is, which Israeli companies are currently not involved in covert military operations?
You have failed to answer the question ("Which _Israeli_ companies were used for Stuxnet or the 2024 pager attack?") and implied the opposite with no good evidence.
The question is a straw man fallacy in an attempt to distract from the fact that Shin Bet/Mossad, both Israeli organizations, used multiple company cutouts to weaponize the supply chain of civilian infrastructure in order to commit acts of perfidy in violation of the Geneva Convention.. of course they’re not going to set up “SababaTech”, headquartered in Tel Aviv, to do this dirty work. The perfidious nature of this act required them to involve Hungary, among other nations.
Where the question “which Israeli companies are involved in committing Israels war crimes?” needs to be answered, is at the ICC - not here on HN.
(Unless the question is being answered by a whistleblower, of course..)
> Which _Israeli_ companies were used for Stuxnet or the 2024 pager attack?
I'll tell you as soon as you tell me exactly why ZTE devices were banned in the United States. The thing about clandestine operations is that they aren't done in the open.
RTFA
> The presence of an Israeli-origin technology component on Samsung phones in WANA countries poses additional problems. Several nations in this region legally bar Israeli companies from operating, and in light of the ongoing Israel–Palestine conflict, the preload of an app tied to such a company becomes even more contentious.
So yes, the presence of Israeli software is a problem in many countries, and may even be illegal.
I’ll wager there is a bit more Israeli tech in those phones than some adware.
Or a heck of a lot of non-phone tech as well.
Apple's A/M-series chips are designed in Israel. My guess is no one is banning iPhones.
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To HN readers, the controversy is likely this:
> the program was found to be quietly invasive as it allows the installer to install programs on the user’s device without permission. It circumvents the user validation process and successfully bypasses multiple security checks, including antivirus programs
I agree that the headline “controversy” is manufactured.
Uhhhh, not sure about you, but I wouldn't want anything Israeli within 10m of my phone.
If you want to _really_ bar anything of Israeli origin, you should:
- Not use Intel processors, as many are developed in Haifa
- Not use a firewall. It was invented in the IDF.
- Not use Waze. It's Israeli.
- Not use thumb drives. Invented in Israel.
- Not eat cherry tomatoes. Israeli development.
The list goes on and on, but I must add - if you ever suffer a serious head or stomach injury, tell the medics to not use the Israeli bandage.
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Best throw it away then
you probably need to throw away your phone. or something. because never mind of it apple/qualcomm/android/etc - one of R&D centers that all companies have in Israel developed part of it.
The controversy is Israeli remote control over all these phones. Not Israeli R&D contributing to a component.
Edit: I know what they wrote
parent said "anything israeli". phones are partially israeli. including baseband firmware and stuff.
ROFL.
Best step up to your words and throw away your phone then.
All major tech companies and chip manufacturers have R&D and design centers in Israel.
That's not the controversy based on the article - it's arguing that because the app is Israeli in origin, it may run afoul of local BDS laws thus another reason for AppCloud to be removed from local device, which is notable because the AppCloud app only appears to be installed on African, Asian, and MENA Samsung phones, where the bulk of countries with BDS laws exist.
The article doesn't appear to take a side one way or the other in the conflict, it's just listing a potential compliance issue.
BDS is a western concept, legal laws banning business with Israel in the Middle East precede it.
There is no such thing as BDS laws, only anti-BDS laws. Some muslim countries boycott Israeli-made products, But since Israel is a tech powerhouse only behind the US, almost every tech is Israeli-made at least partially, so again, trying to enforce any boycott is stupid.
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If you want clicks putting "Israel" in the story will do a better job than a fairly boring tale of typical Android phone/Samsung bloatware. Outrage sells, and a loooooot of people (for a range of reasons) are easily outraged by that one word.
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Please don't comment on whether someone read an article. "Did you even read the article? It mentions that" can be shortened to "The article mentions that".
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Or there is a history of shady companies doing shady things, and the one that this app is related to, has done shady things in the past, so people are nervous about this app doing shady things.
"history" , "shady" ... where did I hear that before...
