bepotts

They do and I will give them props for that. But no company should have as much control over open source that Microsoft does.

I think people are "okay" with Microsoft because so many hackers have a problem with the data agglomeration and monetization strategy of Google and Facebook, but this Microsoft "embrace" will come to a head within the next couple years and I just can't wait for it.

The way people think Microsoft's embrace of open source, GitHub, and now NPM is genuine is completely ridiculous. Microsoft had to change because much of where the action was is on *nix systems. Microsoft will start to use these companies to make developers embrace Microsoft services. It's only a matter of time.

Gotta respect how Microsoft couldn't build anything the open source community wanted to work with/on so instead they used their Windows and Office monopoly to buy everyone's favorite playgrounds.

Americans don't believe the onus is on the whole to make sure the individual lives a happy life. We just don't have the collectivist culture the Europeans have. I think this is a great thing, and is why America is where most of the innovation, cultural, and political power is.

I personally have lower taxes, high quality healthcare, and live in an awesome location, and I got all of that through an education and training. That is available to almost every American if they just put in the work.

That, to me, is not just a great thing but the morally right thing. Apply yourself and make a better future for you and your family.

To the people responding to me with the most predictable lines: poverty exists in Europe; so does homelessness; as does food insecurity. Please don't tell me that Europe is some great place where poverty doesn't exist and everyone is living great lives.

It is also possible to be sympathetic toward the most needy while not supporting collectivism. You know what the poor need most? A marketable skill. A good job. Support programs that give people the skills they need in order to compete in a globalized market. It's funny how collectivists never push that though, and instead push for more collectivism.

I agree, but the problem is that people who hate "tracking" use the same terminology. You see them all over Hacker News.

To say "privacy advocates" are disingenuous is a huge understatement.

All that stuff is private and is never disclosed to anyone without a court order; or at least that is supposed to be how it works.

Yellowpages told the public. That is the point.

I can't remember who said it, but someone once compared the outrage over how tech companies use data to Yellowpages. There used to be this free book that had everyone's name, address, and phone number and the only way to opt out was to pay. This is much more egregious act than Google and Facebook; the only difference is the scale.

At least Google and Facebook only take what you give them.

Sure. I'd agree that futurists need room to think and invent the future; but VR, Blockchain, and Cryptocurrencies are not the Model T.

If the past two years have shown me anything, it's that people are becoming skeptical of the technologist mantra that "technology will make people's lives better." Not always; and with Apple introducing Screen Time and people trying to figure out how to "break" from their cell phone and social media usage, I think anybody who believes that the mass market wants to live in some VR simulation is tone deaf.

Maybe AR will never be like Minority Report, but I think if AR could get to a point where no goggles are needed, or if the equipment is light enough to not be a burden to the user (unlike VR headsets), then I think AR will be much bigger than VR. The average user just don't want that crap on their face and they don't want to live in a simulation like so many in the Bay Area would like to believe.

When people talk about the Bay Area/Silicon Valley monoculture/hivemind, I immediately think of VR enthusiasts. I'd also throw cryptocurrencies and blockchain enthusiasts into this category as well. Both of those technologies solved "problems" that the general population wouldn't agree to being problems in the first place.

Because I want GitHub to be agnostic and not pushing me towards anything?

This was always one of the core worries about GitHub and Microsoft. Microsoft will not leave GitHub alone. It's too important to developers, and no matter how much they say "we won't touch GitHub", nobody (rightfully) will believe them.

I always believed Microsoft saw GitHub as a potential "in" for millions of developers, rather than a product that could generate revenue.

This move doesn't worry me, as I'm sure Microsoft would look to do something easy to calm the nerves of people who worried about Microsoft's acquisition. The cynic in me sees this as sweetener for Microsoft's later moves to integrate GitHub with Microsoft's developer tools, which will infuriate me along with millions of other developers.

