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I'm not sure IBM Smart Ads were ever an actual product/invention, and Prime Air is a live service (albeit geographically limited): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amazon_Prime_Air

Devs say a lot of uninformed things. With a heavy predisposition to hating the "legacy" monoliths that are Microsoft and by association GitHub.

Yes, Copilot supports skills. Practically all agents support very similar feature sets or are actively building up parity support if not already there. The only real difference between systems is the prompt and payment method. Copilot even allows you to use Anthropic's own skills repository: https://github.com/anthropics/skills

https://docs.github.com/en/copilot/concepts/agents/about-age... details the support for skills. https://docs.github.com/en/copilot/concepts/agents/copilot-c... details the CLI tool in general, which seems more or less on par with Claude Code's.


Uninformed devs is what makes this gravy train going. If everybody jumps on gh copilot it will end quick.

Unfortunately it’s self defeating to educate them.


It's a bit rich to go around calling people uninformed because they prefer one harness to another, particularly when you are recommending GHC as comparable to CC.

Have you used the gh copilot cli? What would stand out most to you as gaps right now?

IME is is less capable of performing complex work, more frequently goes down blind alleys and needs correcting, that kind of thing. It's night and day vs CC.

And this has been comparing like for like with CC - say Opus 4.6 on the same reasoning effort? Hasn’t been my experience particularly but fair enough. I do tend to use them in different situations (CC outside of work).

Even if it is close, maybe GHC CLI has improved in the last month since I last used it, I know you didn't say it but calling people uninformed because they prefer one or the other is just wrong.

I’d agree, though maybe there’s a more charitable reading of the OP - “uninformed” is one of those accusations that it’s rarely very polite or fair to level against an individual but sometimes is reasonable against a group based on observation. My experience would be that it’s true that “devs says lots of uninformed things” - and I’d include myself in that. It’s been my experience that it’s particularly tough in this space at this time because:

1. Tooling is changing very fast but people tend to form sticky opinions (reasonably enough - there’s only so much time in the world).

2. It’s just hard to form robust objective opinions - you have to make a real effort to build test cases and evaluation processes and generally the barrier to entry there is pretty high.

So - I agree, calling people uninformed is not a great way to win them over, but maybe that’s the price of living in a world of anecdotes which become fixed in people’s minds.


That's probably because the 200k context window means that it'll end up compacting things sooner.

I've just had a chat with Copilot's Opus 4.6 go off the rails after compaction today.


Make it write a skill and rule hook for PreCompact to do a handoff that explains what was worked on, what to know, and what to do next. If it goes off the rails after compaction then it won’t be great in a new session either, and you want to make sure you maximize continuity or development will be unsustainable. A backlog.md and improvements.md workflow also helps with this (ticket numbers, descriptions, “focus on BACK-0075,” etc.)

It’s a bit rich to take the most negative interpretation of my statement, and moreso telling of your insecurities that you chose to be so offended.

And, ultimately, proving my point. Did you actually explain why you thought it’s superior? Or is it just because GitHub bad? Have you even tried it recently?


That's because TFS/VSTS followed the same naming convention where the "S" stood for either Server or Services. Once they rebranded the Azure-backed hosted version Azure DevOps Services, then it no longer really made sense to do anything but rename the self hosted version in the same fashion.

It would have been more confusing to have Visual Studio Team Server and Azure DevOps Services being the same product but hosted differently.


Since when is code considered

> which is published with the purpose of informing the public on matters of public interest

From your link, that's the only case where text needs to be attributed to AI.


Code may not be, but opening a Merge Request undercover may be unlawful:

> Providers shall ensure that AI systems intended to interact directly with natural persons are designed and developed in such a way that the natural persons concerned are informed that they are interacting with an AI system


Then in that case you wouldn't be a provider. You are at best a deployer, and even then the definition doesn't exactly match using AI services.

That should be obvious considering an MR is not providing AI services.


That merge request would be AI generated content. You wouldn't be interacting directly with the AI system that opened it.

Depends if it's a closed loop agent. If the agent opens the request, writes the body and is triggered by an answer on the MR, then I'd expect the law to cover this.

What AI service are you providing with said MR?

Good question. Actually, i was assuming that at least source code is treated as text under the legal regime (there is typically special rules in copyright law, but provision applying to text should apply). Furthermore I would think pull requests, etc are all text. So I would think this applies.

But it's not just text. Once again, it's explicitly defined as:

> which is published with the purpose of informing the public on matters of public interest

There is no "informing public on matters of public interest" in source code nor an MR. It's clearly meant to prevent "deepfake" news, like the image and video ones explicitly call that out.


You are absolutely right. However, the recitals point clearly beyond only protection against fake news. IMHO running such an agent in stealth mode can easily be illegal, Articl 50 (1) states : > Providers shall ensure that AI systems intended to interact directly with natural persons are designed and developed in such a way that the natural persons concerned are informed that they are interacting with an AI system, unless this is obvious from the point of view of a natural person who is reasonably well-informed, observant and circumspect, taking into account the circumstances and the context of use.

