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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

#371

Post by account42 »

charcircuit wrote: post #67
bilekas wrote: post #59

> We identified a programming logic issue with a GitHub Copilot coding agent tip that surfaced in the wrong context within a pull request comment. We have removed agent tips from pull request comments moving forward. Why does this read as they are saying it was a mistake ? Because it absolutely wasn't, and it will absolutely happen again, maybe just less obvious next time.

How do you know better if it was a mistake than GitHub themselves? It is possible that the tip was only supposed to show up in some other place and it accidentally started getting added somewhere it shouldn't have been.

You don't seriously believe that a company's PR release is the same as the truth or what the people inside that company believe. And no, they don't deserve the benefit of the doubt after the umpteenth time that their "mistake" caused an outrage.

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

#372

Post by account42 »

st_goliath wrote: post #78
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

Oh, this is just the usual Microsoft Stockholm syndrome. I've been witnessing this for over 20 years now and have been told that it has been a thing for much longer than that. "No, we can't switch to OpenOffice you weird Open Source hippie! I can't e-mail documents to other people anymore, nobody can open them. Besides, the UI is all different, I won't be able to find anything!" Then Office 2007 happened, tossing out…

> I think it was him who suggested that if Microsoft sent a sales rep around to shit on peoples lawns, it would take at most a year until they start defending it as the inevitable cost of technological progress.

They would inevitably say that Linux was not viable because you had to buy your own fertilizer.

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

#373

Post by account42 »

avdelazeri wrote: post #137
yard2010 wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's that old misconception about how to boil a frog..

Afaik turning up the temperature slowly wouldn't work on an actual frog. But works on people without fail.

That's because you can ignore when the people complain as long as its not too many at once.

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

#374

Post by account42 »

latexr wrote: post #125

It’s good they walked it back, but the fact it was implemented in the first place is a signal of their thinking and inexcusable in itself. Trust is easier to lose than to gain, and Microdoft continues to break trust.

Microsoft has been breaking trust since the 90s. If they have any left then perhaps it's not as easy to lose as you say.

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

#375

Post by account42 »

Aachen wrote: post #219
contravariant wrote: post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The fact that they chose to publish the ad _under someone else's name_ is so tone deaf that I just can't understand what they were thinking.

This. It's so far out there that I have to wonder if it's a rogue employee who thought this a good excuse to cause reputational damage without it being too obvious. Doesn't pass several razors though (not the simplest explanation; malice involved.. is that Hanlon's and Occam's razor?), so I don't truly believe it... but it would be possible

Occam's razor is about the simplest solution often being the correct one.

Hanlon's razor is about not assuming malice, which makes no sense when applied to faceless mega-corporations or even random strangers where you know conflicting motives exist.

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

#376

Post by esseph »

account42 wrote: post #364
esseph wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

I too deliberately avoid products from ads, especially ones that annoy me. But I'm under no illusion that ads never work on me, "there's no bad publicity" and all. It takes active effort to avoid defaulting to the options you have already been told about and sometimes you're going to slip up. And since about every company advertises it's not like you really have any other option.

> And since about every company advertises it's not like you really have any other option.

I couldn't tell you what brand the clothes I'm wearing right now. I ordered bulk packs from somewhere in Asia.

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

#377

Post by ahartmetz »

dude187 wrote: post #336
ahartmetz wrote: post #201

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well - my perspective is the KDE project, which has a team of capable admins who take care of hosting. The project has always been more or less self-hosted (I remember SUSE providing servers) and even provided hosting for at least one barely associated project, Valgrind. I think Valgrind bugs are still on KDE Bugzilla. It's admittedly not really practical for most projects, but it could be for some large ones - Rust,…

KDE uses Phabricator, or at least did the last time I contributed. Worked pretty well in the collaboration aspect for submitting a change, getting code owners to review and giving feedback. I was able to jump in as a brand new contributor and get a change merged. The kind of change that would have been a PR from a fork in GitHub. However I got the distinct feeling the whole stack would not fit as well into an enterpr…

KDE uses GitLab now, the change-over was mostly in 2020 with some less commonly used features staying on Phabricator a while longer.

I use a self-hosted GitLab instance in a commercial setting (with developers on Linux and Windows) as well. It's a software department of a non-software company. Fairly small. The person or persons in charge of GitLab have set up some pretty nifty time-savers regarding CI and multi-repo changes - I'd prefer a monorepo, but the integration makes it bearable.

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

#378

Post by account42 »

alsetmusic wrote: post #370
account42 wrote: post #357

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Internet was initially developed for the military and then extended for academic use. Capitalism wasn't needed to create it. And neither does "not the capitalism we have in the west today" equal to "soviet communism" - it's neither a binary distinction nor is it a one dimensional spectrum.

It wouldn't have become the internet of today without capitalism. The government / military certainly didn't finance everything that happened after it was created.

I'd much prefer if it hadn't become the Internet of today actually.

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

#379

Post by 3yr-i-frew-up »

latexr wrote: post #361
3yr-i-frew-up wrote: post #246

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>A “best mind” should be capable of empathy and have a broad societal view of consequences for their actions. 9 years of philosophy later: You are not a best mind. Sorry. But you think morals metaphysically exist and no best minds do.

I find it fascinating how you can read someone’s own definition of a subjective concept and immediately make wrong assertions about them and their opinions and do so by employing a No True Scotsman, a logical fallacy so basic one learns it in high school introductory class.

[dead]

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

#380

Post by maronato »

sega_sai wrote: post #267
jacquesm wrote: post #228

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because it's Microsoft. Categorically incapable of respecting their users. What's interesting to me is how many people went like 'Oh, Satya really gets open source, this time it will be different'. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17225599

I am not sure it is that. The job of Microsoft is to satisfy shareholders. That is the only target. They only care about users to the extend that helps the shareholders.

Exactly. Which is why we must increase the social and economic cost of these bad decisions so much that it’ll be in the shareholders’ best interest to make the platform better to get us to stop. Precisely what happened here.

Just as with politics, the only way to get them to do what’s in our best interest is to make them come to the conclusion that they’ll risk losing money (or status or power) if they don’t.

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