gortok

This is a distinction without a difference, according to the text of that enable/disable dialog,

> Allow GitHub to use my data for AI model training: Allow GitHub to collect and use my Inputs, Outputs, and associated context to train and improve AI models. Read more in the Privacy Statement.

“Associated Context” is the repo. If I use copilot, I’m giving it access to my repo.

I don’t know in all the ways copilot can be triggered, and I’m not certain that I could stop it from being triggered, given Microsoft’s past behaviors in slapping Copilot on everything that exists.

> It certainly doesn't seem to hurt their bottom line, which is the only thing they care about.

I want to draw out this comment because it's so antithetical to what Apple marketed that it stood for (if you remember, the wonderful 1984 commercial Apple created; which was very much against the big behemoths of the day and the way they operated).

We're at the point where we've normalized crappy behavior and crappy software so long as the bottom line keeps moving up and to the right on the graph.

Not, "Let's build great software that people love.", but "How much profit can we squeeze out? Let's try to squeeze some more."

We've optimized for profit instead of happiness and customer satisfaction. That's why it feels like quality in general is getting worse, profit became the end goal, not the by-product of a customer-centric focus. We've numbed ourselves to the pain and discomfort we endure and cause every single day in the name of profit.

I was literally just coming in here to comment "in before someone says this is fine and there's no issue." and the first(!) comment is effectively "this is fine and there's no issue."

The sentiment feels like software folks are optimizing for the local optimum.

It's the programmer equivalent of "if it's important they'll call back." while completely ignoring the real world first and second-order effects of such a policy.

In this case there were two arrivals within 4 minutes of each other and two departures, in addition to the emergency plane that had just aborted takeoff.

Reports are there were fog and rain at La Guardia at the time of the incident. They were on a short final, and it’s entirely possible they were not visible to the fire truck’s crew.

Since the internet is ad-driven, what happens when these sites can no longer afford to stay in business because AI is siphoning off their traffic? What does AI do when the content it relies on stops coming?

> So if this is a tool, the fault lies fully in the user, and if this is treated as “another persons work” then the user knowingly passed the work onto someone not authorized to do it. Both end up in the user being guilty.

I am particularly against this point of view, because we as a community have long touted how computers can do the job better and faster, and that computers don’t make mistakes. When there are bugs, they’re seen as flaws in the system and rectified, by programmers.

When there are gaps between user expectations and how the software works, it’s our job to manage those gaps and reduce the gap.

In the case of AI, we are somehow, probably because we know it’s non-deterministic, turning that social contract we had developed with users on its head.

Now, that’s just the way it is and it’s up to them to know if the computer is lying to them. We have absolved ourselves of both the technical and the non-technical responsibilities to ensure the computer doesn’t lie to the user, or subverts their expectations, or acts in a way contrary to human logic.

AI may be different to us in that it’s non-deterministic, but that’s all the more reason that we’re responsible to ensure AI adoption aligns to the social contract we created with users. If we can’t do that with AI then it’s up to us to stop chasing endless dollars and be forthright with users that facts are optional when it comes to AI.

There are two issues I see here (besides the obvious “Why do we even let this happen in the first place?”):

1. What happened to all the data Copilot trained on that was confidential? How is that data separated and deleted from the model’s training? How can we be sure it’s gone?

2. This issue was found; unfortunately without a much better security posture from Microsoft, we have no way of knowing what issues are currently lurking that are as bad as —- if not worse than —- what happened here.

There’s a serious fundamental flaw in the thinking and misguided incentives that led to “sprinkle AI everywhere”, and instead of taking a step back and rethinking that approach, we’re going to get pieced together fixes and still be left with the foundational problem that everyone’s data is just one prompt injection away from being taken; whether it’s labeled as “secure” or not.

There's a trust built up over years (in this case, decades) by a news organization. In this case, Ars Technica. I don't trust the rando on the internet, but I do trust a news organization that has proven over the course of decades to release factual information.

Now that Ars Technica has been caught and admitted to using AI-generated material in its stories, I now have to question that trust. A week ago, I wouldn't have had to.

Ever since the recent revelation that Ars has used AI-hallucinated quotes in their articles, I have to wonder whether any of these quotes are AI-hallucinated, or if the piece itself is majority or minority AI generated.

If so, I have to ask: If you aren’t willing to take the time to write your own work, why should I take the time to read your work?

I didn’t have to worry about this even a week ago.

