Links of Note 2024-02-17

• Digital Defense Fund published a guide to keeping your abortion private and secure. It's full of generally good advice on keeping your data out of the hands of the advertising-surveillance complex.
• A new study has found that GitHub Copilot reduces code quality. They found a few mechanisms. No surprise: code generated by Copilot is less like to be correct. But also, code generated by Copilot is more likely to be duplicate or repeated code, and Copilot doesn't refactor. The result is a code base that grows less and less maintainable over time.
• Cory Doctorow wrote about how he got scammed. His story is a great reminder that any of us can be a victim of a scam. All it takes is a few crumbling systems and, as Doctorow puts it, "a miracle of timing."
• Dan Hon created a series of stickers to manage your replies on social media.