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Comment by ganomi | Hacker News Reader

Another example for keyword matching: I work on a German/Polish team. We sent money for a birthday present from Germany to Poland. Someone used the colleagues' nickname "Kuba" in the subject line. The Paypal account of the Polish colleague was blocked afterwards. But he could resolve the issue via support afaik.

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I'm guessing it's because of Cuba.

I'd wonder why the US is still embargoing Cuba after all these years. What's the endgame? What's the goal? The Cuban regime is still there and the Soviets are long gone. It seems petty and spiteful.

Florida is an important swing state, and it’s also the home to a lot of anti-Castro Cubans in exile, and their descendants. Politics.

Like most things in America it comes down to political pandering thanks to the two party system. You may have noticed a lot of progress or corruption on the Cuba front in recent memory based on your political affiliation. There is a large “Cuban” American population that primarily hates the regime in control of Cuba and will support the political opponent that is speaking tough on Cuba. Whether you care about Soviet’s or Communism or revenge is irrelevant because what you do care about is south Florida and South Florida still cares deeply.

And we have to care about South Florida because of the undemocratic system of the electoral college.

Letting Cuba off the hook would require politicians to admit they are wrong and have been for decades. In contrast, keeping the sanctions up does not cost the government much and companies have long factored in the sanctions/compliance as cost of doing business, so there is no pressure on politics from that side.

Just to augment the story: Kuba is not an internet nickname. It is a shorter form of given name Jakub (Jacob). I use Jakub only in documents and during formal events. For everyone else I'm Kuba.

I wonder if Cuba Gooding Jr. has issues any time he tries to do something online with PayPal or such

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