I agree that it's not purely happenstance -- I think Microsoft the company is making a genuine bid to be relevant again.
It's a desperate bid, and I don't think it's in their DNA to succeed, but it'd be great if it happens. Personally I avoid using MS whenever possible; I still have to use Word and Excel to communicate with others, and some conferences still require a PPT file.
Even back when Microsoft was a big player I never found the Windows programming model technically appealing, but even if I had I would have stayed away because their anticompetitive approach was too risky and hostile for me to be willing to depend on. They became addicted to that instead of technical excellence, which is why I think this effort will fail, no matter how sincere the commitment is at the top.
But they do employ many smart people and surely it is good if we have more sources of good technology (where good is a combination of technical excellence & good policy). So why not encourage them in the hope they get their shit together?
Microsoft always has had pockets of technical excellence. It's also always had the problem of the left hand not knowing what the right hand is doing. This seems to be somehow built right into the company's structure. (So not DNA, more like epigenetics.) Perhaps these are just the problems faced by any big company in a nutshell?
> It's a desperate bid, and I don't think it's in their DNA to succeed
I'm not so sure. I think their DNA is changing pretty rapidly these days. Office for iOS is better than Office for Windows RT. Windows Azure services are actually really good, with tons of documentation on how to use them across all platforms (iOS, Android, Javascript, Node.js, etc).
It feels as though the last few decades, every team has been beholden to the Windows/Office hegemony, whereas now teams have the direction to make a good product on their own terms. Without having to answer the question "how will this keep Windows/Office dominant", the massive amount of talent at Microsoft can finally start to shine, and I really think we're starting to see the genesis of that environment lately. It's too early to tell, but I'm pretty hopeful.
shrug. I thought someone needed to do machine learning as a service, especially that can be accessed from Python, so I upvoted an article on Azure. I think presentation should be separate from data, so I upvoted a comment on posh.
I'm a OS X / Linux person (my name's probably in your distro somewhere) and sometimes Microsoft does good stuff.
And, strangely, I didn't say otherwise. I'm typing this message on Windows. My main development IDE is Visual Studio. My primary RDBMS platform is SQL Server, deploy of course on Windows.
Yeah, the strawman that Microsoft can do no right is pretty easy to knock down, but has absolutely nothing to do with the context of this.
Again, a post on the second page (a ridiculous, extremely low quality post that had to be flagged off the front page) saw my benign comment get -11 within 60 seconds. I've never seen that before, much less for a completely moderate comment. I've seen this extremely pro-Microsoft moderation hit other threads hard, and it seems pretty obvious that it isn't by accident.
The part that 'nailer' is correcting is your statement that "There is absolutely and unequivocally either brigading Microsoft fans, or paid shills, hitting HN hard.". You accused him (and me, and others who voted up this story) of being either a "brigading Microsoft fan" or a "paid shill". Your comments are being downvoted because individual users think that they are rude and false, not because of an organized pro-Microsoft movement.
You accused him (and me, and others who voted up this story) of being either a "brigading Microsoft fan" or a "paid shill".
Sorry, but that's just false as far as I can tell. He cited those things as the reason for his other comment's moderation. Please quote the text from which you draw your conclusions of attribution.
jhou2: the amount of positive press that MS has been garnering recently on HN is impressive
engendered: Don't think it is purely happenstance. There is absolutely and unequivocally either brigading Microsoft fans, or paid shills, hitting HN hard.
My interpretation might be wrong, but I take jhou2's "positive press" to mean stories such as this one appearing on the front page. I interpret 'engendered' as saying that these stories would not appear on the front page if it were not for "brigading Microsoft fans" or "paid shills". Since the story is on the front page because of user upvote, and although there could be dispute about all vs most vs some, I read this to be accusing those who voted up the story as being one of these things.
In my read, he attributes the downvotes on his comments to the same faction, uses this as evidence that the faction exists, and thus can also be held responsible for elevating this and other Microsoft-positive stories to the front page. I think he's wrong, don't think the "brigading Microsoft fan" has much of an influence on HN, and doubt that Microsoft is paying anyone for getting things on the front page.
I'd happily consider evidence to the contrary, but I think the downvotes to engendered's comments are due to other factors, and that the pro-Microsoft stories are appearing more frequently on HN because they periodically act as a positive force. I don't know how prevalent my attitude is, but I find these stories interesting in a "Dog Bites Man" fashion. I am more likely to vote up a good deed done by Microsoft because I find it to be more noteworthy than a good deed done by others.
When startups choose tech these days based on what HN thinks is cool and hip at the day the decission is made, you can't blame tech companies noticing this and trying to turn the odds in their favour.
You're getting downvoted for tone because of your repeated accusations of shilling.
