Comment by icxa | Hacker News Reader

Comment by icxa | Hacker News Reader

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I find it interesting that most threads on HN lately about Windows always seems to have quite a few comments in the form "I switched from Mac to Windows, loving it!" I know no place is immune from shilling, but it does raise a particular brow.

Conspiracies aside, and probably more interestingly, I am not convinced that "this is the new Microsoft" or that Satya Nadella is some visionary CEO because while everyone has been seemingly lulled to sleep here on "the new Microsoft" on HN lately, guess what accounted for an ever growing portion of Microsoft's business last quarter? Microsoft's data mining business! Horray! So while we are out here with our pitchforks on the Google's and Facebooks of the world collecting our data and selling it, Microsoft has quietly turned around and ramped up their version of these practices seemingly unscathed.

Remember, Microsoft is still under scrutiny for continuing to collect your data on Windows and other products even after you have opted out. From my perspective, choosing to run Windows is still choosing to run a spy machine for Microsoft.

Maybe I am wrong, but Microsoft still doesn't deserve our trust, not even in the slightest.

What in the world are you talking about? They have 3 business units they report earnings for. Which one is the “data mining business”?

If you need help sourcing this assertion, here’s their quarterly SEC 10-k filing. I look forward to understanding the basis of your accusation.

https://microsoft.gcs-web.com/static-files/fb546cc4-2cbe-41c...

I am well aware a public company's earnings report is public https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/Investor/earnings/FY-2019-Q3... (btw -- Tell me where in Facebook's earnings reports we should have looked to learn what they were doing with CA?)

Microsoft Dynamics is their ad tech solution for companies that wish to mine data about their customers. You want to tell me you are that naive to think they aren't dogfooding this internally to at least some extent? Windows 10 basically turns your PC into a spy machine for Microsoft. Now they have LinkedIn, which has well documented gross-levels of data collection on it's users, and GitHub which has a gold mine of data voluntarily given to it daily, and to some extent VSCode, although AFAIK, turning off the telemetry in VSCode really does turn it off (should still use Pi-hole to filter, just in case). You really think they aren't feeding that data into their DP and packing up this data and selling it off to the highest bidder, including governments, just like Facebook got caught doing? If so, I got a bridge I'd like to sell you.

I know no place is immune from shilling, but it does raise a particular brow.

Calling commenters shills is explicitly against HN policy.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html:

Please don't impute astroturfing or shillage. That degrades discussion and is usually mistaken. If you're worried, email us and we'll look at the data.

Give it a rest or try Slashdot. You’ll definitely get a +5 Informative.

If you interpreted that statement as me specifically saying that commenter is a shill, you should probably take a rest from social media as well, and take a step back to realize the negative lens you are viewing things through.

If you interpreted that statement as me specifically saying that commenter is a shill

I don’t understand. Which commenter are you referring to? You weren’t replying to anyone. In so doing you implicated anyone saying something along the lines of "I switched from Mac to Windows, loving it!" as being a possible shill.

you should probably take a rest from social media as well, and take a step back to realize the negative lens you are viewing things through.

I don’t understand how that follows from anything.

Accusing people of being shills is against the policies of this website.

End of story.

I wouldn’t say it was “shilling”, but the geek community has thought that their opinion matters to the general consumer electronics market more than it has at least since the infamous era of the “less space than Nomad. No Wireless. Lame.” Slashdot era.

got a source?

I completely agree. Most of the HN readers are too young to remember MS's bad practices.

How many employees from Microsoft in the 90s are still there now, calling the shots?

Microsoft is a company like any other, and like any other company we should keep an eye on what they're doing.

But too often the people who "remember Microsoft's bad practices" are completely unwilling to reevaluate the company based on what they're actually doing _now_, instead preferring to cling to illogical biases based on an old grudge.

How many of the National Security Letters are still in place?

How many PRISM-like APIs are there?

Maybe that is ok?

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