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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.

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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.

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