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Comment by rustystump

21 hours ago

Idk i can think of a long list of awful stuff coming out of ms that is modern. They put fing ads in an os among other atrocities.

I put them behind meta on the evilness meter but i think google is less evil which speaks volumes.

The only side of ms that i have any love for is xbox but that is also waning with all the studio acquisitions.

148 comments

rustystump

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speeder  8 hours ago

The fact you still only got bothered by studio acquisitions show you don't even noticed the studio closures...

MS fired thousands of gamedevs in the last few weeks, cancelled a lot of games, including games the execs liked to play the prototypes, cancelled publishing deals, and even closed entire studios, some of them literally successful that had just released profitable products.

  • schuyler2d  7 hours ago

    In the profitable cases (and maybe just as open offer), why not just sell them back to their staff/former owner?

    There's no point to keep the IP of games that are shuttered.

    Maybe the offer was made and a bunch didn't take it?

    • AbstractH24  5 hours ago

      > There's no point to keep the IP of games that are shuttered.

      Any movie studio that rebooted a franchise after a decade or two of dormancy would beg to differ

    • ethbr1  5 hours ago

      > why not just sell them back to their staff/former owner?

      Saving corporate face

    • BolexNOLA  4 hours ago

      Dunkey has a great overview of how Microsoft handles studios/IP: https://youtu.be/GWrcUh2GuPQ

      For the last decade they acquire studios/IP’s, let them languish, then without warning strip them for parts. Make a successful game? Doesn’t matter, you’re all fired. Y’all want to make a game? Sure! We can even promote it! 12-18mo of no news after an announcement ah dang guys we were so hyped but we’re pulling the plug.

      It is baffling how many studios they own and yet they have almost no exclusives/big cross platform hits developed for the Xbox this generation.

mass_and_energy  4 hours ago

Amen. Also, forcing us to tie our local OS into their cloud nonsense is a travesty. Hearing that they will soon disallow updates to those of us that don't capitulate to their cloud-account ransom has kick-started my efforts in formally moving away from Windows. I'd rather lose most games than get a cloud account.

sevensor  16 hours ago

Excel single-handedly redeems Microsoft from being a pure drain on human existence, but I can’t see what the point of the company is beyond that. Enterprise something something maybe. And declining literacy makes Powerpoint unfortunately indispensable.

  • fnord123  12 hours ago

    > Excel single-handedly redeems Microsoft from being a pure drain on human existence

    Debatable. Excel can't even open CSV files properly. You need to run the import wizard. But loads of people don't do this. They see a file on their desktop and double click it. Why can't double clicking a CSV file just open the import wizard!? (Because they want people to share xlsx files as a data format.)

    • lisbbb  1 hour ago

      OMG--we had a worfklow where less-techy folks were supposed to edit a csv, then check it in to github, which would kick off a whole process automatically for them. I kid you not--anyone who edited the csv in Excel would eff the whole file up every single time! They just needed a text editor, which we told them to use, and the changes were literally simple, either editing an existing entry or adding a new entry. Nope, these college educated "IT" workers could not handle it! We ended up having to scrap the entire automation workflow because the employees were simply too dumb to use a text editor and github.

    • withinboredom  10 hours ago

      I assume most Americans don't run into the CSV hell that other countries do. In my current country, whether CSVs open as a comma-separated or semi-colon seperated document depends on whether the OS is set to use a , or a . for decimal numbers. It's absolutely annoying.

      19 replies →

    • kcoddington  5 hours ago

      CSV is data only. Excel handles way more than that. XLSX is the preferred file format because it's compressed XML that can hold all kinds of things.

      Also, CSVs seem to open just fine on my Excel. If it's not formatted with a standard delimiter or isn't handing quoted strings the proper way, sure maybe the data wizard is needed.

      Excel is terrible in a lot of aspects, but CSVs seem to be something it handles as well as anything else in my experience.

    • Ygg2  9 hours ago

      > Excel can't even open CSV files properly. You need to run the import wizard.

      Ofc you do. In practice, a CSV file can decide to use `|` for comma, and `<>` instead of quotes.

      1 reply →

  • Gud  12 hours ago

    Microsoft are wielding the entire office suite as a weapon against free and interoperable formats…

    It is the single biggest blocked against open computing.

    If Microsoft were serious about open source like another poster claimed, they would let us run it on all platforms.

    • novok  10 hours ago

      Much like iOS/Android & the Web killed MSFTs stranglehold on OSes, google docs & markdown killed MSFT office's stranglehold on office. So many businesses are google doc shops, vast majority of schools are google docs, vast majority of casual document usage is google docs and google docs is open-enough with it's export formats.

      Excel at this point is specialist software, like adobe photoshop. Everything else is 'good enough'.

      9 replies →

    • ethbr1  5 hours ago

      That's being charitable to OSS office packages' UX.

