If you live outside of the United States,do you know if your country has a plan if the US government decided to cut access to Google, Microsoft, and Amazon products overnight?
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@Javensbukan Ah yes, excellent point
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@Javensbukan Ah yes, excellent point
@Em0nM4stodon Maybe that's an idea I can raise to my superiors - they are extremely limited in function - no reason why they couldn't be running not Windows as long as drivers are available.
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@Em0nM4stodon Maybe that's an idea I can raise to my superiors - they are extremely limited in function - no reason why they couldn't be running not Windows as long as drivers are available.
@Javensbukan I think that's an excellent idea

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If you live outside of the United States,
do you know if your country has a plan if the US government decided to cut access to Google, Microsoft, and Amazon products overnight?What would happen to your work?
What would happen to your hospitals?
What would happen to your emergency services?
What would happen to your banks?
Imagine overnight, for all those public services and private businesses, no more Windows, no more AWS, no more Google and Microsoft office software, no more remote files storage, no more emails, no more online maps, no more videochats.
What would happen?
Is your country prepared?@Em0nM4stodon Fully? No. Partially? Yes. My work would do fine though.
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If you live outside of the United States,
do you know if your country has a plan if the US government decided to cut access to Google, Microsoft, and Amazon products overnight?What would happen to your work?
What would happen to your hospitals?
What would happen to your emergency services?
What would happen to your banks?
Imagine overnight, for all those public services and private businesses, no more Windows, no more AWS, no more Google and Microsoft office software, no more remote files storage, no more emails, no more online maps, no more videochats.
What would happen?
Is your country prepared?@Em0nM4stodon My company steadfastly refuses (so far) to use hyperscalers for our core business. This is not to say we don't have some important things in AWS - but it would be more of a "grit teeth and deal with it" issue than the end of the business.
But that's the Core. Like practically every other business here we're O365 and the way MS shoves OneDrive down your damn throat in such a way as to make every other storage location practically unusable means that a looooooot of documentation exists solely there.
We'd still be mostly on the air but probably cut off from a lot of our own documentation.
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If you live outside of the United States,
do you know if your country has a plan if the US government decided to cut access to Google, Microsoft, and Amazon products overnight?What would happen to your work?
What would happen to your hospitals?
What would happen to your emergency services?
What would happen to your banks?
Imagine overnight, for all those public services and private businesses, no more Windows, no more AWS, no more Google and Microsoft office software, no more remote files storage, no more emails, no more online maps, no more videochats.
What would happen?
Is your country prepared?@Em0nM4stodon we can start by getting google the hell out of our schools!
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@Em0nM4stodon Work in a Hospital in Canada supporting the IT infrastructure - and yeah, we do!
We have an offline physical PC preloaded with PDFs connected to USB printers available at all units in case the main EMR were to somehow spectacularly explode or all internet is lost - they'd revert to paper charting and bust out their pre made downtime kits with workflow instructions.
All units also have 'red phones' using dedicated copper circuits incase cellular or the main digital PBXes fail.

@Javensbukan @Em0nM4stodon same deal here in Colorado, USA. We have boxes of paper charts, a big rolling trackboard for the ED, and the red phone. We have an EHR downtime a few times a year, and if it runs more than about 2 hours, we do paper charts for some patients.
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If you live outside of the United States,
do you know if your country has a plan if the US government decided to cut access to Google, Microsoft, and Amazon products overnight?What would happen to your work?
What would happen to your hospitals?
What would happen to your emergency services?
What would happen to your banks?
Imagine overnight, for all those public services and private businesses, no more Windows, no more AWS, no more Google and Microsoft office software, no more remote files storage, no more emails, no more online maps, no more videochats.
What would happen?
Is your country prepared?@Em0nM4stodon AIUI The whole Canadian public service depends on American cloud storage/services so.. we’d be cooked.
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@Em0nM4stodon Nobody in the US is that stupid, right? Right?
@khleedril @Em0nM4stodon I'm still wondering how some of these people are capable of unassisted respiration.
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If you live outside of the United States,
do you know if your country has a plan if the US government decided to cut access to Google, Microsoft, and Amazon products overnight?What would happen to your work?
What would happen to your hospitals?
What would happen to your emergency services?
What would happen to your banks?
Imagine overnight, for all those public services and private businesses, no more Windows, no more AWS, no more Google and Microsoft office software, no more remote files storage, no more emails, no more online maps, no more videochats.
What would happen?
Is your country prepared?@Em0nM4stodon thankfully the brains trust put a lot of thought and hard work into this and made the hard call to stick with the full stack of US vendors.
... we just pay extra money to microsoft/aws/salesforce to use instances hosted in australia.
* problem solved *

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@Em0nM4stodon lol and here i am working out what to do when the power and internet are cut

