Read my posting history before you ask me that, kiddo

Put aside the personal data for a moment.

This also included all of the customer's Xbox digital "purchases".

Microsoft is literally known for poor security, including in their services. Azure was hacked at least twice where there are literally no logs, so Microsoft has literally no idea what was accessed.

It's unconscionable to permit Microsoft, a corporation known globally for incompetence, to cut off people's access to content they "purchased" because their account was hacked. Sure, it could be the user's fault, but it's at least equally plausible that it's Microsoft's. Remember, this is the company that built literally the only Chromium derivative that loads all of your passwords into memory on launch in plaintext. What if your account got hacked because some attacker who got onto your machine in the first place because of a buffer overflow Microsoft should have fixed twenty years ago read your passwords out of your browser's memory? Who's liable for that? Answer, NOT MICROSOFT! It's your problem, sucker.

Not to say that this is OK because HFT is OK... instead, HFT isn't OK because it's basically the same thing.

nothing actually gets owned --> claiming it was sold to the customer is fraud

It's probably way less true than it once was, because we used to build things with meaningful safety factors, and because all of these devices have flash storage in them now and it's subject to bitrot.

Bad for their customers, yes. Good for Sony, as long as they don't get busted for claiming to sell what they clearly were only renting out, and they clearly knew this if they didn't secure a perpetual license.

Anyone "buying" a digital good which doesn't come with the inherent ability to use it later (like a GOG download) isn't buying it. While it should be illegal to claim you're selling to those people instead of just renting, they are also being fools if they think they own that.

Who are you? Nobody? Oh, OK. Feel free.

They could instead be prohibited from operating in markets where that data would give them an unfair advantage.

Both corporations and intellectual property are legal fictions, they are not real property. They are supposed to exist only for the benefit of The People. Work it out.

It's not just capitalism at play. There's also nationalism.

China may invade Taiwan eventually. TSMC would be irresponsible not to hedge against that.

Sure, as long as we can all also admit that Clinton was a rapey piece of shit who did multiple absolutely fucking terrible things, like signing the CDA and PRWORA. Also, "got a blow job" is a gross misrepresentation. "Coerced an intern into a sexual act" is a better one.

Which is exactly why no one should ever trust a promise from the USA again. Until we get our legal documents into some semblance of order, it must be assumed that this will all happen repeatedly.

Yes, and it's wrong. And it's also exactly why congresscreeps shouldn't be allowed to trade stocks. It goes way beyond insider trading, straight to market manipulation.

In OSS there's a certain desperation for quality code where a lot of bullshit has historically been tolerated.

In the comment you posted at the top of this thread, you talked about servers, desktops, and mobile devices. Now you want the conversation to be only about desktops.

Extreme? Not in my opinion.