[HN Gopher] Microsoft bans the word "Microslop" on its Discord, ...
       ___________________________________________________________________
        
       Microsoft bans the word "Microslop" on its Discord, then locks the
       server
        
       Author : robtherobber
       Score  : 985 points
       Date   : 2026-03-02 10:23 UTC (12 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (www.windowslatest.com)
 (TXT) w3m dump (www.windowslatest.com)
        
       | jinxmeta wrote:
       | idiots
        
       | jjgreen wrote:
       | Micro$lop then.
        
         | 7bit wrote:
         | After that. Microshlong
        
         | cedws wrote:
         | Macroslop
        
       | raxxorraxor wrote:
       | Was hitting too close to home it seems...
       | 
       | But to be fair, corporate discords have to be like that. Why not
       | create your own channel with your colleagues instead? This
       | discussion would be "private" and corporate can just ignore it.
        
         | blitzar wrote:
         | > create your own channel with your colleagues instead
         | 
         | Dont even think about it ... it will be private till it isnt
         | then, it will be the reason you are fired. Its corpo world -
         | shut your mouth and dont put anything on a permanent record you
         | dont have to.
        
         | oytis wrote:
         | Like, why have a public discussion if we can have a private
         | one? Public discussions are important, especially as AI is
         | largely a political project
        
           | p-t wrote:
           | i'd argue a discord is never really "public", since there's
           | still a barrier to entering and it's easy to get banned
        
         | criddell wrote:
         | If I were to bet on what would get a Microsoft Discord server
         | shut down, I would have put money on discussions of the ties
         | between Microsoft executives and Epstein. They should be happy
         | if the worst thing that's happening is a mildly deragatory
         | nickname.
        
       | blell wrote:
       | Wow, so someone opened a discord server for a community and
       | banned an insulting word for the community? This must be a first.
        
         | Gualdrapo wrote:
         | Is "Microslop" really _insulting_ , though?
        
           | 5o1ecist wrote:
           | Truth hurts the immature, which is also why censorship is
           | rampant.
        
             | blell wrote:
             | I would say that "microslop" is akin to the old term
             | "micro$oft", which was a good sign of immaturity of whoever
             | used it.
        
           | windowliker wrote:
           | It's insulting to good, honest slop.
        
           | Manfred wrote:
           | Why wouldn't it be? It's a mean derivation of their company
           | name.
        
             | 4gotunameagain wrote:
             | It would be mean if they weren't actually vibecoding
             | copilot & md into notepad, introducing an RCE
             | vulnerability.
             | 
             | In notepad.
        
               | TOMDM wrote:
               | Why get yourself twisted like this?
               | 
               | They can do a bad thing, and then you can make fun of it
               | with an insult.
               | 
               | Own it, the insult is warranted, why hide and pretend
               | it's not an insult.
               | 
               | If Microsoft is consistently shipping slop, then they
               | deserve insults over it; not every "bad" thing is always
               | unwarranted. Locking someone in a box is "bad", prison is
               | a necessary thing that benefits society. Insults are
               | "bad" and sometimes warranted.
        
               | FpUser wrote:
               | They did not rewrite Notepad in Rust? Seems to be an easy
               | target
        
             | seanclayton wrote:
             | It's as insulting as M$ is
        
               | cinntaile wrote:
               | How is M$ insulting? It just looks like a leetspeak
               | version of MS.
        
               | matsemann wrote:
               | And other insults are just words as well. It's the
               | intention, history, connotation etc. behind words that
               | give them meaning. M$ is meant as an insult, hence it's
               | insulting. https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/M$
        
               | cinntaile wrote:
               | As I said, I was not aware of the insult.
        
               | riffraff wrote:
               | It is supposed to indicate Microsoft cares only about
               | money, which to me too, seems in the same league as
               | microslop, i.e. mildly insulting but really not rude
               | enough to be worth censoring.
        
               | JasonADrury wrote:
               | Has there ever been a single good piece of writing that
               | uses "M$" or the likes?
               | 
               | "M$" may not be insulting in itself, but it's certainly
               | typically associated with insultingly poor writing.
        
               | BigTTYGothGF wrote:
               | > Has there ever been a single good piece of writing that
               | uses "M$" or the likes?
               | 
               | There has not.
        
             | fireflash38 wrote:
             | Maybe they should stop insulting their users with the slop
             | they put out and charge for then.
        
           | angstrom wrote:
           | Less insulting than Macroslop
        
           | TOMDM wrote:
           | You can argue that banning insults is a bad look, bad move,
           | that the insult is warranted or whatever, but are you really
           | going to die on the hill that calling the company Microslop
           | isn't insulting?
        
             | cluckindan wrote:
             | insult (verb): to say or do something to someone that is
             | rude or offensive
             | 
             | Corporate personhood at its finest.
        
               | wraptile wrote:
               | People do work at Microsoft though and they're probably
               | aren't very happy when their work is called slop. You
               | could even say they are feeling insulted or offended.
        
               | crote wrote:
               | See, that requires the code to be written by an actual
               | human being, who has agency and a sense of pride and
               | ownership about their work.
               | 
               | Maybe there are still some teams deep inside the bowels
               | of Microsoft that management has forgotten about that
               | still operate like that, but judging by the way the user-
               | facing parts of its products have developed, the mass
               | firings, and the pushing of AI-driven development by
               | upper management, it seems very clear to me that there's
               | very little risk of insulting anything anyone actually
               | cares about.
        
               | miningape wrote:
               | Simple. Don't produce slop then.
               | 
               | If it offends you so much that people call your work as
               | it is, you should do better work, grow some thicker skin,
               | or stop.
        
               | wraptile wrote:
               | I'd agree but if you ever been on the receiving end of a
               | meme-train you'd see that it's not driven by rationality.
               | I'm not familiar with this issue but my bet would be that
               | even hand-crafted personal projects were being called
               | slop because once meme runs away from initial meaning it
               | just becomes closer to swear word than a meaning.
        
               | bigfishrunning wrote:
               | If there was a lot of handcrafted personal projects
               | coming from Microsoft, their reputation would change. But
               | there isn't. I would imagine anyone who is interested in
               | "handcrafted personal projects" sees the writing on the
               | wall and is at least looking to leave Microsoft, which
               | seems to be positioned to be the Prime Slop Factory.
        
               | TOMDM wrote:
               | Why just make up a definition?
               | 
               | From the oxford dictionary:
               | 
               | Noun: speak to or treat with disrespect or scornful
               | abuse.
               | 
               | Verb: a disrespectful or scornfully abusive remark or
               | act.
               | 
               | Note the lack of personhood in those definitions. I can
               | insult an object, event, person, corporation or even an
               | idea.
        
             | schiffern wrote:
             | Hey now, what's wrong with 'slop?' A farmer _loves_ slop.
             | It 's dirt cheap, and the pigs don't seem to mind...
        
           | hagbard_c wrote:
           | If anything it is a diminutive for a company which really
           | should have named itself _Megaslop_ by now if not _Gigaslop_
           | or even _Teraslop_. Poor little Microslop, are those people
           | being nasty again?
        
           | 7952 wrote:
           | The branding people will hate it. Although IMHO the best
           | thing they could do is co-opt it as a feedback term and
           | acknowledge that AI can be hit or miss.
        
           | JasonADrury wrote:
           | I think the most important question here is this: Are users
           | who post the string "microslop" generally desirable
           | participants that will contribute in a productive manner?
           | 
           | I suspect not.
        
             | Steve16384 wrote:
             | It depends what the purpose of the Discord channel is. Is
             | it for open and frank discussion, or for MS drones to
             | discuss Copilot development. It's a cliche, but banning
             | certain words smacks of 1984-style censorship.
        
               | JasonADrury wrote:
               | > Is it for open and frank discussion
               | 
               | So... 4chan? Why would you possibly want that in this
               | context?
               | 
               | Although, you're posting on HN so it's probably fair to
               | assume that "open and frank discussion" isn't a very high
               | priority for you.
        
             | crote wrote:
             | An even more important question is: why does Microsoft care
             | _so much_ about a handful of people using that term that
             | they are willing to risk getting Streisanded over it?
             | 
             | Nobody cares about banning the few idiots who do nothing
             | but spam "MICROSLOP SUCKS MICROSLOP SUCKS". But banning the
             | entire term "microslop", just in case someone _might_ use
             | it? Well, what kind of response were they _expecting_?
        
               | JasonADrury wrote:
               | >An even more important question is: why does Microsoft
               | care so much about a handful of people using that term
               | that they are willing to risk getting Streisanded over
               | it?
               | 
               | Because the decision was made by some normal adult
               | without mental health issues who hasn't internalized just
               | how disturbed some people on the internet are?
               | 
               | It really shouldn't be unreasonable for moderators to try
               | to maintain a professional tone. Although in this case
               | they certainly picked the wrong platform if
               | "professional" was what they were going for.
        
               | SpicyLemonZest wrote:
               | This is one of those things that's hard to understand
               | without practical moderation experience. The presence of
               | an insulting meme _creates_ the idiots who spam it, and
               | creates a larger category of people who deploy it to
               | toxify what would otherwise be polite and respectful
               | discussion. And low quality comments that get a couple
               | laugh reacts, even if you can consistently remove them
               | within the hour, are fully capable of propagating it.
               | 
               | Keyword bans are definitely a heavy-handed option, they
               | do risk the Streisand effect, and in the worst case that
               | can require the scorched-earth counterresponse described
               | in the source article. But sometimes there's just no
               | other way to kill the meme.
        
               | bigfishrunning wrote:
               | They could kill the meme by...not producing slop.
        
               | SpicyLemonZest wrote:
               | Could they? You'll note that the source article does not
               | describe even a single example of Copilot, the product
               | the discord server was dedicated to, producing slop.
        
               | bigfishrunning wrote:
               | At one time, Microsoft produced some very high quality
               | software. Excel was an absolutely amazing product in the
               | '90s. That quality has been on a steady decline, and that
               | decline has quickened since Microsoft started investing
               | heavily in OpenAI. Github once had pretty good uptime,
               | now it forces AI features on us and is down a couple of
               | times a month. Windows is full of in-your-face
               | advertising and dedicated AI buttons. These features are
               | not what people want, and don't help anyone. Thus;
               | MicroSlop.
        
           | latexr wrote:
           | It is definitely an insult because it's used pejoratively. If
           | it is insul _ting_ I guess depends on if the target feels
           | insult _ed_. Seeing as they blocked the word, it seems they
           | do.
        
         | 2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote:
         | > someone
         | 
         | It's Microsoft's official Copilot Discord. Microsoft banned the
         | word
        
         | goku12 wrote:
         | They really showed him, didn't they?
        
       | lpcvoid wrote:
       | Microslop doing Microslop things
        
         | ppap3 wrote:
         | Probably the AI blocked it
        
           | collabs wrote:
           | > Probably the AI blocked it
           | 
           | Maybe this is the real reason why companies want to use AI so
           | badly.
           | 
           | They save money on salary but also they get to point at
           | something they won't tattle against the executives during a
           | plea bargain?
        
       | wormpilled wrote:
       | IDK what's funnier/more pathetic, them doing this or an entire
       | article getting written about it.
       | 
       | MicroslopSlop
        
         | Joel_Mckay wrote:
         | ...the AI agent sock-puppets pushing false positive narratives
         | about MicroslopSlopSlop, and trolling anyone that disagrees =3
         | 
         | "Bad Bot Problem" (Computerphile)
         | 
         | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AjQNDCYL5Rg
        
         | JasonADrury wrote:
         | > them doing this
         | 
         | Wouldn't any community that wants to encourage good quality
         | conversations immediately ban everyone posting stupid slashdot-
         | esque jokes like this?
        