But you aren't a provider of AI services by using AI. There's a clear difference already called out between "provider" and "deployer". An AI user could barely be called a "deployer" as is, let alone a "provider".

In other words, what AI service are you providing by creating a PR?


I would argue that the person reading an AI generated pull request is if there is no human oversight with an Ai. And are you sure that you get out of this definition (at least as a company):

> provider’ means a natural or legal person, public authority, agency or other body that develops an AI system or a general-purpose AI model or that has an AI system or a general-purpose AI model developed and places it on the market or puts the AI system into service under its own name or trademark, whether for payment or free of charge;


I would argue that an MR does none of those things.

I will generally ask for the "devil's advocate" view and then have it challenge my views and opinions and iterate through that.

It generally does a pretty good job as long as you understand the tooling and are making conscious efforts to go against the "yes man" default.


> The guy is an ex-Darknet Vendor and regularly interacts still with people that build ransomware, hack the US government, sell online drugs and he is quite pleasant compared to these people.

It’s _almost_ as if we don’t use “people that build ransomware, hack the US government, sell online drugs” as a baseline for “pleasant”.


The point I was making that the norms for many of us isn't this behaviour of everyone is walking on eggshells. I find it infuriating that people will get bent out shape if they hear the truth. I prefer it when people talk plainly and speak how they feel. He is unfront and honest, which I appreciate much more than a snake in the grass (which is how many people behave in spaces where language and behaviour is tightly controlled).

I find it honestly ridiculous that people are complaining about provocative & hyperbolic title, to the point where I believe they are concern trolling.


> I could not charge my Kona at multiple public charging stations around Vancouver:

You could not, or you did not want to? There is a difference.


I also do this. Xfinity went out for a few hours earlier this month and Unifi failed over almost instantly, and within minutes we had high speed internet once I upgraded us. The standby mode would have been plenty for basic web browsing, too.

$5/mo for pretty guaranteed connectivity, plus being able to take it around with me on travels is pretty awesome.


I was paying for gigabit with the local ISP and it slowed down and lost connection so frequently I bought a Starlink (the regular one, not the mini) as a "backup."

As per the usual, my internet went down and I switched to the backup Starlink. After working with it for about a week I cancelled my ISP.

Turned out around 350MBPS down was fine for everything I was doing (and it's way more reliable).


Kinda drifting off topic, but I'm so bitter over this

My girlfriend had been paying for 1Gb fiber for about 5 years at the insistence of the rep because "You stream 4k content and use your internet for work". $110/mo or something. Verizon comes by and sets her up with a modem and an "auto-route smart 2.4GHz/5GHz" router which slots you into a frequency based on...something. Who knows because it didn't work. It just put everything on 2.4GHz.

I noticed while at her house that the internet was painfully slow downloading large files and dug into it.

For those who don't know, 2.4GHz will typically top out around 100Mbps. Around the house you're looking at closer to 50Mbps. With 5Ghz it's much better, about 500Mbps typical, but verizons awful "smart" router just put everything on 2.4GHz.

So for years she had been paying for 1Gbps, Verizon happily taking her money, while she never saw over 100Mbps. It's also not like they tell you anywhere that the router they give you will only realistically offer 1/10th your Gb speed. Such a dumpster tier company. I can only imagine there are tens of thousands being conned by this scheme.

Anyway, I put in a new router and switched to the cheapest plan. The internet is now much faster.


Also "renting" their router/modem to you is typically a bad deal. (Billing details may depend on local laws.)

Getting my own modem and router easily paid for themselves, plus I'm not arbitrarily locked out of anything.


I hate that it works so well these days. I have my antenna right out ground level between the house and trees. Absolute worst case scenario, and it's been rock solid in everything but the heaviest of rain storms for almost a year now. Still, the occasional slowdown or half-second outage really screws up Android's idiotic magic for switching between wifi and cell to the point that my pixel phone is basically useless at home. But that's more of a "google knows best" problem.


How likely is it that this $5 deal will continue in the future? It sounds like a no-brainer WAN backup option, are Starlink going to discontinue it when they realise that people are using it as such?

Also, is this available globally or UK-only? I can't find any mention of it on the local Starlink site.


It's $5 for every month where you don't actually use it. If they are still subsidizing the hardware cost, that's probably where that money goes. If you actually use it you pay regular price for that month

I don't see how this would be a bad deal for Starlink

It's in available on most plans in most locations, with some restrictions described here: https://starlink.com/ca/support/article/37bb3b47-9525-7224-5...


Well you are actually using it, just at 500kbps. Oh, we used to DREAM of 500kbps. Would have been lightspeed to us. We used to live in an old water tank on a rubbish tip with a 9600bps dialup modem, IF WE WERE LUCKY!


What is the role of Unifi here? I read the article and went to their site but I still have no clue.


Unifi is one of the few consumer-grade routers that supports dual WAN.


While the GUI and other polish certainly makes it more approachable then many I wouldn't really call it "consumer-grade", it's definitely into prosumer/SMB territory. And in that market there are thankfully a number of solid competitors fwiw, both directly the exact same head to head niche (Omada), more disjoint but sometimes higher value deals like Mikrotik, and open source solutions focused on embedded (like OpenWRT) or ones like OPNsense that will run on a vast array of PC hardware. Failover should be pretty straight forward on all of them, whatever is being used for routing just needs at least three network ports (2 or more for WAN, 1 or more for LAN).


