'Lost' songs from the Middle Ages are brought back to life - <AUTHOR> http://www.cam.ac.uk/research/news/first-performance-in-1000-years-lost-songs-from-the-middle-ages-are-brought-back-to-life-0 <comment><USER2> I found the translated text of "The Consolation of Philosophy", by Anicus Manlius Severinus Boethius

[https://www.gutenberg.org/files/14328/14328-h/14328-h.htm](https://www.gutenberg.org/files/14328/14328-h/14328-h.htm)

"It has been translated into every European tongue, and into English nearly a dozen times, from King Alfred's paraphrase to the translations of Lord Preston, Causton, Ridpath, and Duncan, in the eighteenth century."

Books were expensive. A very rough calculation is about $450 a book. Amazon could have made as killing back then.

List of prices of medieval items

[http://www.luminarium.org/medlit/medprice.htm](http://www.luminarium.org/medlit/medprice.htm)

How Much Is That in Today's Money?

[http://www.history.org/foundation/journal/Summer02/money2.cf...](http://www.history.org/foundation/journal/Summer02/money2.cfm)

(I did say _roughly_ )

<comment><USER3> > Books were expensive. A very rough calculation is about $450 a book. Amazon > could have made as killing back then.

 _Paper_ was expensive. It wasn't until wood pulp techniques hit in the 1840's that the price of paper actually dropped significantly.

<comment><USER4> Did you put " _Paper_ " in italics to suggest that paper was the primary cost in book making in the medieval era?

Because I would have thought that manual copying by scribes - the above link says it took 15 months to copy the Bible - would be more expensive.

Also, I believe the price of paper also dropped significantly in Europe when the paper mills were introduced in the 1500s. So dates [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_paper#Europe](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_paper#Europe) .

<comment><USER3> Bibles were chained to desks because the parchment was valuable.

The fact that many times people were willing to scrape off the ink tends to imply that the manual labor involved in copying was cheaper than the substrate.

Paper mills did reduce the cost. However, paper relied on rags, and rags relied on people discarding clothing. And people only discarded cloth (which was also really expensive) only when the cloth was completely useless.

[http://www.sleuthsayers.org/2013/06/the-3500-shirt- history-l...](http://www.sleuthsayers.org/2013/06/the-3500-shirt-history- lesson-in.html)

<comment><USER4> I agree that paper was expensive. I don't see evidence that paper was the paramount, much less primary cost, of book making, assuming that explains the italics. Though I haven't looked hard.

I think you've mixed up two writing materials. "Parchment" refers to animal- based materials like vellum, not paper. Yes, people scraped the ink off parchment. But according to [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_paper](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_paper) , deinking of paper wasn't invented until the 1700s. The same source says in the 1300s or so, the price of paper was about 1/6th the price of parchment, "and then falling further."

Your cost model says only that the labor for removing ink from parchment was less than the price of making new parchment. For made up numbers, let's say the effective price to make new parchment was $15,000 and the price to scrape the ink off was $10,000. How does that help figure out if the price to copy was $4,000 or $40,0000?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> This is really cool.

Has anyone found where you can buy and/or listen to the whole song?

</comment><comment><USER6> Recreating ancient music is a fascinating endeavor because notation was either non-existent or difficult to read, like the piece discussed in the article. Another reconstruction, from ancient Egypt this time, is made from gestures left on wall inscriptions (archived webpage): [https://web.archive.org/web/20151012085128/http://www.rakkav...](https://web.archive.org/web/20151012085128/http://www.rakkav.com/biblemusic/pages/chironomy.htm)

</comment><comment><USER7> Bagby does a beautiful rendition of Beowulf. We heard him a couple of times at the Renaissance and Baroque Society of Pittsburgh, where I've been taking our kids for 20 some years.

</comment><comment><USER8> "The Consolation of Philosophy" is one of my favorite books, so it's exciting to learn about this musical interpretation of it. I hope I can listen to the upcoming rendition soon!</comment>


Show HN: Nicknames - <AUTHOR> http://abhiously.com/nicknames <comment><AUTHOR> My first Show HN, my first Chrome extension, my first open source app. Lots of firsts, would love feedback and/or ideas.