      Some wounds are self-inflicted, and open source has a well-known last-20%-polish problem that's especially painful in mass-user scenarios like office software.

      OOo wasting the 00s with a circa-90s UI (and Oracle being assholes) is equally responsible for MS Office's continued popularity in enterprise.

      1 reply →

  • scbrg  13 hours ago

    Interesting. I consider Excel the worst of Microsoft's misdeeds. Not that there's not an abundance to pick from, but Excel may very well top the list.

    It's perhaps the single worst database in the world; with no type control, no relationship management, no data safety whatsoever to speak of (it even actively mangles your data), its interface is utter madness, and yet - it's the most used database in the world.

    It's perhaps the single worst development and runtime environment in the world, obscuring code, making reasoning about code and relations between code almost impossible, using a very obscure macro language that even morphs between different computers, and yet - it's the most used development and runtime environment in the world.

    It's perhaps the single worst protocol/data exchange format in the world, with dozens of intentionally obscure, undocumented versions, insane format with surprising limitation (did I mention it actively mangles your data? - it's worth repeating anyway), supremely inefficient, and yet - it's the most used protocol/data exchange format in the world.

    I can't really think of anything in the computing world that has done as much damage as Excel.

    • automatic6131  9 hours ago

      What you fail to realize is that (nearly) everything you think of as a flaw here is a key feature.

      Excel allows norm(al users)ies to scale Mt Impossible from the bottom where they don't care about types, or relationships, and don't want to (because it's too abstract). They want to solve a problem. So they start with simple data given meaning by physical space, and work up from there.

      It's genius. It's computing for people that will never care about pointers.

      1 reply →

    • icameron  12 hours ago

      Everything you say is not wrong. But despite being so horrible, the business world still runs on excel. Finance, underwriting, accounting, engineering tools, fantasy football leagues… Excel is a highly used tool possibly the most used tool and enables many users who do not consider themselves programmers to be productive with their PCs. It’s timeless and hated by many for valid reasons, but its impact is vast.

      10 replies →

    • arielcostas  9 hours ago

      And as a casual Excel user (to get data from CSV, remove some rows, move few things around, etc.) it isn't even great. You can't open two files with the same name because Excel seems to have some "global state" between windows; to the point where you might be hitting Control+Z to undo some changes, and it's undoing stuff on the other spreadsheet without you noticing.

      Doing something as "simple" as a LEFT JOIN of data requires having two separate documents (or one, but saved on your system), open them in the Power Query editor (if it's the same document you do it twice, once per table) which creates two "queries", and then you can either use one to join against the other, or create a third one "joining" them. In the end, you get three new sheets on your docs: the original tables and the merged one.

      Then there's the annoyances: if you use Excel in English (US at least), apparently you get a CSV separated by actual commas "," (ASCII 0x2C) but using it in Spanish (Spain) you get it separated by semicolons ";" because commas actually separate number decimals. Meaning whenever I build a program that parses/writes CSV, I need to consider the chance it's using semicolons and commas instead of commas and dots. Not that it's non-standard: CSV doesn't specify a delimiter, but you could stick to the same format everywhere, or give an option to customise, or create "Tab-Separated Values" (essentially CSV with tabs separating values).

      Another one is formulae, that also change based on language, and their arguments separator also changes. In en_US you'd use `=SUBTOTAL(109,B2:B7)` while in Spanish it's `=SUBTOTALES(109;B2:B97` (plural instead of singular, and semicolon instead of comma). Meaning any guide, documentation or tutorial in English requires me having to "guess" how the function is translated, and manually changing commas to semicolons.

      With all this, I mean to say: Excel isn't even that great for the "normal" user. Or perhaps I'm too "power user" for this and just lazy enough to bother with it instead of using "proper" tools like Python or R.

      2 replies →

    • antaviana  11 hours ago

      I would dare to say that all business apps start as an Excel sheet (or Google Sheet) and after the usefulness of data collection and data arrangement/presentation is validated (often long after the usefulness is validated) they eventually become a full-fledged business web app.

    • cdaringe  11 hours ago

      If pleebs can understand it, surely it’s not as foul as you state.

      Nonetheless i hear your argument. I feel that python is the same abomination of the programming world. Yet it flourishes and is even loved.

      Haveth we stockholm syndrome to our own garbage tools?

  • tomalbrc  14 hours ago

    Lets not pretend like there wouldn't be dozen of quality and actually used software if it wasn't for microsoft existing.

    • eitland  13 hours ago

      I actively prefer Libre Office.

      Yes, Excel is probably a lot better if you use English setup and advanced functions.

      For me,

      - not having to use Norwegian for formulas (my work machine has Norwegian setup and Excel insists on using Norwegian formulas)

      and

      - not having it trying to find something it can misinterpret as a date, preferably some random place in a list of thousands of items

      makes it worth it.

      3 replies →

xnyan  21 hours ago

Don’t Apple and Ubuntu also advertise products in their OS also?