There is this guy Bernie Maddoff, heard of it? Did some bad things... so obviously people are wary of buying from those jew peoples since there is a history of doing shady things. RIGHT?
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As a Jew, the soon as I hear "Israel" and "App" I think of Pegasus. In this genocide, the Israeli government has shown it will cross any line. Remember the pager attack? So I would like there to be zero Israeli controlled products anywhere near me. That plus everyone should be engaged in boycotts divestment and sanctions against the regime.
As soon as I hear Israel and App, I think "manufactured controversy".
What i wish instead people thought of:
- Waze(now Google Maps) - ICQ - Moovit - Viber - GetTaxi - Apples FaceID - Xbox Kinect
And hundreds of other consumer tech that we have all used.
"As a jew" is a dimension that has nothing to do with your political views which have more impact on your view of israel than your genes.
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Ethnic cleansing involves forcible expulsion of a population -- not just mass killing -- with the goal of achieving cultural or racial homogeneity in a given territory.
Israel is guilty of both the forcible expulsion and mass killing of Palestinians, so the definition certainly applies.
The resistance and the resilience of the Palestinian people have prevented their ethnic cleansing. This is not because Israel isn't trying as hard as it can within the bounds the international community is allowing.
Why are you obfuscating the concern? The issue is not that it is an app that is popularly found on devices!
The issue is that it is an app which is forcibly installed without consent or disclosure, which has privileged access to the system and beyond the scope of the device vendor. To have no care for that reeks suspiciously of nationalistic bias.
edit: Please answer: Which country has backdoor control of the phones via this app?
I agree that the issue is what you described -- an bloatware installed on a common handset manufactured by South Korean tech company. That should be the controversy.
Focusing on the factthe software is made by an Israeli company is manufacturing a controversy which is in fact extremely biased. We should be focusing on the decisions made by the South Korean manufacturer.
Why are you obfuscating the concern? Bloatware does not accurately describe remote control backdoor access.
Which country has backdoor control of the phones via this app?
And as someone who worked for multiple cyber firms out of Israel… it’s entirely reasonable to double-check that apps from Israeli firms don’t have a dual purpose to feed data to Western intelligence agencies.
Please rid yourself of your smartphone and personal computer at your earliest convenience!
:D
Sure you are.
It's antisemetic to question whether someone is Jewish based on their disdain for genocide.
Seems reasonable. Same way "Russian" companies are shady. Doesn't matter if they do something inane . This is really basic geopolitics that only had a short respite... Like less than 30 year period as cold war slowed. This is very normal.
Why do android phone companies load up the bloatware on their phones? Why can't they provide a plain vanilla version of android and let users to choose the stuff?
The same reason this happens/happened on Windows laptops. The hardware provider gets money to pre-install this software. They can then offer the phone at a lower price with a higher margin.
Getting an Android phone from anyone but Google seems like a nightmare.
low quality website "sammobile" wanted to recycle news from 2011 which is essentially "samsung packs their phone full of bloatware" so they sprayed some israel over it. Now they got all those angry clicks and they have made their honest pay.
but why is HN playing along?
What a trash title, literally just covering bloatware...
Actually AppCloud is a software that can install apps remotely. Not bloatware. It is spyware. And the location of the developers (example, being in China) would make it a security concern. And Israel is a security concern for countries that don't recognize Israel.
For a bloatware that has been owned by a US company for years.
Just originally founded in Israel.
Almost like posting it has an alterior motive.
AppCloud is not only in India. It is on some OEM version of the phone in the US as well.
How did I know? My phone had random notifications promoting apps that I had never heard of, and I couldn't find a way to disable them. Eventually I found and removed it via adb.
These scumbags.
Any chance you can remember the package name? It's not mentioned in the article or ones it linked to, and I can't quickly find it on my phone. There is the vaguely named "application recommendations" that going by a quick search should be com.samsung.android.mapsagent
TL;DR Article claims AppCloud (software in question) has ties to ironSource, an Israeli-founded company now owned by US-based Unity, but never clarifies what those ties are. The author only states that an ironSource tech called "Aura" appears to do something similar to AppCloud. However, the author also points out that AppCloud isn't listed anywhere on ironSource's website. They also acknowledge that there's no evidence currently that AppCloud is doing anything weird. This looks an awful lot like an "Israel bad" article.