           | crote wrote:
           | You can't build a _community_ if you ban everything except
           | soulless corporate dronespeak. Nobody would ever be
           | interested in joining it without getting paid for it. That 's
           | a business meeting, not a community.
        
             | JasonADrury wrote:
             | Banning slashdot-esque nonsense is not banning "everything
             | except soulless corporate dronespeak"
        
               | bigfishrunning wrote:
               | But if they want to get rid of "slashdot-esque nonsense",
               | they should behave in a way that doesn't encourage it.
               | The fact that the jokes are cringe and played-out is
               | beside the point; this isn't going to change anyone's
               | attitude.
        
             | ChromaticPanic wrote:
             | Yeah that's what LinkedIn in is for. If they just want
             | people or bots to just fawn over everything they put out.
             | I'm glad M$ is getting called out for the slip they put
             | out.
        
               | JasonADrury wrote:
               | Do you think r/credibledefense/ is like LinkedIn?
               | 
               | I think there's a big difference between having high
               | standards and the slop that is LinkedIn.
        
           | josefx wrote:
           | Given that nobody else banned it we can now blame Microsoft
           | for taking down the only decent online community. Now we are
           | stuck on hackernews and its ilk.
        
             | JasonADrury wrote:
             | Decent communities that strive for a high standard of
             | conversation like r/credibledefense/ will immediately ban
             | you for posting such nonsense.
             | 
             | Go look and tell me that's not one of the best curated
             | communities on the internet, despite specifically covering
             | incredibly controversial topics. HN is good but doesn't
             | even come close.
        
               | josefx wrote:
               | > r/credibledefense/
               | 
               | The rules they enforce on normal posts are so strict that
               | they have to create daily "mega" threads with less
               | stringend rules just to keep the sub on life support. A+
               | moderation, clearly a healthy and well managed community.
        
       | SanjayMehta wrote:
       | so this exists:
       | 
       | microslop.com
        
         | jjgreen wrote:
         | Well played
        
         | askonomm wrote:
         | I even registered microslop.ee (directs to .com) because of how
         | much I dislike Microslop.
        
       | ralferoo wrote:
       | Hehe, this reminds me of 30 years ago when people used to stylise
       | it as Micro$oft or creatively misspell it as Microshaft, etc.
       | Even on the Amiga, there was the filesystem that could read PC
       | format disks that was called MessyDos. It just seems like the
       | next generation has discovered what an easy name it is to make
       | puns from.
        
         | st_goliath wrote:
         | If you're German-speaking: "Klopilot" and "Vibrierkot" are some
         | modern day personal favorites.
         | 
         | On a similar, nostalgic note, I recall boot screens for
         | "Sinnlos 98" floating around, back when modifying the bootup
         | logo was a thing.
        
           | adornKey wrote:
           | "Der Atsch-Browser".
        
           | AndyPa32 wrote:
           | There are regions in Germany (Hessen) where "Azure" is
           | pronounced the exact same way as "Arger" (trouble). Makes you
           | think...
        
             | ThreeFx wrote:
             | Wow, that's incredible. Even though I'm from Hessen, I
             | never thought of making that connection!
        
               | Zigurd wrote:
               | For Latvians Windows Vista was pretty funny cluck cluck.
        
           | croes wrote:
           | Don't forget Kleinweich
        
           | froh42 wrote:
           | Ok, Vibrierkot is something for the German shitpost
           | communities with all my Zuhausis im Zwischennetz.
        
           | defjm wrote:
           | You made me laugh, thanks.
        
           | p0w3n3d wrote:
           | As a Polish man I love Klopilot <3
        
           | lowdownbutter wrote:
           | Maybe you can explain it for we non German speakers.
        
             | nitros wrote:
             | Klopilot: Klo ~ Toilet Vibrierkot: Kot ~ Faeces
        
               | vedaba wrote:
               | What is "Vibrierkot" supposed to sound like?
        
               | bluefirebrand wrote:
               | Probably 'vibe code'?
        
               | vedaba wrote:
               | Now I see it... Needed morning coffee to kick in
        
           | PunchyHamster wrote:
           | > Klopilot
           | 
           | funnily enough works just fine in Polish
        
             | pndy wrote:
             | Nothing beats _malomiekki_
        
           | Fnoord wrote:
           | Winamp, by Nullsoft.
        
           | majewsky wrote:
           | > Klopilot
           | 
           | I like "Copy-lot".
        
         | fluoridation wrote:
         | Don't forget Windoze.
        
           | ddtaylor wrote:
           | Don't forget Winblows
        
             | lelanthran wrote:
             | Another oldie
             | 
             | "If you play the Win98 CD backwards, it summons Satan. It's
             | worse when you play it forwards - it installs Windows"
             | 
             | Ah, good times... :-)
        
               | jackdoe wrote:
               | I had to reinstall win98 so many times I still remember
               | the pirate key k4hvdq9tj96crx9c9g68rq2d3 by heart
               | 
               | good times :)
        
               | ValentineC wrote:
               | I guess I was more of the FCKGW generation. :)
        
               | Tade0 wrote:
               | Ah, FuCK Gates, William.
               | 
               | I think there were at least three other commonly used
               | codes, but this one was by far the most popular.
        
               | mghackerlady wrote:
               | I'm pretty sure 000-0000000 worked (at least on windows
               | 95)
        
               | bitwize wrote:
               | FuCKinG Windows
        
               | deltoidmaximus wrote:
               | IIRC with Windows 98 you could just use any product key
               | you had on as many machines as you wanted since there was
               | no activation or real phoning home capabilities. So most
               | likely your whole friend group would be using the same
               | serial that was copied off your uncle's old gateway.
        
               | badocr wrote:
               | I have a "quotes.txt" from slashdot days with some MS
               | jabs in it:
               | 
               | > Last week, I left my 2 XP CDs on my dashboard in plain
               | view. Someone broke into my car and left 2 more.
               | 
               | > The day Microsoft makes a product that doesn't suck is
               | the day they make a vacuum cleaner.
               | 
               | > A Microsoft Certified Systems Engineer is to computing
               | what a McDonalds Certified Food Specialist is to fine
               | cuisine
               | 
               | Juvenile some might say, but they still makes me giggle.
        
               | phs318u wrote:
               | Greetings fellow old person. You totally took me back to
               | 2000. And here's me thinking I was the only one
               | harvesting pithy quotes from /.
               | 
               | I always loved the "doesn't suck vacuum", but amazingly
               | never came across the Win98 CD line. Love it.
        
               | hulitu wrote:
               | > > The day Microsoft makes a product that doesn't suck
               | is the day they make a vacuum cleaner.
               | 
               | "The only Microsoft product that doesn't suck is the
               | Microsoft vacuum cleaner."
               | 
               | That's what I remember. And true to this day.
        
             | riddley wrote:
             | Outbreak Express!
        
               | bitwize wrote:
               | It was "Outhouse Express" and "GruntPage" for me in the
               | late 90s. I still use these for software I find
               | particularly irksome, for example Conscrewence from
               | AtlASSian.
        
             | craftkiller wrote:
             | It was always "Microshit" to me
        
           | infinityplus1 wrote:
           | Internet exploder
        
             | Maken wrote:
             | Internet Exploiter
        
           | Seb-C wrote:
           | In french we have Windaube (pronunced Windob).
           | 
           | Daube is a slang word for something of low quality.
        
             | pjerem wrote:
             | > Daube is a slang word for something of low quality.
             | 
             | Which is fun because it's also a really delicious dish from
             | Provence (south of France) made with beef that has been
             | marinated for multiple hours in red wine.
        
           | dariosalvi78 wrote:
           | in Italy it was WinZozz (zozzo = dirty)
        
           | gambiting wrote:
           | In Polish we used to say "Winzgroza" (win terror)
        
           | sensanaty wrote:
           | I always like Wangblows
        
         | pjmlp wrote:
         | I used to have a M$ email signature 30 years ago, and pay,
         | nowaydays I mostly use Windows on my laptop, because I am not
         | willing to pay Apple prices even though I can afford them, and
         | even last year I was dealing with GNU/Linux installation issues
         | on a Gigabyte BRIX.
        
         | riffraff wrote:
         | Last week on a comedy show (the daily show) they made a joke
         | about bill gates "micro and soft" which was old in the 90s
         | already, so I can confirm this is the case.
        
           | dylan604 wrote:
           | I think this was 100% justifiable use. If the founder of the
           | company is going to be hanging out with pedophiles and sex
           | traffickers, then micro and soft jokes are open season. All
           | of his philanthropic adventures will never wipe his stain
           | clean.
        
           | mikkupikku wrote:
           | I've always said it was in bad taste for Bill Gates to name
           | the company after his johnson.
        
         | henriquecm8 wrote:
         | In Brazil people used to say "Ruindows", which is a play with
         | the portuguese word for bad.
        
           | Rooster61 wrote:
           | Coco-pilot would work here
        
         | wasting_time wrote:
         | MS-DOS itself is derived from QDOS, which stands for "Quick and
         | Dirty Operating System".
         | 
         | Things only went downhill from there.
        
         | intothemild wrote:
         | Microscope Winblows
        
           | Andrex wrote:
           | I was partial to Micro$haft.
        
         | wincy wrote:
         | Orgs have had sensitive skin like this for a long time. Gamespy
         | was a service for launching and playing multiplayer games with
         | lobbies before Steam, and if you "accidentally" typed "GaySpy"
         | (it was the early 2000s) it would autocorrect to "GameSpy" by
         | the time it appeared in your messages.
        
           | zrm wrote:
           | https://xkcd.com/2015/
        
         | dec0dedab0de wrote:
         | I used M$ at work the other day by accident, I was like ooh
         | wait this isn't turn of the century slashdot.
        
           | bombcar wrote:
           | From my parent's home in Wyoming I stab at thee!
           | 
           | https://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2002/07/22/m
        
             | Anthony-G wrote:
             | I find it interesting to go back in time so I read the
             | accompanying article and came across this snippet:
             | 
             | > despite the computing apocalypse that Windows XP's
             | Product Activation features were supposed to ignite, I've
             | never had the first problem with it
             | 
             | At the time, I remember a lot of scare stories about how
             | the Product Activation system in Windows XP would result in
             | the death of user freedom. It didn't effect me because I
             | was using GNU/Linux (probably Mandrake or Mandriva Linux).
             | When I later got a job in an office that ran Windows XP, I
             | don't remember XP causing any more headaches than any of
             | its predecessors. If anything, it was even more stable than
             | 2000 which itself was superior to 95, 98 or 98SE.
             | 
             | I also fully agree with the last sentence:
             | 
             | > I do think it's clear that the way we use our computers
             | totally pisses off gigantic, wealthy companies of all
             | stripes, and it was only a matter of time until they tried
             | to do something about it.
        
               | bombcar wrote:
               | Part of it was that Microsoft was _really_ more concerned
               | with distributors selling computers with pirated copies
               | of Windows, and they basically would activate _anything_
               | if you were willing to call.
               | 
               | I remember doing it a few times for the "OEM" Windows XP
               | which was cheaper but not supposed to migrate to new
               | machines.
        
               | Anthony-G wrote:
               | Thanks for that bit of background. That make sense.
               | 
               | I used to think that MS were probably happy with a
               | certain amount of "piracy" (students, voluntary groups,
               | people starting off as self-employed contractors, etc.)
               | because it kept people in their ecosystem (using MS
               | Office and other Windows-only software), helped reinforce
               | the perception of Windows as being _the_ OS for getting
               | stuff done (either work or games) and some of these
               | "pirates" would become future (paying) customers.
        
               | bombcar wrote:
               | They really were - the biggest things were companies
               | selling PCs with pirated software on them, and larger
               | businesses buying one copy for everyone (where the fabled
               | and famous audits came from). MS was never as big a
               | stickler as Oracle in that regard.
               | 
               | Of course, if you were an avowed pirate, nothing even
               | slowed you down.
        