Basically it's a little extension that replaces people's real names with their nicknames. E.g. Donald Trump = "Drunk Uncle". Pretty simple really, just about ~50 lines of JS.</comment>


3D Visualization of a Convolutional Neural Network - <AUTHOR> http://scs.ryerson.ca/~aharley/vis/conv/ <comment><USER2> Interesting idea, but nothing seems to work here, both on Firefox and IE 11. All I can see is the left "control pane".

<comment><USER3> Works in Chrome. Really nice!</comment></comment>


HP Buying Palm For $1.2 Billion - <AUTHOR> http://finance.yahoo.com/news/HP-to-Acquire-Palm-for-12-bw-3412218042.html?x=0&.v=1 <comment><USER2> HP's getting a hell of a deal here. They're now a major player in the mobile devices market, overnight.

Palm has current relationships with the three biggest American cell carriers, plus channels in Canada, France, Germany, UK, and Mexico. Palm also has an extensive patent portfolio, many of which Apple is infringing upon.

However, the real prize is WebOS. I just got back from Palm's Developer Day, and their technology stack for their next OS version is pretty damn neat. It's a high performance event-driven javascript architecture on the back end, with WebKit on the front, all programmed through a Rails-ish MVC model. As a web developer, it looks shockingly easy to program for.

Of course, if you want to program the phone in raw C/C++ and SDL, you can do that too. It's incredibly flexible.

What Palm has been lacking is cash and time. The WebOS development stack won't be fully built out until Fall, and they haven't had the resources to push new phone models out as quickly as they need. This deal gives Palm much needed juice, and gives HP all the things they need to go head-to-head with Apple.

If HP is smart, they'll start tossing WebOS on tablets as soon as they can. I'd buy an HP slate with WebOS in a heartbeat.

<comment><USER3> _"This deal (...) gives HP all the things they need to go head-to-head with Apple."_

Except for the one thing that makes apple products special: Design.

<comment><USER4> I've used the Pre (I have an iPhone) - it is incredibly solidly designed. Its main problems are twofold:

\- It's slow. Really slow. If they can get a 2-3x performance improvement overall throughout webOS, they can actually compete with Apple. So far it's just not snappy enough to be a pleasant experience.

\- The marketing sucked. Seriously, what the hell. It's almost as if they went out of the way to convince you to not buy this device.

<comment><USER5> In the area of performance, going with V8 sounds like a smart move. It's now faster than Python 3k and Ruby 1.9 if the Computer Benchmarks Game is to be believed.

I like my iPhone/iPad but it's high time Apple had some real competition.

<comment><USER4> It's really too bad that the software wasn't faster and more solid out of the gate - they had some key innovations that Apple _still_ doesn't have: social media integration.

Do I want my Facebook contacts in my address book? Hell yes. Would I like a dashboard with recent Facebook updates from my friends? Duh.

Palm has an innovative head on its shoulders, I for one am glad they are in a position to have a deep pit of money with which to battle Apple.

<comment><USER6> Facebook contacts in my address book and a performant OS, right now. It's called Android.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Dear HP:

Please don't mess this up.

You're a storied pioneer in tech, but you got massive and lost your sense of direction. You're about to acquire something of a microcosm of yourself—a company that pioneered an industry but lost its way as it grew.

The difference is that your new acquisition rediscovered its sense of curiosity and turned itself around, too late to save itself, but brilliantly so nonetheless. You can learn from this. Your size has protected you from Palm's fate, but you were slowly headed down the same path, despite even your well-intentioned yet insufficiently-pursued experiments with things like TouchSmart.

While this is a new beginning for Palm, it's also a new beginning for you. What's your tagline again? Ah, yes: _Invent._ There's never been a better time to make good on it.

<comment><USER8> HP is now run by business men, not engineers. If Carla didn't prove this to you, then you are probably never going to get it. The fact is, they don't care about Compaq, DEC, Palm, or even HP. They just want to pull in enough money over the next few years, until they retire. They could be selling Paper cups for all they care about the product, as long as they still get their bonuses.

<comment><USER9> I don't know if that's really true. Most businesspeople are not just interested in milking salaries. Like most other people, they want to do a good job at the job they've been assigned. Unless you have personal knowledge of the execs at HP, I wouldn't go so far; such a claim is rather personal and depends on a lot of individual factors and I don't think it can really be made en masse about a whole exec team.

Also, there is financial incentive to set the company on an innovative, profit-filled future; many (most?) executives hold lots and lots of stock.

