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GitHub backs down, kills Copilot pull-request ads after backlash

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Re: GitHub backs down, kills Copilot pull-request ads after backlash

#101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The reflex to assign our morally wrong behaviour to the animal part in us is quite ironic. I just don't see jellyfish building concentration camps.

Yeah they just use their tentacles to catch prey and bring it into their body cavity, where they feed on and defecate out of the same opening. Maybe they don't because they lack the intellect to do so, not because they have any sense of morality.

Well not sure where the disgust for jellyfish is coming from but there isn't really much of a moral argument here. What you are saying is akin to: look you just ate a burger, what's next–the holocaust?

(The organisation of the functioning of bodily orifices of the organism isn't really at all relevant for that. One might also add, that in the case of the burger, there might actually be an argument for some structural analogy that depends on the origin of the meat in a process of captivity and killing, that is organized in an industrial fashion..)

Re: GitHub backs down, kills Copilot pull-request ads after backlash

#102
post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A lot of amazing technology has been invented just for the purpose of killing people. It's nothing new. Humans are monkeys that like to kill other monkeys and no amount of civilization will change that.

I find it sad that while technological progress is seen almost as a given by virtually everyone, moral progress is often not even an aspiration

Our current incentives system is absolutely amoral, there's no financial/economic benefit for being moral, it's the opposite: being moral is penalised since you'd be disadvantaged competing with others who don't care about it.

I completely agree with you, moral progress should be incentivised somehow...

Re: GitHub backs down, kills Copilot pull-request ads after backlash

#103
post #4

Calling advertisements "product tips" as if everybody is too stupid to understand what that means. They created an amazing technology that oftentimes is indistinguishable from magic and then use it to deliver ads and - sorry about the tangent - kill people. This really is the quote of the century: > The best minds of my generation are thinking about how to make people click ads What a waste.

It's just the natural evolution of "They're not advertisements. They're recommendations."

Re: GitHub backs down, kills Copilot pull-request ads after backlash

#104
post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> letting Copilot make changes to PRs written by a human without their knowledge Wait, did they really sneak this in entirely without user interaction? So people trying not to use AI would still risk being ""contaminated""? Incredible breach of trust. Similar kind of thing to lying about whether your product is vegan.

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Re: GitHub backs down, kills Copilot pull-request ads after backlash

#106
post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And thinking that megacorps are in any meaningful way different than your last underdog startup darling is another level of copium.

Sure. But a startup could, in theory end up profitable and self-sufficient without a public offering. It's not impossible.

Startups are about making money, take they capital with a promise of making more capital, and the logic of capital is uniform, no matter where it comes from. It always, without exception, will end up the same, with the only difference how much time it will take.

Re: GitHub backs down, kills Copilot pull-request ads after backlash

#107
post #4

Calling advertisements "product tips" as if everybody is too stupid to understand what that means. They created an amazing technology that oftentimes is indistinguishable from magic and then use it to deliver ads and - sorry about the tangent - kill people. This really is the quote of the century: > The best minds of my generation are thinking about how to make people click ads What a waste.

A lot of amazing technology has been invented just for the purpose of killing people. It's nothing new. Humans are monkeys that like to kill other monkeys and no amount of civilization will change that.

Monkeys don't generally like killing other monkeys though.

Re: GitHub backs down, kills Copilot pull-request ads after backlash

#109

I wonder if the PM responsible for this will be held accountable. Who should resign? I'm guessing the answers will be predictable and disappointing.

> Who should resign? And achieve what?

A healthy culture where leadership is held accountable, and egregious errors in judgement are treated with the seriousness they deserve.

Re: GitHub backs down, kills Copilot pull-request ads after backlash

#110
post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You could just as easily see it as the best minds are building huge amounts of amazing, free technology and need a way to pay for it. That's a false dichotomy. First of all, the technology is far from "free". It's easily accessible, perhaps, but users pay handsomely to use it, even if they're unaware of it, which most adtech companies go out of their way to ensure. Secondly, advertising isn't the only business mode…

It's hardly a black and white area, and there's more to this question than just GOOG, but there's a joke here that has some relevance: Those bastards have bled us dry with their algorithms, taken all the data we had, and not just from us, but from our children, our children's children, our children's children's children, our children's children's children's children... and what have they ever given us in return? The…

I like this, and I agree with the sentiment!

But does anyone else feel we might need to cross the search engine off this list soon? Since whatever happened which is reducing the usefulness of Google search (Search Engine Optimisation?), is search better now than it was in the pre-Google days?

Tangential question - would search engine optimisation have been less effective/destructive if there was more variety in the search engine people choose?

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