Post B5SARWfM6Mo0VGQHcu by pomagarnet@chaos.social
 (DIR) More posts by pomagarnet@chaos.social
 (DIR) Post #B5RqBz9yOdkp9u3YtU by david_chisnall@infosec.exchange
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       The recent post criticising Free Software advocates for advocating user-modifiable software and then being annoyed at LLMs annoys me and the reason is best illustrated by this analogy:Public-transport advocates spend years advocating for a connected public-transport infrastructure, where it’s easy to take a small combination of busses, metros, trams, and trains to get from anywhere to anywhere. The network would be efficient and operated as a non-profit-making public good, making individual movement cheap (or, ideally, free). They work with municipalities to build out some of this infrastructure, persuade national governments to invest in the longer routes, and so on.Someone comes along with a massive subsidy for a handful of private taxi companies to hire a bunch of drivers and give free (paid for by investors) ride to everyone. The drivers are immigrants who don’t speak the language very well, which is great for the taxi companies because they are easy to exploit (they are, in fact, underpaid and put in dangerous situations routinely). The owners of the taxis are pocketing a load of investor money for every ride though.When you get in one of these taxis, there’s a 90% chance they’ll take you where you want, a 9% chance they’ll take you somewhere nearby, and a 1% chance they’ll just drop you off in a dangerous part of town. A bunch of people are mugged and a few more murdered as a result of this, but the companies aren’t liable. The investors behind this tell everyone ‘don’t bother learning to drive, there’s no point, our taxis will take you anywhere, for much less money!’.  At the same time, ridership on existing public transport drops off, leading to calls to cut its funding and there are mass redundancies for bus drivers and so on. The taxis are all diesel and heavily polluting, leading to worse air quality everywhere they go. To make sure that they can pick people up easily, the ones not actively giving rides are constantly circulating, placing huge strain on road infrastructure and further increasing pollution.And then someone says to those public-transport advocates: ‘this is what you wanted, why are you unhappy just because it’s not delivered in the way you imagined?’
       
 (DIR) Post #B5RqBzdkbvZceFzLJA by sun@shitposter.world
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       @david_chisnall rideshare drivers are often ordinary people and taxi drivers are often outright scary ime
       
 (DIR) Post #B5SARVy6hAD8L8BkDQ by sloanlance@mastodon.social
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       @david_chisnall I don't understand the first part of your post.  Who is annoyed with the LLMs? Can you link to the recent post?
       
 (DIR) Post #B5SARWfM6Mo0VGQHcu by pomagarnet@chaos.social
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       @sloanlance @david_chisnallRE: https://nondeterministic.computer/@mjg59/116424709251813699
       
 (DIR) Post #B5T4QmQtag0aXwseps by neilk@xoxo.zone
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       @david_chisnall As someone who has been an enthusiast and contributor to open source since before it had that name:We have never delivered on the idea of user-modifiable software. We have sometimes freed software builders from unnecessary toll booths and restrictions. In other words, we built something that works for us and stopped.I think your analogy of literal crazy taxis is good when talking about LLMs for noncoders. But there was no actual product from FL/OSS world that it’s displacing
       
 (DIR) Post #B5T4Qn3BIKdKSgnEVk by art_codesmith@toot.cafe
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       @neilk @david_chisnall LLMs are displacing the open source movement itself.By flooding FLOSS projects with slop requests on one side, and copyright-washing their code on the other side.
       
 (DIR) Post #B5T4QnD6hQZaxTR9yy by neilk@xoxo.zone
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       @david_chisnall Maybe a better analogy: imagine we only had trains and last-mile delivery on horse cartsFor 30 years, nerdy rail engineers (on their days off) have tinkered with door-to-door rail networks. They build impressive examples in their back yard – tech that becomes light rail, and is absorbed by existing rail companiesBuses and cars are invented and solve the last-mile problems. They crash due to flaws and operator error all the time. The backyard rail engineers are angry.