Hacker News Reader

Comment by UnoriginalGuy | Hacker News Reader

I am a Microsoft Engineer so take what I am about to say as gospel: There's no way to know when someone claims to be something on the internet that they are that thing unless the company itself corroborates it.

The pastebin was posted on 4chan... 4chan... And all of the information in it could have been gleaned from publicly available sources. We should at best discuss it like it is rumour, and much more realistically just ignore it as trolling.

PS - I am not a Microsoft Engineer, I was making a point.

View on HN

His post was (largely) free of any supposed inside knowledge. It seemed like it was just an attempt at a possible justifications of the choices made for the Xbox one. It really doesn't make much of a difference whether he is a Microsoft engineer or just a canny outsider playing devil's advocate to all the (seemingly) blind rage flowing around consoles these days (and most days...).

The gamestop insight is arguably and inside perspective. full disclosure, i dont even play consoles.

It's a terrible thing when somebody (Microsoft Engineer or not) tries to make sense of all the fact'less back n' forth about how much Microsoft sucks and they can't do anything right.

If more people stopped to think what the Master plan here might be, we would all be better off.

Instead we're entrenched in cold-war-like mentality of Apple-FRIEND, GOOGLE-FRIEND, SONY-BEST-FRIEND, ... Microsoft-ENEMY.

Microsoft stopped being a monopoly long, long time ago (in internet time), yet everybody still continues to hate.

http://arstechnica.com/science/2011/08/users-treat-criticism...

It's so strange. I don't think I could name a single company or even product that I'm not ambivalent about. I may prefer X over Y, but everything has irritating flaws.

I don't pretend to be some emotionless paragon of objectivity. It's just...criticism is good. I try to even highlight my own flaws, so they can be addressed. It's far more useful than trying to ignore problems.

Do you also tend to feel ambivalent about political parties and religions?

These feelings largely depend on whether you view the world in absolute or relative terms.

A similar study was performed with religion. When someone attacked a persons religion, they felt like it was an attack on them.

I mean, MS helps governments spy with Skype, and now they want us all to have an always-on system in our living rooms with cameras and microphones?

I'm normally the one defending MS, but come on. Unless I have my facts wrong about Xbox 1, Xbox 1 is literally doo doo.

IE6, NEVER FORGIVE! NEVER FORGET!

>"It's not worth my time to prove it, or risk my Job. I work in Studio A, 40th ave in Redmond, Wa. The thai place in the studio cafeteria has double punch wednesdays. Go ahead and call them and verify if you want."

Clearly, only a true Microsoft employee would know such a well-kept secret. This proves everything.

Oh wait. https://www.facebook.com/pages/Streets-of-Asia/1595621342030...

That actually is kinda suspicious he picked the one piece of information that was on the Facebook page. I changed my stance and now more agree with wutbrodo that it doesn't really matter if he's an engineer or not. Just pretend he didn't say that if you don't believe him.

As someone who works in Redmond, the details of Microsoft's gigantic food court thing aren't exactly private.

He claims to be a Microsoft Engineer, but talks like a Microsoft PR. "Consumer delight"? "Sick second screen"? I don't know any technical person who uses this kind of doublespeak.

The fact it's on 4chan actually gives it much more credibility than if it were a throwaway account on Reddit or similar

Reply on news.ycombinator.com