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Let us git rid of it, angry GitHub users say of forced Copilot features

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Re: Let us git rid of it, angry GitHub users say of forced Copilot features

#101

Post by chubot »

chubot wrote: post #72
tho2342o349423 wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At this point, pretty much all of the US markets (and the USD) is hinging on "unlimited upside" promised by techbros and their magic AGIs & robots. They probably get orders from all the way up the food chain to keep the show going. Wonder what'll happen to JPY once the Yen-carry unwinds from this massive hype-cycle - will probably hit 70 JPY to the dollar! Currently Sony Bank in Japan offers USD time-deposits at 8% p…

They probably get orders from all the way up the food chain to keep the show going. Honestly I think the same thing happened with self-driving cars ~10 years ago. Larry Page and Google's "submarine" marketing convinced investors and CEOs of automakers and tech companies [1] that they were going to become obsolete, and that Google would be taking all that profit. In 2016, GM acquired Cruise for $1 billion or so. It se…

Also, I think Hacker News mostly believed the hype about self-driving cars, with relatively little pushback. Many people were influenced by what the CEOs/investors said, and of course the prospect of jobs and "cool tech"

e.g. in 2018, over 7 years ago, I was simply pointing out that people like Chris Urmson (who had WORKED ON self-driving for decades) and Bill Gurley said self-driving would take 25+ years to deploy (which seems totally accurate now)

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16353541

And I got significant pushback

Actually I remember some in-person conversations with MUCH MORE push back than that, including from some close friends.

They believed things because they were told by the media it would happen

People told me in 2018 that their 16 year old would not need to learn how to drive, etc. (In 2025, self-driving is not available in even ONE of their end points for a trip, let alone two end points)

Likewise, at least some people are convinced now that "coding as a job is going away" -- some people are even deathly depressed about it

Re: Let us git rid of it, angry GitHub users say of forced Copilot features

#102

Post by skydhash »

mhh__ wrote: post #95
AlexandrB wrote: post #44

I find it weird how companies talk out both sides of their mouth on AI. On the one hand it's this magical tool that will make you 10x more efficient at your job, and on the other it's something they have to market heavily and shove in your face at every turn - sometimes outright forcing you to engage with it. These two things don't seem compatible - if the tool was that good people would be beating down their doors t…

I bet this was true of computers back in the day too. The processes that are native to computers are magical but adding computers to the old is actually quite bad e.g. paperwork is better done on paper

You bet wrong. Computers were pricey enough that if you want one, you have to really need it to justify the price. It was not forced on any business.

Re: Let us git rid of it, angry GitHub users say of forced Copilot features

#103

Post by jraph »

diggan wrote: post #100
jraph wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> we all believed GitHub would eventually turn into a open platform made by and for FOSS I really don't remember it like this at all. I do remember looking for actually open source forges and choosing Gitorious, which was then bought and shutdown by GitLab (and projects were offered to be seamlessly migrated, which worked well, and somehow we ended up being hosted on an open core platform, but that's another story).…

> I understand their was hope that GitHub would be open sourced, but I don't think there was any reason to believe it would happen. Yeah, I don't think me myself had good reasons beyond "They seem like the good guys who won't sell out", but I was also way younger and more naive at that point (it was like 15 years ago after all). I think I mostly just drank the cool-aid of what you mentioned as "if you weren't on GitH…

Fair enough, obviously!

I suspect many people were in a similar situation.

Re: Let us git rid of it, angry GitHub users say of forced Copilot features

#104

Post by api »

marginalia_nu wrote: post #96
api wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ahh, the reason we lost the Vietnam war. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/McNamara_fallacy

"AI is the Vietnam of product management" is a blog post that almost writes itself. Not really my field so if anyone wants to take it for a spin, go ham.

Have ChatGPT write it

This isn’t AI specific though. The whole industry runs this way because thoughtful decision making doesn’t scale easily. KPIs are easier.

Re: Let us git rid of it, angry GitHub users say of forced Copilot features

#105

Post by 1over137 »

chamomeal wrote: post #85
mvdtnz wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Critical"? "Infrastructure"? What do you think Github is?

Critical piece of tech infrastructure. Which is absolutely is. When GitHub goes down, the company I work at is pretty much kneecapped for the duration of the outage. If you’re in the middle of a PR, waiting for GitHub actions, doing work in a codespace, or just need to pull/fetch/push changes before you can work, you’re just stuck!

