5 ms·

So much resentment in this thread. Do people seriously think Microsoft is going the EEE route again? Companies are not monolithic entities that never change; Th

So much resentment in this thread. Do people seriously think Microsoft is going the EEE route again? Companies are not monolithic entities that never change; They’re made of people. It’s been almost 25 years since the lawsuit, and I can guarantee you that practically no one from the 90s is still working at Microsoft.

jacquesm 6y ago
> Do people seriously think Microsoft is going the EEE route again? Frankly: yes. MS has changed it's colors but the nature of the beast is still exactly the same, don't forget that the current CEO was right there when all that stuff was going down. Browser wars, SCO trial, MS tax and on and on.
- colejohnson66 6y ago
  > MS has changed it's colors but the nature of the beast is still exactly the same And your evidence is? > don't forget that the current CEO was right there when all that stuff was going down. And? Just because he was there doesn’t mean he agreed with it all. Microsoft has provided much evidence that they actually support open source, and you all are sticking your heads in the ground and ignoring it all, while also providing no evidence to show the contrary.
  - jacquesm 6y ago
    > Just because he was there doesn’t mean he agreed with it all. My evidence is that he didn't leave. When you're working for an unethical company you have but one choice: leave. If you don't - and especially not at that level - you are implicitly ok'ing it. At a guess with your MS advocacy all over this thread you don't see anything wrong with it, past or present. And if you did then you'd think twice about staking your reputation on this. But as always, the mortgage comes first.
    - tmottabr 6y ago
      Leaving is not the only option. He may not agree but decide to stay, learn from its errors and work to make it better.. If people that do not agree just left microsoft it would never have changed, because only the ones that agree with the status quo would be left. Microsoft changed not because the people left but because the people choose to stay and work to change it.
      - jacquesm 6y ago
        Right, pull the other one. The number of issues with Microsoft in recent times is large enough to put serious doubt to the theory that they've changed.
        tmottabr 6y ago
        no one said they are perfect.. on the end of the day they are a public traded company and like so their number one objective is make shareholders more money.. but they did changed a lot from the 90s microsoft, although they still have a long way to go.
    - deleted 6y ago
      [deleted]
  - jacquesm 6y ago
    By the way, shouldn't you at least disclose you work at Microsoft in threads like these? It would help to put your comments in perspective.
    - colejohnson66 6y ago
      Please don’t insinuate I’m astroturfing when I’m not. It’s rude and against the posting guidelines.
    - dang 6y ago
      Please don't do this here. It's not ok to bring someone's personal details as ammunition into an argument (https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&query=by%3Adang%20%22personal%20details%22&sort=byDate&type=comment https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu...), nor to make accusations of astroturfing based on someone arguing a view you dislike (https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html). If you feel like someone's abusing HN, please email hn@ycombinator.com so we can look into it.
      - TulliusCicero 6y ago
        Hi dang, I wanted to ask you something related to your modwork. A while back, I saw a comment you made about this phenomenon on internet forums of comments that are...well basically empty negativity trashing the very forum they're posting in, that amount to, "this place sucks and everyone in it is dumb (except me, obviously)" and how these types of comments are unproductive and toxic. I don't suppose you have a, like, a blogpost or really in-depth comment that talks about this? It elucidates something that I intuitively felt before, especially as a reddit mod, but had trouble articulating. I also really liked your comment about contrarianism that you went in-depth on, that one is pretty easy to Google for though.
        dang 6y ago
        I don't have a blog, but I've posted about this many times over the years. I understand what you mean about the intuitive feeling being strong yet hard to articulate. If you (or anyone!) find a new way of articulating it, please let me know. HN Search is the best way to track down past posts. Here are some links based on phrases I know I've used repeatedly: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&sort=byDate&type=comment&query=%20%22as%20much%22%20%22as%20anyone%22%20%20by:dang https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&sor... https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&sort=byDate&type=comment&query=community%20-dissolve%20-dissident%20-country%20-dissonance%20diss%20by:dang https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&sor... (note that I used the Algolia query to exclude unrelated words) If those links turn up the comment you remember, please let me know—I'm curious which one it was. All these past moderation comments are beginning to crystallize into discrete topics about which I've said similar things many times, and I intend to eventually distill them into a kind of commentary on the site guidelines, to fill out the picture of what HN is intended to be. The underlying phenomenon, I think, is that people feel insecure in an internet forum, especially a large one, because the sheer quantity that shows up there is bewildering and our wiring did not evolve to process