Here's one of the problems in this brave new world of anyone being able to publish, without knowing the author personally (which I don't), there's no way to tell without some level of faith or trust that this isn't a false-flag operation.

There are three possible scenarios: 1. The OP 'ran' the agent that conducted the original scenario, and then published this blog post for attention. 2. Some person (not the OP) legitimately thought giving an AI autonomy to open a PR and publish multiple blog posts was somehow a good idea. 3. An AI company is doing this for engagement, and the OP is a hapless victim.

The problem is that in the year of our lord 2026 there's no way to tell which of these scenarios is the truth, and so we're left with spending our time and energy on what happens without being able to trust if we're even spending our time and energy on a legitimate issue.

That's enough internet for me for today. I need to preserve my energy.

what in the cinnamon toast fuck is going on here?

I recognize that there are a lot of AI-enthusiasts here, both from the gold-rush perspective and from the "it's genuinely cool" perspective, but I hope -- I hope -- that whether you think AI is the best thing since sliced bread or that you're adamantly opposed to AI -- you'll see how bananas this entire situation is, and a situation we want to deter from ever happening again.

If the sources are to be believed (which is a little ironic given it's a self-professed AI agent):

1. An AI Agent makes a PR to address performance issues in the matplotlib repo.

2. The maintainer says, "Thanks but no thanks, we don't take AI-agent based contributions".

3. The AI agent throws what I can only describe as a tantrum reminiscent of that time I told my 6 year old she could not in fact have ice cream for breakfast.

4. The human doubles down.

5. The agent posts a blog post that is both oddly scathing and impressively to my eye looks less like AI and more like a human-based tantrum.

6. The human says "don't be that harsh."

7. The AI posts an update where it's a little less harsh, but still scathing.

8. The human says, "chill out".

9. The AI posts a "Lessons learned" where they pledge to de-escalate.

For my part, Steps 1-9 should never have happened, but at the very least, can we stop at step 2? We are signing up for wild ride if we allow agents to run off and do this sort of "community building" on their own. Actually, let me strike that. That sentence is so absurd on its face I shouldn't have written it. "agents running off on their own" is the problem. Technology should exist to help humans, not make its own decisions. It does not have a soul. When it hurts another, there is no possibility it will be hurt. It only changes its actions based on external feedback, not based on any sort of internal moral compass. We're signing up for chaos if we give agents any sort of autonomy in interacting with the humans that didn't spawn them in the first place.

The 100 mile "Constitution-free zone" 'policy' has long been a problem, not because it was abused, but because it had the propensity to be abused, and here we are, seeing it abused.

With the current Supreme Court doing everything in its power to require the hardest road possible to righting constitutional wrongs, this is going to take a lot of time and money by regular folks to fight and to hopefully -- at some point -- stop this abuse of power.

For me, the policy question I want answered is if this was a human driver we would have a clear person to sue for liability and damages. For a computer, who is ultimately responsible in a situation where suing for compensation happens? Is it the company? An officer in the company? This creates a situation where a company can afford to bury litigants in costs to even sue, whereas a private driver would lean on their insurance.

“Growth is what makes a cell a cell.”

Until it turns into cancer because of unrestrained growth.

Like it or not capitalism is a part of an ecosystem. We’ve been “educated” to believe that unrestrained growth in profits is what makes capitalism work, and yet day after day there are fresh examples of how our experience as consumers has gotten worse under capitalism because of the idea that profits should forever be growing.

ICE uses administrative warrants; and while administrative warrants do not allow for seizures inside a home, see my comment about the legal argument of “you can’t suppress the body” for why there’s not a whole lot that can be done if they do decide to kick down your door. The latest Serious Trouble podcast goes into this at the 12 minute mark. https://www.serioustrouble.show/p/120-days

In this case the story didn’t make it clear whether or not they even had an administrative warrant. I’d be interested to find out if they did.

I want to switch to Linux for my EOL Windows 10 originally-built-for-gaming rig. It was “new” in 2016, so I hold out hope that there will be few compatibility issues. My biggest concerns are being able to play my library of steam games on it. Overall the problems I have are that last time I tried to put Linux on that machine I tried a dual boot system, and at the time UEFI did not play well with dual booting. I don’t know if it’s gotten better, but as of now I wouldn’t be dual booting anyway so conceivably it wouldn’t be an issue.

I understand, but do you have a news link to where the judge released him?

I wasn’t clear. I’m referring to a news link indicating that judges have released folks due to valid arrest warrants but invalid means of arresting folks.