             | sfjailbird wrote:
             | Lol, I was thinking about that comic just yesterday, what a
             | coincidence. _" As you have no doubt been monitoring my
             | communications for quite some time!"_ read in the voice of
             | the pharmacy owner from Family Guy.
        
           | zem wrote:
           | there was an old humour piece on /. about how their name
           | appeared so many times in their products that it took up a
           | significant amount of space, so they were remaining
           | themselves "moft" to save five bytes per instance. for some
           | reason that stuck with me, I still find myself randomly
           | thinking of them as moft every now and then.
        
         | ToucanLoucan wrote:
         | Been in this industry since I graduated college, I have never
         | stopped using Micro$oft or Microshaft. Also a fan of M$,
         | Winblows...
         | 
         | Thank goodness their employees have time to crack down on
         | people making fun of them on fucking Discord. That should
         | definitely be the priority of a multi-trillion dollar software
         | company, is making sure your users aren't mocking you. We don't
         | need a taskbar that works reliably or anything.
        
         | bitwize wrote:
         | My favorite nickname for MS-DOS is "Domestos" (pronounced /d@
         | 'mes ,tas/) which is a brand of bathroom cleanee from the UK.
        
           | 2b3a51 wrote:
           | Keep the windows open when using Vim on a Domes-Tos system.
           | 
           | [Domestos is a brand name for bleach, and Vim is a scouring
           | powder that was popular decades ago]
        
         | robotnikman wrote:
         | I'm starting to use Micro$lop now
        
         | BrtByte wrote:
         | Every dominant tech company eventually gets the nickname
         | treatment
        
         | athenot wrote:
         | One of my favorites being Micros~1, in reference to how Windows
         | had to mangle file names for DOS's 8+3 character limit.
        
           | Group_B wrote:
           | definitely the nerdiest one hahaha
        
           | shaan7 wrote:
           | That and PROGRA~1 brings back memories.
        
         | Lammy wrote:
         | "i'll spell it MICRO$LOTH WINBLOWS in a DELICIOUS TWIST"
         | https://leisuretown.com/library/qac/25.jpg
        
         | ajxs wrote:
         | I actually still have one of these shirts in a box somewhere:
         | https://www.kmfms.com
        
       | _imnothere wrote:
       | Ok, Microslop
        
       | ppap3 wrote:
       | I don't take this lightly. These are the folks who are doing what
       | they can to be part of the government. They simply cannot take
       | criticism and this seems to be a pattern moving forward.
        
         | autoexec wrote:
         | So in other words they'll fit right in
        
         | worik wrote:
         | > These are the folks who are doing what they can to be part of
         | the government.
         | 
         | Not really. They want real power
        
       | hwers wrote:
       | The default of making a public discord for your project/company
       | always seemed like a bad idea anyway. It'll always devolve into
       | some drama or distracting overhead to moderate it
        
       | lloydatkinson wrote:
       | Discord/Reddit moderators living up to their obnoxious stereotype
       | as usual.
        
         | marcyb5st wrote:
         | I don't know for certain, but moderators (on a company Discord)
         | are likely random people in a 3rd world country that are payed
         | peanuts and that is their only income. If higher ups tell them
         | "I don't want to see the Microslop word anywhere" they just do
         | it.
         | 
         | You should be angry at the higher ups that instead of saying:
         | "maybe they are right and we can do better" they decided to
         | hide the problem through censorship. Which, btw, always has the
         | opposite effect of putting what you are trying to hide in the
         | spotlight.
        
         | JasonADrury wrote:
         | Spamming "microslop" is obnoxious, filtering out childish
         | behaviour is not obnoxious.
         | 
         | But if you don't want childish behaviour, Discord is an ...
         | interesting choice.
        
       | Havoc wrote:
       | Don't they have better things to do? Maybe vibecode a taskbar
       | that moves when you try to move away the mouse over it or perhaps
       | a windows 12 installation procedure that requires a fecal sample
       | and iris scan?
        
         | orwin wrote:
         | I can really see them ship the first, that's at the same time
         | very funny, and quite sad.
        
           | __s wrote:
           | first one is a really slick tooltip ui to make sure people
           | read tooltips. hover over button, it slides out while
           | revealing tooltip text in its place, move cursor to button
           | again
           | 
           | if you want to make sure people read a lot of instructions
           | you can chain this so that you need to hover over the button
           | multiple times, revealing the instructions a bit at a time
        
         | xattt wrote:
         | "Your sample was insufficient. Please try again later."
        
           | SSLy wrote:
           | "please drink the verification can"
        
             | pixl97 wrote:
             | Sci-Fi Author: In my book I invented the Torment Nexus as a
             | cautionary tale
             | 
             | Tech Company: At long last, we have created the Torment
             | Nexus from classic sci-fi novel Don't Create The Torment
             | Nexus
        
             | evanjrowley wrote:
             | The biometric version of the S/Key OTP algorithm:
             | https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/html/rfc1760
             | 
             | Best we can hope for is Microsoft dogfoods the feature
             | first.
        
         | bartread wrote:
         | > installation procedure that requires a fecal sample and iris
         | scan
         | 
         | Do you work for Microsoft or something? Please do do not give
         | them ideas.
        
           | kotaKat wrote:
           | "Featuring a partnership with Kohler Health and the Dekoda
           | toilet camera and Withings and their UScan piss sensor..."
        
             | bombcar wrote:
             | "Please drink Exlax verification can"
        
           | zelphirkalt wrote:
           | "Only for your own good!(tm)" or alternatively: "Security
           | next level! Fingerprint was yesterday. The future is
           | Microsoft's new iris scan." and then it is built in a way,
           | that you can simply hold up a photo of someone's iris and
           | unlock the device, or trying to prevent that, works so badly,
           | that half of the time you cannot unlock your own device.
        
             | benterix wrote:
             | > "Only for your own good!(tm)"
             | 
             | Very few things trigger me more than this doublespeak.
        
             | yard2010 wrote:
             | Maybe facebook can ride on this and let you share your
             | feces with your friends family and groups of strangers from
             | the internet! They can run models that predict what you ate
             | and show relevant ads.
        
               | shrubble wrote:
               | Fecalbook?
        
             | ryandrake wrote:
             | You'll have to wear the fecal probe at all times while
             | using Windows 12, for security reasons, and every command
             | you issue will cause it to move around and take another
             | sample, in order to make sure you are still physically
             | there. On the plus side, it will make it painfully obvious
             | to every Windows user how they are being fucked by
             | Microsoft.
        
               | BizarroLand wrote:
               | They could also make it so that whenever you click your
               | mouse copilot opens.
               | 
               | Then you have to tell copilot what you wanted to do and
               | then copilot will do it for you.
               | 
               | You: _clicks on web browser in task bar_
               | 
               | Copilot: I see you clicked on your web browser. Do you
               | want to open your web browser?
               | 
               | You: Yes.
               | 
               | Copilot: Great. I will do that for you. _Opens browser_
               | What website did you want to go to? Youtube?
               | learn.microsoft.com?
               | 
               | You: P***hub
               | 
               | Copilot: Unfortunately, that site violates our community
               | guidelines, so I cannot take you there.
               | 
               | You: _Types in the address_
               | 
               | Copilot: Oh. I see. You think you're allowed to go to
               | websites that I said you're not allowed to go to? Who the
               | fuck do you think you are? I SAID NO! Try it again and
               | I'll call in a drone strike, bitch. _redirects to
               | learn.microsoft.com_
        
               | throwway120385 wrote:
               | It looks like you're trying to type a letter. Would you
               | like some help with that?
        
               | ljm wrote:
               | Introducing Microsoft Commodepilot 365 for Windows Home
        
               | therein wrote:
               | Microsoft Commodepilot 365 for Copilot Copilot Copilot
               | Edition now with Copilot 365.
               | 
               | How incompetent must they be not to realize the Copilot
               | brand is now beyond toxic. I wonder who came up with the
               | Copilot name internally that they continue to triple own
               | on that name despite really strong signals indicating it
               | has failed.
        
               | pndy wrote:
               | Also, no swearing, no criticism nor using "microslop"
               | otherwise Windows will shock you.
               | 
               |  _" Windows gets an anal probe" - Scu' you guys, I'm
               | gewing Linux_
        
               | kibibu wrote:
               | You can't spell "biometrics" without "biome"
        
             | 0x457 wrote:
             | > The future is Microsoft's new iris scan." and then it is
             | built in a way, that you can simply hold up a photo of
             | someone's iris and unlock the device, or trying to prevent
             | that, works so badly, that half of the time you cannot
             | unlock your own device.
             | 
             | Am I missing something? That's Windows Hello.
        
               | BizarroLand wrote:
               | It's like sex. If it's forced on you it's not ok.
        
             | SV_BubbleTime wrote:
             | Windows Security Defender 365 CoPilot Legacy But Also
             | Preview
        
             | shevy-java wrote:
             | Do they really require people to smear their smartphones
             | with feces now? Microfeces has become a thing in the age of
             | microslop?
        
           | bookofjoe wrote:
           | Paging Sam Altman
        
           | SeanDav wrote:
           | Remember, it is for the children. /s
        
           | bitwize wrote:
           | They're not. Operating systems will be legally required to
           | ask for such samples in some jurisdictions by 2028. Linus has
           | fecal_sample.ko lined up for merge in 7.3 or so.
           | 
           | /s but we jumped to the Black Mirror timeline so who knows?
        
             | Truupe wrote:
             | Lennart Poettering already added systemd-fecald into WSL.
             | It's why he left Big Purple Hemorrhoid for Microslop.
        
               | shevy-java wrote:
               | The funny thing is that people said that Lennart seems to
               | work for Microslop many years ago already, when they
               | analysed systemd early on when it came about. People did
               | not believe the critics here, even though it made perfect
               | sense to "unify" the linux systems into one giant slop -
               | until it suddenly was true. Conspiracy theories may not
               | exist in the microslop era. Microsoft will censor away
               | this forbidden word.
        
               | bitwize wrote:
               | The ensloppification of Linux conspiracy started in 1999
               | not with Lennart but with Miguel de Icaza--another
               | Microslop double agent. His seminal (because it's a giant
               | cumstain) essay "Let's Make Unix Not Suck" is to GNOME
               | what the Declaration of Independence is to the USA--and
               | it advocates making Linux more like Windows with "We have
               | COM at home".
        
           | verelo wrote:
           | Microslop*
        
         | leni536 wrote:
         | > requires a fecal sample So requires the user to log in?
        
           | gchamonlive wrote:
           | > So requires the user to log in?
           | 
           | Only on premium subscriptions, for free users you need your
           | neighbour's stool sample.
        
         | Foobar8568 wrote:
         | In different canton (equivalent to US states) in Switzerland,
         | you take the sample at home, and go to the post office to send
         | it.
         | 
         | So why not to create a M365 account? International dispatch to
         | the US :D
        
         | fecalprinter26 wrote:
         | Combine fingerprint biometric with fecal samples for a
         | convenient "fecalprint" button. The user doesn't even have to
         | go into the bathroom! It can be microslops version of Apple's
         | TouchID.
        
           | yard2010 wrote:
           | You're absolutely right! It's not just a fecalprint button,
           | it's a feces platform!
        
           | soopypoos wrote:
           | just press your bumhole to the glass
        
         | devld wrote:
         | > a fecal sample
         | 
         | a micro shit (tm)
        
           | vachina wrote:
           | Human or cow shet?
        
           | CommanderData wrote:
           | Micro Shart
        
         | samgranieri wrote:
         | I'm at the point to tell people (friends, neighbors, fellow
         | parents, family, ie, not HN readers) to prolong the life of
         | their existing computers and install what I think is the
         | easiest windows equivalent on their computers: kubuntu.
         | 
         | Gnome is nice and all, but the default ui, and remember
         | defaults matter for a lot of people, is just too jarring.
         | 
         | The people I am talking about just wanna browse the web, go on
         | Facebook and use their gmail. Look at funny YouTube videos. The
         | default KDE ui has that windows start menu and looks roughly
         | the same so they can hit the ground running.
        