anything like that. Instead of seeing it as a statistical cloud produced by thousands of people (which is what it really is), we interpret it as the productions of a small group of individuals (which is how we're wired to see the world). Since that's such a distorted interpretation, those imaginary individuals seem weird and dramatic in our imagination. Either they seem super smart (because of all the information we had no idea of), which makes us feel dumb, or they seem monstrous (because of all the views that seem outrageously wrong or offensive), which makes us feel surrounded by enemies, if not demons—and so on. Because these feelings are uncomfortable, we end up creating an image of the community that we can diss in order to restore our sense of equilibrium towards it. The problem is that if everybody's doing this, it makes community really hard. There's a long sequence of past comments on a related mechanism here: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&sort=byDate&type=comment&query=notice%20dislike%20by:dang https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&sor.... Also these: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&sort=byDate&type=comment&query=demons%20by:dang https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&so.... That may sound like arcane psychologizing, but I think it's the biggest issue HN faces. It's astonishing how many people have a negative image of the community, even among users who love HN and come here every day. The negative images differ depending on what people feel most offended or threatened by: if you're political, it tends to feel like the site is politically against you; or it might feel "full of toxicity", "nitpicking by know-it-all techies", and so on. There are many variations. HN is particularly prone to this because it's a non-siloed site (https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&sort=byDate&type=comment&query=silo%20by:dang https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&sor...) - we're all in the same boat and nobody gets to factor away the things they dislike (via subscriber lists and whatnot) so they won't notice them anymore. The much larger sites like Reddit and Twitter all grew by sharding. It feels safer if you have your own shard, and on HN we don't do that, so we're really up against the problem of what happens when everybody faces everybody else and nobody realizes that's happening or how unprecedented it really is. I wonder sometimes whether HN is on the leading edge of this phenomenon; if anyone knows of other cases, I'd love to be pointed there. I think it's sad, and limits the community, that even when people have a deeply positive relationship to HN, their top-of-mind model is that it’s “toxic and negative”. This showed up in what patio11 said in a recent interview about HN—even when praising HN, he feels obliged to bow to the “toxic and negative” meme both at the beginning of his answer and at the end: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23153475 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23153475. Just saying directly what's good about it would seem outrageous otherwise! Ultimately this challenge is more interesting than it seems at first glance. It's about whether we can have a true sense of community here over time.
craftinator 6y ago
Why do you think they bought GitHub? They're are doing EEE on git...
- colejohnson66 6y ago
  And like my other comment, I ask: where’s your evidence?
  - craftinator 6y ago
    Aside from magically happening upon internal memos, what evidence could I possibly have? I am using simple reasoning, extrapolating about the future using data observed in the past. It seems a bit underhanded to demand evidence of the intent of a corporation. Microsoft is, quite literally, famous for their EEE strategy. And, as a major corporation, their decisions are based on forecasted returns to shareholder value. Those two facts support the idea that Microsoft purchased GitHub as part of an EEE strategy on git. What we should be arguing about is how strongly they indicate that is what Microsoft is playing at; history has already shown that it is a definite possibility.
- bdcravens 6y ago
  So they are planning to extinguish git? Acquiring a dominant company and becoming the go-to solution isn't full EEE.
  - craftinator 6y ago
    Correct. They found a company that had already both Embraced and Extended, which takes out two-thirds of the work for them. Of course, they've also been running the "We're actually all about open source now" marketing campaign for the last few years; there's seldom a single motive in a company that large.
- ToFab123 6y ago
  > They're are doing EEE on git No, I don't think that git has anything to do with why they bought GitHub and I don't think any single GitHub technology was the motivation, but if there were, I would say it is Electron and not git. Microsoft still wants their phone and a phone needs apps. I bet somewhere inside MS a team is working hard on a version of Electron that comes with the OS and that does not have all these memory issues that the current version have and that behaves like a native app (multiple windows etc.). When a large % of apps are using that MS going to release a new phone.
m463 6y ago
I think there's a new business model that's taken over. EEE -> Embrace Extend Exfiltrate or maybe: III -> Install Identify, ...Income! (google makes billions just by identifying individuals)

jacquesm 6y ago

> Do people seriously think Microsoft is going the EEE route again? Frankly: yes. MS has changed it's colors but the nature of the beast is still exactly the same, don't forget that the current CEO was right there when all that stuff was going down. Browser wars, SCO trial, MS tax and on and on.

