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  RE: https://mastodon.social/@glynmoody/117388721160448007 "Some of you will suffer, but that is a sacrifice that I am willing to make." It would be funny how tone-deaf and asinine Altman is if it weren't for all of the damage he's causing. He'd be an absolutely fantastic movie villain. Lousy real-life human being, though.

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  Just bought for Bandcamp Friday, "Eghass Malan" by Les Filles de Illighadad. Described as "Tuareg guitar mixed with traditional rural folk". Great stuff. Give it a listen! #BandcampFriday https://lesfillesdeillighadad.bandcamp.com/album/eghass-malan

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  In addition to the steady stream of LLM-generated pitches we're seeing at LWN, I'm also seeing an uptick in pitches for LLM-generated projects and distributions. While we do write about projects, like the Linux kernel, that are using LLMs somewhere in the process, I'm not going to be writing about any of these flash-in-the-pan projects anytime soon. - Generally, I don't write a review of a project that I wouldn't use myself. - I also am wary of writing about a project un...

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  RE: https://social.ginny.today/@ginny/117312913530116961 "You fucking capitalist perverts" is going to be a new go-to phrase for me, so thanks for that.

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  RE: https://toot.cat/@zeenix/117326398656330874 I'm sure this will be dismissed by some folks as "tone policing" but I'll once again try to make this case: the overheated, straight-to-rage reactions are so detrimental to the cause of keeping LLMs/AIs out of FOSS projects. I am not saying that people aren't justified in their feelings. I am saying that every person is responsible for what they do with their feelings, and I have less than zero sympathy for the argument tha...

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  A user asked in a project forum, reasonably, "does the widely reported X security vulnerability that affects the project that this was forked from affect this project as well?" They were told, basically, that they should report such an issue in private. Um, no. Sorry - thats dumb. It's public knowledge that Project B is a fork of Project A from a specific version. If X security flaw affects A, then it's not exactly a big stretch for anybody to conclude that B may also be a...

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  A thought on considering AI policies for FOSS projects: who will you attract , and who will you repel with the policy? If you reverse the polarity later, will the “damage” on either side be repairable if the policy turned out to be bad? e.g. if you say “no LLMs for now, maybe never” what’s the downside, and the upside? And vice versa: what’s the one-year, two-year risk of accepting LLM content? ISTM that a no-LLM policy, for code, content, communications, is lower risk than a pro- or toleran...

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  RE: https://zirk.us/@CindyWeinstein/117311695606112636 Perhaps a “allow hunting of billionaires for sport” proposition would be better. You can obtain a hunting license for $50. If you bag a billionaire you receive 1% of their assets, the other 99% is absorbed by the state. You’re not allowed to taxidermy them. We’re not monsters. For people who don’t want to kill, they can “catch and release” the billionaire. Same rules otherwise apply: a successful capture nets the hunter 1% of the bill...

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  RE: https://sfba.social/@drahardja/117312373576583428 “Listen, meth is supposed to make you more productive. I have no idea why the quality of your work is so shit and everybody is so hostile lately.”

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  Continuing to see a steady trickle of LLM-assisted or LLM-created pitches for LWN, some of which don't even seem to have a meat proxy at the wheel; just somebody turning loose an AI agent with instructions to try to scam a publication for a few bucks. I don't like the adoption of LLM tools by FOSS maintainers and contributors, but I can understand the appeal (kind of) and that doesn't feel malicious or scammy to me. (I understand some people disagree there. That's fine. No need...

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  There's a lot of folks complaining (rightfully) about the money being thrown toward Omarchy while other FOSS projects are struggling for funds. I'm not a tech billionaire or millionaire (thousandaire, maybe?) but all this reminds me I could do better at donating to things I use myself. So I'm going to throw some money at two projects I use, and try to remember to keep doing that more regularly. I humbly suggest other folks do the same. It'd be great to see a few FOSS projects r...

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  By default any application capable of showing / emitting notifications should have them all turned off by default. All of them. Do not make users wonder, "Where did that sound come from?" "What was that pop-up that just appeared and disappeared in the corner of my monitor?" I'm sure some folks want, for example, their terminal's "visual bell" to emit a sound or pop up a dialog. They can open the preferences and enable it if so. It's not something tha...

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  I've usually relied on K3b for burning data and music CDs, but it's been a few years since I looked for any alternatives. This is probably not a task that's receiving a lot of attention these days, though maybe discontent with streaming services has encouraged people to think more about it lately. I haven't been doing much of it myself, but my daughter asked me recently to show her how to burn music CDs* and I've been poking at it again. Does anybody have a better sugge...