Another slightly-above-consumer-grade device is the Firewalla. It works really well, the only time I even notice it's failed over is (a) when I get an alert on the phone and (b) search engine results start coming up in Spanish.


Same remark here. This reads more like paid promotion for UniFi than anything. It should be mentioned that any Linux box can trivially accommodate multiple WAN interfaces. You don't need to pay the UniFi tax for this.


People like unifi because it’s relatively easy to configure. My Netgear R7000 from at least a decade ago running Fresh Tomato firmware will also happily let you have 1-4 WAN interfaces depending on how many of its Ethernet ports you want to dedicate. It won’t let you use all 5 ports for WAN though!


Most likely to be a router, configured to fail over.


XFinity has been terrible lately, and I have a Starlink Mini. XFinity failed today, and I did fallback for a few hours on the Mini. Connectivity was actually better than fiber. If only it worked when it is cloudy -- for $50 on roaming, that's a no-brainer given the exorbitant cost of living in northern cal.


I’ve never had an issue with Starlink when it’s cloudy, or rainy for that matter. They even advertise this. Mini is different this way?


My Mini is fine unless it's a large rainstorm, +1 anecdata


Thanks for this. Can you still use it on heavy rainy days or does it come to a halt?


I have never noticed an issue but now that we’re talking about it I realize It’s never occurred to me to run a speed test during a heavy downpour. Which might tell you something positive by itself. Next time I will do so but it might be a while; my rain season has ended.


Good to know. Thank you!


What's with the excessively hostile attitude? That's more of a Reddit thing than a semi-professional discussion site that has this as a guideline:

> Be kind. Don't be snarky. Converse curiously; don't cross-examine. Edit out swipes.


> What's with the excessively hostile attitude? That's more of a Reddit thing than a semi-professional discussion site that has this as a guideline:

>> Be kind. Don't be snarky. Converse curiously; don't cross-examine. Edit out swipes.

Which part was snarky, excessively hostile or unprofessional?


The beginning, middle and end.


So, in the interest of 'curious discourse' how would you suggest I should have written my comment so that it would be more professional, less snarky and less hostile?

You see, the comment that I replied to made an assumption, that assumption is embedded in the word 'probably'. The person that wrote that presumes to know what I intend. I corrected that. Clarified it and moved on. If that seems hostile and snarky to you then I'm happy to be educated. For myself, I think the comment I replied to could have been phrased as a question rather than a statement.

Your comment strikes me as a bit snarky too by the way.


> You probably mean necromancy.

You:

> I probably did not. Then I would have written that. They are fucking over the dead. They are clearly not communicating with the dead.

A less snarky and hostile version:

> I actually didn't! I specifically meant that they are fucking over the dead.

Pretty much the same content, and it makes you sound like you actually want to interact with other people. Even in your paragraph long explanation you do quite a few things that are just unnecessarily hostile. It's clearly just the way you talk, but it also doesn't mean you shouldn't work on improving it.

> For myself, I think the comment I replied to could have been phrased as a question rather than a statement.

Then you should have (politely) said it.


Thank you. I'm 60+ and I think I'm past saving, but I appreciate your effort to tone police HN.

As well as your own exemplary behavior:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46653114

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45505708

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45334298

And probably others besides.


As an outside observer: mynameisvlad is right, and even provided a better variation of your comment _which you requested_. To me this is an OK criticism, I'd like to see more of this on HN. Then you've thrown everythign in the trash, essentially, and started digging through their comment history. Their comment wasn't even under discussion. I'd like to see less of this on HN.


[flagged]


Hi Vlad,

Turnabout is fair play, you should know that by now. You seem to have the idea up your bonnet that you are in a position to lecture, that sort of thing is best done from a position of maturity. Your incessant attacks are far more against the spirit of HN than anything that I've written in this thread.

Your criticism does not take into account anything beyond the first layer of what I've written and does not apply leeway for cultural or other differences, which you seem to want to flatten to 'whatever Vlad says' being the norm.

Your intolerance is the problem here, not my writing. I asked you because I wanted you to have a chance to clarify your view before criticizing you because that's only fair. It could well be that you had an actual reason besides having long toes.

I don't like to be lectured by those that have ethics issues themselves on ethics and I don't like to be lectured on the tone of my writing by those that have issues themselves with the tone of their own writing.

For someone who has been here for as long as you have I'd expect a more balanced view on the contributors to HN and a much better contribution:flagged comments ratio than you seem to rack up.

If you really want to improve the tone on HN by reducing hostility, snark, unprofessionalism and now personal attacks then I suggest you seek out a mirror. Your own behavior in this thread shows examples of all of those and you are neither a credit to yourself or your employer.


He's not hostile; he's Dutch.


That's no excuse. Dutch people still have to communicate with others.


That talks about inter-satellite links (which Starlink uses already). Parent comment asked about ground <-> sat


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