Live data from Hacker News

Today I realized I now trust Microsoft more than Google. What is happening?

old.reddit.com

221–230 of 280 posts

Re: Today I realized I now trust Microsoft more than Google. What is happening?

#221

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> VS Code has one as far as I am aware uniquely-implemented feature -- remote editing -- which is absolutely invaluable to me as a freelancer with many long-term, infrequently-updated projects. To be that one guy, Emacs has had remote editing (without even needing to install anything on the remote server, unlike vscode) for forever with tramp mode. But other, more accessible/modern editors having it is definitely nic…

I guess Tramp mode must be the inspiration, to some extent. But the VSC approach allows me to customise the tool environment within the remote extension, including going as far as using different SCSS processors and language servers, but is managed through essentially exactly the same interface as the local. (It's also inherently multi-user; changes are reflected in each machine connected to the remote, which makes i…

Yeah, I certainly didn't mean it as a slight against VSC. (I am very much an electron hater but VSC is an exception because they obviously put in the effort to make it work as well as it does.)

Much as I love Emacs I do mostly use VSC these days, and I do tend to forget the extent of what remote editing capabilities it provides since I haven't had much reason to use them in a while.

Re: Today I realized I now trust Microsoft more than Google. What is happening?

#222
post #209

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> VS Code has one as far as I am aware uniquely-implemented feature -- remote editing -- which is absolutely invaluable to me as a freelancer with many long-term, infrequently-updated projects. To be that one guy, Emacs has had remote editing (without even needing to install anything on the remote server, unlike vscode) for forever with tramp mode. But other, more accessible/modern editors having it is definitely nic…

Everyone always brings up Emacs with regards to VS Code's remoting features, but I have yet to see anything that supports that it is anywhere close to VS Code. With VS Code, I can develop across Windows, Docker, Linux, Linux running on WSL, and macOS with zero configuration aside from setting up SSH connection configs and installing the remote extensions with a button click. All the extensions work seemlessly when re…

Ah right.

(Embarrassed cough)

So, er, I didn’t need to install MacOS Fuse, mount an SSH-FS folder and then use VS Code to open my remote code for editing then?

Thanks for sharing. At least I’ll know next time! :-)

Re: Today I realized I now trust Microsoft more than Google. What is happening?

#223

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is a new angle of attack that the authors of the code didn’t know was coming. I think it is pretty obvious that lots of GPL authors wouldn’t want their code to be productized in ways that don’t contribute back to the community, because they had the ability to use a BSD or MIT license and didn’t take it.

If you don't want people to learn from your code then don't open source it. Learning via LLM vs person learning is a distinction that sounds unenforceable in practice.

There will eventually be a court case where an LLM reproduces creative code verbatim which clears the de minimis threshold. For example: https://twitter.com/mitsuhiko/status/1410886329924194309

But the defendant won't be Microsoft — they just provided a tool, and that's legal. No, the defendant will be the downstream consumer who incorporated the code spat out by the LLM.

It doesn't matter whether the LLM "learned" — intent is irrelevant and the defendant will have committed copyright violation regardless. The LLM can't copyright-wash the code — nobody can.

Re: Today I realized I now trust Microsoft more than Google. What is happening?

#225
post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think that’s mostly my point. GP release source code, presumably under a license that permitted this use. It’s okay to not be happy that it was used this way… but that’s life

No license except CC0/unlicense permits laundering authorship like Copilot does.

Yes, this is exactly true among the popular FOSS licenses.

The attribution licenses such as ALv2, BSD, MIT, etc. which are generally considered to be "permissive" still require attribution, and this condition is not upheld by popular LLMs.

Of course, the copied material has to be judged substantial enough for the license to apply in a court of law, which is a human-arbitrated threshold.

It will most likely be a copyleft author who eventually brings a court case, but the attribution licenses do not allow for LLM usage either unless the LLM provides attribution and preserves notices as spelled out in the licenses.

Re: Today I realized I now trust Microsoft more than Google. What is happening?

#226

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I guess Tramp mode must be the inspiration, to some extent. But the VSC approach allows me to customise the tool environment within the remote extension, including going as far as using different SCSS processors and language servers, but is managed through essentially exactly the same interface as the local. (It's also inherently multi-user; changes are reflected in each machine connected to the remote, which makes i…

Yeah, I certainly didn't mean it as a slight against VSC. (I am very much an electron hater but VSC is an exception because they obviously put in the effort to make it work as well as it does.) Much as I love Emacs I do mostly use VSC these days, and I do tend to forget the extent of what remote editing capabilities it provides since I haven't had much reason to use them in a while.

Yes -- sorry, my comment about critics may have come across as aimed at you, but it wasn't!

I was thinking more of all the other times this has come up in the past and I have to say, "you understand it's not just a text editor with network access?"

It has pretty much unique capabilities, and as another commenter has said, it's even remarkably agnostic as to the _kind_ of remote container. For example you can run the editor on Windows with the remote as WSL, and it really blurs the boundaries between them in a way that cannot possibly be a coincidence for Microsoft.

Re: Today I realized I now trust Microsoft more than Google. What is happening?

#227
post #209

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Everyone always brings up Emacs with regards to VS Code's remoting features, but I have yet to see anything that supports that it is anywhere close to VS Code. With VS Code, I can develop across Windows, Docker, Linux, Linux running on WSL, and macOS with zero configuration aside from setting up SSH connection configs and installing the remote extensions with a button click. All the extensions work seemlessly when re…

Ah right. (Embarrassed cough) So, er, I didn’t need to install MacOS Fuse, mount an SSH-FS folder and then use VS Code to open my remote code for editing then? Thanks for sharing. At least I’ll know next time! :-)

Ohh you're going to enjoy this when you get to it :-)

Re: Today I realized I now trust Microsoft more than Google. What is happening?

#229

I generally avoid Google products, but I do not understand the animosity towards YouTube, nor why anyone would not just pay the very small fee for YouTube Premium and do away with all the ads. The content being created for YouTube is fantastic, you can easily watch news from all over the world, conference talks, lectures, interviews, in-depth documentaries and deep dive analysis that blows away anything you'll ever s…

>I generally avoid Google products, but I do not understand the animosity towards YouTube It's still a Google product that does Google things. If you hate Google things, making an exception for YouTube is saying your standards have a price tag attached.

[deleted]

Re: Today I realized I now trust Microsoft more than Google. What is happening?

#230
post #72
post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What could do with your data to make more money that they aren’t? Sure in theory they could be selling access to anyone’s Gmail account to the highest bidder, but that’s going to lose them money by actively driving their customers away. Google may be actively harmful/evil, but they aren’t stupid.

Indexing and fingerprinting your browser history locally in Chrome, to generate a set of demographic and special-interest identifier tags, that are then attached to your Google account; where the special-interests are used by Google Ads to personalize the ad auctions, and the demos are used by Google Ads to price your CPMs.

> locally in Chrome

Google is likely afraid of a similar backlash as what happened to Apple when they wanted to use local hashing of images.

They might consider it if they couldn’t basically do the same thing via upload data.

Post reply on HN