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  “Are you awake? Good. There’s an emergency. I can see the bottom of my food bowl.” - Willow #catsofmastodon

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  I don’t think people are taking enough about Big Raisin and its evil work infesting perfectly good foods with raisins like oatmeal cookies and cinnamon bagels.

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  Just a random "thank you" to all the folks who post random pet pictures, scenery, crafts, musings on music or entertainment, and all other manner of creative wonderfulness that pops up in my timeline in between all the (necessary!) discussions of everything going wrong. It's so important. It's the flowers growing in the pavement cracks. Reminds me of what's good.

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  RE: https://mastodon.social/@gvwilson/116997366488785600 If you accept something is unethical, its usefulness is irrelevant, isn't it? Unrestrained medical testing on humans would be useful* -- but we oppose that because it's wildly unethical. We may have learned more from the Tuskegee Syphilis Study than we could have any other way; you can argue that it was "useful" but it was not ethical. Nobody should have to weigh its usefulness in saying, "We should not conduct m...

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  Additional views from the #catio. My mothers in law and daughter came over to see it this afternoon. Meg’s mom said it reminded her of a treehouse and I think that’s about right. Great space to just hang out and enjoy nature. Going to be doing a lot of reading out here.

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  My current theory is that the pharmacy business is just a sideline for CVS and its primary mission is wasting paper...

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  It’s Friday, and our deck replacement/catio is now fully operational. Took about ten days from demolition of the old deck to finishing the new one (minus staining it, which has to wait, apparently). It would seem that the cats approve. Hope they really enjoy the outdoors. #catsofmastodon #catio

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  What are you thinking about that's interesting and not about AI/LLMs or politics these days?

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  It continues to suck that the people at the top who pursue these follies just keep on collecting obscene paychecks while the folks who do the work get kicked to the curb. 21,000 people. They didn't decide that Oracle should fund AI crap. 21,000 people whose families are going to, at best, feel the pinch on their finances while somebody in the house has to look for another job. Many of those families, if based in the U.S., are going to either pay out the nose for health insurance via COBRA...

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  My wake-up call today was Willow deciding to leave her bed and curl up next to my head to purr at top volume at about 6 a.m. Since she's about 40% subwoofer by weight and has a window-rattling purr, it was impossible to sleep through but not a terrible way to wake up. #catsofmastodon #Cat

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  RE: https://beige.party/@maxleibman/116948585713420593 Until we get the all-clear on lettuce again, I'm just substituting french fries for salad. OK, I was doing that before too, but.

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  I have many thoughts about Linus' recent comments on LLM/AI use for the Linux kernel. Few of them are really interesting or original, at least not currently. My tiny brain needs a while to churn over things. One thought keeps coming to the fore, though: I really wish that this discussion was a lot kinder all the way around and less "everybody who disagrees with me is not only wrong, but malicious and evil and dresses funny too". There are, for reals, some players in the whole A...

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  The upstairs trio have become, shall we say, accustomed to receiving treats when I’m in the kitchen. Here they are, just watching me expectantly until I do the right thing… #catsofmastodon #cats

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  Sir Wobbles helping me recuperate. #catsofmastodon #caturday

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  RE: https://mas.to/@carnage4life/116890429736816268 I’ve made a few VPs unhappy in my corporate days by refusing to cater to their self-induced frenzies. “But my boss wants this tomorrow, you have to drop everything! They’re a VP!” “They’re not my VP and their lack of planning isn’t my team’s responsibility.” To be clear, I tried to be a team player and to respond quickly for real urgent situations. Need to respond to a zero-day announcement? Yes, we’ll jump for that. Sure! The VP just has...

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  It looks like the subscriber link for the xsnow story has broken containment, so might as well boost it here too: "The xsnow application, which generates an animated snowfall effect (and other pleasant diversions) for X11 desktops, does not seem like an obvious channel for political statements. Nevertheless, xsnow's maintainer seems to have included a political protest in the program: an Easter egg that is triggered when the program's language is set to Russia ('ru'). One u...

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  RE: https://social.wildeboer.net/@jwildeboer/116832387648136125 I'll say this again, louder for the folks in back: When you use commercial LLM tools, including freely available "open weight" models trained by assorted companies on God-knows-what data sets, this is the kind of industry you support. The commercial LLM providers do not care about the damage they inflict on anyone or anything else. They don't care about the impact that LLM usage has had on FOSS community develo...