  • pjerem  20 hours ago

    Apple barely does it and only for their products. I agree with you that that’s already too much and too annoying but that’s an order of magnitude less than Microsoft who advertise their products pretty aggressively AND ALSO are advertising for whoever gave them money too.

    Ubuntu I didn’t use it for years, there are tons of other distributions that I prefer now but last time I checked, there was a removable default shortcut to amazon. That’s an awful symbol, if you ask me, to associate Ubuntu and its meaning to Amazon but it’s nothing when compared to Apple or Microsoft (dare I say Google) behaviors.

  • Wololooo  21 hours ago

    I have yet to see a single ad on either the menus on Ubuntu or in OSX. Care to elaborate on what you mean by that?

  • lrvick  12 hours ago

    Unlike with Apple, you have virtually unlimited choices of Linux distributions that are ad-free.

  • fsflover  6 hours ago

    > Don’t Apple and Ubuntu also advertise products in their OS also?

    I looks like Ubuntu was created just in order to be able to dismiss Linux as "also advertise products". It's just a single distribution out of a hundred, and far from the best, so it's completely wrong of course. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38300531.

kokanee  19 hours ago

Your comment warrants a post in its own right: let's rank FAANG/M by evilness. Personally I've always been way more afraid of Google, because Microsoft's evil is just old-school capitalism, which is blatant, brash, and harder to ignore than to identify. Google feels like they are quietly and surreptitiously trying to pull the strings of the online economy in their favor, voraciously consuming the world's data behind the scenes, presenting to consumers a tiny little sliver of this massive digital beast lurking under the hood. They're always 15 years ahead of policy, so they get away with theft, copyright infringement, monopoly, and more, on a scale that I don't think we even fully understand.

My ranking from most evil to least would be:

1. Google

2. Meta

3. Microsoft

4. Amazon

5. Apple

6. Netflix

  • johannes1234321  19 hours ago

    Ranking evil is hard, but I'd rank Amazon's control of global supply chains as more evil than at least Meta. While Meta got WhatsApp, which is big. (Escaping Facebook, Instagram etc is a lot simpler)

    • cess11  6 hours ago

      Project Nimbus is Amazon and Google together. Meta was early on the genocidal train, in e.g. Myanmar and Ethiopia, as well as adjacent to the 'regime change' obsession of usian elites.

      Arguably they're all atrocious due to effects on environment and labour rights.

  • bratsche  17 hours ago

    I think what's almost shocking about this is that Google seemed so great in the beginning. "Don't Be Evil" was even like an internal code of conduct slogan or something.

    I never worked there and have no inside knowledge of what happened. Did they get taken over by MBAs who gained control of the company? Was it always evil and we were just misled the whole time? Something else?

    • terminalshort  17 hours ago

      Nothing fundamentally changed. The only real difference is they hit that inevitable point for any business that they had to start making money. They weren't evil then and they aren't now. They're a business, and they are responding to market demand for free to consumer products paid for by advertisement. What nobody on HN wants to admit is that the vast majority of people would rather have that than pay for their software in dollars. People love to complain about the Google panopticon but aren't willing to grapple with the fact that it has tremendous benefits too.

      2 replies →

    • geocar  12 hours ago

      > Google seemed so great in the beginning.

      It's almost like they were good at marketing.

  • techjamie  17 hours ago

    Can we get an honorable mention for Adobe? I'd put Adobe probably right under Apple.

    • 20after4  12 hours ago

      Adobe would be far more evil if they weren't so bad at making software. I think their intentions and business practices are clearly equal to or more evil than Apple, they just don't have nearly the scale and market reach that Apple has.

  • timuckun  16 hours ago

    Does google collect more information than Apple, Meta, Microsoft, OpenAI, Palantir etc?

    I don't think so. Collecting data is a baseline for all those companies, you have to rank the evil they do with that data.

  • fc417fc802  12 hours ago

    > they get away with theft, copyright infringement, monopoly, and more

    Citation needed. Did you forget that Google owns YouTube among other things? They don't need to torrent training data when people voluntarily upload an endless stream of it to their platform.

  • physix  16 hours ago

    What's so evil about Netflix?

    They use Cassandra and make cool series ever now and then, like Love Death Robots. :-)

    • kaladin-jasnah  16 hours ago

      DRM is probably something that people take issue with, and it's probably harder to buy physical media that you "own" more than streaming services.

luxuryballs  6 hours ago

ah yes Google, the less evil company that manipulates search results to facilitate their desired election outcomes, lmao

tw04  21 hours ago

> They put fing ads in an os among other atrocities.

As did Ubuntu.

>I put them behind meta on the evilness meter but i think google is less evil which speaks volumes.

Huh? The same google caught tracking your every move even if you opted out? The Google that seems to serve ads based on your conversations if anyone in the room has an Android phone? The Google that actively tries to kill any and all ad blockers?

They aren’t even close…