To my students

As for not seeing "anything of value in the comments", really? You don't see anything valuable in a comment like this:

https://lobste.rs/s/ly0vif/my_students#c_qy8yhh

I am uncomfortable about "my camp" defending intellectual property now though.

I think this is a manifestation of a second-order belief that a lot of people hold, even if they wouldn't articulate it as such: that the law should protect everyone equitably, not just equally. That is: they killed Aaron Swartz because he violated the copyright of a few big publishing houses, via the threat of a $1 million penalty and 35 years in prison. Even were the law applied equally to Anthropic, OpenAI, etc., a $1 million - or even $1.5 billion - would not have nearly such an effect on those companies. I think a lot of people see that as pretty screwed up.

I would rather live in a world where copyright doesn't exist and in which it's possible to make a living as an author, artist, etc. That's a world that could exist; we could simply decide to stop starving people and denying them medical care for not fitting into value extraction structures, but we haven't.

A world where nobody faces punishment for copying is preferable; one where massive companies face slaps on the wrist while we murder 26-year-olds for it is unacceptable. That seems like a pretty coherent view to me.

Or this:

https://lobste.rs/s/ly0vif/my_students#c_0zukjz

this is good advice, I have done my fair share of awful choices (ad-tech, gambling, etc...) and here is my three bullet point summary from my personal experience about it:

1. if you are honest with yourself, there is no way to work around it and these things will always hunt you morally through the years (not being a decision maker at these places, and/or having a big amount of debt to pay urgently won't make it better)
2. companies that work in markets with dubious/shady practices, tend to reproduce and to some effect normalize those types of practices throughout their shit pyramid (this is where you will get hurt, even if not directly... knowing or working with colleagues who are being oppressed into leaving or upset is never good for you or the work environment)
3. it will affect you, even if unnoticeably slowly, it will change you, even if slowly, it will demand an effort and a set of skills from you that will not make you a better person, only more defensive at best; these small but consistent psychological changes are hard to counter-balance and notice

your mileage might vary, talking about my experience here

The comments on Lobsters are filled with all kinds of people with all types of backgrounds and experiences, professional or otherwise, discussing the nuances of getting an education and eventually a job in an industry that's riddled with ethical issues, in a country world that, for many, feels like it's falling apart.

I started sharing the link to the submission on Lobsters for a few reasons:

1. I like Lobsters (the website, the animals are okay too).
2. I think people who visit ~comp on Tildes would like Lobsters.
3. A lot of Tildes users who frequent ~comp already have accounts on Lobsters, so they might be interested to know there's a discussion going on over there too.
4. Lobsters has a lot of users who are "notable". It's common for a blog post or project to be posted on Lobsters by one user, and for the author of that content to also have a Lobsters account and show up in the comments. For example, Andrew Kelley, creator of the Zig programming language, and Mitchell Hashimoto, creator of more things than I care to list, both have accounts and are active there.