Yet another Hacker News

85 points edward 1 hour ago 27 comments

louwrentius 43 minutes ago | parent

I’m still sad that Debian is now integrating (external?) LLM in the build process which seems antithetical to the core values of Debian (as pointed out).

There is no alternative to Debian for me. I’m ready to justy throw out all my computers and become a goat herder at this point.

PS I’ll remove memory and storage from said computers to pay for land and goats before I chuck them out of my window.

disiplus 41 minutes ago | parent

I don't think there's another way. Everybody is being spammed with Gen AI outputs and the only even to it seems like a paradox way to fight it is with LLMs of some kind or go around it like what the EU is trying to do with watermarking and then detect AI and have different processing for it. I kinda think we could end up there, but we are still not there.

voidUpdate 36 minutes ago | parent

The other way is not to spam someone with LLM-generated outputs, and actually review the package

monsieurbanana 33 minutes ago | parent

Does debian's NEW queue actually have this issue? Not anyone can just upload to it, you have to be a debian developer or maintainer AFAIK.

tempfile 22 minutes ago | parent

How can the solution to LLM slop be sending more LLM slop back?

tommica 40 minutes ago | parent

> spend my valuable developer time (this is my free time)...

Lesson for us all is that if we do not own the thing/project/etc, things can suddenly change without our decision, and all time we put into it might become a waste-of-effort retroactively

lukeify 29 minutes ago | parent

Hate to say it but this is one of the primary reasons I can never get interested in contributing to open source.

throw-qqqqq 15 minutes ago | parent

Doesn’t this also apply to closed source software, but with the extra downsides that you can’t fork it etc.?

I contribute to open source software because it improves stuff I use and/or care about.

It seems too pessimistic, IMO, to abstain because things could potentially change to the worse, sometime in the future.

sampullman 8 minutes ago | parent

Yes, I think they're pretty much saying they don't want to contribute to projects they don't own.

monsieurbanana 37 minutes ago | parent

I'm not anti-ai but I am firmly anti-make-people-read-llm-output-I-didn't-read-myself, and this breaks this.

They also have a reward system that punishes people for ignoring the llm review (by pushing their submission lower in the queue).

SOLAR_FIELDS 29 minutes ago | parent

Yeah AI is the relevant stand in but ultimately this is about one group of people being lazy and trying to shift more work onto another group of people. It just so happens that they are using AI to do it

account42 20 minutes ago | parent

I don't think it "just so happens". AI enables that behavior at great scale and arguably even encourages it.

monsieurbanana 27 minutes ago | parent

I guess I have to temper my own statement a bit. I do see situations where I would generate and send automated LLM messages. Probably to reply to generated unsolicited messages or pull-requests.

But to upload to debian new's queue you already need to have pre-approval, it's a different situation from e.g. a public git repository that anyone can push to.

g-b-r 10 minutes ago | parent

> where I would generate and send automated LLM messages. Probably to reply to generated unsolicited messages or pull-requests.

Why would you use an LLM instead of a fixed message?

monsieurbanana 2 minutes ago | parent

To help classify between human and llm-generated ones? I don't know, and you're probably right than in this case a fixed message would be better.

Another situation where I would use llms to generate messages is if we've mutually agreed to do that. For example automated review messages at work, if we've agreed that it would be a part of our workflow.

A good rule of thumb might be unsolicited vs solicited llm messages.

pantalaimon 20 minutes ago | parent

Do you share the same opinion about script generated (pre-LLM) review comments?

monsieurbanana 6 minutes ago | parent

It's disingenuous to compare LLM outputs to script generated ones. They have more differences than similarities.

A script is reproducible, and fixable. They won't waste your time hallucinating issues. Note that this is different from "being wrong". A script can be wrong, and you can spend time debugging it, but that time is not wasted. You can fix the script, remove wrong rules, whatever.

Also, nothing exists in a vacuum. Script-generated review comments were never a widespread societal issue, LLMs unfeterred content generation is.

cromka 10 minutes ago | parent

> I'm not anti-ai but I am firmly anti-make-people-read-llm-output-I-didn't-read-myself, and this breaks this.

This here might hit the nail on the head exactly in terms of what the biggest FOSSes gripe with LLMs with might be: not the fact people use it but rather how it hinders the communication.

If you use it to help the write code, but you explain things in your own words or, at very least, redact and trim LLMs output, it's fine.

If you, however, just drop a wall of text at someone and expect they act on its b/s, this is lazy to the point it borders with microagression.

You wouldn't expect a distinguished professor explain basic maths to a student, and we shouldn't expect actual developers address Copilot's stupid, unredacted hallucinations or otherwise unrelated remarks.

This works for patches submission, too: you should be outright banned for submitting stuff you didn't bother to double check and properly document.

cadamsdotcom 36 minutes ago | parent

This is a strongly phrased message but the problem could be solved with an opt-out.

Even something as simple as writing the phrase "No LLMs please" somewhere in the upload, that if present, prevents LLMs being triggered. Nothing elaborate and it preserves the default-on behavior the team seems to want.

baumschubser 32 minutes ago | parent

i wozld not care for most other actors even in the FOSS universe to swallow their pride and put LLM into their workflows. However, Debian proved in countless occasions before that they can and will go the route that is right, not the one that is easy, even if it makes everything slow or cumbersome and I think thats a good thing and the reason why so many others build their stuff in top of it.

mono442 25 minutes ago | parent

There's no point volunteering free time just to deal with slop.

boredhedgehog 16 minutes ago | parent

So how often is this LLM wrong?

vconnor 6 minutes ago | parent

Elsewhere in the email thread:

Picking at random a successful and unsuccessful LLM-generated review from the dashboard, the successful review consists of 734 words (~2.5 printed pages) and the unsuccessful review weighs in at a whopping 1,535 words (~5 printed pages). I haven't tried to fully read either report, nor spend brain cycles checking if the LLM output is legitimate or not. I just want to emphasize the many orders of magnitude change in review size that's being generated, and that uploaders may need to spend time trying to review and understand in this new process.

A bit rude to expect people to swallow 5 pages of slop to figure out why review failed.

EDIT: made my comment more constructive, but originally asked if any distro has adopted a hard anti-AI stance.

none_to_remain 3 minutes ago | parent

No Linux distro can have a hard anti-AI stance