<comment><USER10> "many (most?) executives hold lots and lots of stock."

All, probably.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I don't think that HP has a clear purpose for making this purchase. They held a conference call on the acquisition, which is available on their webpage, along with a transcript:

<http://www.hp.com/investor/webcast>

The first questioner wanted to know why HP didn't just build Android devices. HP didn't have a compelling response. They just mumbled something about "early stage market" and making webOS "more compelling". Oddly, HP then mentioned that they are still a strategic partner with Microsoft.

</comment><comment><USER11> According to the press release, Palm shareholders get $5.70/share. The stock is above $5.90/share in after-hours trading. Is there some reason for this? Is this an arbitrage opportunity (assuming you could get shares to borrow)?

<comment><USER12> Got to keep in mind that a lot of short sellers will be covering, which could account for some of the premium.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Wow. I just bought a Pre a month ago. At least they'll continue to be a going concern (and able to provide me with support ;) I was hoping Palm would be able to make it independently somehow, though.

This would be an awesome thing if WebOS ended up on the HP Slate.

</comment><comment><USER14> Well, this is great.

I love my Apple gear, and I'm going to stay that way as long as they keep making well-designed (minimalistic externally) stuff.

But with the Palm acquisition, HP will be able to do just what Apple is doing. And that's great - integration between software and hardware makes my life (as a user) so much easier.

The main question I have is: will they have any taste? The HP slate has a big white HP logo on the user-facing side, which will keep me from buying one no matter what else it might do. (I don't want to be distracted when I'm using a tablet.)

<comment><USER15> It's funny, even though Apple has resisted messing up the hardware, there is still that "Sent from my iPhone" message which always struck me as having no taste at all. It is different because you can remove it, but still.

<comment><USER16> I view 'Sent from my BlackBerry / iPhone' as a way of explaining why the email is so short.

<comment><USER14> Did BlackBerry start putting those messages in first, before Apple did the iPhone?

<comment><USER17> Article from Jan 2007 telling you how to remove that message from Blackberry's: [http://www.bbhub.com/2007/01/02/how-to-banish-your-sent- from...](http://www.bbhub.com/2007/01/02/how-to-banish-your-sent-from-my- blackberry-wireless-handheld-t/)

iPhone came out in June 2007 so .. looks like BB's did it first.

<comment><USER18> My SE K790 had a "Sent using a Sony Ericsson Phone" message as early as Sep 2006!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Wow, that just came out of no where. Did anyone really think of HP as a serious contender? great move!

Elevation Partners must be trilled!

<comment><USER20> It's a save, not a single, but yeah: <http://twitter.com/danprimack/status/13026332506>

<comment><USER21> Could you (or someone else) please explain what "single" and "save" mean in this context?

<comment><USER20> Single: 1x return (100% ROI), confusingly 2x back on what was invested. This means a triple is a 300% return, or 4x back what was invested. A home run is a 400% return or better, or 5x back what was invested. Along those lines, Save: money back = money invested

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Very good news for WebOS since HP doesn't have their own competing mobile OS.

<comment><USER23> Weren't they the last major Windows Mobile player? This sounds like the last nail in WM's coffin.

<comment><USER24> HTC makes Windows Mobile/Phone devices. They just recently came out with the HD2 in the US.

<comment><USER25> I had hoped that HTC would discontinue making new Windows Mobile devices after Microsoft told them that Android stepped on their patents. Instead HTC is now 'licensing' these patents from MS. Still, it would have been funny if there were no major manufacturers for Windows Mobile.

[http://www.androidcentral.com/htc-pay-royalties-microsoft- af...](http://www.androidcentral.com/htc-pay-royalties-microsoft-after-being- told-android-steps-its-patents)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> Wow, amazed that it is worth 1.2 Billion. Not that I dislike Palm, but I suspect for 1 Billion, you could write several WebOS from scratch.

<comment><USER27> By the time you're done writing and testing a new webOS, the market would have changed and the serious contenders established. Right now it's still up for grabs.

<comment><USER26> The market of non-Appe users, that is? :-)

OK, but if time is of a premium, why not just use Android, as it's free? Or build on top of Android?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> I'm just going to stick my fingers in my ears and pretend that HTC is buying them.

<comment><USER29> I think this is better. HTC is vetted in hardware, I'm not sure they would care for WebOS as HP hopefully will.

