For those wondering, here is the meat of the declaration:

Promoting AI accessibility to reduce digital divides;

Ensuring AI is open, inclusive, transparent, ethical, safe, secure and trustworthy, taking into account international frameworks for all

Making innovation in AI thrive by enabling conditions for its development and avoiding market concentration driving industrial recovery and development

Encouraging AI deployment that positively shapes the future of work and labour markets and delivers opportunity for sustainable growth

Making AI sustainable for people and the planet

Reinforcing international cooperation to promote coordination in international governance

https://www.elysee.fr/en/emmanuel-macron/2025/02/11/statemen...

My grandparents are from China, and they've always been very proud of the culture/heritage. However, I think the Cultural Revolution destroyed a lot of it because of the book burning, mass exodus and killing of intellectuals. For reasons....the culture in Taiwan may have a stronger connection to historical China.

I'm just going to say it....Inkjet printers are one of those technologies that just has to die (for general printing usage). Same with HP Consumer. I don't mind HPE.

Sony is an electronics engineering company, and it really shows. The quality, forethought and care put into creating this product is part of their tradition. Microsoft, while doing wonderful things to make software more accessible is not an engineering company, and that shows too.

I only hope Microsoft has tested their cooling solution better than the 360 era. I don't want another RRoD situation.

"Microsoft is not an engineering company"

Looks at the Surface hinges

4. Repeatedly accomplish the above with people and a constantly changing environment

Honest question - Is it the video conferencing technology or the lack of famaliarity with the medium? I've been video coneferencing and working with developers remotely since my early 20s and never felt tired as a result of it. I could see someone who's not used to doing all day finding it a jarring experience. But wouldn't that just discipate in time as the individual adapts? Anyone else feel the same way?

As a former Accenture Consultant I do have to point out we rarely used hourly billing. Fixed fees were preferred and I think it actually works better as it forces everyone to keep talking about scope. That being said, the worse part of Accenture was working with the offshore developers. The only way to move a project forward was hand holding these guys. I ended up working around the clock to catch our Hydrabaud team at the beginning of their day and at the end of thier day. Keeping in mind I was suppsedly dealing with the "manager". Was Accenture perfect? No. But based on what I've seen, projects were well run with componetent local staff, good managers and the client side was usually in shambles.

Sage 300. 32-bit software still exists. Macros are written in VB6.

I went through a resume building seminar once, and the instructor mentioned years of experience are often inflated to deter people from applying. She worked in HR for over 20 years and she said, if a job is looking for 1-2 years then it really means entry level. 5 is more like 2-3 years. I'm not surprised anymore nor do I let the years of experience stopping me from applying. Also, just a tip to those looking for jobs. Most places will bring you to the front of the list if you know someone at the company.

> Meanwhile, I'd really like for people to stop hating Microsoft just because "Microsoft"

OK, I respect the call for keeping an open mind. Always a good approach. But let's not forget all of the moves toward a friendlier Microsoft/Linux world looks suspiciously like "Embrace"

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Embrace,_extend,_and_extinguis...

I for one am willing to keep an open mind, but will be following these types of developments closely.

I hope to be proven wrong.

Then EVERY single other business of its size has a strategy that looks like "Embrace". The only difference is that Microsoft had a memo leak.

... which is exactly the problem. The issue is the tactic, not the company employing it. It’s just this company has a serious habit of employing those tactics, hence the distrust.

I'd like anyone in any business contemplating an Embrace, Extinguish strategy to know that it ends in people not trusting your company and being unwilling to work with your services.

I would like to know how much it is costing Microsoft to fix that damaged reputation so that other executives will know if they do this it will end up costing at least X amount.

Hmm... I would think that it will cost Microsoft a rethinking of their business strategy.

If their 'Embrace' looks like 'Yes we are compatible with...' and their 'Extend' like 'If you use our layer you can also do...' then people stay sceptical.

Instead their 'Embrace' should be 'How can we help you with your open source product?' and their 'Extend': 'Here are patches that fixes problems, improves performance and implement community wanted features.'

