Was this rolled out to individuals (especially non paying accounts) early? I was hit by this over a week ago on my side project, but it seems to be just blowing up now.
VS Code inserting 'Co-Authored-by Copilot' into commits regardless of usage
741–750 of 917 posts
Re: VS Code inserting 'Co-Authored-by Copilot' into commits regardless of usage
#742The "regardless of usage" in the HN title isn't correct. If you dig into the source you see that the attribution line is only added when some changes in the commit come from Copilot, either inline completion or agent. @dang
That is the crux of the issue: the detection of whether the changes came from copilot or not is buggy, thus all changes are flagged as coming from copilot, thus the title is correct.
Re: VS Code inserting 'Co-Authored-by Copilot' into commits regardless of usage
#743Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Someone made a mistake, owned up to it and fixed it. No one is entitled to more than that for a free software. Funny how these "mistakes" only seem to happen in ways that align with the agenda of the supposedly non-evil corporation.
Not sure about the other “mistakes” but this one is way too stupid to be evil :) Hanlon’s razor applies pretty well here. Pretty sure no one thought “let’s add a lie to every commit and hopefully no one minds. Free Marketing yay!” at Microsoft.
IDK, I heard way stupider and less ethical ideas at work.
Re: VS Code inserting 'Co-Authored-by Copilot' into commits regardless of usage
#744Question -- is this a general feature that detects which AI agent was used to edit your code (Claude, Codex, etc) and inserts THAT agent's name into the commit message's trailer. Or this pnly detects and inserts (Github) Copilot as a co-author?
For me it just inserted "Copilot" and I was only using inline completion, not agents. A bit weird too since my VSCode doesn't even have copilot installed as an extension (I had just started using that editor again on an old linux install and was wondering why I was even getting AI completions).
Re: VS Code inserting 'Co-Authored-by Copilot' into commits regardless of usage
#745I can only imagine this passing their “QA” because every dev there uses AI for every commit and therefore saw no issue.
Re: VS Code inserting 'Co-Authored-by Copilot' into commits regardless of usage
#746Earlier quoted context omitted.
Changing the default behavior for all of your users with no notification is pretty unforgivable. Even if this feature worked correctly, it obviously doesn’t, this should at minimum be a prompt after upgrade to let the user confirm that this is what they want. But honestly should be opt in for those that want it. To have it silently just start adding marketing copy to git commit messages is pretty bad. To have that ad…
> Changing the default behavior for all of your users with no notification is pretty unforgivable. What does that even mean? The git log exists. Do you mean they should shove the entire git log in the face of every user on every update? Obviously this change was a massive fuckup, but that sentence makes absolutely no sense.
It just means that when changing a global default with such impact the user should be prompted with an option to opt out of the new behavior. Something like “AI assisted changes will now have ‘coauthored by Copilot’ added to the commit message”. If the user clicks “no thanks” it changes their local setting to “off” to opt them out of this new global default.
Re: VS Code inserting 'Co-Authored-by Copilot' into commits regardless of usage
#747One fascinating thing about the whole AI phenomenon is how incredibly hostile it is to _standards_. Whether something works properly, or is ethical, or is true, no longer matters at all; all that matters is "pls use our AI". Microsoft spent literal decades rehabilitating their reputation. And then set fire to the whole thing in an offering to their robot gods. And it's not just them. There was a time that Google care…
>There was a time that Google cared deeply about UX. Now, on macOS Google remaps CMD-G in Google Docs to launch some LLM bullshit That reminds me of a few years ago when Android phones replaced the behavior of "long press sleep/power button" from "shut down" to "ask AI about what's in your screen". Perhaps a manager got promoted somewhere for "raising AI usage" in Android phones.
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Re: VS Code inserting 'Co-Authored-by Copilot' into commits regardless of usage
#748Earlier quoted context omitted.
Hard to blame the engineer when the engineer gets fired for not implementing management's whims. As much as I'd like to hold people accountable and say they should just accept getting fired instead of compromising the ideals, the truth is I've got a family now and if they paid me enough I'd do the same.
The torment nexus was built by engineers. Not management. It couldn't exist without engineers.
> The torment nexus was built by engineers. Not management.
Before the more recent wave of successful tech startups (say, from 2010 on), a very large amount of programmers were incredibly sensitive to anything related to topics like (posisbility of) surveillance, privacy, authorities (including government), centralized infrastructures, DRM etc.
In my feeling, the only reason why this mindset shifted is because from this wave on, in the USA, programmers were showered in money.
The interesting question rather is: now that tech companies want to become more frugal with respect to paying programmers, will the mindset among programmers shift back or not?
Re: VS Code inserting 'Co-Authored-by Copilot' into commits regardless of usage
#749Earlier quoted context omitted.
A lot of people who think of themselves as able-bodied never think to poke around in the Accessibility sections of their settings menus. But it turns out that accessibility options are for everyone; people should really think of and evaluate them as first class tools more often
Or,are we just getting older and these things suddenly matter?
Nah, one of the things I found in Discord's accessibility settings is an ability to turn off or reduce animations and other visual effects by default, which is wonderful no matter your ability.
Re: VS Code inserting 'Co-Authored-by Copilot' into commits regardless of usage
#750Incredible.
I would like to study the of people who thought it is a good idea.
Reading comments on GitHub made me laugh.
Made me also wonder, what's the next step?