Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

theregister.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

111–120 of 386 posts

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

#111

Post by esseph »

pbhjpbhj wrote: post #80
Razengan wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And nobody has ever bought anything just because of an ad. You either already knew about shit through some other way or you were going to buy it anyway. Only people downvoting this will be the ones who perpetuate this Emperor With No Clothes racket. It's just a thin veil for surveillance.

People buy things because of ads all the time. Probably you've done it too. I go out of my way not to buy products advertised to me, but I've definitely fallen to the incessant brain-washing of brand advertising. Probably regular advertising too depending what you include as adverts. I was surprised speaking to someone the other day, just out and about. They'd purposefully gone out to buy doughnuts they'd seen advert…

> I go out of my way not to buy products advertised to me

The most likely way to get me to not buy your product is to advertise it to me.

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

#112

Post by [deleted] »

_thisdot wrote: post #98
Razengan wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And nobody has ever bought anything just because of an ad. You either already knew about shit through some other way or you were going to buy it anyway. Only people downvoting this will be the ones who perpetuate this Emperor With No Clothes racket. It's just a thin veil for surveillance.

I have definitely bought things I’ve seen in ads. And I know many people who have. There are brands that I know exist only because I’ve seen ads for them. What is an alternative to advertisements that you suggest??

[deleted]

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

#113

Post by [deleted] »

croon wrote: post #107
altmanaltman wrote: post #8

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.

Monkeys don't generally like killing other monkeys though.

[deleted]

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

#114

Post by nextaccountic »

yosamino wrote: post #99
saidnooneever wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

if its indistinguishable from magic please do some reading or refrain from using.

You know, I'm well aware of how an LLM works (partially. mostly anyway), but if you pulled in any layperson from the street and ask them to explain how it's possible that they can speak natural language commands into their phones and get a useful response as if they were talking to a human, you'd be hard pressed to get a more precise answer than along the lines > It's something with to do with data, and I know it's n…

Data is like mana, LLMs are like djinns, and prompts are like incantations

This reminds me the introduction of SICP

https://mitp-content-server.mit.edu/books/content/sectbyfn/b...

> We are about to study the idea of a computational process. Computational processes are abstract beings that inhabit computers. As they evolve, processes manipulate other abstract things called data. The evolution of a process is directed by a pattern of rules called a program. People create programs to direct processes. In effect, we conjure the spirits of the computer with our spells.

> A computational process is indeed much like a sorcerer's idea of a spirit. It cannot be seen or touched. It is not composed of matter at all. However, it is very real. It can perform intellectual work. It can answer questions. It can affect the world by disbursing money at a bank or by controlling a robot arm in a factory. The programs we use to conjure processes are like a sorcerer's spells. They are carefully composed from symbolic expressions in arcane and esoteric programming languages that prescribe the tasks we want our processes to perform.

That was the idea in the forefront of AI in 1984 - software can perform intellectual work. This idea is now mainstream since ChatGPT, but for many people in the decades prior, software couldn't be called intelligent - they just follow rules!

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

#115

Post by Ygg2 »

wolvesechoes wrote: post #106
Ygg2 wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

That's why I said in theory. Consider that at some point Valve was a startup.

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

#116

Post by benterix »

yosamino wrote: 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.

> They created an amazing technology that oftentimes is indistinguishable from magic and then use it to deliver ads

The people who created the tech and the ones that use it for ads in this case are two different groups - the first one is from Google (initial discovery) and OpenAI (realizing the potential of discovery and developing it into a product), whereas the second is the same company that decided that building ads into an operating system is an excellent idea.

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

#117

Post by latexr »

yosamino wrote: post #99
saidnooneever wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

if its indistinguishable from magic please do some reading or refrain from using.

You know, I'm well aware of how an LLM works (partially. mostly anyway), but if you pulled in any layperson from the street and ask them to explain how it's possible that they can speak natural language commands into their phones and get a useful response as if they were talking to a human, you'd be hard pressed to get a more precise answer than along the lines > It's something with to do with data, and I know it's n…

> if you pulled in any layperson from the street

Then they wouldn’t be able to explain how any part of their computing life works. Not hardware, not software. LLMs are not at all special in that regard, to the layperson they are equally as magical as anything else.

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

#118

Post by californical »

pbhjpbhj wrote: post #80
Razengan wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And nobody has ever bought anything just because of an ad. You either already knew about shit through some other way or you were going to buy it anyway. Only people downvoting this will be the ones who perpetuate this Emperor With No Clothes racket. It's just a thin veil for surveillance.

People buy things because of ads all the time. Probably you've done it too. I go out of my way not to buy products advertised to me, but I've definitely fallen to the incessant brain-washing of brand advertising. Probably regular advertising too depending what you include as adverts. I was surprised speaking to someone the other day, just out and about. They'd purposefully gone out to buy doughnuts they'd seen advert…

The thing that really messed with me recently was when I started thinking deeply about the fact that I’ve been seeing so many Southwest ads about their switch to assigned seating…

I realized that they probably made that whole change, along with all of the ads, because they knew it would spark mild outrage and discussion from people who saw it — they’d discuss if assigned seating is actually better or worse than the previous fist-come-fist-serve system. I can understand either angle but I liked that they were different than other airlines, etc.

But really it’s because they removed the free checked bags that had been their policy forever, now you need to pay like any other airline. Which completely ruins their value prop. But by advertising the seating changes so heavily for months, they make you forget about that part that actually makes a much bigger difference in the experience

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

#120

Post by lopis »

scbrg wrote: post #6

"You're just a bunch of fanatic, Linux obsessed Microsoft haters living in the past. Microsoft are the good guys now." -- ca. everyone here, during the GitHub acquisition

"Microsoft loves open source now!"

Oh, they adore it. Specially once they figure out how to plaster all open source projects with ads...

Post reply on HN