Came here for this meme.

Thank you comrade

OpenBSD is pretty great. I really hope open source projects settle into a human write + LLM static review workflow but I know that’s wishful thinking.

Till then OpenBSD/NetBSD

My senator is Schumer, should I call him and ask him to back Van Hollen?

There’s actually a reasonable argument for global regulation of AI.

Every country faces an economic doom loop as AI becomes more capable, once it is capable of automating away a sufficient amount of labor the economy will spiral. This means every country, in a game theory sense, is facing a no-win prisoners dillema. That is precisely the recipe that allowed for nuclear nonproliferation.

It is completely within the realm of possibility for the international community to agree to control the training of models at the national level and heavily regulate distribution commercially, similar to what we do with nuclear power.

Very cool! I hope there will be a space for those of us that want to enjoy computing as a craft, who knows, maybe I’ll get lucky and a space for innovation without LLMs or at the very least limited LLM will continue to exist.

A guy can dream.

We’re Americans. We own guns.

The problem is there are no meaningful citizen’s militias that aren’t themselves Nazis.

The left allowed itself to be disarmed for the purpose of purity signaling and the result is a gross lack of tribal knowledge with regards to engaging in protracted violence.

This some great stuff and a really fun read.

On an unrelated note, as a remark about the world I live in. I spent the entire article waiting for the mention of how an LLM was used to devise a faster algorithm or how it was used to research this.

Even myself, a certified LLM hater, has fallen into the trap of assuming that some well researched, and especially novel, creation was ultimately the product of a bot. I really can’t stand how much my confidence in humans has been shaken.

In either case this was a blast to read, especially for someone who loves low level OS/Systems code.

I agree its more than just a chat bot. Part of the reason I’m praying for rain. I hope the proletariat can come through this with some measure of success though I think we’re past that.

Why? Nvidia does not provide clean water, food, shelter, or medicine. They are not essential

Myself and my kin benefit from a global economic crash with no bail out. I lose nothing as I have never invested, I’ve pivoted out of tech and have no interest in going back to a role that a chatbot can replace (easily). Best case scenario, I get communism, worst case scenario I get to watch tech billionaires publicly executed.

Own less, want less, need less.

You know I’ve been playing with typst and I just found it supports multiple directions

Yeah, basically this. Let’s be real,“Good Form” is soft core porn

Given that this project started based on werk that’s another signal for no LLM.

Truthfully it’s a signal for people that are in that particular indie-tech subculture, so it’s more or less a cultural signal but one I appreciate nonetheless.

God I love seeing a codeberg link. I swear their no AI policy is going to do dividends in the future.

I think the important thing is finding that happy space where you can feel certain that you are the author of the ideas that are being put to text (or code).

I’m not sure what that middle ground looks like but for me its having a really clear separation between the LLM acting as a really good search engine and static analyzer and a human authoring code.

In an ideal world, professionals would have been given LLM’s and told “make of this what you will, we have no expectations of output”. We did not get that world unfortunately.

You’re still establishing utility as “chief among equals.” I have already responded to this premise. The total value of something is the weighted sum of its individual value axis’ and those weights are derived from context. Once again, neither of us is discussing a situation in which survival is dependent upon the use of LLM output. We’re describing, at worst, CVE remediations and, at best, driver enhancements. While I don’t know what your material condition is I feel it is safe to say that you are not likely to die as a result of amdgpu not being up to date. Because of this the word “objectively” that you’re using is doing a lot of work.

Regarding the claim that there is no such thing as a “non-utility-feature”; yes there is. There’s a whole term for it; " nonfunctional requirements". It’s something not uncommonly brought up in product planning. If you mean “utility” in the broadest sense of “does thing” than this conversation is pointless. That definition provides no distinction between “this accomplishes tasks that I want accomplished” and “this is built in such a way as I would want it built”. Surely we can agree those are different things?

You are right to say that I find the use of LLMs distasteful even under ideal circumstances. And I have stopped using Linux for that reason. Hell I stopped using Neovim for that reason, I’m very close to getting rid of my browser. If push comes to shove I may eventually go full hermit and use 9front as the thought of using anything that’s been touched by them is rather sickening. I’m not sure how much longer I can stand knowing that most everything I see online has been tainted at some point.

Your analogy adds a condition for need that my framework does not presuppose and, because of that, I feel it is a weak analogy.

My entire argument is that value is judged against a wide host of different axis. Do I have a literal deathly need for a drawing app to support Gaussian dithering? Like, will I die of that isn’t present? No. Obviously in a life or death situation we select the object which will most rapidly and most effectively meet our need. Though even under those circumstances there are limits a lá trolley problems.

On to your main point as to the value of non-utility features inside of an underserved niche. That really depends on the niche doesn’t it? If the niche is LoRa communication networks in disaster environments than perhaps I am more willing to tolerate something churned out by an LLM until something better comes along but if the niche is not human life preservation than it’s not dire enough to justify compromising on the other things I care about.

A more accurate anology that you might have asked me is "if you really wanted a croissant and you had the choice between a delicious croissant made with forced child labor, no croissant, or a pan é chocolat would you really not choose the croissant?

To which my response is “Yes, I would pick something else”.

I do. You’re describing a bar for humor where we can’t even make fun of Nazis because, to do so, would require referencing the existence of Nazis.

Technology is political. If we limit humor here to be exclusively word-play about obscure CS topics then this is going to get very boring very quickly. I feel for you if this rubbed you the wrong way but, particularly in today’s climate, we can’t flinch from stuff like this.

The enemy hates you. They despise you in ways that can scarcely be imagined. You must mock them at every turn.

I see this so often.

That is not what is meant. No one is taking the “no true vegan would eat vegetables fertilized with animal byproducts” position here.

1. Bad actors are not a reason not to enforce a community rule. If I start a forum for victims of sexual violence and state, as a community rule, that people who have ever committed sexual violence are not permitted, how do I enforce that? The answer is “to the best of my abilities.”
2. The bar for No-AI is not “this has literally never even been ingested by an LLM, nor has any of its components, nor has anything like any of its components.” In the vast majority of cases what myself and others are looking for is that, to the maximum extent possible, you did not seek out LLM assistance on this project and barring that 100% of the content is your own creation and not the output of an LLM.

While I can’t speak to this project’s values specifically I can say for me, it is enough to know that every word of prose or line of code followed the same path

Your brain -> your hands -> that project

Again, and I brought up more details elsewhere in this thread. This is assuming utility as the principal axis. You highlighting art as having a utility "to be observed* is more of this neo-liberal hyper optimization psychology.

I am awash in projects that compile. Frankly, for most use cases, getting the code to compile is a pretty easy step. But all those other axis? Those are much tougher.

So, yes, “does it compile and run” is generally table stakes as I can’t interact much with the code without that step. However, comparing it to art, that is functionally the equivalent to “is it visible to a human somehow” as far as requirements to be considered art.

Because of this, the utility of code, that is “does it serve my needs”, is not the principal axis by which to judge it for me. It is just one of many axis’ that are used to judge.

This isn’t limited to code by the way. Every field, and every technology, gets this treatment. It is simply not enough to make a product that does a task. I’m looking for conviviality.