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> The Palm Pre is going to have a fighting chance now. Its a great phone.

</comment><comment><USER31> Not sure what the industry analysis of this will be, but I like the idea of HP having its own platform to present to the world.

It reminds me of the 80s where the was lots of diversity in the platforms. The good news here is WebOS apps are mostly built on web standards so we have the best of both worlds.

</comment><comment><USER32> "Palm's unparalleled webOS platform"

Question: is Palm's web os platform really unparalleled? Or is it quickly falling behind the race that is now dominated by iPhone and android?

<comment><USER33> afaik webos has the best multi-tasking system out there and the easiest entry point (since it's just js, css & html)

<comment><USER34> "Best" in what sense?

Android's life-cycle and Bundles makes a developer think about saving app state information from day one. Something as simple as a configuration change, rotating orientation, recreates your Activity.

Since creating and destroying your activity is such a common occurrence you are forced to save the state info.

When the OS needs to kill a background activity to free up space it tends to work.

Really good YouTube video explaining this:

<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fL6gSd4ugSI>

<comment><USER35> I think it's "Best" interface-wise. The cards metaphor is awesome.

<comment><USER34> It's a fabulous metaphor, but "Can't open any more Cards" really detracts from it.

Palm may have nailed the UX, but Android nailed the engineering.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> This is very surprising. I'd speculated that Sony or RIM would consider buying them once HTC fell out of favor. Sony seemed to be a good fit from a capacity to deliver a high quality product, plus they have ability, much like Apple, to sell stuff at a premium.

RIM seemed less likely but given their need for a new phone OS, it seemed like a pretty easy fit. Corporate culture might have been a factor against them doing this deal, hard to say.

HP's not the sort of company that can enter a new market like this and turn it on its ear, but maybe I'm wrong. They did have the foresight to buy DEC Alpha, which seemed like a great fit, but then they did nothing with it.

Here's hoping for the best.

<comment><USER37> _HP's not the sort of company that can enter a new market like this and turn it on its ear_

This isn't a new market for HP. They've been a leader in the PocketPC space for years, with their Axim line, and Compaq's Ipaq link (no, Apple didn't invent the "i" thing).

I wonder now what's to become of the Ipaqs. I assume that the Windows Mobile based devices will simply be phased out.

<comment><USER38> The Axim was from Dell, not HP. The iPaq was created by Compaq and taken over by HP in their acquisition.

<comment><USER37> +1 for you on the Dell thing; my mistake. But my point still stands on the ipaq thing.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> So Palm = Groupon?

[http://techcrunch.com/2010/04/13/groupon-raises-huge-new- rou...](http://techcrunch.com/2010/04/13/groupon-raises-huge-new-round- at-1-2-billion-valuation/)

<comment><USER40> An apple and orange may sell at some day at some market to some buyer for roughly the same price. Doesn't make apple == orange.

<comment><USER35> That's a very good insight.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER41> I hope HP gets WebOS to be a big enough player to mean great things for innovation in the mobile device space going forward. Gotta love competition as a consumer!

</comment><comment><USER42> <joke>I guess HP figured out that when print media dies, it can't sell as many cartridges and figured it would tow along a sinking boat to its tanker ship. </joke>

Whatever the case may be, HP needs to put blinders on Palm. Palm needs to ultra focus on one good phone. How did they forget that they used to focus so well on the Treos that Blackberry seemed pale in comparison.

</comment><comment><USER43> For years I've loved HP's printers but found the _drivers_ to be a complete mess. I've been left with the sense that they have a incredibly solid hardware/firmware group, but the rest of their software was incredibly poorly designed: that they really didn't understand software at all.

Is there a compelling reason to believe that HP won't make a mess of the software in WebOS?

</comment><comment><USER44> Man, that is a big pile of cash. It hardly seems worth it, but if HP wanted to be a player in the mobile space now they are.

But Palm has a (very long and storied) software problem, not a hardware problem. HP doesn't have much of a reputation in consumer-grade OS software development so I'm not sure how they will be able succeed where Palm failed.

<comment><USER45> Software problem?

Though Palm Pre and Pixi didnt sell as expected, Palm's WebOS has received pretty decent feedback from all over.

