
Tycoon Xavier Niel says he was spy who hacked ex-French president - wallflower
https://nypost.com/2020/05/23/tycoon-xavier-niel-says-he-was-spy-who-hacked-ex-french-president/
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polote
The article is misleading, you can see the interview video here :
[https://www.journaldugeek.com/2020/05/21/xavier-niel-un-
espi...](https://www.journaldugeek.com/2020/05/21/xavier-niel-un-espion-au-
service-des-renseignements-francais/) (french)

He says that he was not working for them, but instead after getting caught
hacking a few things, he was noticed by the secret service, and after that he
was informing them what he was finding.

He says he was doing that for fun, and didnt pursue by working for them,
because he is not a spy but an entrepreneur (and quite successful actually)

~~~
Iv
He is a bit the local Elon Musk actually. Has fans and haters. Is technically
competent and occasionally trollish.

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kace91
Slightly off-topic: Is it ok to say "ex-French" president in English? (Rather
than French ex-president).

I'm not a native but to me it reads like the guy stopped being French.

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philipov
No, it isn't. It sounds like he's still the president, but he's no longer
French.

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Svip
Yet, it happens so often, one would think it was OK. Like the Salisbury
poisoning, where the victims were referred to as an 'ex-Russian spy', when he
was really a 'Russian ex-spy'. Unfortunately, there are cases, where if one is
true to form, it becomes rather a mouthful.

Unfortunately, I believe it is because what they mean to say is he is no
longer the French President (as if 'French President' was a single term), and
attach 'ex-' in front of that term. Similarly for the 'Russian spy', which
apparently is also a single term, rather than two terms.

~~~
philipov
The correct way to handle it is to use the word "former" instead. "Former
French President" parses correctly.

"Ex-" binds tightly to the word in front of it because of the dash, but
"former" allows "French President" to be the noun phrase being modified.

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orwin
"Everybody" knew he created equipment and designed networks for the DST
(Directorate of Territorial Surveillance in the article). I did not know he
was also hacking for them.

Rumors i heard when i was closer to Paris and when it interested me is that a
lot of french engineers who worked in the silicon Valley during the 90s came
back between 1998 and 2002, bringing back ideas and skills that Niel quite
successfully used to build Online (now Scaleway) and Free.

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celicaraptor
He is the owner of Online.net/Scaleway and the Iliad Group among others, FYI

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dnpp123
News aside (whether true or not), this guy is definitely more evil than Jeff
and Zuck combined.

~~~
eloisant
I don't think so. Most of his success with Free Telecom is by putting the
customer first, which led to fair pricing for both broadband and mobile and
no-bullshit mobile plans that are impossible to understand. His plans were "a
single, affordable, all unlimited plan".

Now, he's said to be pretty ruthless in a business setting, but it's because
he's basically the only self-made billionaire in France (all the others have
inherited) and he couldn't play by the rules because the rules were stacked
against him.

Thanks to this guy I pay less than 40 euros/month for 1Gbps unlimited fiber at
home, with a fixed ipv4. I pay 16 euros a month for my mobile plan, with
unlimited everything, including while roaming in Europe or North America.

He didn't do that by exploiting his employees like Jeff, he did it by not
taking part of the telecom oligopoly who used to milk customers (surprisingly
they had no problem to align with his prices to keep their business).

He didn't do it by selling out his users data to third party, on the contrary
he provided adblocking tech right in the broadband router you get with your
subscription.

I'm not saying he's a saint, you can't become a billionaire without screwing a
bunch of people, but he's clearly better than most billionaires especially the
ones you cited.

~~~
maeln
I would still argue that Free use to have the best of the best customer
service. I remember in the early 2010', when you were calling them, you
usually had somebody that spoke perfectly and was very technically savy.

Now, their customer service, while not awful, is no better than the other
operator, which is a shame.

Their fight with Google for the Youtube bandwidth was really not putting their
customer first also. Their problem was maybe justified, but being a Free
customer, you were paying the price for it with Youtube being sometimes barely
usable. Same happened, and still happen sometime with Twitch and Netflix.
Their 4g coverage is still garbage in a lot of place also and definitely worse
than any other operator.

Overall these days, they are not so much better than the other big telco. But
I have to agree that they really shook up the market and that was really
beneficial. And they are still pushing and innovating, arguably less than
before, which keep the competition going.

