Steve BellovinThe Trump regime wants to start making a list of Jews (https://www.nytimes.com/2025/11/21/us/eeoc-university-pennsylvania-antisemitism-jewish.html). Now where have I heard that one before?
Matt Blaze@SteveBellovin the peope who think swastikas aren’t hate symbols want a list of Jews, in order to protect Jews. Naturally.
@SteveBellovin maybe they can encode them on IBM punch cards.
Paul CantrellLet my class know a snippet of this history the other day. Every generation of engineers and technologists needs to learn it.
arclight@inthehands @mattblaze @SteveBellovin I really really wish there was a thorough book on IBM's role in the Holocaust besides Edwin Black's book; I found "IBM and the Holocaust" to be unreadably hyperbolic and emotive. Depressing because I really want to read a detailed history of the subject but Black's prose is so awful and tiring and he can't just let the facts tell the story.
@arclight @inthehands @SteveBellovin It does have kind of a Netflix true crime documentary feel to it.
@mattblaze @inthehands @SteveBellovin I absolutely don't want to diminish the evil of the Nazis and their meticulous industrial slaughter but the constant breathless emphasis placed on mundane actions ("The Dehomag chairman ate breakfast that morning ... JUST LIKE *HITLER*") detracts from the cold banality of the actual evil taking place. Maybe because I'm officially Old now and was raised on TV shows like 12 O' Clock High, The Rat Patrol, and Hogan's Heroes* that I don't need a constant reminder that Nazis are The Bad Guys. To me, that's self-evident. I'm more interested in the reaction of the IBM and Dehomag staff once they realized that their otherwise innocuous census and accounting gear was directly being used to target and murder people. There are useful parallels to modern IT firms and modern genocides that are buried under Black's overwrought prose and tone.
* In syndication. I'm not _that_ old. We had color TV by then but cable was over a decade away.
@arclight @inthehands @SteveBellovin I completely agree with you about the breathless tone. It distracts from the underlying research, which was important and very timely now.
I think the author couldn't figure out whether to frame it as a work of history or as a polemic, which is unfortunate. But it's still important work.
@mattblaze @arclight @SteveBellovin
Agreed, and there is perhaps an important question of audience here: some are drawn to history, some are drawn to technical detail, and some have a strong aversion to both and need a gripping narrative to carry them through. It’s a story that needs to be told many times in many ways for many people.