Well, apps probably won't explode.
I bought an Ipad yesterday. The setup was almost the same, except all the bloat was from Apple itself. Numbers, GarageBand, iMovie, Keynote, Pages, Clips… even the Tips app felt like bloatware.
Wild how every ecosystem has its own "preloaded surprise pack."
Those are easily deleteable though, moreover they don't install third party "recommended" apps.
They are deletable, and frankly, I wouldn't call them bloatware, they are all pretty much decent applications, they don't shove you ads down your throat and a lot of people are happy to use them.
Edited. This seems to be according worldwide despite the article saying it's in West Asia and Africa.
Why, is privacy less valuable there?
It tells readers whether they might or might not be affected.
The reporting is not accurate. The app is found in phones sold in the US as well.
Source: me who uninstalled AppCloud via adb on a phone purchased from Best Buy.
Thanks that's important data. I started looking into this and found a case in the EU as well.
Even worse is that Samsung phones, at least in my region, come with a "Samsung Global Goals" app installed by default; an app that serves to push a certain political agenda that many find unpalatable. Imagine if your new Xiaomi phone came with an app telling you how good the CCP is.
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Redis and Elasticsearch were both built by Israelis, and there is also Israeli code in important projects like the Linux kernel. And of course, also Israeli contributions in closed-source tech like CUDA. Avoiding all of that is a pretty tall order. But if you want to impair your systems by purifying them based on national origin of the contributors, have at it.
In fact Elasticsearch was specifically mentioned as a partner of the "Gaza Humanitarian Foundation", a fake aid org who caused many Palestinians to be killed under their watch. (Elasticsearch denied involvement when I contacted them)
But to be more specific I would narrow it down to avoiding using any tech which Israel could use for surveillance, narrative control, or harm.
Opposing a specific organization for engaging in specific acts is a lot less objectionable than discriminating based on national origin.
Was opposing apartheid South Africa objectionable?
Israel must be really bad at apartheid, as Israeli Arabs can vote, serve in the army, the parliament, supreme court and form coalition governments. Worst. Apartheid. Ever.
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His grandson has said it's worse than Apartheid https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/mandelas-grandson-...
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So, not Nelson Mandela. Not even his own children. Why do their voices matter to you?
And since you value their voices, why not his grandson's voice? Or do their voices only matter when they agree with yours? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45958241
To the best of your ability. If you can avoid Israeli tech then do so, if you can't at least you try. Also opensource technology is different because you can verify and audit the tech
One might wonder what computer you are using, I think ZX Spectrum is safe.
Are you suggesting this software will somehow be able to make a phone explode? The pagers weren't just normal pagers with malware, I'm pretty sure they were loaded with actual explosives.
I added more context above to clarify the point I was making (which I thought would be self-evident, but I guess it was a bit more obscure than I thought)
> Most Israeli tech companies are founded by people in Unit 8200, which is the sorta Israel NSA. They orchestrated the pager attack on Lebanon [2] which was a supply chain attack that was 10 years in the making, and was internationally decried as a War Crime.
The spicy pagers were mostly Mossad AFAIU, an extremely precise supply chain attack(where the devices were exclusively sold to terrorists) and where essentially all casualties were terrorists(or in rare cases family members of terrorists) is unlikely to be a war crime despite what various UN officials(who have a serious credibility problem in general) say.
> The take away I would have for people is to not trust any Israeli tech, anywhere in their tech stack. Don't use anything that sends user data via Israel or to Israeli companies, don't use anything with Israeli tech in it. If you're building anything that has user data, don't use any Israeli subprocessors. Anything that Unit 8200 has touched should be avoided.
That really worked out great for the terrorists who bought the spicy Mossad pagers didn't it? They tried to avoid modern devices like smartphones(which are relatively easy to hack by nation state attackers regardless of where the tech inside came from) and ended up with an even bigger problem.