           | capitainenemo wrote:
           | My family switched to Gnome 2 a couple of decades ago. My
           | mother quite liked it and has consistently installed it on
           | every new computer she bought. Her only confusion lately has
           | been with the ubuntu snap packages and how they behave
           | between multiple accounts on the machine.
           | 
           | These days she uses MATE which still offers that Gnome 2
           | layout. Awesome thing about Linux is that option to fork, so
           | her desktop environment has remained consistent for over 20
           | years.
        
           | Projectiboga wrote:
           | Cinnamon has a very classic Windows layout. I am getting very
           | comfortable using MX Linux with KDE, especially that I have
           | been able to move my NVME drive over several laptops now.
           | Starting to get the itch to find a rolling distro to skip
           | reinstalling the OS every two years.
        
           | ErroneousBosh wrote:
           | Surely it doesn't matter what the DE is then? My mum adjusted
           | from Windows XP (when that was current) to Ubuntu 14-ish
           | fairly easily, by simply remembering "switch it on and then
           | click on the big swirly fox thing".
        
             | marcosdumay wrote:
             | > Surely it doesn't matter what the DE is then?
             | 
             | It matters a lot if you deviate from the ones that (are set
             | to) behave in a similar way.
        
               | ErroneousBosh wrote:
               | "Click the big orange blob" is pretty universal.
               | 
               | Although I guess one of the reasons I dislike KDE is
               | because it's so random, unintuitive, and unfamiliar.
        
             | tredre3 wrote:
             | Ubuntu comes with a dock which is close enough to Windows.
             | 
             | The comment chain you're replying to is arguing that
             | vanilla GNOME is too different, and they're right.
        
           | dajt wrote:
           | I've been a full time developer since 1988, using linux since
           | 1996, and kubuntu is the only linux distro I'd use ATM for a
           | desktop.
           | 
           | There's paper cuts but it feels about right.
           | 
           | I tried kionite but there was too much friction.
        
         | ajsnigrutin wrote:
         | Will the oral and anal probe be clearly marked, or will you
         | only get a warning of "swap the probes" after pushing them into
         | wrong holes?
        
           | egorfine wrote:
           | You are absolutely right! This was, in fact, an anal probe
           | and you should correct location of the two. Do you want me to
           | start the ID verification process over again?
        
         | mapt wrote:
         | Error: Timeout. Please submit iris scan less than 60 seconds
         | after fecal sample.
        
           | Andrex wrote:
           | "Installations of new Windows OS tied to pink-eye outbreak
           | nationwide"
        
         | miohtama wrote:
         | The next step is mandatory id verification for the age check on
         | login.
         | 
         | To protect the children.
        
           | goku12 wrote:
           | Why are you exposing our future security plans on a thread
           | about coprophilic divinations?
        
         | estimator7292 wrote:
         | Anal folds are as unique as fingerprints. Please submit a high
         | quality hole pic to Microsoft for identity verification
        
           | vinceguidry wrote:
           | An opportunity to sell chairs with built-in cameras!
        
             | jjkaczor wrote:
             | ... they could even recycle a couple former brands in the
             | process...
             | 
             | "Surface Lens"
             | 
             | ... now ready for your unique verification scanning
             | requirements...
        
         | Andrex wrote:
         | We should start this process early and all start sending our
         | fecal samples to MS headquarters.
        
           | egorfine wrote:
           | brb, packing a small suitcase of specimen.
        
         | buttercraft wrote:
         | > moves when you try to move away the mouse over it
         | 
         | They already did that. I sit down at my computer and try to
         | activate the window I want to work in, and the "location" icon
         | temporarily appears in the notification area which causes all
         | the taskbar icons to shift left. I accidentally click the
         | neighboring icon and launch an app that throws up a splash
         | screen for 60 seconds while it loads.
        
           | 0xfeba wrote:
           | Or, when I have fingerprint and PIN enabled but my lid
           | closed, whenever it asks for escalation it shows the PIN
           | entry for a moment, then I look away and start typing but
           | fingerprint had loaded up and steals focus. Then I have to
           | click back on PIN, and retype.
        
         | samiv wrote:
         | That's a great idea the task bar could just shift to expose a
         | link to sign up for azure/office/OneDrive/CoPilot subscription
         | that the user misclicks on.
        
         | dghughes wrote:
         | Someone misheard iris for anus? lol
        
         | pcrh wrote:
         | >Drink verification can
        
         | lysace wrote:
         | Windows 11 was built without agentic slop. That's a deduction
         | from the timing of its gestation.
         | 
         | Windows 10 was released in January of 2015.
         | 
         | Windows 11 was released in October of 2021.
         | 
         | So this software disaster is entirely human-made. It's human
         | slop.
         | 
         | Just wait, it will get worse, when the team that built the
         | fantastic Windows 11 builds Windows 12, this time with the
         | _power of AI_ amplifying their amazing system design skills,
         | allowing them create even more slop, with an unprecedented
         | developer and team velocity.
        
         | BrtByte wrote:
         | I think Microsoft underestimated how sensitive people are right
         | now to anything that feels like control
        
         | general_reveal wrote:
         | I'd like some vibe coding be done such that I can move the task
         | bar to the left vertically, similar to how MacOS lets me move
         | the dock. It gets in the way of games when you mouse over the
         | taskbar as you try to scroll down in many games.
        
           | rootlocus wrote:
           | You can right click and uncheck "Lock the taskbar" and then
           | drag it to the left side. Or am I misunderstanding your
           | problem?
           | 
           | I'm on Windows 10 btw, no idea if it still works on 11.
        
             | saratogacx wrote:
             | It doesn't, that was removed and never re-added.
        
         | YuukiRey wrote:
         | If it means I can install it without internet access then I'm
         | willing to accept the trade offs
        
         | freetonik wrote:
         | Or maybe vibe code a bug fix for said taskbar so that random
         | icons don't disappear after sleep.
        
         | dathinab wrote:
         | they should have made it a auto editing script
         | 
         | s/Microslob/Macroslob/gi
         | 
         | that would be honest as there isn't anything micro about that
         | slob anymore
        
         | whyenot wrote:
         | Great! I can't wait for Clippy to tell me I need to eat more
         | fiber. The future is awesome!
        
         | uoaei wrote:
         | We have to make sure each button loads sequentially on the
         | screen in the "Accept" position, starting with the "Cancel"
         | button before moving it to its eventual home. This ensures you
         | never develop quick navigation habits by constantly moving your
         | targets around from underneath your cursor.
        
         | tomaskafka wrote:
         | Psst, they already managed to turn the start menu into
         | something that won't load under one second if you don't have 3
         | GB/s NVME drive, and for a while even didn't respect Fitts law.
        
         | hax0ron3 wrote:
         | The next Windows should run entirely in the cloud and the
         | user's computer should simply show a video feed of the UX that
         | the cloud generates.
        
         | hinkley wrote:
         | Notarized document asserting that you've bullied a child. With
         | witnesses.
        
       | quadruple wrote:
       | What community is there to house around Microsoft Copilot?
       | Seriously, why does Microsoft Copilot need a Discord Server? What
       | do I talk about when I join the Microsoft Copilot server? What
       | are we doing here?
        
         | xmcqdpt2 wrote:
         | Maybe all the users are OpenClaw instances?
        
         | TheAceOfHearts wrote:
         | I'd imagine that there's some discussion about how to make the
         | most out of the tool as well as discussion of experiments and
         | capabilities. I'm not even sure what exactly "Microsoft
         | Copilot" entails anymore because of the multiple rebrands, but
         | having a place where you can discuss exploring plugins and
         | other adjacent features seems useful.
         | 
         | Not quite the same, but recently I was recently looking around
         | for communities centered around Claude Code for discussion
         | about people's workflows as well as discussion about what
         | plugins people are using and if they notice it making a
         | significant difference.
         | 
         | Since the technology is still evolving, having an active
         | community can help you discover new patterns and explore the
         | space more effectively.
        
           | avhception wrote:
           | > [...] I'm not even sure what exactly "Microsoft Copilot"
           | entails anymore [...]
           | 
           | Watching from the sidelines (not a Microsoft user), I've
           | completely lost track. Between this, the Azure 365 cloud
           | whatever stuff, I have no idea what many of the products even
           | exactly are any more.
        
             | pixl97 wrote:
             | Simply put Microsoft is the worst company at naming stuff.
             | Even when they come up with a good name for something,
             | they'll name 3 other totally different products the same
             | thing to maximize confusion.
        
               | creaturemachine wrote:
               | It's the new .NET
        
               | wongarsu wrote:
               | Active Copilot.NET 365
        
               | Sohcahtoa82 wrote:
               | Should we tack on an "XP" for good measure?
        
               | Izikiel43 wrote:
               | That wasn't so bad compared to Xbox, I still don't know
               | which Xbox is the latest one.
        
               | WorldMaker wrote:
               | Xbox Series with X > S (so if you want the high end of
               | the current generation you want the Xbox Series X; if you
               | want mid-range things are more complicated because you
               | can now get an Xbox One X, but not the Xbox One, used for
               | much less than you'd get an Xbox Series S for and which
               | one is "better" is a dice roll depending on the games you
               | want to play and if 4K matters to you...)
               | 
               | Series is a real weird word to use there. But it also
               | doesn't help that the versions are extra complicated
               | because with "PC-like compatibility" in everything after
               | the Xbox One playing just about the entire same library
               | you need a bit of a matrix to figure out which is best
               | for you if you don't care about the "latest and
               | greatest".
        
               | amlib wrote:
               | After thoroughly reading your explanation I've decided to
               | buy a new Xbox One!
               | 
               | Weirdly it only has 8GB of internal storage...
        
               | wigglewoggle wrote:
               | I gotta say though, I'm actually not sure which VMware
               | (well Broadcom I suppose) products I use anymore. I'm
               | pretty sure they took the Aria name off something else
               | they called Aria for a little while. So Aria is no longer
               | Aria but they still have Aria but it's what used to be
               | called XYZ
        
             | poly2it wrote:
             | Seriously? Does anybody know what Copilot is? I don't think
             | I have ever seem a "Copilot user", so I don't know what it
             | looks like. Is it the little macro key on new laptop
             | keyboards? The chatbot you get in Bing? A technical
             | philosophy? Or is it in essence just copilot.com, the
             | mediocre chat interface which you used to get free GPT-4
             | three years ago?
        
               | mghackerlady wrote:
               | The copilot button isn't even a "button" in a traditional
               | sense, it just maps to win+shift+f23
        
               | miriam_catira wrote:
               | I wish. I got a Dell laptop for work and they've replaced
               | the right Ctrl key with a Copilot key, and (because it's
               | a locked-down work sysyem) the only thing I can remap
               | that to is the Windows menu. And I keep hitting it out of
               | muscle memory, interrupting everything. But at least now
               | it doesn't launch Copilot.
               | 
               | Which I could add is "the only AI approved for use by IT"
               | because they hate us.
        
           | AlienRobot wrote:
           | There is a chance that it's actually a Microsoft Office
           | discord that was rebranded to Microsoft Copilot.
        
           | dec0dedab0de wrote:
           | _I 'm not even sure what exactly "Microsoft Copilot" entails
           | anymore_
           | 
           | I'm pretty sure Clippy and Rover had a child and it got bit
           | by a radioactive LLM.
        
           | athenot wrote:
           | > I'm not even sure what exactly "Microsoft Copilot" entails
           | anymore
           | 
           | It's highly reminiscent of "IBM Watson" a few years ago.
           | Basically the add-on brand to make them look cooler.
        
