[erlehmann_]

So is this what a PR submarine [1] looks like? I remembered that I had read such a story before and found that Emma could also write again in March 2017 [2], December 2016 [3], November 2016 [4] and probably other months between now and then.

[1] http://www.paulgraham.com/submarine.html [2] https://theassistiveblog.areavoices.com/2017/03/30/emma-a-we... [3] https://mspoweruser.com/microsoft-researcher-creates-wearabl... [4] http://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-3979182/Engineer-c...

[elorant]

How can this be a PR piece? For starters, there isn't even a product. And most important, this is Microsoft, not some up and coming start-up that's craving for exposure. Microsoft is a behemoth when it comes to ad spending. If they had a product to market they wouldn't need some native advertising article, they'd go in guns blazing.

[cperciva]

Microsoft is actively rebranding itself from "evil megacorporation" to "innovative doer of good".

[curiousDog]

That's pretty much every corporation these days though. Facebook, Google, Amazon starting a permanent homeless shelter etc.

[badminton1]

Like "Microsoft <3 Linux" and "Microsoft <3 Open Source".

Except that Microsoft used to collect 2 billion dollars in patents from Linux based product vendors. They totally "<3" open source.

[badminton1]

To the downvoters: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Halloween_documents

[NoPiece]

The story is a Microsoft blog post - it is definitionally PR. Still a good story though.

[skrebbel]

It's PR, but it's not a submarine.

Also I'm not sure why you think it's suspicious that this was written about before. It's an amazing result and clearly it didn't happen overnight so there were earlier opportunities for a writeup.

[wglb]

In what way is this submarining?