In general any post that accuses other people of being a fanboy or a shill will attract rapid heavy downvotes, regardless of which company is criticised or which company is accused of shilling. This is probably a good thing.
There is plenty of anti-MS sentiment on HN that doesn't get downvoted.
People do have strong opinions and favored suppliers and sports teams, but generally there is a polite way and an impolite way to disagree with something :-) Stating that a given sports franchise "sucks" and anyone who thinks it doesn't is "stupid" is a great way to start a brawl in pretty much any sports bar, and discussion forums like HN are no different.
And like sports teams, companies are constantly changing they are getting new employees and new management and new ideas. So the idea that any company is "good" or "bad" is unsupported on its face, all we can ever say is that "this action" or "this decision" was good or bad and criteria by which we have judged it.
Microsoft's decision to immediately cleanse this injector code as 'malware' was, in my opinion, a "good" decision. Based on the reasoning that it is better for the users and folks like my Dad who doesn't know how to get it off his system is helped by this.
Better yet would be killing any komodia cert (I don't think that's what they did), since even the spy-on-your-kids products have the effect of breaking ssl.
There's also the possibility--very distant, I know--that Microsoft has been put into the odd position of being an underdog in many areas, which gives it the flexibility and necessity to act morally to make inroads against competitors among consumers.
Of all the BigCos, MS seems the best to me right now, and I say that as a guy who's made a habit of buying a Lenovo laptop every year or so and immediately installing Linux on it.
I down-voted you for this and nothing else that further followed.
Because anyone that believes in a) absolute objective truth and b) that they posses that said truth, is a person that will generally be wrong in many ways on whatever follows (or at the least, if this was an out-of-the-character emotional response, it will lack the needed logic and reason based evidence to support the statement).
Also, starting out a discussion with kill terms that accuse and label anyone who does not agree with the given POV, is not cool.
I hated Microsoft for years, for all the stupid garbage they pulled. Antitrust stuff, terrible software, mismanagement, etc. Even after switching to using a Mac full time, I still had to deal with awful Office documents with undocumented changes, or 'XML-based' documents with undefined data formats. Sending my resume to someone and finding out the entire thing had been reformatted into Courier New and lost all my indenting, making me look like an idiot, etc.
But lately, things have changed. Apple is the new Google, loved by the tech world. Google is the new Microsoft, using their market power to do dumb stuff that no one really cares about, and Microsoft is the new Apple, the underdog who got left behind by changing technology and ego and is making a serious, determined effort to become and stay relevant, to put out good products, and to regain their position as a market leader (earned this time, and not strong-armed).
Oddly insightful for such a simple analogy. Out of curiosity, what products do you use from these companies? (Eg android phone, mac computer, microsoft xbox?)
Does everything have to be a conspiracy? So either Microsoft is building some good and interesting stuff, or there's some conspiracy to target HN that would get them...what, exactly? +Karma here?
I think it would actually be pretty interesting to do some kind of visualization over time with popularity of languages and mentions on forums like this.
It's no secret that we've had problems with pro-Microsoft astroturfing on HN in the past. But the way to deal with this is not to make angry, substanceless accusations and then complain when the community responds poorly. Please stop.
I'm going to detach this subthread as off-topic now.
Without discounting the possibility that there may be some astroturfing, I think it's far more likely that you've run afoul of community expectations.
The HN guidelines specifically suggest you resist commenting on downvotes, and people take that seriously here. Editing your comment to add meta-commentary on votes will generally just get you more downvotes.
Additionally, your comments are fairly polarizing. You make statements about how something is obvious, but then provide nothing besides anecdotal evidence. If it's that obvious, real evidence should be easy to show, otherwise it's possibly not as clear as you think. You could possibly have avoided this problem by framing it as a question and leaving an opening for someone to provide a better answer. This also invites people who disagree, or have a different interpretation to engage in a useful way, rather than starting off in an antagonistic way. For example, stating something "absolutely and unequivocally" without evidence won't generally be seen useful to the discussion here.
No, not intentionally naive, but perhaps intentionally not cynical. I'd like to believe that a technology company, such as Microsoft, relies on a bit more than buy-in and advocacy. Perhaps the soundness of a product, for example.
> I left a completely benign post that didn't go with the pro-Microsoft/anti-Google narrative
This is simply not true, that comment (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9076549) included "HN has seen a HUGE influx of Microsoft shills, and it's getting disconcerting." You're also being inconsistent with whether the post was on the front page or the second.
Given that, I'm not inclined to believe that you actually got -11 in less than 60 seconds.
That's like saying the majority of HNers are Gruber's drones for praising his business model, or Google/Mozilla/Node having a brigade of posters to praise their languages.
