I use this and contributed a small bug fix to it the other year. It’s pretty functional, although one thing I wish it did is have a way to see quarantined/spam labeled messages instead of the filter just blackholing them.

the bigger issue is that it’s being used in a GPL3 project which kind of isn’t allowed

I followed the links and I think the original argument being referenced has been twisted around a bit game-of-telephone style, GPL prohibiting inclusion of LLM generated code isn’t what it’s claiming, it’s more that they think AI trained on GPL code violates it when it happens to reproduce it exactly:

it is readily apparent that GitHub Copilot is capable of returning, verbatim, already extant code (although it does attempt to synthesise novel code based on its training data). This immediately raises the issue, what happens when that code (such as the previous example) is licensed under a copyleft license such as the GPL or AGPL? How is the matter of copyright in this instance resolved?

https://github.com/ZDoom/gzdoom/issues/3395 https://www.fsf.org/licensing/copilot/on-the-nature-of-ai-code-copilots#5. What About Copyright?

It might also be the case that the GPL prohibits LLM generated code somehow, I don’t actually know, just want to point out that no one has made an argument for that.

Github is a way of quickly getting some indication that software is legit before you install it, because you can see at a glance various ways others have interacted with it, and potentially look into things further. If it’s on Github the code is probably at least published, which is another sign of not being sketchy, so it’s a good thing to be able to append to a web search. I also like that it’s easier to find info about how to install software from Github than from some self published website for that particular software, because the information is generally going to be in the same place and use the same conventions every time.

If you’re only writing code for yourself, Git by itself would be fine, but there’s definitely a need for something that is basically a sort of social media for software.

What you confuse here is doing something that can benefit from applying logical thinking with doing science.

I’m not confusing that. Effective programming requires and consists of small scale application of the scientific method to the systems you work with.

the argument has become “but it seems to be thinking to me”

I wasn’t making that argument so I don’t know what you’re getting at with this. For the purposes of this discussion I think it doesn’t matter at all how it was written or whether what wrote it is truly intelligent, the important thing is the code that is the end result, whether it does what it is intended to and nothing harmful, and whether the programmer working with it is able to accurately determine if it does what it is intended to.

The central point of it is that, by the very nature of LKMs to produce statistically plausible output, self-experimenting with them subjects one to very strong psychological biases because of the Barnum effect and therefore it is, first, not even possible to assess their usefulness for programming by self-exoerimentation(!) , and second, it is even harmful because these effects lead to self-reinforcing and harmful beliefs.

I feel like “not even possible to assess their usefulness for programming by self-exoerimentation(!)” is necessarily a claim that reading and testing code is something no one can do, which is absurd. If the output is often correct, then the means of creating it is likely useful, and you can tell if the output is correct by evaluating it in the same way you evaluate any computer program, without needing to directly evaluate the LLM itself. It should be obvious that this is a possible thing to do. Saying not to do it seems kind of like some “don’t look up” stuff.

Are you saying that it is not possible to use scientific methods to systematically and objectively compare programming tools and methods?

No, I’m saying the opposite, and I’m offended at what the author seems to be suggesting, that this should only be attempted by academics, and that programmers should only defer to them and refrain from attempting this to inform their own work and what tools will be useful to them. An absolutely insane idea given that the task of systematic evaluation and seeking greater objectivity is at the core of what programmers do. A programmer should obviously be using their experience writing and testing both typing systems to decide which is right for their project, they should not assume they are incapable of objective judgment and defer their thinking to computer science researchers who don’t directly deal with the same things they do and aren’t considering the same questions.

This was given as an example of someone falling for manipulative trickery:

A recent example was an experiment by a CloudFlare engineer at using an “AI agent” to build an auth library from scratch.

From the project repository page:

I was an AI skeptic. I thought LLMs were glorified Markov chain generators that didn’t actually understand code and couldn’t produce anything novel. I started this project on a lark, fully expecting the AI to produce terrible code for me to laugh at. And then, uh… the code actually looked pretty good. Not perfect, but I just told the AI to fix things, and it did. I was shocked.

