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VS Code inserting 'Co-Authored-by Copilot' into commits regardless of usage

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Re: VS Code inserting 'Co-Authored-by Copilot' into commits regardless of usage

#371

Post by drivebyhooting »

2ndorderthought wrote: post #223
thephyber wrote: post #200

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not all AI companies are the same. Some are piling on masses of debt to built capacity (eg. Oracle). Others are just reinvesting the profits from the rest of their company (eg. Google, Meta). Anthropic’s moat is their best tool, Claude Code. OpenAI’s moat is the brand of ChatGPT, once the fastest growing app in the history of the world. It’s possible that open weight models keep pace, but it’s also possible that the…

I really don't think open models will lose. I think they are cheaper to train because they have to be more efficient than the monstrosities we have now. There is no theory that says the current frontier models cannot exist in models with 1/100th the compute waste ;). When we start trending in that direction, and oh wow we truly are, there will be no reason for these services. You could run them on your own hardware w…

I’m interested in learning more about your theory that these models can be trained more cheaply. Is anyone doing it from scratch, rather than adversarial distillation?

Re: VS Code inserting 'Co-Authored-by Copilot' into commits regardless of usage

#372

Post by [deleted] »

low_tech_love wrote: post #32

Isn’t this a kind of “leopards ate my face” situation? I thought we had all “agreed” that letting AI write code and take control of software repositories is good, even if we have no idea what is going on beyond a thin surface layer, because well it’s fast and we can fix it later and lol who needs testing? My customers are my testers. And now it’s suddenly bad because the developer is the customer?

[deleted]

Re: VS Code inserting 'Co-Authored-by Copilot' into commits regardless of usage

#373

Post by squigz »

movedx wrote: post #362
artyom wrote: post #182

To everyone who bought the "developer-friendly" Microsoft of VSCode fame from a few years ago: this is what they forever did, and forever will do. This company has been pulling these tricks since the early 90s. If you fell for this once again, there's nobody else to blame but yourself.

You’re forgetting the fact that the newer generations coming into the industry don’t know that. They don’t even know what a VHS tape is and some don’t even know what a DVD is — this isn’t a problem it’s just their baseline is different from ours. Global warming is an example of this: newer generations see today’s conditions as normal but we older generations see them as broken and a problem. To be direct about this:…

The younger generations aren't really that stupid. They know what a DVD is for gosh sake.

They also know the conditions they have to endure - economic, climate, whatever - are not normal or okay. They're well aware of who to blame for those.

Re: VS Code inserting 'Co-Authored-by Copilot' into commits regardless of usage

#374

Post by jamesbfb »

dmitriv wrote: post #268

I am the person who approved this PR and would like to acknowledge and apologize for the mistake of turning this feature on by default without sufficient upfront validation. There was no ill intent by evil corporation, but rather a desire to support functionality that some customers expect of VS Code w.r.t. AI-generated code. As folks mentioned here - many similar tools do this as well. Obviously, it should not be on…

I think there’s a few of us who appreciate you being up front. I’d question the intent and why it was a mistake, especially when the commit[0] message reverting said functionality states “widespread criticism” citing this very HN article makes it look seemingly like the revert is due to negative PR opposed to a mistake.

[0]https://github.com/microsoft/vscode/pull/313725/commits/1e70...

Re: VS Code inserting 'Co-Authored-by Copilot' into commits regardless of usage

#375

Post by golem14 »

I miss in this whole thread why this is happening. Presumably to be transparent whether code has been co-written by AI?

What's in it for Microsoft?

If we accept that AI can't copyright or own IP rights on something, then why? I have a sneaky suspicion that there's some lobbying in the works to overturn that ruling going forward. In the past, it was OK to build models from copyrighted data etc one might have found on the wayside. But, in the future, no such thing for you. Everything generated by the AIs will then belong (at least partly) to the megacorps (maybe THEY can co-own the copyright if the AI cannot). Nice pulling-up-the ladder if true.

This could also be a move against other countries' IP position.

I've seen the explanation from dimitriv [1], but I am not convinced. These markings achieve very little, as people can clearly work around it by copy-pasting code from another place, or using other companies tools, like claude code or antigravity (or, not even use the GUI)

I suppose the answer might just be "don't attribute to malice ...", even if Microsoft has proven us wrong before; they generally know exactly what they are doing strategically.

I guess, in a few years we will know.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=dmitriv#47991835

Re: VS Code inserting 'Co-Authored-by Copilot' into commits regardless of usage

#377

Post by bigstrat2003 »

abustamam wrote: post #285
thiht wrote: post #265

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ok but I’ve used VSCode for almost 10 years, got mad at this once, and disabled it instantly. This sucks, but maybe don’t overreact?

Just because you can opt out doesn't mean that they're not shitty for defaulting you to opt in.

It is certainly bad behavior that Microsoft did this. But it's irrational to jump from there to "this is what they always did and always will do" as OP did. Corporations are not unchangeable monoliths, and it was perfectly reasonable to use Microsoft tools when they were acting decently towards their users. Now that they have turned user-hostile, it makes sense to avoid them until they learn their lesson, and so on.

People act like a corporation has character traits, as a person does. But it doesn't. You can't strongly predict future behavior based on the present the way you can with a person, so it makes no sense to have seething eternal hatred for a company.

Re: VS Code inserting 'Co-Authored-by Copilot' into commits regardless of usage

#378

Post by krupan »

nz wrote: post #113
krainboltgreene wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> And then set fire to the whole thing in an offering to their robot gods. It's the bourgeoisie dream: A means of production that also does the labor 24/7 and can't complain, infinitely spawnable. Theoretical slavery+, so of course they're throwing everything into the furnace for it.

People (well, American people (disclosure, I am an American)), used to be scared/worried that Silicon Valley will eventually move to Bangalore or Shenzhen, because of wage-discrepancies, and so on -- and it is not a totally unreasonable concern, considering that the _Silicon_ part of Silicon Valley has been slowly relocated to Taipei, Seoul, Tokyo, and a few others. At this point, maybe we should start pushing that t…

If you have worked in Silicon Valley you know that Bangalore and Shenzhen came here ;)

In all seriousness, the silicon is still designed in Silicon Valley but maybe you don't hear about that as much? Broadcom, Qualcomm, Intel, Samsung, AMD, Nvidia, etc. all have a huge presence there still.

Re: VS Code inserting 'Co-Authored-by Copilot' into commits regardless of usage

#379

Post by drivers99 »

xp84 wrote: post #289
storus wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a complete takeover of technically incompetent management that feels like it can finally execute their ideas to the fullest instead of relying on those pesky swengs with their obstructions, complaints and problems. We'll soon get the management utopia everywhere.

It wasn’t AI that brought us Apple’s gray on slightly-lighter-gray UI standards, nor the 10,000,000 ••• menus that have infested every webapp in the past 10 years as an alternative to thoughtful UI design. We humans made everything shitty before we made AI.

> Apple’s gray on slightly-lighter-gray UI standards

It's a tangential point, but I turned on System Settings -> Accessibility -> Display -> Increase Contrast (the on/off option, not Display Contrast) and now at least the windows are outlined sharply.

Re: VS Code inserting 'Co-Authored-by Copilot' into commits regardless of usage

#380

Post by [deleted] »

yankohr wrote: post #84

This feels like the modern version of 'Sent from my iPhone' but much more invasive. Git commits are legal and technical records. Falsifying who authored a piece of code just to pump up AI usage stats is a huge breach of trust and it is disappointing to see Microsoft prioritize branding over the integrity of the developer's log. I expect my IDE to record what happened, not what the marketing department wants people to…

[deleted]
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