Original submitter here. Yes, this was a thought/concern when I submitted the article. Upon some reflection I went with:
1. HN guidelines stating, "Don't editorialise titles," and
2. The article itself is quite upfront on the issue - it's not like they tried to bury it or mislead (arguably except for the borderline headline), and
3. It does tell us, in no uncertain terms, that at least some coterie within MS is thinking of doing this thing.
My guess is that this inside build functionality was deliberately leaked to test the waters, see whether anyone would care.
Could the headline have been better? Probably.
Should we be concerned when the veil momentarily pulls aside and we glimpse the real MS behind the New Shiny Friendly MS mask? Certainly.
Just for reference (and thanks for remembering the guideline about not editorializing—if only everyone would!) it's ok to edit a title to make it less misleading. That would be the guideline behind adding "insider build" in this case. When editing like that, it's best to use representative language from the article itself. We're good on that here too, since "insider build" appears in the first paragraph.
I don't actually know what an insider build is, btw.
"Insider build", afaik, is MS's term for "nightly build". Like a permanent beta-test program that you can opt into in the Windows Update settings dialog.
It's their current terminology for their widely-available, public early-access programs for all sorts of products. They are not completely unqualified builds like a a nightly build would be. That would break all the things.
Those customers signed up for it. It wasn't a random sampling. It's similar to running a Firefox Nightly or being part of an open Beta.
Microsoft's Insider program is an opt in where you get to try out potential features. There's a history of features being pulled from the channel, their Sets feature was pulled in June.
