Are you saying that in today's politically correct world, HN should rank and give equal front page time to every topic relating to a minority? And also implying subtly that the predominantly male audience of HN prefer prostitution stories over discussion of minority's issues?
People remain the same people and companies remain the same companies.
It's in microsofts DNA to build stuff that captures and watches and monitors and logs.
Just because they've started to be more open, won't change the fundamental company attitude and approach to doing things.
Microsoft will simply be bringing more "Microsoftiness" to the open source world. Get used to it, there's more coming cause that's the way they build software.
I would suggest that it is time to rethink some of those outdated assumptions that tools won't spy on you. Microsoft have arrived at the open source party, so open source isn't the same any more, just accept that the world has changed and now it's entirely possible that your open source is logging and watching.
I'm not a fast programmer nor the smartest, but I am a relentless problem solver. I'm the terminator of problem solving ..... once I get stuck into working something out I just can't rest till I've cracked the case.
You're good at programming if you work hard at really learning your craft.... learning some things to deep expert level and many things to competence. So many programmers make no determined effort to learn - they are the shit programmers.