> spicy pagers
what a disturbing infantilization
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1. The only "terrorist" is Israel
2. The vast majority of casualties were not mythical "terrorists", they were ordinary pedestrians.
3. Regardless this is still considered a war crime, and is by definition a terrorist act because it was not targeted. When they launched the attack they had no knowledge of where each pager was.
If you define "casualty" as suffering some ear pain or a minor scratch, then sure.
> 2. The vast majority of casualties were not mythical "terrorists", they were ordinary pedestrians.
This is simply false, virtually every single spicy pager casualty was part of a terrorist organization.
> 3. Regardless this is still considered a war crime, and is by definition a terrorist act because it was not targeted. When they launched the attack they had no knowledge of where each pager was.
It was highly targeted in reality, spicy pagers were sold exclusively to the terrorist organizations for use on the terrorists communication network. It's arguably one of the most highly targeted attacks in history in terms of enemy to civilian casualty ratios.
> 1. The only "terrorist" is Israel
Can't believe we've reached this level of delusion
Yes, software was involved in the pager attacks, and software can be used to overheat and cause malfunction(which in the case of lithium ion can cause explosions, hazardous gases, and fire). Another example of a software-based attack that damages hardware is Stuxnet(there were no explosives either as part of this attack).
Downvoting facts? You might not be thinking about this topic rationally.
well, your facts are wrong, because there were in fact explosives planted in there [1]
1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2024_Lebanon_electronic_device...
GP self-describes as "Cofounder of Tech for Palestine", so making that sort of mental association is not unexpected.
It's a pretty well established phenomenon and he cites israeli leaders. no need for ad-hominem attacks. What's your argument for allowing spyware?
he cited a single Israeli private citizen. not Israeli leaders.
The fact that a data-harvesting bloatware is installed on common handsets should be controversial enough.
Both the title of this post and the link try to add "Israel is baaaad" angle as just because a company was founded in Israel.
Israel is a middle-eastern tech hub that produces a lot of tech companies and innovations. Its just a numbers game that some of them will be working on things of questionable value to humanity.
What GP suggesting is discriminating against all technologies developed by Israel because of his political views, nothing more.
Israel is an apartheid state. Seems like a pretty valid reason.
Your claim has nothing to do with the parent claim. Truthful or not, you can't write an article, have it debunked or disputed and then move onto another argument.
FUD and rationalising. We do understand the real reason they don't like it.
By the way, in the Arab world (my reading of "some West Asian and North African markets". Nice euphemism, btw) there isn't the same stigma as in the West so they usually don't feel the need to be cautious and say exactly what they mean, i.e. "the Jews".
100%.
Israel is genociding Palestinians with western material support. Not only is being against that not antisemitic, it's gruesome to imply that good jews and gentiles simp for said genocide, and it's racist to paint North Africa with an antisemitic label when in fact these countries host jewish communities of their own. (Edit: religion is irrelevant to the immorality of genocide support)
99.9% of jews from north africa had to leave their homes after 1948 or after 1967. so saying that those countries "host jewish comminutes of their own" is far fetched
morocco went from 250000 to 2000
algeria went from 130000 to 200
tunisia went from 105000 to 1000
libya went from 40000 to 0
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Nothing about this is antisemitic in my book. In fact I would go as far as conflating criticism of Israeli state actions with antisemitism is a sort of antisemitism since it puts both things in the same category equating both with each other (leaving no room for legitimate criticism according to the person equating them).
What is antisemitism is people shouting sieg heil outside my house when they read my name on the door thinking I am Jewish (I am not, though our family fled from German forces during WW2, not all survived).
It’s very clear that comment is agent provocateurs trying to sow discord. They have a lot of comments about “the west”.
Please be more specific about what you're seeing and where, as it's not apparent from this comment what you're referencing.
Which part of this was racist? Did you even bother to even skim the article?
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HN must not become a platform for hate. Israel has really strong national security reasons for putting spyware on our phones, and ultimately it benefits our own security too.
Israel wouldn't last a year without Western support. It would be nice if they remembered that. The Chinese sure as hell couldn't care less about Moses.
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…and this, and similar stories, continues to be why I will never trust or own an Android phone.