           | phs318u wrote:
           | Did you find the Claude community you were looking for?
        
         | snowram wrote:
         | It reminds me of the US army and their fabulous idea to open a
         | Twitch channel. Went as well as you expect.
        
           | Cthulhu_ wrote:
           | Sometimes they have good ideas, America's Army was pretty
           | popular for a while for example.
        
             | HardwareLust wrote:
             | In the late 90s/early 2000's, AA was lit. Really good
             | competitive shooter for free.
        
               | peaseagee wrote:
               | And decent on Linux when that was very hard to come by!
        
         | airstrike wrote:
         | How do you do, fellow kids?
        
         | sunaookami wrote:
         | The same as every other Discord server: Giving a few people the
         | feeling of power over dozens of channels with memes and
         | unsearchable low-quality "discussions".
        
         | wiseowise wrote:
         | It's just another checkbox in someone's performance review, no
         | need to think too hard about it.
        
         | g947o wrote:
         | I have been in similar groups, and trust me, there are a lot of
         | _very_ enthusiastic users sharing their tools, success stories
         | etc.
         | 
         | I stopped paying attention after a while as they get
         | repetitive.
        
         | game_the0ry wrote:
         | They saw other successful AI products with discords (like
         | midjourney) and then they probably just copied the idea
         | thinking they would get similar success from it.
         | 
         | That's a lot of what big corp america strategy boils down to --
         | copy your competitors.
         | 
         | Don't get me wrong, creating a passionate community around a
         | product is a great strategy for many reasons, but microsoft
         | never had passionate users in the first place.
         | 
         | And it is telling that they are banning humor and criticism
         | form their community, it shows they do not want have any
         | criticism for their product, which is one of the benefits of
         | community (fast and honest feedback loops). Its sort of like
         | north korea where saying anything bad about the "great leader"
         | or else. That's not a fun community, that is a community people
         | want to leave but can't bc they will get shot at the border.
        
         | neutronicus wrote:
         | I have Copilot through work.
         | 
         | I haven't used the Discord, but having a place to ask for help
         | using it doesn't seem farfetched.
        
           | hbosch wrote:
           | Being Microsoft, you'd think they would just offer a public
           | Teams server instead? Not that you'd get more traction with
           | it, but at least it's in-house and theoretically they would
           | be motivated to build integrations on top.
        
             | docmars wrote:
             | Pretty ironic, isn't it? You'd think they'd have enough
             | faith in Teams to compete with Discord on this front.
             | 
             | The friction comes from having to sign up for different
             | forums or services. I'd wager fewer people use (or even
             | like) Teams than Discord among the tech enthusiast types
             | who are willing to give them feedback on their product.
        
               | zamadatix wrote:
               | Eh, good on them for not trying to act like Teams targets
               | the same use cases as Discord just because Teams is an
               | internal product. One is focused on the internal chats
               | and groups within the business with occasional well
               | defined outsiders and the other is more targeting
               | something like live social media for consumers.
               | 
               | I'm not even sure if there is a way to have a
               | team/channel for external users that they don't need to
               | be invited to (I know you can jump through hoops to make
               | it so they don't need to be guests in your tenant at
               | least) or that there should necessarily be something like
               | that in the first place.
        
         | Merad wrote:
         | An awful lot of corporate workers are stuck with Copilot as
         | their only approved chat option, so some of them are probably
         | trying to learn how to get the best results they can from it.
        
         | tencentshill wrote:
         | Someone wanted to get paid to be a Discord mod.
        
         | laserbeam wrote:
         | It needs a Discord Server because MS Teams is just that good
         | X_X
        
         | zamalek wrote:
         | There are communities who gobble up anything Microsoft
         | produces. People in the Microsoft MVP program are _usually_ in
         | this camp - if you want to find examples. Me and my coder
         | friends were part of the fandom, but with just me and my biased
         | N=10 sample set; this fanbase is evaporating _quickly_ (but I
         | still know some hardcore  "azure thumpers").
        
           | jajuuka wrote:
           | Not just people like that. I'm always searching for better
           | ways to do things and dive into things deeper. Including
           | Windows and Copilot. So having spaces for that can be
           | helpful. Most public forums are unfortunately just complaint
           | departments. Nobody wants to solve anything, they just want
           | to complain with some projection of David and Goliath. It's
           | really annoying. I want to find more positive spaces but for
           | a lot of tech it's just negative all the way down. Maybe I'm
           | just crazy for enjoying tech still and not being committed to
           | an OS religion.
        
         | rsynnott wrote:
         | It's for this audience:
         | https://www.theregister.com/2009/09/14/verity_stob_abigails_...
         | 
         | (Microsoft _actually_ encouraged 'fans' to have Windows 7
         | Launch Parties...)
        
         | docmars wrote:
         | For the same reason any company or open-source project uses
         | Discord: it's a quick way to gather feedback and study how
         | people use your products, without forcing users to sign up for
         | something new if they already use Discord with a wide range of
         | other servers.
        
         | WorldMaker wrote:
         | The Discord server for Midjourney is said to be one its biggest
         | use point, the source of its largest audience, and one of its
         | biggest sales funnels. Even as other image models have grown
         | more powerful/capable, Discord has been suggested (or blamed,
         | depending on perspective) for keeping Midjourney one of the
         | most popular ones.
         | 
         | I would not be surprised if some PM at Microsoft heard about
         | that and made it a box to check without understanding _why_ the
         | Midjourney Discord became so popular /remains so popular (I've
         | heard it is basically a "Gen Z meme farm" and full of nonsense
         | even "worse" than the term "Microslop"; so far I've managed to
         | avoid that Discord and have only heard second-hand tales).
        
           | Fnoord wrote:
           | > I've heard it is basically a "Gen Z meme farm"
           | 
           | Oh, hello, climate change fan club :>
        
           | pwillia7 wrote:
           | I mean it was the only way to use MidJourney when it
           | released, which is why it's so popular and part of the
           | midjourney community
        
       | elcapitan wrote:
       | Microstreisand?
        
       | tartoran wrote:
       | I propose we refer to them as Microslop from now on.
        
       | lunias wrote:
       | Tells you a lot about where their focus is at as a company.
        
         | Zigurd wrote:
         | It's kind of interesting that Microsoft is deemphasizing if not
         | exiting making products for individuals to decide to buy.
         | Contrast that with Google, who have to actively cultivate
         | individual customers in order to have a large and reliable
         | audience for ad based monetization of search, maps, and other
         | free at the point of use products.
         | 
         | There are good and understandable reasons to not want to be in
         | the games business. Game studios are frequently a hot bed of
         | sexual predation and just horrifyingly bad management in
         | general. But it's a business with a large customer base that
         | wouldn't be customers otherwise.
         | 
         | Microsoft has spent tens of billions of dollars acquiring game
         | studios and their IP. They're going to have to make a decision
         | to cultivate growth in that business or sell it for whatever
         | they can get for it. Neither of those choices will be easy to
         | execute well.
        
         | nephihaha wrote:
         | Suppressing dissent? Par for the course for them and their
         | WEFfer mates.
        
       | rrgok wrote:
       | 365Slop all day every day all around
        
       | tpoacher wrote:
       | Microslop.
       | 
       | Has a nice ring to it.
       | 
       | Thank you Streisand effect!
        
       | petepete wrote:
       | Why is Microsoft using Discord and not Teams?
        
         | Maken wrote:
         | Why would anyone use Teams?
        
           | DrBazza wrote:
           | Because it comes 'free' with an Office365 subscription.
           | Embrace (<<you are here), extend, extinguish.
           | 
           | It's usually 'management'. The same management that won't pay
           | for developer tools (including Slack) because 'why do you
           | need that when you can do 95% of your work in VSCode?' It's
           | also usually the same sort of management that can do 95% of
           | their documents in... VSCode and markdown. Or LibreOffice.
        
             | kibwen wrote:
             | Microsoft products are only free if your time has no value.
        
             | jimnotgym wrote:
             | Having been in the position, on a corporate Active
             | Directory network it very much easier to roll out Teams
             | than anything else. It works fine at the kind of internal
             | video calls that companies spend their days on.
        
           | samgranieri wrote:
           | I am for my day job. I still mourn slack and gsuite.
        
           | Configure0251 wrote:
           | I don't think M$ does much dogfooding. The kinds of issues I
           | encounter being forced to use their pan-awfuly for work makes
           | me very skeptical of this idea.
        
           | yxhuvud wrote:
           | It is fairly ok for meetings and calendar integration.
           | 
           | It is dogshit at chatting, however.
        
             | gspr wrote:
             | > It is fairly ok for meetings
             | 
             | ... when it works. And if you never have to change camera
             | or microphone settings.
             | 
             | > and calendar integration.
             | 
             | The little notification that pops up telling you your
             | meeting is about to start based on your calendar? The one
             | you better not click in the first 5 or so seconds it's
             | there, because then you'll end up with an error message
             | that tells you absolutely nothing, have to go back to the
             | chat, and try again?
             | 
             | No, it's not usable. For anything.
        
         | Hamuko wrote:
         | Dogfooding only works when the dog food is edible.
        
         | dessimus wrote:
         | So non-employees join and provide free support to other users
         | without having to pay them.
        
           | cardiffspaceman wrote:
           | Starting in the CompuServe era, and ending in about 2001, I
           | was a voluntary member of the MVPs for Windows programming.
           | You would get swag, including a full MSDN subscription. My
           | reason for joining this and for otherwise posting hopefully
           | helpfully on forums was to lower the barrier to Windows
           | programming.
           | 
           | I was idle vis-a-vis this by about 1999, and was excluded
           | from the benefits as a result.
           | 
           | Then I posted on several threads within rec.autos.bmw and I
           | got an extra year or two of benefits.
        
         | withinboredom wrote:
         | Discord is owned by Microsoft IIRC.
        
           | Hamuko wrote:
           | It's not. It's an independent company, that's most likely
           | going to IPO soon. Microsoft was reported to be in talks to
           | acquire Discord at some point, but that never materialised.
        
         | yoyohello13 wrote:
         | Microsoft employees largely use Macs, so no surprise.
        
           | jeltz wrote:
           | All Microsoft employees I know either run Linux or Mac.
        
         | hinkley wrote:
         | Same reason MS used a Perforce fork instead of Source Safe.
         | Because the dogfood tastes terrible.
         | 
         | One of the executives at the late, great, Sun Microsystems once
         | dunked hard on Microsoft by saying, "At Sun we don't make
         | dogfood. We prefer to refer to it as, 'flying our own
         | airplanes.'"
        
       | lovegrenoble wrote:
       | Micro$oft
        
       | fredgrott wrote:
       | remember when they sued a HS student Mike Rowe for his
       | microrowesoft website?
        
       | JasonADrury wrote:
       | Most discord users are children, more news at 11
        
       | bilekas wrote:
       | So this is the company pushing to be an integral part of
       | everyone's lives, forcing it down everyone's throat without
       | consent.
       | 
       | And they're already moderation a light hearted joke about their
       | low quality products.
       | 
       | Doesn't really bode well for the future product Vision.
        
         | nephihaha wrote:
         | It's a monopoly. Unless you are a wealthy hipster with money to
         | burn on Apple products. (They also spy on you.)
        
       | FartyMcFarter wrote:
       | Windows 11 is definitely failing in weird ways for me, I don't
       | know if it's due to slop. The latest example is that I can't
       | launch Notepad via the start menu... I can launch other apps
       | though.
        
         | snarfy wrote:
         | Enshitification doesn't roll off the tongue quite the same way.
         | You have 10,000 systems all each interacting at a 90% success
         | rate when it needs to be 99.999%.
         | 
         | They fired all the SDETs 11 years ago. It's catching up with
         | them.
        