<comment><USER44> They spent an eternity trying to develop a successor to the old Palm OS, then they abruptly threw it all away and created WebOS by sticking WebKit on top of a Linux kernel.

As a result, WebOS has been plagued with performance and reliability problems that they're still trying to address, and that shouldn't surprise anyone familiar with system software development.

They've also had a lot of trouble getting 3rd-party development off the ground.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER46> All of you developers, does this excite you as a potential development platform now? Watching past Palm/webOS postings here not gain any traction made me wonder why. Was it the dismal outlook? Was there something wrong with the dev suite Palm offered? Does the hp acquisition change all that for you?

<comment><USER47> Lack of an app market and developer tool immaturity (incomplete documentation, private methods for complete implementation, non-obvious debugging, etc)

<comment><USER46> Thanks for letting me know. Since there hasn't been much buzz about developing for webOS, I never heard details of whether it's actually any good. I hope hp will fix all that.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER48> Hopefully this won't mess with the webOS mojo. Palms seems to be doing some pretty interesting stuff these days.

</comment><comment><USER49> Can't be worse than buying Compaq.

</comment><comment><USER50> I can't imagine this going well for HP or Palm. Palm has already been passed around 5+ times and it just gets chewed up by bureaucracy worse and worse each time. HP also doesn't really have a strong history of stylish consumer electronics, particularly in the non-business market, which is frankly what the mobile market is all about. It's all about hearts & minds.

With Apple and Android clearly the top players, and Microsoft always being a long-term contender, I don't see how there's any room left in the marketplace for another major player.

</comment><comment><USER51> UGH poor Palm employees. I am so sorry.

<comment><USER20> Really? They should be grateful that they look to still have jobs. If Apple or Microsoft or Google bought them, a bunch of them would have been laid off.

<comment><USER52> HP cut deep when it acquired EDS, from top management all the way down to the trenches. I don't think they will leave much besides (parts of) R&D this time.

<comment><USER53> That's because there was lots of overlap w/ EDS. They already had their own services division, a pretty big one at that, so they had to cut out the redundancies. Not the case with Palm. HP doesn't have many software developers, and much less for mobile platforms.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER54> I'm an idiot. I've been mulling buying some PALM for a while.

<comment><USER55> By awhile, I hope you mean less than a month, since they've been in a downward spiral and a month ago were above the $5.70 asking price. 2 months ago they were at $8 and 6 months ago they were at $16 per share. It was a good thing you didn't buy it (unless you purchased December 2008).

<comment><USER56> I misread it and thought he meant he was considering buying the entire company and was disappointed that HP beat him to it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER57> So, Pre hardware running VMS, then? I like it...

</comment><comment><USER58> Classic HP move...first to follow last.

</comment><comment><USER59> I have to think that HP could just throw $100m at the problem and build an embedded OS that's far better than Palm, without having to take on the assets of a long-since failed corporation.

<comment><USER60> That would take them how long? Buying Palm they get that now.

<comment><USER59> Probably a lot quicker than it will take to save the sinking ship that is Palm. Sure this is a market penetration play, but why? Palm was a failure. PalmOS was a failure. WebOS might be cool, but the damage is done. Google is making good penetration into the mobile market, and they didn't need to buy grandpa to do so.

<comment><USER61> PalmOS was hardly a failure. It was far and away the most popular mobile OS for the better part of a decade.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Google Chrome Blog: Browse for a good cause - <AUTHOR> http://chrome.blogspot.com/2010/12/browse-for-good-cause.html <comment><USER2> There is a limit of 250 tabs. I'm not sure if it's per day or not.

That's equivalents to:

10 Vaccinations

25 Books

1.3 Person's clean water

2.5 Square feet of shelter

25 Trees planted

<comment><USER3> On the terms page [1] for the extension, Google says it's a daily limit.

<http://www.google.com/chrome/intl/en/p/cause/tos/>

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> This is something simple that everyone can do to help others out. It takes no effort, so I hope anyone that uses Chrome will install this.

</comment><comment><USER4> The counter is pretty cool. It will probably up my productivity/decrease my browsing at work.

The only problem is I'm experiencing a much higher than normal rate of tab crashes. I hope that will clear up.

