Hacker News Reader

Comment by 34679 | Hacker News Reader

If W10 is on 800,000,000 computers[1], and it costs each user 1 second of productivity, then every time that ad shows, Microsoft is stealing 222,222 hours of productivity from people and businesses around the world to advertise its subpar browser in an operating system they've already been compensated for.

https://www.zdnet.com/article/microsoft-says-windows-10-is-n...

View on HN

>Microsoft is stealing 222,222 hours of productivity

You better don't want your boss to know how much HN is stealing "hours of productivity" from you :)

Hey, this forum gives us ideas, helps us learn more, helps us become better!!! If anything our bosses should give us more time to spend on HN!! ;)

I hate OS-level ads the same if not more than any other HN reader, but that's like saying we shouldn't be glancing out of the window for half a second because it would scale up to losing ~100,000 hours of productivity every day. It's a fraction of a ten-thousandth of a workday - anyone concerned with that level of optimization shouldn't be using humans to begin with.

I think you're looking at it from the individual's point of view instead of Microsoft's. Of course at the local level a person or even small business shouldn't be worried about a second of time lost. I'm not saying we should be concerned with employees glancing out the window. I'm saying any decision that affects 800,000,000 people has very tangible consequences.

I think an apt analogy would be the "Take a Penny, Leave a Penny" tray at convenience stores. Nobody cares if you take a penny from a gas station. But if someone figured out a way to take a penny from every tray in the world, that would raise some real questions about theft that would need to be answered.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com