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Publishing your work increases your luck

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111–120 of 131 posts

Re: Publishing your work increases your luck

#111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I can't stop any megacorp from training on my code, and it's futile to try. I do not like this take and I do hope you reconsider repeating such. This very much reads as accepting a lack of any claim to reasonable privacy and ownership, borderline on accepting what I would consider theft.

I understand. I am, however, impotent against OpenAI. If I publish code to GitHub, I understand it will be used for training. I'd rather get the win for my family than try to fight a megacorp. I'm sorry.

You don't have to win from a megacorp. Just add a bit of friction to some of their actions. Many small frictions do stack up.

Re: Publishing your work increases your luck

#112
post #91
post #24

I suppose we're going to just gloss over the fact that the primary party benefitting from people publishing their work like this is someone else. Someone else being usually some corp that is happy to pay with exposure instead of money. This is of course a rather cynical read, but the first instance of luck being "Having your OSS library take off" kinda paints this picture for me. Which does make sense I guess, given…

Hey! I wrote the article. Having an OSS project take off changed my life. YMMV

If you throw my nickname into a search engine, you will see that that is the case for me as well. Doesn't change anything about what I said though.

If anything, the fact that it worked for me, yet I found it necessary to add the full context, probably strengthens the statement even more.

But anyway. Standard damage control statement that latches onto nothing because there is nothing to latch on to as I made sure to structure the comment that way.

I hate corporate so much man. Just because you can predict what happens doesn't mean that the happening would be any less frustrating.

___

I understand that your role requires you to do this. That is clear to anyone moving through these systems.

What I do not understand though is why you even tried to deflect this with such a low-quality "oh it worked for me it might not have worked for you. YMMV" thing, when you could've also just said nothing at all, not forcing my hand and making me call you out on that.

That is, above all else, strategically unwise.

Fortunately, however, this all doesn't matter. It's not like anyone cares about anything on this platform anyway. So even a strategically unwise move might as well not exist at all.

Re: Publishing your work increases your luck

#113
post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When we become ghost content producers for LLMs, you are not supposed to hear something in reply to your post, book, or other work. Most of the time, your work will be ingested by a handful of companies as training data; the readers benefitting from your work will pay these companies, and in return these companies will thoroughly shield and insulate you from being thanked by the people you helped. These companies wil…

Obviously the solution here is to have the LLMs post thank you notes, and offer a complex network of job offers for all of these people contributing to open source. Of course the jobs don’t actually exist, but these acts of kindness will keep the producers thinking that they are both in demand and appreciated.

Current LLMs seem to have an opposing goal baked in; don't reveal the exact source. They may ignore copyright when training, but revealing actual lists of sources with quotes would be too much of a giveaway.

Re: Publishing your work increases your luck

#114
post #112
post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hey! I wrote the article. Having an OSS project take off changed my life. YMMV

If you throw my nickname into a search engine, you will see that that is the case for me as well. Doesn't change anything about what I said though. If anything, the fact that it worked for me, yet I found it necessary to add the full context, probably strengthens the statement even more. But anyway. Standard damage control statement that latches onto nothing because there is nothing to latch on to as I made sure to s…

My role? My role as a what?

Re: Publishing your work increases your luck

#115
post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you throw my nickname into a search engine, you will see that that is the case for me as well. Doesn't change anything about what I said though. If anything, the fact that it worked for me, yet I found it necessary to add the full context, probably strengthens the statement even more. But anyway. Standard damage control statement that latches onto nothing because there is nothing to latch on to as I made sure to s…

My role? My role as a what?

Oh. Okay, yeah. Makes sense

Yeah, sorry about that. I agree it indeed worked out for you and that is great.

The point that I'm getting at is that it is necessary for the system to occasionally produce a winner, because otherwise, people would stop trying.

Think for example about a casino with zero wins. No one would come to play. If they however occasionally select a winner, that winner will then be the best marketing they can get, encouraging all his friends to also start gambling.

Please do not mistake this analogy as me questioning your merits. I am confident in your abilities at your craft.

What I am however saying is that the system does not select its winners based on that merit. Instead, the criteria for selection are usually based on what benefits the system most. This, in some situations, might line up with general merits to some degree, but it also might not, and that is one of the core deceptions, the corporate world runs on.

I do believe you that the idea of the article was to encourage people so that they can also have these great wins and experiences you had. But, as said, that is just one side of the coin, and it would be unethical to not mention all the outcomes in which a person does not win.

Re: Publishing your work increases your luck

#116
post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My role? My role as a what?

Oh. Okay, yeah. Makes sense Yeah, sorry about that. I agree it indeed worked out for you and that is great. The point that I'm getting at is that it is necessary for the system to occasionally produce a winner, because otherwise, people would stop trying. Think for example about a casino with zero wins. No one would come to play. If they however occasionally select a winner, that winner will then be the best marketin…

> But the good news is that we can increase our chances of encountering good luck.

Every phrase in the article was carefully selected to make it clear that we're trying to increase the odds. Nothing is sure. But if you play the game right, the odds of winning go up

Re: Publishing your work increases your luck

#118
post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think srchut is one solution. Its email workflow does successfully deter less experienced/curious people, for better or worse, and it still has some project discovery bit not social signals like stars.

It’s not a neutral service though. The owner is very opinionated and likes to get involved in what projects are and are not allowed to be hosted there, and changes these rules on a whim. In my eyes, this disqualifies Sourcehut for anything serious. You could get booted off any second, if Drew decides that he does not like you. (I like Drew, and I like opinionated and outspoken people. But Service Providers should be…

Any recent/recognizable examples of this?

They’re on my radar as an alternative.

Thanks!

Re: Publishing your work increases your luck

#119

I used to release some writing and publish code publicly but the mean comments got to me.

Turn off comments on platforms that allow you to do that. One of my projects for the next few weeks is to get my blogging stuff up and running again but with a couple of tweaks: 1. I'll never allow on-blog comments again, ever. The signal/noise was always so poor. I'm sorry that you had a similar experience and the unpleasant odour of drive-by sniping got to you. For what it's worth, I'm always interested in finding…

No need to write any code for 3. Just search for backlink checker and you'll find multiple free ones.

Re: Publishing your work increases your luck

#120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Turn off comments on platforms that allow you to do that. One of my projects for the next few weeks is to get my blogging stuff up and running again but with a couple of tweaks: 1. I'll never allow on-blog comments again, ever. The signal/noise was always so poor. I'm sorry that you had a similar experience and the unpleasant odour of drive-by sniping got to you. For what it's worth, I'm always interested in finding…

No need to write any code for 3. Just search for backlink checker and you'll find multiple free ones.

One of the many wonderful things about being a software developer is that you can build tools that fit you perfectly, and I think I might enjoy this specific rabbit hole, but thanks for the tip, I’ll check some of them out.
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