Hacker News Reader

Comment by nullindividual | Hacker News Reader

I can't reproduce. If I search for 'chrome', the answer I get back from Bing AI:

> Chrome is a web browser developed by Google. It is known for its speed, simplicity, and security features. Would you like to know more about Chrome?

Additionally, I get a proper download link for Chrome as the top result. This is on Edge.

Performing this on Chrome yields a different, arguably better answer from Bing AI.

> Chrome is a web browser developed by Google1. It is fast, secure, and free to download and use. It also has features like bookmarks sync, form autofill, and Google smarts built-in. Chrome supports various operating systems, such as Windows, Mac, Linux, and Chromebook. You can check if your device meets the system requirements to use Chrome3.

View on HN

They pulled it:

> Shortly after we published this story with that comment, Fischel confirmed Microsoft has pulled the plug on this particular idea. “The experience is no longer flighting.” Sure enough, I no longer see it.

But "flighting"? Does that mean "deployed"? I've never heard that before -- I'm guessing a weird variation of "in flight" which itself is an unusual metaphor? Is that something people are saying now?

It’s an advertising term. Unsurprising, given the context.

https://www.investopedia.com/terms/f/flighting.asp

As a former Microsoft employee, “flighting” is the internal (and external, in some cases like https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-insider/flighting) name for A/B testing or feature flags and has been for a long time.

If that was the original definition from whoever introduced it to the company, it’s long been forgotten.

Yes, this means "in flight" (in experiment). Microsoft related articles use that every now and then. Some sort of micro-speak.

I've heard it before in microsoft context. Oddly, Raymond Chen has never covered it - https://devblogs.microsoft.com/oldnewthing/tag/microspeak

And what's up with "the experience", which refers not to a theme park ride but rather is doublespeak for "the ad that we crammed down your throat"...

“Experience” is a common term in software experimentation. It’s a superset of ad, feature, image, etc. It very literally means anything that a user will experience. A broader version of feature flagging is experience management.

They've been using that for a long time to refer to bugs users have. "Oh I'm sorry about your experience with our product." Stuff like that.

Used to be "the feature was removed from production".

New English mod where one says "need to action this" I guess leads to "flighting"... because reasons.

Ironic complaining about improper English usage and ending your sentence with “… because reasons”.

"because reasons" is another new feature of the English mods. I used it to drive the point home.

Does "mods" mean "modifications" here, as used in the car, vape, gaming scenes? Originally I was thinking perhaps "modernists" or "moderators," but those don't fit your earlier comment. Quite an overloaded abbreviation!

Modifications.

Of course this practise is known as "verbing"

It's typical obfuscated corporatespeak.

(To be fair, Mozilla has done the same shit in the past when they went adware: https://blog.mozilla.org/advancingcontent/2014/02/11/publish... --- I'd look for the HN article discussing it and link that here too, but ironically Google is also refusing to find it.)

Think like ‘test flight.’

It’s something that’s being tried out to gauge effectiveness.

It’s also an excuse to dismiss something as insignificant. Oh that thing? We were just flightning it, it hardly counts.

The article mentions that a Microsoft marketing director confirmed they'd disabled the 'experiment' following the publication of the article.

Edit: sibling comment was faster.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com