<comment><USER3> Is it somehow conflicting with other extensions? I haven't had any issues at all since installing it.</comment></comment>


Remote Work – NoDesk - <AUTHOR> http://nodesk.co/remote-work/ <comment><USER2> Nice collection of links! I'm quite interested in seeking some interesting freelance work. Currently I'm working on putting together a portfolio. Enough about me! Does anybody have any feedback on these sites? Does any of them stand out?

<comment><AUTHOR> I've used quite a few of those links and found them to be pretty good. What kind of freelance work are you looking for? Design, marketing, tech etc?

<comment><USER2> Thanks for the feedback!

I've done some web development mostly PHP and such. Then I've studied computer science for three years so I've some insight in the academic formal world as well. On my spare time I do c programming and Linux stuff.</comment></comment></comment>


Microsoft Workers Protest Army Contract with Tech 'Designed to Help People Kill' - <AUTHOR> https://www.npr.org/2019/02/22/697110641/microsoft-workers-protest-army-contract-with-tech-designed-to-help-people-kill <comment><USER2> The problem with killing more efficiently is that after a point you don't know if you are improving your situation or worsening it.

There is this tv series in Amazon about Einstein life and you could see him opposing using his knowledge to improve weapons, while Haber(creator of Bosh Haber process) did not.

Haber was probably murdered while traveling by secret services in the same way the US killed engineers of Iran nuclear program openly. His wife and son committed suicide because of his work.

As a technical person with decades of experience in science you can do enormous harm if you really want. All you really need is a powerful reason for that.

If you see other countries developing so strong weapons they could invade your country with no cost for them, this is a powerful reason for you to collaborate.

The US has focused so much in developing force that is seen more and more in the world as the bully while countries like China build bridges, ports or roads.

<comment><USER3> You think China isn't using it's tech industry to further it's own defense and surveillance projects? That what you seem to imply?

<comment><USER4> No, the implication is that US uses its prowess disproportionally to advance its military abilities.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> At Rubyconf a few years ago, I saw a talk about writing software for controlling drones. As I remember it, the speaker configured the drone to "lock on" to his face & follow his movements. It was more unsettling than I expected.

<comment><USER6> Do you remember who the speaker was?

<comment><USER5> Ruby On Robots Using Artoo by Ron Evans:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mhXyNGX38mw](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mhXyNGX38mw)

Here's the drone video:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zp7czxk52bI](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zp7czxk52bI)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Whether you agree with this sentiment or not, people waking up to ethical questions in our field is unquestionably a good thing. It's important to ask these questions.

</comment><comment><USER8> Countries all around the world, including the United States armed forces, are using Microsoft software in things "designed to help people kill" _for years_ but now the US Army under Trump has a contract with Microsoft it now becomes a problem?

We have a word for that in the dictionary, it is called hypocrisy.

<comment><USER9> You're trying to tie Trump's administration to this? How? It just sounds like you're a trump supporter trying to cry "stop picking on us".

Ethical concerns raised by developers are an increasingly common occurance that have nothing to do with the current presidential administration.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> It's a good place to be when workers can pick and choose which jobs to pick up.

It's not always this way. We should be glad we're here now.

<comment><USER11> I wouldn't want to be in their place if a global recession with layoffs comes. And it is long oberdue by historical standards.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> They are not slaves, they aren't bound to Microsoft and Microsoft is not bound to them. Step asside. I don't have any doubt that Microsoft won't have any problem in filling their positions with better professionals. Heck, if I were younger and didn't had yet a family, I would apply for a job at Microsoft and would be ok with moving to the United States, and helping the civilized world get rid of the barbarians would be an honor.

<comment><USER13> as a member of the civilized world, would you kill ("get rid of") a "barbarian" person with your bare hands ? Indirection doesn't change anything

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> I can't decide if it's more or less ethical to turn down these type of jobs. Even if you are anti-war, by declining such a job you open up space for the next person in line who may not be as talented of a programmer. The weapons will exist either way, but now they'll have an increased chance of having severe bugs because all the best programmers chose less morally ambiguous jobs. Maybe working for a military contractor is how you prevent the world from accidentally being destroyed. Or that's how you help it intentionally get destroyed, I don't know.

<comment><USER15> I almost wonder if these movements are driven in part, or at least encouraged by, foreign state actors within these companies, who have interests in hampering US military dominance.

<comment><USER16> Not everything is a conspiracy.

<comment><USER15> Of course it isn't. I didn't claim it was.</comment></comment></comment></comment>