Wow. Why would your company do that? It's easy to self-host gitlab for example.

Re: Let us git rid of it, angry GitHub users say of forced Copilot features

#106

Post by everdrive »

kelvinjps10 wrote: post #26
ants_everywhere wrote: post #6

People have been voluntarily letting Microsoft host their code for years now. And before that they posted their open source code to a centralized site that wasn't open source. This is one of those things where of course it was going to happen. GitHub was VC funded, they were going to either exit to a big company or try to become one. Eventually the bill was going to come due and everyone knew this. You can choose to…

Wasn't GitHub initially bootstrapped?

I'm not being flippant or contrary. What does "bootstrapped" mean in this context? I feel like I've never really understood it as a metaphor.

Re: Let us git rid of it, angry GitHub users say of forced Copilot features

#107

Post by sys_64738 »

ants_everywhere wrote: post #6

People have been voluntarily letting Microsoft host their code for years now. And before that they posted their open source code to a centralized site that wasn't open source. This is one of those things where of course it was going to happen. GitHub was VC funded, they were going to either exit to a big company or try to become one. Eventually the bill was going to come due and everyone knew this. You can choose to…

Didn't sourceforge used to be the most friendly open source place then they did something which I forget which got them binned. I think the problem with Github is the low barrier to entry for another open source hosting entity if the typical MICROS~1 action of Embrace, Extend, Extinguish were practiced on GH.

Re: Let us git rid of it, angry GitHub users say of forced Copilot features

#108

Post by mhh__ »

skydhash wrote: post #102
mhh__ wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I bet this was true of computers back in the day too. The processes that are native to computers are magical but adding computers to the old is actually quite bad e.g. paperwork is better done on paper

You bet wrong. Computers were pricey enough that if you want one, you have to really need it to justify the price. It was not forced on any business.

How long ago? I was born after the pedants Millenium so I'm expecting my definition of back in the day is different to yours

I think my time frame is firmly after the invention of excel but before the web was it's own thing

Re: Let us git rid of it, angry GitHub users say of forced Copilot features

#109

Post by immibis »

cmiles74 wrote: post #66
AlexandrB wrote: post #44

I find it weird how companies talk out both sides of their mouth on AI. On the one hand it's this magical tool that will make you 10x more efficient at your job, and on the other it's something they have to market heavily and shove in your face at every turn - sometimes outright forcing you to engage with it. These two things don't seem compatible - if the tool was that good people would be beating down their doors t…

The less I know about a thing the more useful an LLM seems to be. I’m working with a new-to-me enterprise code base, the LLM helps me find related (and duplicate) code. Even here it’s usefulness has an expiration date, eventually I’ll know where stuff lives and I’ll use it less and less. Life experience tells me I’m not unique and I suspect the constant cram-AI-into-the-thing is because the vendors are hoping, eventu…

Yes, they've legitimately good at a few things (e.g. very fuzzy search), but that doesn't justify the amount of investment.

Re: Let us git rid of it, angry GitHub users say of forced Copilot features

#110

Post by chubot »

Rover222 wrote: post #97
chubot wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They probably get orders from all the way up the food chain to keep the show going. Honestly I think the same thing happened with self-driving cars ~10 years ago. Larry Page and Google's "submarine" marketing convinced investors and CEOs of automakers and tech companies [1] that they were going to become obsolete, and that Google would be taking all that profit. In 2016, GM acquired Cruise for $1 billion or so. It se…

Not really your main point, but Tesla self driving is quite incredible, despite what internet clickbait says. They have a clear path to full autonomy with vision-only systems. But yeah, certainly 5-7 years behind the initial schedule. Which I guess was more of your point.

OK, but I think it will end up being more than 25 years behind schedule, taking into account the claims

which is what people like Chris Urmson and Bill Gurley already said prior to 2018 (see my sibling comment)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_predictions_for_autono...

We're going to end up with complete autonomy

Ultimately you'll be able to summon your car anywhere … your car can get to you. I think that within two years, you'll be able to summon your car from across the country

---

(Also, in 2018 I said I'd be the first to buy a car where I could sleep behind the wheel while going from SF to Portland or LA. That obviously doesn't exist now.

Anyone want to take a bet on whether this will be possible in 2032, 7 years from now? I'd bet NO, but we can check in 2032 :-) )

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