colejohnson66 6y ago
> MS has changed it's colors but the nature of the beast is still exactly the same And your evidence is? > don't forget that the current CEO was right there when all that stuff was going down. And? Just because he was there doesn’t mean he agreed with it all. Microsoft has provided much evidence that they actually support open source, and you all are sticking your heads in the ground and ignoring it all, while also providing no evidence to show the contrary.
- jacquesm 6y ago
  > Just because he was there doesn’t mean he agreed with it all. My evidence is that he didn't leave. When you're working for an unethical company you have but one choice: leave. If you don't - and especially not at that level - you are implicitly ok'ing it. At a guess with your MS advocacy all over this thread you don't see anything wrong with it, past or present. And if you did then you'd think twice about staking your reputation on this. But as always, the mortgage comes first.
  - tmottabr 6y ago
    Leaving is not the only option. He may not agree but decide to stay, learn from its errors and work to make it better.. If people that do not agree just left microsoft it would never have changed, because only the ones that agree with the status quo would be left. Microsoft changed not because the people left but because the people choose to stay and work to change it.
    - jacquesm 6y ago
      Right, pull the other one. The number of issues with Microsoft in recent times is large enough to put serious doubt to the theory that they've changed.
      - tmottabr 6y ago
        no one said they are perfect.. on the end of the day they are a public traded company and like so their number one objective is make shareholders more money.. but they did changed a lot from the 90s microsoft, although they still have a long way to go.
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
- jacquesm 6y ago
  By the way, shouldn't you at least disclose you work at Microsoft in threads like these? It would help to put your comments in perspective.
  - colejohnson66 6y ago
    Please don’t insinuate I’m astroturfing when I’m not. It’s rude and against the posting guidelines.
  - dang 6y ago
    Please don't do this here. It's not ok to bring someone's personal details as ammunition into an argument (https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&query=by%3Adang%20%22personal%20details%22&sort=byDate&type=comment https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu...), nor to make accusations of astroturfing based on someone arguing a view you dislike (https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html). If you feel like someone's abusing HN, please email hn@ycombinator.com so we can look into it.
    - TulliusCicero 6y ago
      Hi dang, I wanted to ask you something related to your modwork. A while back, I saw a comment you made about this phenomenon on internet forums of comments that are...well basically empty negativity trashing the very forum they're posting in, that amount to, "this place sucks and everyone in it is dumb (except me, obviously)" and how these types of comments are unproductive and toxic. I don't suppose you have a, like, a blogpost or really in-depth comment that talks about this? It elucidates something that I intuitively felt before, especially as a reddit mod, but had trouble articulating. I also really liked your comment about contrarianism that you went in-depth on, that one is pretty easy to Google for though.
      - dang 6y ago
        I don't have a blog, but I've posted about this many times over the years. I understand what you mean about the intuitive feeling being strong yet hard to articulate. If you (or anyone!) find a new way of articulating it, please let me know. HN Search is the best way to track down past posts. Here are some links based on phrases I know I've used repeatedly: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&sort=byDate&type=comment&query=%20%22as%20much%22%20%22as%20anyone%22%20%20by:dang https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&sor... https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&sort=byDate&type=comment&query=community%20-dissolve%20-dissident%20-country%20-dissonance%20diss%20by:dang https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&sor... (note that I used the Algolia query to exclude unrelated words) If those links turn up the comment you remember, please let me know—I'm curious which one it was. All these past moderation comments are beginning to crystallize into discrete topics about which I've said similar things many times, and I intend to eventually distill them into a kind of commentary on the site guidelines, to fill out the picture of what HN is intended to be. The underlying phenomenon, I think, is that people feel insecure in an internet forum, especially a large one, because the sheer quantity that shows up there is bewildering and our wiring did not evolve to process anything like that. Instead of seeing it as a statistical cloud produced by thousands of people (which is what it really is), we interpret it as the productions of a small group of individuals (which is how we're wired to see the world). Since that's such a distorted interpretation, those imaginary individuals seem weird and dramatic in our imagination. Either they seem super smart (because of all the information we had no idea of), which makes us feel dumb, or they seem monstrous (because of all the views that seem outrageously wrong or offensive), which makes us feel surrounded by enemies, if not demons—and so on. Because these feelings are uncomfortable, we end up creating an image of the community that we can diss in order to restore our sense of equilibrium towards it. The problem is that if everybody's doing this, it makes community really hard. There's a long sequence of past comments on a related mechanism here: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&sort=byDate&type=comment&query=notice%20dislike%20by:dang https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&sor.... Also these: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&sort=byDate&type=comment&query=demons%20by:dang https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&so.... That may sound like arcane psychologizing, but I think it's the biggest issue HN faces. It's astonishing how many people have a negative image of the community, even among users who love HN and come here every day. The negative images differ depending on what people feel most offended or threatened by: if you're political, it tends to feel like the site is politically against you; or it might feel "full of toxicity", "nitpicking by know-it-all techies", and so on. There are many variations. HN is particularly prone to this because it's a non-siloed site (https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&sort=byDate&type=comment&query=silo%20by:dang https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&sor...) - we're all in the same boat and nobody gets to factor away the things they dislike (via subscriber lists and whatnot) so they won't notice them anymore. The much larger sites like Reddit and Twitter all grew by sharding. It feels safer if you have your own shard, and on HN we don't do that, so we're really up against the problem of what happens when everybody faces everybody else and nobody realizes that's happening or how unprecedented it really is. I wonder sometimes whether HN is on the leading edge of this phenomenon; if anyone knows of other cases, I'd love to be pointed there. I think it's sad, and limits the community, that even when people have a deeply positive relationship to HN, their top-of-mind model is that it’s “toxic and negative”. This showed up in what patio11 said in a recent interview about HN—even when praising HN, he feels obliged to bow to the “toxic and negative” meme both at the beginning of his answer and at the end: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23153475 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23153475. Just saying directly what's good about it would seem outrageous otherwise! Ultimately this challenge is more interesting than it seems at first glance. It's about whether we can have a true sense of community here over time.