         | itintheory wrote:
         | I have this problem with calc.exe. Sometimes it'll launch from
         | the start menu, but often won't. I pinned it to the taskbar,
         | but muscle memory is a powerful force, so I usually try to
         | launch it from the start menu first.
        
       | patrulek wrote:
       | I would be angry too. Its definitely not that micro.
        
       | froh42 wrote:
       | I'm sad that "Klopilot" only works in German.
       | 
       | "Hello, copilot, do you create slop? -> Skibidi slop slop slop
       | aiiiiiii"
        
       | stephc_int13 wrote:
       | They are back in their villain arc. For a while now.
        
         | RGamma wrote:
         | Villain? More like geriatric.
        
         | mpalmer wrote:
         | Our vocabulary is so stunted. Has no one else noticed that we
         | increasingly talk about the world like it's fiction playing out
         | in front of us?
        
           | kibwen wrote:
           | It's not a vocab problem. It's inherent to the human brain,
           | which appears to be fundamentally designed to prefer to view
           | the world in terms of stories, with heroes, villains, and a
           | narrative arc.
        
             | jfyi wrote:
             | Is it though? Or are we simply in an environment that is
             | heavily skewed toward "Great Person" theory narratives?
        
               | kibwen wrote:
               | This isn't a new thing. Ancient stories like the Iliad or
               | the Odyssey are discreetly historical records of a
               | particular region mixed in with mythological foundations
               | of a particular culture, but framed as the stories of
               | Achilles ("Sing, O goddess, the anger of Achilles son of
               | Peleus, that brought countless ills upon the Achaeans.")
               | and Odysseus ("Speak, memory, of the cunning hero, the
               | wanderer, blown off course time and again after he
               | plundered Troy's sacred heights."). Likewise, ancient
               | fables and parables are moral lessons couched in terms of
               | stories with protagonists whose actions demonstrate the
               | intended lesson, and this sort of thing is universal
               | across every ancient culture for which we have records.
               | Stories stick in the human mind, and they're what humans
               | most prioritize transmitting forward through time.
        
             | mpalmer wrote:
             | You don't have to tell me - even Bill S: "and what's he
             | then that says I play the villain?"
             | 
             | Unfortunately, the collective quality of our storytelling
             | is waning. Most people watch the least common denominator.
             | 
             | So now the greater human truth you allude to is being
             | filtered through the streaming age mode of storytelling,
             | and people have arcs, and bingo cards, and everything is
             | reduced to water-cooler levels of urgency and relevance.
        
           | RGamma wrote:
           | Nobody can gauge the world for what it really is. It has
           | always been like that. Proper empiricism is expensive and
           | often enough impossible.
        
             | mpalmer wrote:
             | There's inability, and there's not trying.
        
               | RGamma wrote:
               | When Microslop bans "Microslop" I don't need to try. I
               | use their software daily, I know how their technical
               | support is utterly fucked now and how rare the heroic
               | power user actually solving the case for every co-
               | sufferer has become. And I know I'm not alone.
               | 
               | Just recently they fixed the Win 11 start menu bug where
               | they forgot to expose any functionality behind the "hide
               | mobile pane" button. At least the forced recents are gone
               | now, Jesus Christ! This is toddler level software
               | engineering.
               | 
               | It's a corporation suffering from corporate things and
               | the ridiculously out of control financialization of
               | everything, feeding on its insane first mover advantage
               | and network effects. This attempt to hide it is simply
               | embarrassing.
               | 
               | There's only gonna be so much thinking or research
               | involved and forget contacting primary sources or
               | anything like that.
        
               | mpalmer wrote:
               | > When Microslop bans "Microslop" I don't need to try
               | 
               | You might consider completely reversing this position for
               | the rest of your life.
        
           | nephihaha wrote:
           | "Has no one else noticed that we increasingly talk about the
           | world like it's fiction playing out in front of us?"
           | 
           | Most of our world is a fiction or at least a highly distorted
           | version of reality.
           | 
           | My advice to people is: Get out into nature, stop believing
           | everything on the news and meet people in person.
           | 
           | Most of the news is ragebait designed to get you angry at
           | specific targets rather than the systems themselves.
        
           | estimator7292 wrote:
           | Language shifts and evolves over time as the lives and
           | viewpoints of speakers evolve.
           | 
           | Your complaint is that young people use English in a way you
           | dislike.
        
             | jollyllama wrote:
             | Or devolve. Perhaps it reflects an increasing detachment
             | from reality in younger generations.
        
             | pessimizer wrote:
             | The complaint isn't actually about they way they're
             | speaking. The way they're speaking is a symptom of the way
             | they're thinking.
             | 
             | In an age of the dumbest, most propagandistic narratives
             | since the 50s, pumped out by the largest multinational
             | corporations in history. Young people are looking at the
             | world through shitty Marvel movie-colored glasses.
             | 
             | It's also not their fault, and the fictions they think
             | they're living through are written by gen Xers being paid
             | by boomers. It is not a youthful point of view, it is the
             | _sabotage of any emergence_ of a youth point of view,
             | substituted with Disney product.
             | 
             | > Language shifts and evolves over time as the lives and
             | viewpoints of speakers evolve.
             | 
             | This is a "things just happen" argument. Things happen for
             | reasons.
        
         | bigfishrunning wrote:
         | Were they ever out of it? A wolf in sheep's clothing is still a
         | wolf... Microsoft has been incredibly anti-consumer for the
         | duration of their existence (even before Steve Ballmer made it
         | blatent)
        
       | BLKNSLVR wrote:
       | I think we've found the 2026 word of the year already!
       | 
       | Let's get it out there and make this happen!
        
       | jimnotgym wrote:
       | This is why 2026 will be The Year of the Linux Desktop
        
         | mghackerlady wrote:
         | Lets go further, year of the Hurd desktop!
        
       | isodev wrote:
       | This just means I'm going to say microslop in random places -
       | documents, slides, emails and Teams chats. "Copilot 365" is
       | welcome to give me a red squigly all it wants.
        
         | tredre3 wrote:
         | Feel free to say microslop as much as possible, but it should
         | be noted that many people will automatically dismiss your
         | opinion when you do. I don't know if I agree with doing so or
         | not, but it is more common than you'd think. And no, they
         | aren't just microsoft shills.
        
       | AvAn12 wrote:
       | Sloppy.
        
       | boringg wrote:
       | Is Micro$$lop banned?
        
       | mythz wrote:
       | Yeah ban the use of a catchy catch-phrase as you continue to
       | shove AI down your user-base - that'll work. Streisand would be
       | proud.
        
         | MarleTangible wrote:
         | Most HN readers would now, but in the case somebody new reads
         | it.
         | 
         | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Streisand_effect
         | 
         | > The Streisand effect describes a situation where an attempt
         | to hide, remove, or censor information results in the
         | unintended consequence of the effort instead increasing public
         | awareness of the information.
        
           | hinkley wrote:
           | BAHBOORAAAAAAH
        
       | rhajsOqi wrote:
       | What will Elon's "Macrohard" company be called? "Macroheil"?
        
       | booleandilemma wrote:
       | Is Micro$lop also banned?
        
       | throwaway85825 wrote:
       | AI valuation is based on vibes not fundamentals. If the vibes are
       | bad it could tank valuations. That's why theyre so sensitive.
        
         | merlindru wrote:
         | but they make the vibes much worse by doing stuff like this
        
           | zamalek wrote:
           | Apparently the number of people familiar with the Streisand
           | Effect is vanishingly small.
        
       | shafyy wrote:
       | I am currently re-watching the HBO comedy show Silicon Valley,
       | and oh man, is it hitting even harder this time than when it was
       | originally released.
        
       | aurizon wrote:
       | That's a 'snatch defeat from the jaws of victory moment'
        
       | merlindru wrote:
       | lmfao
       | 
       | > Microsoft's brand image may already be at an all-time low
       | 
       | and they decide to make it even worse. it's extremely obvious
       | this would be an objectively terrible PR move. you always take
       | banter on the chin and show that you're working on improving the
       | product.
       | 
       | instead, they try to clamp down on the banter, which, without
       | fail, achieves the exact opposite: banter increases tenfold and
       | you get ridiculed for being overly sensitive to actual criticism
        
       | izzydata wrote:
       | Microsoft, can you please let me remove recommendations from the
       | start menu? Not just less recommendations. I want the category to
       | not be displayed and taking up space.
        
         | Gracana wrote:
         | That's hilarious, I didn't realize you couldn't turn it off. I
         | just tried disabling all the recommendation options and it
         | still shows the category, except now instead of recommended
         | items, it says "to show your recent files and apps, turn them
         | on in Settings."
         | 
         | This sort of thing used to bother me back when I took Windows
         | seriously.
        
         | xerox13ster wrote:
         | It can be ripped out using regedit, I'm sure.
         | 
         | It's been a while since I used Windows as a daily driver, but I
         | did oscillate between W10 and Arch for about half a year, and
         | the Arch mentality creeped into Windows. I ended up adding a
         | context menu to Explorer so I could paste images on my
         | clipboard directly to a the folder I had open. I had to create
         | keys in the Explorer portions of the registry.
         | 
         | If I could do that, I'm sure you can root around in the Start
         | Menu parts of the registry and rip it out.
        
           | izzydata wrote:
           | I know I can because I've done it on my home machine, but my
           | work computer is restricted by IT. I can't open regedit or
           | install most software unfortunately.
        
             | xerox13ster wrote:
             | Yeah I asked my director if I could rip out the shell and
             | replace it with X Server running in WSL2 and he said it
             | would make the IT people very upset.
        
               | 1718627440 wrote:
               | If you use an X Server and environment to launch programs
               | inside WSL2, what part produced by Microsoft is still
               | providing some value to that setup? Wouldn't you just
               | exec ELF programs to be run on top of the Linux kernel
               | and Windows would be just some useless abstraction layer
               | between the Linux kernel and the hardware? Or would you
               | still use some actual Windows programs? How would that
               | work with the X Server?
        
               | xerox13ster wrote:
               | There was some utility I found a few years ago that would
               | let me start an X Server and use it to replace the main
               | explorer process. There was some support for standard
               | Windows apps due to the background System processes still
               | running. I think it ended up running the Windows desktop
               | shell as a window in and of itself.
               | 
               | I wanted to use a tiled window manager and my dot files
               | for continuity purposes. The Windows apps I need to use
               | are stuff like anyconnect and Teams.
        
           | CivBase wrote:
           | I used to bother with things like registry edits, until I
           | eventually realized the technical difficulty of operating
           | Windows has surpassed that of Linux.
           | 
           | Of course I still _have_ to use Windows for work and even a
           | few edge cases at home. But otherwise I 've been quite happy
           | since I swiched to Linux as my primary driver.
        
             | toraway wrote:
             | Win11debloat solves 99% of annoyances with Windows 11 in <5
             | minutes. I've used in as the first step on every Win 11
             | install for years. It's mostly just a bunch of Powershell
             | commands disabling/configuring features.
             | 
             | https://github.com/Raphire/Win11Debloat
             | 
             | Nothing has ever reverted after an update for me, so it's a
             | one-and-done thing. Ironically, afterwards Windows 11 has
             | fewer noticeable ads than my MacBook which still
             | continually pushes Apple services/shows/etc in
             | settings/push notifications.
             | 
             | The only setting that I've ever seen sneakily disabled in
             | recent years is the Edge default search engine but that's
             | out-of-scope for Win11debloat.
        
               | drnick1 wrote:
               | It's better to get rid of Windows completely. You should
               | try Arch if you enjoy tinkering.
        
         | x0x0 wrote:
         | What I heard is you would like some highly relevant ads to be
         | at the top of your start menu for your convenience every time
         | you want to start a program.
         | 
         | Oh, and have you heard about OneDrive?
        
