HN Reader

The trick with Microsoft is to very carefully separate the good parts from the bad ones.

Labeling all of Microsoft as banned is really constraining your technology options. This is a gigantic organization with a very diverse set of people in it.

There aren't many things like .NET, MSSQL and Visual Studio out there. The debugger experience in VS is the holy grail if you have super nasty real world technology situations. There's a reason every AAA game engine depends on it in some way.

Azure and Windows are where things start to get bad with Microsoft.

This applies to any company homed in the US. Not sure why Microsoft is singled out. Why Google, or Amazon, or Apple would oppose demands of the US government?

> The Trump politics are, for a lack of a better publishable word, unpredictable.

That's one of his most powerful weapons. Like with terrorism, nobody knows who or what is going to be next on the executioner's block, and thus nobody can safeguard against it except cut all ties with the U.S. if you're lucky enough to be outside.

I can't understand why people are still using proprietary software like Windows or OSX when superior free software exists. It's a testament to the hidden monopolizing forces which exists in our society.

> There was a recent incident where Microsoft somehow allegedly blocked a mailbox of a sanctioned individual. Any organization highly depending on MS products that might come into the crosshair should ask - can this happen to me? What would be the cost? How much I invest into prevention of this scenario? In this article I try to get the facts straight and use a return on security investment calculation to try and judge this situation in a rational way. Let’s grab our tinfoil hats and find out if it’ll be fine.

for people who didn't RTA

The outlined risk is not solely a Microsoft risk. It’s a “contract out to another irreplaceable service” risk.

Make your technology fungible and risks disappear.

For most businesses, the cost and difficulty of shifting away from Microsoft outweigh the benefits

Companies exist in jurisdictions. Jurisdictions have laws. Companies have to follow those laws.

I still find it hard to believe that so many people and companies are prepared to use Microsoft's online/cloud services.

Not ony is this a single point of failure but it's one they've no control over whatsoever. Same goes for Google/Youtube etc. It's as risky as flying a passenger jet with only one engine.

What are they thinking, why are they prepared to risk everything?

It boggles my mind.

I think the current subtrends of things like a resurgence of interest in mechanical watches, fountain pens, steampunk, etc, are sort of a large excursion on a dampening social problem: that technology is too far beyond our comprehension.

Can you even even tell what network stack got you this packet?

How about the protocols that got it from the network to your screen?

How about the quantum mechanics of the phosphors that pushed out the photons?

There are certainly techno-luddites/visionaries who are running their own email servers, but it's a pretty hostile environment for personal email servers. Ignoring the spam, just getting the existing big boys to trust you can be humiliating exercise in futility.

Can I get by without Excel? Sure. Google Sheets? Sure. No spreadsheet at all? Gonna be hard.

In the era of globalization businesses expected to only follow a set of harmonized global laws set through treaty. TPP etc. Now globalization is reversing and business is expected to follow the law of the nation they're from wherever they're operating.

Such risks will have to be factored in now.

Fundamentally it’s hard to pushback against an authoritarian government. There is very little to stop Trump from sending Doge into MS headquarters with Marines and demanding admin access so they can make the change. Thinking the dependency on Microsoft (or any company) is the risk then you haven’t been paying attention.

GitHub is also from them and brings the very same risks. The solution would be to build viable open source alternative but decentralized. GitLab Federation [1] or Forgejo (Codeberg) Federation [2] might be the answer.

[1] https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab/-/issues/6468

[2] https://codeberg.org/forgejo-contrib/federation/src/branch/m...

Hello, author here. The main point is that it's not a financially rational decision to ditch Microsoft.

There's just no real alternative for businesses, as most use AD, Teams, Outlook/Exchange and couple others.

A good business continutiy plan will accept that and any other risk with the compensating control of insurance. Yes, there is a statistic and probability of your entire business going out like a lightswitch, however if you have insurance to mitigate that risk, it isn't game over.

I am not convinced by the argument about cost, particularly "You’d still have to be more efficient than Microsoft though - that’s a challenge"

1. Most, even quite big organisations, do not have the complexities of operating at the scale of MS services.

2. I have no idea how efficient MS are. maybe they are highly efficient, but I know enough big businesses are inefficient that it is not a given.

"I was horrified to learn that there’s an Azure container behind every cell of a spreadsheet executing the python code instead of… you know, my PC doing the work."