craftinator 6y ago

Why do you think they bought GitHub? They're are doing EEE on git...

colejohnson66 6y ago
And like my other comment, I ask: where’s your evidence?
- craftinator 6y ago
  Aside from magically happening upon internal memos, what evidence could I possibly have? I am using simple reasoning, extrapolating about the future using data observed in the past. It seems a bit underhanded to demand evidence of the intent of a corporation. Microsoft is, quite literally, famous for their EEE strategy. And, as a major corporation, their decisions are based on forecasted returns to shareholder value. Those two facts support the idea that Microsoft purchased GitHub as part of an EEE strategy on git. What we should be arguing about is how strongly they indicate that is what Microsoft is playing at; history has already shown that it is a definite possibility.
bdcravens 6y ago
So they are planning to extinguish git? Acquiring a dominant company and becoming the go-to solution isn't full EEE.
- craftinator 6y ago
  Correct. They found a company that had already both Embraced and Extended, which takes out two-thirds of the work for them. Of course, they've also been running the "We're actually all about open source now" marketing campaign for the last few years; there's seldom a single motive in a company that large.
ToFab123 6y ago
> They're are doing EEE on git No, I don't think that git has anything to do with why they bought GitHub and I don't think any single GitHub technology was the motivation, but if there were, I would say it is Electron and not git. Microsoft still wants their phone and a phone needs apps. I bet somewhere inside MS a team is working hard on a version of Electron that comes with the OS and that does not have all these memory issues that the current version have and that behaves like a native app (multiple windows etc.). When a large % of apps are using that MS going to release a new phone.

m463 6y ago

I think there's a new business model that's taken over. EEE -> Embrace Extend Exfiltrate or maybe: III -> Install Identify, ...Income! (google makes billions just by identifying individuals)