God I wish I could upvote this more than once. I almost fell out my chair laughing.

then it is fair to say that all of the usual criticisms you see on the Internet at large, where people explain why Apple products are not good enough/too expensive/whatever for them personally, are irrelevant.

You could swap out Apple with pretty much anything and you'll be accurate. The person commenting on the internet all day isn't representative of the average person.

The only reason Facebook is under so much fire is because Facebook is a scapegoat for entire groups of people.

You have tech people who hate Facebook because Facebook is a social network and many tech people aren't social, so Facebook represents this experience that they either shun or think they're too "above it". Lots of tech people also hate how much data collection they do, even though users give it up voluntarily.

There's also journalists, who hate how much their business model relies on Facebook.

You have politically left-leaning individuals all over the world, who hate that people on the right use Facebook to organize political movements against the establishment. You see this in Trump, Brexit, and anti-immigrant movements all over Europe.

Almost all the people screaming about Facebook before these allegations came out are the exact same people screaming now. It's just hard to take these people seriously.

Facebook needs reform; Facebook will probably get regulated; but Facebook isn't going to get regulated into oblivion and Facebook is going to be here for the foreseeable future.

I recently graduated from college and was heavily involved in national hackathons, and this story is just BS. It's so laughably BS that this story can be used as proof of the New York Time's willingness to publish anything that'll hurt Facebook.

Facebook goes to the best schools in the country and hires the best of the best.

Which basically confirms that the media is out to get Facebook.

I mean I suspect the same thing, but I wish everyone would be upfront with their motives instead of acting like they're just concerned citizens. Facebook's biggest critics are the same people that hated Facebook before they did any of this.

Their lack of willingness to make executive-level changes is appalling given what has come out in the last 12 months.

They're under no obligation to. Firms don't (and shouldn't) make personal decisions based on the whims of the mob.

They still refuse to fully cooperate on various investigations involving foreign interference, and have shown practically no remorse for their negligence in these cases.

How many times does a company need to say sorry? I mean honestly, who would have thought a foreign government would do such a thing?

Plus the foreign interference is overblown. The amount of ads and groups Russia was pushing was miniscule compared to amount of content pushed everyday and political advertising that political parties does.

Yeah it's really off putting. A lot of people here cannot come to grips with the fact that many tech companies are big because their customers people love their products; this includes Apple, Google, Facebook, and Amazon.

Nobody is pulling a fast one on me when I buy my iPhone and Mac. I know full well what Google and Facebook are doing with my data when I use their sites.

I. Don't. Care.

They have products and services that I want and I'm happy to fork over cash or data to get them. Please take your conspiracies elsewhere.

The problem with that plan is that if Google were to release such a service in the EU, the EU would then fine Google for using their search monopoly to prop up a service in another industry (News). The EU did something similar when Google used their search monopoly to promote Google Shopping.

EU is gonna EU.

And it's so transparent at this point. I've listened to podcasts with reporters and they lament the rise of Facebook and how "Facebook is stealing their business" through ads and algorithm changes that hurt them.

But the bias doesn't matter because everyone on the internet hates them (and Google) so they just rush to pile on. Anything negative about Facebook gets to the front page very quickly. The thing is, Facebook has billions of users and you don't get billions of users by being evil. People may not love Facebook, but there really isn't a better way to keep up with friends, family, and to organize get togethers. I don't use Facebook that much, but I'll never delete it. It's just too valuable in my life.

As an aside: we're all engineers here, and if Facebook offered you guys a job, almost everyone here would take it. Their engineering team, quality of life, and compensation is extremely hard to beat. The NY Times found a couple college kids who don't want to work for Facebook. Okay. As a recent college graduate I can assure you that almost everyone in my graduating class would have taken a job at Facebook if given the chance. Facebook came and hired the smartest of my graduating class and the "hackathon" crowd puts Facebook at close to the top of their list of companies to work for. Facebook isn't hurting for talent and they have the compensation packages to compete for the best of the best.