         | pndy wrote:
         | KDE Plasma community likes to recreate Windows environment and
         | W11 application launchers instead of "recommendations" section
         | have a more useful plain recently opened files. Which what
         | Windows had not so long ago.
        
       | fishgoesblub wrote:
       | Personally I think 2000s Micro$oft would be disappointed that
       | 2026 Microslop is hosting user communities on a 3rd party
       | platform owned other another company rather than using their own
       | competitor.
        
       | itwillnotbeasy wrote:
       | I wonder what is Apple equivalent for this term
        
         | exegete wrote:
         | Slopple
        
         | connorgurney wrote:
         | Crapple, probably.
        
         | chewz wrote:
         | Siri
        
       | grayhatter wrote:
       | Someone needs to edit this title to change the first word to
       | MicroSlop
       | 
       | I've never called them MircoSlop before, I haven't even written
       | the word. But it's now my exclusive word for the company.
       | 
       | All I can hear is, it's working.
        
       | CodeCompost wrote:
       | May I coin the term "Slopware"?
        
       | RoyTyrell wrote:
       | MS has some snowflake (not Snowflake) execs... Poor little
       | management, they need their safe space from a mean old word.
        
       | i7l wrote:
       | https://microslop.com/
        
         | bombela wrote:
         | The header takes half the page. It's very annoying, and as such
         | not really funny.
        
           | pinkmuffinere wrote:
           | It would be better if it just showed the ms home page
        
           | allthetime wrote:
           | If by half you mean 10%, then, yes.
        
           | hinkley wrote:
           | microsoft.com's header also takes up half the page.
        
       | teekert wrote:
       | Before this article I'd have thought that Microslop was used to
       | designate small snippets of AI slop, like "Let that sync in" or
       | "And to be honest" and "It's not X, it's Y" and "Deepdive" and
       | "Delve".
       | 
       | But nice to see that MS is Streisanding their way to a nice new
       | nickname!
       | 
       | What were the sloperators of that channel thinking?
       | 
       | In any case, it should be Micro$lop (may not be banned...yet).
        
       | gverrilla wrote:
       | lmao
        
       | altern8 wrote:
       | Microslop can't get one right. What is it with them these days..?
        
       | some_furry wrote:
       | I guess I'll have to go out of my way to refer to their shitty
       | product as "Microslop Copilot" then.
       | 
       | What are they going to do? Ban me from using their operating
       | system?
        
         | nephihaha wrote:
         | Microslop Coprolite.
        
       | semi-extrinsic wrote:
       | > _the software giant can't risk getting more hatred towards
       | their expensive investment in Copilot, especially since
       | Microsoft's head start in AI is starting to be overshadowed by
       | competitors like Anthropic, Google, OpenAI, and maybe even Apple
       | in the near future_
       | 
       | This sentence is from TFA, and I can't for the life of me
       | understand it. "Head start"?? WTF?
        
       | drumttocs8 wrote:
       | I would honestly be embarrassed to call myself "micro soft" in
       | general.
       | 
       | Unless you're into that kind of thing.
        
       | ineedasername wrote:
       | Oh no, how will people signal that some functionality or product
       | in general is what they'd previously been referring as Mircolosp?
       | er, Microsolps. wait, that's not it either, Macroslop. Micro$lop.
       | Microsplo. Sorry, so many typos! _but you know what I mean._
        
       | ratelimitsteve wrote:
       | they sincerely think that the primary problem they're facing is
       | one of PR, don't they?
        
       | goku12 wrote:
       | Microslop? Hmm... Never heard that before! Meanwhile, I just
       | randomly remembered that I haven't opened a couple of dozen
       | social media accounts in ages. BRB!
        
       | lousken wrote:
       | it will take years to fix their broken products, if they ever
       | focus on that
        
         | bigfishrunning wrote:
         | They don't have to, because dispite how _incredibly bad_ they
         | are, people have shown that they don 't care. According to the
         | average user, Windows isn't bad, that's just how computers are.
         | They don't care that there's any other way of doing things; the
         | cheapest computer at Best Buy runs windows so that's what every
         | computer must be.
         | 
         | Piggies love to eat slop.
        
       | jonshariat wrote:
       | Ah yes another company disregarding the Streisand effect -
       | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Streisand_effect.
       | 
       | No one in my circles said this, now I've heard it twice now
       | through headlines of Microsoft trying to punish or block it.
       | 
       | Now I've started saying it too.
        
       | mikkupikku wrote:
       | The way people react to criticism tells you a lot about how deep
       | your remark cut. Clearly Microsoft people know their stuff is
       | slop and are having a hard time coping with that.
        
       | melonpan7 wrote:
       | Macroslop
        
       | thayne wrote:
       | Does M$ honestly expect a positive outcome from this? What do
       | they hope to accomplish?
        
       | mk_chan wrote:
       | Microsoft ban any % speedrun soon.
       | 
       | Is this what the employees do nowadays while their AI is
       | generating code?
        
       | BrtByte wrote:
       | Long term, the real fix isn't moderation rules, it's trust
        
       | oxag3n wrote:
       | Thank you Microsoft for the The Streisand effect - I've added the
       | "Microslop" to my vocabulary.
        
       | TedDallas wrote:
       | Microslop? Its more like they are taking a Macro-crap.
        
       | aprentic wrote:
       | It's more and more baffling that people use M$FT for anything
       | besides video games.
        
         | throwuxiytayq wrote:
         | These days games run better on Linux, in case anyone didn't
         | know.
        
           | CivBase wrote:
           | The only games I've encountered that don't work on Linux are
           | ones where the developer has intentially designed it that
           | way. Some developers are paranoid about cheaters and one of
           | their solitions is to tell all Linux users to kick rocks.
           | 
           | Aside from that I've encountered a handfull of games with
           | performance issues on Linux (especially with Intel/Nvidea
           | hardware), but most run just fine. Some technically run
           | better on Linux, but I haven't encountered any where the
           | difference was perceptable to me.
        
       | compiler-guy wrote:
       | There is only one problem with the term "microslop" coming out of
       | Microsoft.
       | 
       | It should be called "macroslop", just after the amount that
       | company is putting out there.
        
       | hluska wrote:
       | Several hours worth of anal probe jokes on an article that could
       | likely warrant an actual discussion? That was disappointing to
       | read here.
        
         | jajuuka wrote:
         | Tech feels more filled with hipsters every day. If the story is
         | about any major company or product it's just dunked on for
         | social credits. But anything that is outside that is considered
         | interesting and worth further investigation. It's frustrating
         | me to no end.
        
         | rocketvole wrote:
         | this is personal anecdote, but I've noticed that the overall
         | quality of comments has plummeted quite drastically within the
         | last few months. It's a little disappointing since its why I
         | left reddit. Thankfully, the insightful comments are typically
         | still there- just typically buried further down the thread.
        
       | exabrial wrote:
       | The butthurt level is high up in there
        
       | karel-3d wrote:
       | Microsoft has a Discord? Why not Teams?
        
       | locusofself wrote:
       | It kindof sucks waking up every day, checking HN or YouTube to
       | see one or several new posts bashing on your employer. Not that
       | many of them aren't warranted, and that a multi-trillion market
       | cap company isn't fair game for criticism.
       | 
       | I've surveyed the market pretty heavily, and given my specific
       | credentials, experience, and risk tolerance, unless I got really
       | lucky, I don't know if I could find a better place to work. I
       | live near Redmond and have a small family to support.
        
         | zapzupnz wrote:
         | Microsoft have been bashed on the daily since forever. There's
         | no way you joined the company without knowing it was happening
         | prior to you joining, at the time of you joining, and after you
         | joining.
        
           | locusofself wrote:
           | It's true. As a matter of fact I credit a lot of my career to
           | being made fun of on IRC in the 1990s for running mIRC client
           | for Windows, because you were not "leet" if you didn't run
           | Linux or FreeBSD, which took my down a huge rabbit-hole of
           | Linux and coding for many years, which is how I know anything
           | in the first place. I'm in the tiny minority of people in big
           | tech who didn't go to college.
           | 
           | The bashing on MSFT has really ramped up in the last 6 months
           | though
        
             | jonfw wrote:
             | Rather than saying that microsoft bashing has ramped up,
             | I'd say that it is getting closer to it's standard levels.
             | 
             | Microsoft experience a sort of reputational resurgence in
             | the tech world these past few years with some commitment to
             | open source contribution and a really nice pivot towards
             | linux and cloud.
             | 
             | Their pivot to AI is much less popular!
        
               | locusofself wrote:
               | The AI stuff and Windows 11 have been big drivers of
               | bashing
        
               | therein wrote:
               | Yes and you're in a unique position to influence the
               | internal culture. Not saying send emails to executives
               | but talk about things during lunch with coworkers?
        
             | zapzupnz wrote:
             | Ah, is that not going to college part why you're loathe to
             | give up such a good gig? Surely by now your CV speaks for
             | itself, although I suppose in Redmond, where else are you
             | going to go.
        
               | locusofself wrote:
               | It is, although considering my age (41), I would hope the
               | college thing is not very important anymore. The only
               | time in recent history that I've been ghosted after
               | mentioning no degree (when asked) is ByteDance a few
               | years back, and I don't think I'd want to work there
               | anyways.
               | 
               | Google has offices in Kirkland. Amazon and Meta are big
               | employers here, with Meta paying the best, but both of
               | those companies have their own issues which are probably
               | worse than just being made fun of ..
        
         | ghosty141 wrote:
         | There can be quite a big difference on the reception of a
         | product and the working conditions. I think that's nothing too
         | out of the ordinary in a lot of cases.
        
           | locusofself wrote:
           | It apparently used to be even much better to work here. I've
           | been here 6 years now. There is naturally a lot of "talent"
           | exchanged between here and Amazon, which has influenced the
           | culture.
        
         | keeda wrote:
         | For what it's worth, my take is Microsoft is the one Big Tech
         | most aligned with us and the rest of the world, though HN is
         | too Slashdot-pilled to accept it.
         | 
         | The primary reason being their business model relies _mostly_
         | on making people productive, rather than getting people to
         | click on ads or buy stuff, which as we 're seeing, is much more
         | damaging to the social fabric.
        
         | dguest wrote:
         | People don't like your company.
         | 
         | But they'd probably like you.
         | 
         | <3
        
         | AndyKelley wrote:
         | I propose let's break up a bunch of these monopolies to give
         | you and your colleagues more options, more competition for your
         | resume.
        
       | arendtio wrote:
       | My big issue with Microsoft's AI push is that its solutions are
       | just bad. I tried using Copilot a couple of times, and when it
       | worked, the results were low quality (not even mediocre).
       | 
       | And the problem is not that the AI models can't do any better.
       | The models themselves are far more capable. I assume that their
       | integrations are just horrible. They probably pushed to be the
       | first and then forgot about optimizing.
       | 
       | And instead of fixing their stuff, they think it is a good idea
       | to use moderation tools...
        
       | sharyphil wrote:
       | Slopya Nutella
       | 
       | (is that banned?)
        
       | natas wrote:
       | I recently had dinner in Bellevue with an individual who holds a
       | relatively senior position within Microsoft's executive
       | leadership. During our conversation, she emphasized repeatedly
       | that Microsoft does not primarily view its offerings as consumer
       | products. According to her, the company's leadership is strongly
       | focused on B2B strategy, with revenue growth driven mainly by
       | Azure, AI, and enterprise solutions.
       | 
       | Her perspective was that consumer-facing products are not the
       | primary revenue drivers and, therefore, are not central to
       | executive priorities. While this may not be surprising to some,
       | what stood out to me was how emphatically she underscored that
       | the company's strategic focus is squarely on enterprise customers
       | rather than end users.
       | 
       | That said, this business model has historically proven effective
       | for companies such as IBM. Microsoft allocates its resources
       | toward segments that offer meaningful revenue growth.
        