@xenophile @Em0nM4stodon I'm working on that, too.
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@Em0nM4stodon
Actually, it's more than just a Windows and Google thing - it's about AI. If Artificial Intelligence starts getting out of control and starts heading down Terminator Road, one of the first defenses would be to shut down the internet world-wide.
Alternatively, if AI goes rogue one of its first actions against humanity would be to shut down the internet.
Either way, it doesn't look good . . .@AndyKotlarz @Em0nM4stodon So the AI war starts with each side pulling the plug on the other.
To kill Skynet would be a multi-pronged attack:
1: Cut the whole network since we may not know where all the AI nodes are
2:Cut the power to known AI servers
3:If attacks from rogue AI continue, destroy known AI data centers physically, then find ways to locate and destroy "sleeper" nodes as they come online. Do not use computer-controlled network capable military hardware for this as the AI might be able to take it over. Use precomputer or non-networked weapons only. Remove batteries and drain fuel from suspect hardware such as autonomous drones.
4:Real worst case: shutting down the power grid would stop AI nodes not connected to visible local power sources. The remaining nodes will be visible by their power sources and thus be found and destroyed.
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@Em0nM4stodon we can start by getting google the hell out of our schools!
@MikeImBack @Em0nM4stodon Google AND Microslop
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@Em0nM4stodon sorry if this is a bummer, i appreciate those still trying but i think at this point ive reached my stop.
@cyberquixote @Em0nM4stodon I don't blame you one bit.
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@Em0nM4stodon You’ve posed a great question, which prompts another one: what if they did it here in the US as well? Makes me think again about buying that manual typewriter

@lawyersgunsnmoney @Em0nM4stodon If THAT happens Signal goes away so we activists here have to switch to a decentralized encrypted messenger and rebuild our networks.
Signal is hosted on Azure and also uses Cloudflare. If they go down Signal goes down.
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@lawyersgunsnmoney @Em0nM4stodon If THAT happens Signal goes away so we activists here have to switch to a decentralized encrypted messenger and rebuild our networks.
Signal is hosted on Azure and also uses Cloudflare. If they go down Signal goes down.
@LukefromDC You make an excellent point. It is within the realm of possibility that ISPs are shut down or nationalized and some of the big tech companies are nationalized. The regime likes the Ellisons and Elmo (for now)but others are fair game. Other countries have shut down and heavily surveilled the internet). Russia, PRC, N Korea…I wasn’t being entirely facetious about manual typewriters for sensitive comms. @Em0nM4stodon
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If you live outside of the United States,
do you know if your country has a plan if the US government decided to cut access to Google, Microsoft, and Amazon products overnight?What would happen to your work?
What would happen to your hospitals?
What would happen to your emergency services?
What would happen to your banks?
Imagine overnight, for all those public services and private businesses, no more Windows, no more AWS, no more Google and Microsoft office software, no more remote files storage, no more emails, no more online maps, no more videochats.
What would happen?
Is your country prepared?@Em0nM4stodon I think more concerning would be the cut-off from VISA etc. I doubt that non-US banks will be able to provide an alternative in due time if that happened.
I personally wouldn't have problems being cut off from these software companies. There are many alternatives out there.
Except for Windows itself i don't intentionally use any services of said companies. I would guess that many companies would be in serious trouble because they have no exit strategy from these cloud providers. -
If you live outside of the United States,
do you know if your country has a plan if the US government decided to cut access to Google, Microsoft, and Amazon products overnight?What would happen to your work?
What would happen to your hospitals?
What would happen to your emergency services?
What would happen to your banks?
Imagine overnight, for all those public services and private businesses, no more Windows, no more AWS, no more Google and Microsoft office software, no more remote files storage, no more emails, no more online maps, no more videochats.
What would happen?
Is your country prepared?@Em0nM4stodon
I reckon Finland (where I live) would send the President to negotiate (read: make whatever necessary concessions) with the orange wrecking ball, over a game of golf.
That's only slightly better than what can be said about Spain or Portugal which are just as critically dependent on those services. -
@LukefromDC You make an excellent point. It is within the realm of possibility that ISPs are shut down or nationalized and some of the big tech companies are nationalized. The regime likes the Ellisons and Elmo (for now)but others are fair game. Other countries have shut down and heavily surveilled the internet). Russia, PRC, N Korea…I wasn’t being entirely facetious about manual typewriters for sensitive comms. @Em0nM4stodon
@lawyersgunsnmoney @Em0nM4stodon Putin (who is ex-KGB) does in fact use a manual typewriter. Probably locks up the ribbon every night or burns it and starts a new one each day.
During Putin's tenure in KGB, a device was invented there that could monitor the voltage on power wiring near an IBM Selectric typewriter. Each key on one of these puts a different load on the motor, thus putting a downward voltage pulse of different amplitude on the wire. The KGB's device could decipher these pulses and copy the text being typed.
In the 1980's I repaired and sold government surplus typewriters. Sperry/Remington aka Sperry/Rand made a clone of the IBM Selectric, I think they got license rights by helping develop this machine.
Anyway, some of the Sperries came with a half power motor with a heavy flywheel so as not to leak the character typed onto the power line. This was known simply as the "spy motor" it added about a pound and seemed to be less reliable, plus sustained fast typing would slow the machine down.
I know exactly why the typewriter on Putin's desk is a manual one...
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If you live outside of the United States,
do you know if your country has a plan if the US government decided to cut access to Google, Microsoft, and Amazon products overnight?What would happen to your work?
What would happen to your hospitals?
What would happen to your emergency services?
What would happen to your banks?
Imagine overnight, for all those public services and private businesses, no more Windows, no more AWS, no more Google and Microsoft office software, no more remote files storage, no more emails, no more online maps, no more videochats.
What would happen?
Is your country prepared?@Em0nM4stodon my employer is an MSP that's does work for public and private sector across Australia. I'm confident that if just access to m365 was withdrawn that my local state would implode.
Oh and I'd not be able to submit my timesheets (because Entra id auth).