Testifying before Congress doesn't mean one is in crisis. People are called to testify before Congress all the time and you don't hear about it because the testimony is irrelevant.

Because of Trump and the US Government abdicating all responsibility in checking the Executive Branch? NYT's subscriptions jumped after the 2016 election because a free press is extremely vital at this point.

The US is in a very weird spot right now with Democratic norms sliding. Once we exit this weird period and US Government returns to normal, lets see how the NYT's stock price fares then.

This is exactly it.

Look, Facebook needs to get its act together. They are in need for serious reform. However, mainstream media knows that Facebook is under a ton of pressure and these types of stories generate a ton of clicks. I know people want Facebook to die, but Facebook's usage has remained pretty much the same during all these negative stories. The public is not hating Facebook as much as people want to believe.

But the media has its narrative and it'll continue this "Facebook is evil" beat. The same with Clinton's email server, and more recently, the same with that immigrant caravan coming up from Central America.

Losing 2 to 4 million users out of 375 million users is hardly "significant". It's something to look out for of course, but trying to insinuate that Facebook is in trouble in Europe with those numbers is a stretch.

The argument for Austin or Pittsburgh isn't too different than an argument for NYC or Washington, DC.

My point is that there are cities in the United States that attracting talent, creatives, and business investment and instead of crying foul, we should learn about what they're doing and seek to replicate it.

If Amazon had chosen Austin or Pittsburgh, plenty of people would still be complaining, although Maybe not as much as NYC and Washington.

Agree completely. To some people, the tradeoffs between having Amazon come with a couple tax breaks and not having Amazon come at all is worth it. Nobody put a gun to the heads of these city officials - everyone knew what was going on and city officials went along willingly.

If Amazon had chosen Detroit or some city in America's heartland, the national press would have been praising Amazon for "spreading the wealth". Instead of getting mad at Amazon, policy makers should look at why Amazon chose these locations and seek to replicate these conditions elsewhere.

Toronto wasn't chosen because Toronto wasn't competitive. People that live in Toronto talk about how they're underpaid and how their tech sector pales in comparison to major US cities. Even many Waterloo CS graduates have a "US or bust" type mentality because of the labor market disparities.

Amazon would be foolish to choose a location in Canada due to a their healthcare system and immigration situation. Healthcare isn't that big a deal to a company like Amazon and regardless of the current administration, Americans have never been more supportive of immigration.

Canadians were naive to think they were competitive for an Amazon, and they're wrong if they think Amazon would have chosen them if they weren't so concerned about blowback.

Sometimes, America being welcoming to big businesses has its advantages.

The areas with the most growth are cities, not states. And Boston is already wealthy. The states you mentioned all have major cities that are seeing the type of growth I'm talking about.

The real "losers" in this situation are heartland states without major metro areas, like most of the plain states and rural America.

I feel like not many places are willing to do the work in order to attract an Amazon; or better yet, foster an environment where one could build one organically.

Too many pundits are trying to shame Amazon into moving to a city like Detroit or a city in the American heartland. But these areas are unattractive places for obvious reasons and it seems like Americans want to deny it. Want to attract an Amazon? Invest in colleges, reduce business regulations, attract an international and diverse populace which would in turn create an interesting culture, invest in local secondary schools, and (I hate to say this) drop the social conservative politics. One of the reasons why London, Paris, New York, Washington DC, San Francisco, etc. are attractive internationally is the liberal populace and progressive culture - nobody wants to move to a socially conservative place.

I feel like the partisanship that America is experiencing is only going to accelerate. As of now, America's future is in the cities and for whatever reason, cities tend to generate a certain culture that many people in America's heartland don't want. They're going to have to be more welcoming of it if they want to attract these sort of businesses.

Microsoft isn't mentioned because the world shifted in such a manner where Microsoft's monopoly is no longer as important. Nobody could have predicted this in the 80s and 90s, and this situation should be a learning lesson as to why antitrust measures should be extremely rare.