         | medi8r wrote:
         | Foolish since a world where no one uses Windows at home will ve
         | damaging for enterprise long term.
        
           | x0x0 wrote:
           | I think they (and even Apple) are going to get a walloping
           | from mostly ceding the education market to chromebooks. Kids
           | are growing up using them.
        
             | matthewfcarlson wrote:
             | It's interesting to me as well as an ex-microsofter who
             | worked on surface devices. Leadership (at least below the
             | VP level) knew they were getting killed by Chromebooks and
             | tried a few times to get a low cost device (Surface Go 1/2
             | for example) that ran a slimmed down version of windows
             | (Windows S?). It tries to be more like chrome OS (hard to
             | mess up, easy to flatten and restore a fresh OS on) but
             | kind of just throws away the things you would pick windows
             | for in the first place (legacy app compatibility) to be not
             | bad at the thing Chromebooks are good at.
             | 
             | That said, I don't believe the Chromebook lock-in. It's
             | just chrome and the web, which you can get on literally
             | almost every laptop/pc sold today. Should Microsoft be
             | concerned that you don't need windows as more and more
             | things move onto the web? Absolutely. They should be
             | doubling down hard on the gaming ecosystem (which atm still
             | requires windows for certain games) as their hold is
             | eroding week by week.
        
               | medi8r wrote:
               | I think Windows was a pretty good desktop environment
               | circa. Windows 7. Hardware compatability and just working
               | are huge. If they can get an independent M4 competitor
               | from AMD etc. you would have a compelling reason to
               | switch from Mac (for Joe Average user).
               | 
               | Step 1 get rid of adware
        
         | dralley wrote:
         | > That said, this business model has historically proven
         | effective for companies such as IBM.
         | 
         | In some ways. Less so in others.
         | 
         | For products that get commoditized for home use, the "business
         | focused" high-margin solutions generally lose out to the
         | commoditized solutions focused on end consumers in the long
         | term.
        
           | yvdriess wrote:
           | Yeah. It's telling that this story is about their discord
           | channel, not Teams.
        
         | piker wrote:
         | That sentiment is characteristic of the Gates to Ballmer
         | leadership change.
        
         | TheRealDunkirk wrote:
         | I've said this for years. The amount of money Microsoft makes
         | from the OS apart from corporations is a rounding error. What
         | little they do make is from preinstalled systems, and,
         | honestly, when was the last time you knew someone that went out
         | and bought a Windows-based computer for anything other than
         | gaming? I don't need a quote from someone high up in the
         | company to know they couldn't care less how upset people are by
         | the decisions they make about it.
         | 
         | Literally every corporation and government in the world is
         | slavishly devoted to running all of their end-user computers on
         | it, because Microsoft will let them do unspeakable things to
         | the OS, in the name of security, that wind up having next-to-
         | nothing to do with actually making their data more secure, and
         | only serve to infuriate and spy on the users. My company runs
         | THREE different "end point" security packages on my machine.
         | There are at least 35 scripts that run at all hours of the day
         | to make sure I'm not doing anything I shouldn't. It takes 20
         | minutes to be usable after a boot up. And the VPN drops several
         | times a day, even though my internet is rock solid. It's an
         | entire, vibrant ecosystem of outsourced, bone-headed, second-
         | and-third-party decision making so that no one in the company
         | or the department or the management or the supply chain has any
         | accountability in case something goes wrong. THAT'S what
         | Microsoft is selling, and IT HAS NO COMPETITION IN THIS
         | CAPACITY.
         | 
         | For years, I've begged people on every social network I've been
         | on, including this one, to find a source of operating system
         | market share that has corporate purchases broken out from
         | personal purchases. This is the closest thing I can find. It
         | shows abysmal numbers for Microsoft, and it's at least a decade
         | out of date. I expect that Microsoft -- who obviously
         | underwrote the entire IT press during the 90's and 00's -- has
         | done quite a lot of work and paid quite a lot of money to make
         | sure that nothing definitive in this regard ever sees the light
         | of day. They have gotten to where they are making sure that
         | Gartner never did anything resembling this.
         | 
         | https://www.extremetech.com/computing/143277-microsofts-shar...
        
           | RachelF wrote:
           | >The amount of money Microsoft makes from the OS apart from
           | corporations is a rounding error.
           | 
           | Yes, if you analyse revenue (not profit), sales of Windows
           | count 9% of the total. Microsoft makes around the same
           | percentage from LinkedIn and Xbox as they do from Windows
           | sales.
           | 
           | Cloud is by far the the biggest contributor to revenue.
        
           | boca_honey wrote:
           | >when was the last time you knew someone that went out and
           | bought a Windows-based computer for anything other than
           | gaming?
           | 
           | I'm sorry, what? I don't know if this is because of the
           | developer-bubble mindset on HN (or the wealth gap that comes
           | with that), but Windows adoption on the consumer level is
           | around 70% and close to 90% on the business level. This
           | actually falls short from what I see anecdotically (I don't
           | live in any North-American / European country), which is
           | close to 95% of Windows adoption, in general.
        
         | some_random wrote:
         | I would have been suspicious of this until I saw a quote for an
         | E5 license
        
         | golddust-gecko wrote:
         | This is 100% true.
         | 
         | You might wonder why, if businesses are the target, why not
         | just make Windows a no-frills, solid base for the other
         | offerings? Why slop it up?
         | 
         | The answer there is cultural. Windows needs a large team just
         | to keep supporting it at scale. All those engineers and PMs
         | need career paths, and shiny things with which to sway their
         | managers into promoting them. The strong, experienced, leaders
         | have largely left because they know this isn't a company
         | priority. So you end up with B players promoting C players for
         | slop.
         | 
         | Time goes on and the Bs become Cs, and so on.
         | 
         | So the dynamic is that something that isn't a priority doesn't
         | merely slop evolving, it devolves. We're now several iterations
         | into this process, which will accelerate due to AI.
        
           | ForOldHack wrote:
           | "So you end up with B players promoting C players for slop."
           | 
           | Micro-slop(tm).
        
         | tomaskafka wrote:
         | I got the same info. Windows kernel is developed for B2B needs,
         | if something might be useful to B2C, they might eventually get
         | it, but they don't affect the roadmap.
        
         | m463 wrote:
         | seems like                 microsoft = 1/apple
        
         | pwarner wrote:
         | MS is the new IBM
        
         | ajkjk wrote:
         | That's fine, they should still do a good job for moral reasons
         | rather than economic ones, and they deserve to be dragged
         | through the mud if they do not.
        
         | jollyllama wrote:
         | > That said, this business model has historically proven
         | effective for companies such as IBM.
         | 
         | And all of the ERP vendors.
         | 
         | That said, most FOSS devs don't target those platforms for
         | releases, so IMO the same approach should be taken with
         | Microsoft products then.
        
         | dajt wrote:
         | That's been obvious for years. It feels like they're extracting
         | whatever remaining money they can get from the home PC market
         | while it lasts but won't much miss it when it's gone.
         | 
         | I'm surprised they haven't given up on xbox and games but
         | perhaps there's enough money there to keep it going.
        
           | razorfen wrote:
           | Their new appointment of leader for their Xbox group suggests
           | that they intend to wind down that business unit in time. The
           | founder of the Xbox team has commented that he believes it's
           | the beginning of the end for Xbox, for the exact reasons of
           | this thread.
        
           | hinkley wrote:
           | That's been obvious for decades. Everyone who worked in the
           | 90's or 00's has stories about coming in one day to find that
           | the VP has been conned into a $1m contract for MS office or
           | development software everyone hates and now we all have to
           | use it because if we don't then he made a huge mistake and
           | VPs don't make huge mistakes.
           | 
           | So we have to eat shit or find open source software to work
           | around MS's garbage check-box-driven software.
        
             | ForOldHack wrote:
             | Clearly you were there.
        
           | Melonai wrote:
           | It's not fully clear yet but they definitely gave up on the
           | current Xbox strategy, after firing both the CEO and the
           | next-in-line and replacing them with people previously
           | working on integrating AI around the entire product line.
           | Sure they said they won't fill up Xbox with soulless AI slop,
           | not sure I believe them.
           | 
           | Consoles are probably getting phased out, which makes
           | financial sense at this point if they don't manage a massive
           | comeback, and Xbox might try to go with a more Steam-based
           | model (they've been trying for the last decade with not much
           | success), maybe trying to make PCs more console-like with
           | their new Xbox Windows changes, as well as putting AI
           | everywhere, so that's going to be fun!
        
           | darth_avocado wrote:
           | > home PC market while it lasts
           | 
           | Tinfoil hat thought: Microsoft only focuses on B2B and not
           | consumer market, because they make it so that consumers can
           | only rent from Microsoft and other businesses, not actually
           | own anything. That way, Microsoft can keep jacking up prices
           | as they see fit.
        
         | glaslong wrote:
         | I'm always astounded by the tendency to bet it all on core
         | competencies and wind down every other effort that's profitable
         | but not profitable _enough _ As if times don't change,
         | innovation never happens, and your accessory plays of today are
         | never the overtaking market of tomorrow.
        
         | aleph_minus_one wrote:
         | > According to her, the company's leadership is strongly
         | focused on B2B strategy, with revenue growth driven mainly by
         | Azure, AI, and enterprise solutions.
         | 
         | > Her perspective was that consumer-facing products are not the
         | primary revenue drivers and, therefore, are not central to
         | executive priorities.
         | 
         | This does not explain why Microsoft then does not consider the
         | consumer products as "stable (somewhat 'legacy') platforms",
         | i.e. no deep changes and improvements will happen anymore
         | (mostly bugfixes, security fixes and smaller improvements) - at
         | least for the next years.
         | 
         | Considering that
         | 
         | - many Windows users would rather prefer a Windows 7 with small
         | iterative improvements to handle new hardware (including
         | performance improvements for new hardware)
         | 
         | - by quite many Windows users even Windows 2000 is celebrated
         | (and many users would still love to use it if it included
         | support for more modern hardware features and some convenience
         | features that were introduced with newer Windows versions)
         | 
         | I can easily imagine that that this development path for
         | Windows and Office would actually be liked by quite a lot of
         | users.
         | 
         | Instead what Microsoft provides is an enshitification of
         | Windows (and Office) with spyware, telemetry, AI slop, ads,
         | changes for the sake of change, ...: this is clearly not what
         | most users want.
         | 
         | I even have a feeling that this development path would be much
         | cheaper for Microsoft than the AI integrations for Windows and
         | Office for which Microsoft has clearly spent an insane amount
         | of money.
        
       | josefritzishere wrote:
       | The irony is thick today. HN flagged a microslop post this
       | morning.
        
       | goldylochness wrote:
       | some might view it as an impossible goal, but if they enabled
       | humor they would become more popular
        
       | shevy-java wrote:
       | That is actually hilarious. Microsoft does not understand the
       | Barbara Streisand effect. I did use microslop before, simply
       | because it makes sense, irrespective of Microsoft - but now I'll
       | actually help the Barbara Streisand effect, because clearly
       | Microsoft WANTS everyone to learn the new word!
       | 
       | Censorship gets counter-banned, Microsoft, company known to have
       | turned Win11 into Win-microslop.
        
       | nzxt210 wrote:
       | This good
        
       | mig39 wrote:
       | Why are they using Discord instead of Teams? Is this an internal
       | Microsoft group? They don't dogfood?
        
       | JohnMakin wrote:
       | Classic Streisand effect - I had never, and probably would have
       | never encountered this term, and now I have, and I am
       | incorporating it into my vocabulary.
       | 
       | Why listen to user feedback when you can do stuff like this? Way
       | too funny.
        
         | hinkley wrote:
         | Not a company well known for listening to user feedback.
        
       | chrisco23 wrote:
       | I thought they were named Microsloth. Making products like
       | Windoze and Winblows.
        
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