But understanding and testing code is not (necessarily) guesswork. There is no reason to assume this person is incapable of it, and no reason to justify the idea that it should never be attempted by ordinary programmers when that is the main task of programming.

The problem, though, with responding to blog posts like that, as I did here (unfortunately), is that they aren’t made to debate or arrive at a truth, but to reinforce belief. The author is simultaneously putting himself on the record as having hardline opinions and putting himself in the position of having to defend them. Both are very effective at reinforcing those beliefs.

A very useful question to ask yourself when reading anything (fiction, non-fiction, blogs, books, whatever) is “what does the author want to believe is true?”

Because a lot of writing is just as much about the author convincing themselves as it is about them addressing the reader. …

There is no winning in a debate with somebody who is deliberately not paying attention.

This is all also a great argument against the many articles claiming that LLMs are useless for coding, in which the authors all seem to have a very strong bias. I can agree that it’s a very good idea to distrust what people are saying about how programming should be done, including mistrusting claims about how AI can and should be used for it.

We need science #

Our only recourse as a field is the same as with naturopathy: scientific studies by impartial researchers. That takes time, which means we have a responsibility to hold off as research plays out

This on the other hand is pure bullshit. Writing code is itself a process of scientific exploration; you think about what will happen, and then you test it, from different angles, to confirm or falsify your assumptions. The author seems to be saying that both evaluating correctness of LLM output and the use of Typescript is comparable to falling for homeopathy by misattributing the cause of recovering from illness. The idea that programmers should not use their own judgment or do their own experimentation, that they have no way of telling if code works or is good, to me seems like a wholesale rejection of programming as a craft. If someone is avoiding self experimentation as suggested I don’t know how they can even say that programming is something they do.

Well, this is what the relevant part of the video says:

USAGM disbursed $7.5M to these entities, in “what seemed to be an effort to delay the hearing or woo the judge”. Regardless, the latter has sided against USAGM, and just a few days ago, the agency has decided to back off and release the funds for the 2025 fiscal year.

So I guess funds were cut, but then the courts ruled the president doesn’t have authority to do this himself since the funds were allocated by congress, and so as of now they have been restored, although congress needs to approve them every year and there’s concern they might not do so for next year.

That’s a great way to do it, but human attention on your code is a scarce and valuable resource. LLMs are great for the sort of lazy stupid questions where you benefit from a quick answer, but also don’t want to waste someone else’s time on. When you are learning nearly all the questions you’ll have will be like this, your progress is gated on finding the answers, and even if you are taking a class and it’s someone’s job to look at your code and help you understand what’s wrong with it, you have to wait your turn for that and only get so much help.

For me I get prompted with a captcha on redeeming a free game, almost every time

How would it get past the captcha? EGS always has a complicated captcha

I use a script I wrote that plays music from Bandcamp with probabilities based on liking/disliking songs and the albums Bandcamp recommends in association with the rated song. Wary about sharing it anywhere though as it’s definitely against the tos.

I’m skeptical the market is ever going to have principles, for every person that has gotten burned and become personally aware of shady practices, there are many more that aren’t aware and don’t have the incentive or ability to do research to find out. Seems like the sort of thing where the system is rigged in favor of scammers if consumer choice is the only regulation.

Every time I try to convert a PDF to epub or something, or OCR one that doesn’t actually have selectable text, it turns out shit. I assume the real reason people would want to get LLMs involved is that there is actually a lot of ambiguity in what a correct conversion would be, and there are a lot of PDFs out there.

I upvoted because I’m generally excited by the idea of software that lets you interact with different social media via one interface. Idk if the project itself is good but it seems like a neat idea.

This one can do that stuff: https://github.com/huchenlei/ComfyUI-layerdiffuse?tab=readme-ov-file

The company being successful probably wasn’t doing humanity any favors anyway

As long as they aren’t putting ridiculous terms on model usage like SD3 and the weights are provided I’m happy with it

I’m not sure how you’d tell unless there is some reputable source that claims they saw this search result themselves, or you found it yourself. Making a fake is as easy as inspect element -> edit -> screenshot.

Yeah but it’s funny in a different way; they are giving ignorant and condescending advice because while big cats have impressive hunting abilities, they don’t normally hunt mice.