Notices by Ben Zanin (gnomon@mastodon.social)

@cwebber

https://inference.debian.net/doc#:~:text=How%20much%20does%20it%20cost%20me%3f,-Nothing

"How much does it cost me?"

- the good will of everyone running a web facing service that has been crushed under traffic from abusive scrapers

- the patience of every developer who wrote code they did not want to be used by the LLM industry, but it was used against their wishes

- the sympathy of every person performing content filtering for pennies at the cost of their mental health

- the cameraderie of every person who finds this industry tech repugnant

@Gargron perfect creature, zero notes, Peaches forever

Tired: hypervisor

Inspired: hypervizier

@dalias psst @monsieuricon , I know you're working on Kernel Recipes stuff right now, but is something a little screwy with LKML bounce configs right now? (Gripe upthread, 👀↑↑ )

@dalias to the best of my knowledge the folks who actually maintain the LKML have rather strong personal feelings about LLMs, on the negative end of the spectrum. This sounds more like a configuration mistake than a slop slip.

Mind if I tag in Konst in case he knows what's up? (He's a bit busy preparing for a conference right now though, he might not see the note immediately.)

@mos_8502 the argument is not "agentic coding can only produce worthless slop", it's "agentic coding encourages and rewards producing worthless slop".

It's always¹ possible to forge an uphill path. It's possible to write legible Perl, safe shell scripts, and fast Python, too.

I think we both agree that the danger to the craft and industry comes from pairing a tool that rewards and conceals low quality with an outreach effort to get new developers to learn with it.

1/2

¹: well, almost always

@whitequark *male pattern baldness bros have entered the chat*

@cwebber "these noodles taste like NURBS"

Happy #sysadminDay to all sysadmins, sysops, site reliability engineers, devops people, admins, members of the wheel group, holders of root, and people with a flashlight/screwdriver/multimeter in your desk-call pouch.

It may not be a glamorous calling, but here's the thing: setting up and running the machine so others need not worry about it; helping people get their work done; flattening the learning curve and offering guidance; and diminishing the sting of errors?

It matters.

Be proud.

❤️

@mayintoronto bluntly I wonder the same thing for my professional future in this industry too. The leadership in most technical organizations is not acting in ways I would describe as rational or reasonable.

But I would - and if it comes down to that, I will - quit not just my job but this industry before I'll accept forced tool choice. My tools are extensions of my body and mind: literal and metaphorical proprioception make them part of *me*. I'll push a broom before surrendering autonomy.

@mayintoronto oof.

My employer never gets to choose my tools. Not ever.

Not least because in the prod ops line of work, if the employer is pushing those mandates, then it is already impossible to do the job to any professional standard.

I have not had to quit a job because of this yet but I have written two resignation letters already when it looked like that was a very likely direction. In this market I would run a spreadsheet before actually resigning, but I still would.

@mos_8502 I don't claim that my programs are very good, but there are two decade old scripts in my ~/bin/ which I still run weekly if not daily, and I stand by the decisions I made back when I wrote them about how much time I invested in creating them versus how long I expected to benefit from them.

@mos_8502 a good program should age like furniture; a great one should age like architecture. The very best should age like a mathematical proof.

@Gargron superb, magnificent, no notes, standing ovation

@leanderlindahl neither unwelcome nor annoying! I'm waiting eagerly for Sailfish devices to become available in my region; but I'm afraid that while these phone operating systems would fix the issue of vendors pushing unwanted UI changes, they would force my parents to be fully dependent on only me for phone support. This would be a worse problem than the one I just solved.

I hope /e/OS and Sailfish become much more available in the future though.

I'm simmering mad that some combination of Samsung and Google decided to shove out an update to Dad's phone which replaced the power-on flow with an almost inescapable account creation/activation funnel for Samsung AI (?) and, simultaneously, remapped the physical side button from power-off to Google Gemini.

Unasked, unprompted, and unwanted, his phone suddenly became useless and hostile to him.

We worked through it together but there's no way of actually turning it *off*, only snoozing it.

@mhoye I'm also paying close attention to those long-term studies about how solar panels are generally projected to keep producing useful amounts of power for ~10 years, but current results from early solar panel farms deployed 30 years ago show them actually still delivering 80+% of their original output.

And unlike furnaces or refrigerators it's FINE to just keep using old panels. They don't waste fuel or leak coolant, they just keep working a little less well.

Just unreasonably good tech.

I'm sick of hearing how LLMs are warping projects & people I care about. Here's what I want to hear about instead.

You want to create something amazing, that'll reach & last? You need help. Build a team culture of respect, humor, genuine affection, curiosity, patience, sympathy, delight. Build a place where good people want to do the best work of their lives. Help them grow, help them leave.

It's not the commits. It is not the *fucking* *tools*.

It. Is. The. People.

Help the people.

@Gargron (yoink)

It is my birthday, if you happen to have some extra boosts lying around I could give them a good home