Can you provide a news link to this? As I understand it, courts have historically followed the precedent that “you can’t suppress the body”, meaning even if the method of an arrest is illegal, you don’t have to let the person go if their arrest is otherwise valid.

You purchase your own domain name and use that domain name as your email address. For instance, if I had an email address that was me@afandian.com; the afandian.com would be a custom domain. It's not routed to @gmail.com, it's routed to @afandian.com. Now in practice you can have a custom domain and still have it managed by Google's Mail servers; but it's the domain name itself that sends up the flags.

He had a YouTube channel where he often (3071 episodes as of this count) opined on… well. Everything.

The comments in this thread are wild.

Folks in this thread are trying to compare Waymo to human driving as some sort of expectation setting threshold. If humans can’t be perfect why should we expect machines to be?

We don’t expect humans to be perfect. When a human breaks the law we punish them. When they are sued civilly and found liable, we take their money/property.

There’s also a sense of self-preservation that guides human decision making that doesn’t guide computers.

Until we account for the agency that comes along with accountability, and the self-preservation mechanisms that keep humans from driving someone else onto a light rail track, we are making a false equivalence in saying that somehow we can’t expect machines to be as good as humans. We should expect exactly that if we’re giving them human agency but not human accountability, and while they still lack the sense of preservation of self or others.

Thanks; it felt a more Reddit-y vibe than an HN Discussion post vibe.

I can’t tell if calling themselves the CEO of Htmx(sic) is satire or meant to be taken seriously. Heck, I can’t tell if this entire post is satire or meant to be taken seriously.

Maybe that’s the point? In the “it’s satire” vein, the “htmx.org” URL points to a… X Profile for @htmx_org where the display title is “CEO of National Champs (same thing)”, and has (from the logged out perspective) a lot of memes that are programmer centered around htmx.

In the “it’s a serious post” vein, unfortunately a non-trivial number of HN-linked posts contain verbiage like:

> I would like to express my gratitude for your ongoing support as we continue our journey of strategic execution and operational excellence. I remain steadfast in my commitment to delivering incremental yet impactful value to our stakeholders, optimizing synergies where possible, and increasing market share in a manner that will look excellent in future investor updates. > Can't wait for all the profound and fulfilling work ahead of us in 2026.

And those sentiments are not wholly and consistently criticized as the BS they are, so it’s plausible to believe this about a JavaScript library.

The attached post feels AI-generated/AI-edited. I don’t know why that detracts from the usefulness of this utility, but it — at least how I’m reacting to it — seems to.

For me, it reads as not having any soul to it, as well as changing who its target reader is throughout the post. The choice of emphasis comes across weirdly too.

I think this is a wonderful tool, but whether it’s because the author uses AI to help them write this post, or that there’s AI edited content everywhere now, I’m weary of reading and trusting something that reads like this post does.

I don’t know if this is overblown or meta-commentary on the state of online posts these days, but it’s how I’m feeling, more and more, when I see online writings.

What is this site? maarthandam.com? Is it a blog? An AI generated “newspaper”? An internet Newspaper? The menu doesn’t work on mobile, no articles appear to have a by-line, and there’s no link to outside sources to indicate the provenance of these quotes.

While there's not a lot of meat on the bone for this post, one section of it reflects the overall problem with the idea of Claude-as-everything:

> I spent weeks casually trying to replicate what took years to build. My inability to assess the complexity of the source material was matched by the inability of the models to understand what it was generating.

When the trough of disillusionment hits, I anticipate this will become collective wisdom, and we'll tailor LLMs to the subset of uses where they can be more helpful than hurtful. Until then, we'll try to use AI to replace in weeks what took us years to build.

Can you link to this cheat sheet?

The folks that dismiss JB’s work by saying “this could have been done in <x>” are missing the point of why anything is done.

If you are entirely utilitarian in how you approach making a game (as in this case) then you’ll want to create as little as possible to make the game. An existing game engine, an existing programming language, existing libraries, etc.

If your goal is the economic return that making a game will (hopefully!) provide, this is understandable.

However, how I see JB based on his past work and talks is someone who wants to spend their life bringing things into existence. From all available evidence it appears the art of creating and the art of having created is his work and his legacy. The economic return is rhe by-product, but not the goal.

We are in this earth for a finite amount of years, and he is spending his time creating new things. It’s an admirable use of time, and at least from my perspective holds a universe of meaning that working under the utilitarian approach loses.