It seems companies like this always try to hold the door to 'Extinguish' open.

I really don't think reputational damage in this case came from adopting an embrace-and-extend strategy as such, but rather the monopolistic position they were in combined with specific tactics they used.

That might be the reason why many people dislike all businesses of Microsoft's size. I for one wouldn't be happy if Google or Amazon or Apple bought Github either.

I completely agree. The biggest issue here is that we are losing a neutral player as the top comment says. The tech world is that much more monopolistic without an independent GitHub.

The Memo leak was just the tip of the iceberg. MS also lost multiple court cases about their anticompetitive behaviour (for example gov of US, Sun) in that era.

Did you forget the Extend, Extinguish parts of the strategy, or are you just paraphrasing EEE to make it sound somewhat ok?

Pretty sure he means that just seeing symptoms of Embrace is not enough to sound the alarm that it's going to be extended and extinguished.

After all, what's the point of building software, if it's never embraced, aka, used?

The typical implication of "Embrace" in these EEE uses is not 'figure out how to work in tandem with' but more 'how can we the amoeba surround and prepare to Extinguish this'.

Hence the justified caution and monitoring of a known extinguisher.

> But let's not forget all of the moves toward a friendlier Microsoft/Linux world looks suspiciously like "Embrace"

“Embrace” is happening everywhere these days. Don’t sound the alarm until you see Extend.

Wsl is getting scarily close to Linux performance in benchmarks and improving fast. I don't see extend being too far away...

WSL has horrible horrible IO performance. It's really not going anywhere until they fix it, and the fix won't be easy

But they don't really need to fix it. Sure, it'd be nice, but they're targeting developer machines and utilities with WSL, not a server replacement of Linux. Nobody would buy a Windows license just to serve from LAMP stacks on WSL over Azure or something. Speed requirements for dev machines are a little less stringent, and as long as they are hitting better-than-Docker numbers, they will still be providing value.

Sidenote: looks like I/O performance is really not that bad in most cases already, and sometimes even faster than Linux distros like Ubuntu: https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=article&item=wsl-febr...

It runs on Windows and can interop with Windows applications, that's already an extension by itself.

I am sure no one in the company has changed since that memo leaked in 1996...

Developers that exclusively use MS stack are very similar to those exclusive to Delphi. MS and Delphi stacks are very specific in nature and very different from everything else out there. Developers stepping out of those feel very uncomfortable and unfamiliar, thus wanting to stay in. Even though the Delphi stack is very obviously dying, the resistance is great, and many people stay on the sinking ship. MS stack is live and well which gives a viable incentive to never even look over the fence. That is the problem with developers exclusive in MS stack, they are not flexible and they don't want to be. They want everything to be done "the MS way". Where does that put GH? How will it change, in what direction (to accommodate the MS stack)?

> That is the problem with developers exclusive in MS stack, they are not flexible and they don't want to be. They want everything to be done "the MS way".

And unix developers complain endlessly about any dev environment that isn't identical to what they use. Powershell gets shit because it isn't bash/core-utils (even though it's better in just about every conceivable way), Windows API gets shit for not being posix (even though posix is a crappy API), etc.

Delphi might be a small community compared to JVM or MS. Is Delphi dying?

I work in the M/Mumps space(healthcare), another small (almost invisible) but active community and it seems far from dying. I imagine Delphi is bigger.

I wonder how long the MS stack would last without the support of MS. Would the MS stack fare as well as the Ruby stack has without Microsoft’s massive investment in turning developers into sharecroppers? (Or salesforce, scala, unreal, php, erlang, etc.)

Personally, I wonder how ReactOS (www.reactos.org) will affect things when it finally gets to the point of being usable for general population end users.

Seems like a wild card entry, which could go any number of directions. :)

How does this personally affect you such that you consider it your duty to disparage whole groups of developers for the choices that they make ?

Did it ever occur to you that people stick with certain environments because they make a lot of money using them ?

Your statement basically reads as "I can't believe that people/companies have the nerve to stick with a codebase that cost them thousands of dollars to create and has made them very successful over the last couple of decades..."