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Weren't they working on a huge Lord of the Rings MMORPG? I'm guessing that was quietly canceled?

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I like your hammer analogy. And I would still argue that a blanket ban on hammers and forcing people to drive nails with rocks is barking at the wrong tree.

Absolutely, fair enough!

In general, I think there's more to be gained by working towards solutions compatible with free software ideals than by forcing big tech to operate in any particular way - and of course LLMs do have very real practical uses (if far more narrow than big tech makes it out to be!) which would be very useful if their downsides were addressed in whole.

My main argument would be that projects such as Fedora, which by their own mission statement exist to further free software ideals, ought to approach these issues from that angle. That doesn't mean prohibiting LLMs forever, but rather than say "You can use LLM-generated code under these criteria", a far more reasonable approach would be to say "You cannot use LLM-generated code" for now, and consider assisting other projects up- and downstream that seek to advance new and free technologies around LLMs and generative AI that actually respects these ideals, if that is something the Fedora project wants to actively help out make happen faster.

After all this is the huge strength of communally developed software - there are no profits to chase, no need to be first to market. The rise of LLMs and generative AI is really the perfect example of how projects such as Fedora can take the much wiser approach of helping out build up free and respectful foundations for these technologies and integrate them into actual development only once this point has been reached.

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Norbert: In the day, he bites down trees
and chews away the bark
But he really starts to work it
after it gets dark

Daggett: He's got the beaver fever
Beaver fever
Oh, yeah, ooh

🪩🦫

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That's a wild response, dziadulewicz. I'm not going to break it down line by line, as tempting as that is. I'll just re-iterate some of my position on it.

1. I'll start by being super-clear - we are definitely talking about genAI, not AI generally. AI has been around for decades and the neural networks that power them have had enormous benefits. It's marketed to niche areas where it serves a specific purpose. Great! Meanwhile genAI is glitzy, but it's also power hungry and sold to billions around the world. Power hungry x consumers = the planet burns. Or if that's an over-dramatisation, then here's a fact - three genAI advocates (Google, Microsoft and most recently Meta) have re-started three separate large-scale nuclear programs to power genAI.

2. genAI is incredibly inaccurate. I could go on, but that's the crux of it. It lies. All the time. Convincingly. And yet we're meant to rely on code it produces? Or excel functions? Or financial forecasts? Oh, we're not and we have to check everything ourselves? Yep, but then where's the efficiency gains? Turns out, there aren't any - go read that article I've mentioned twice in this thread already.

3. genAI is front-loaded on price. We're not paying the correct amount of money to use it. The genAI companies are losing BILLIONS when they offer this service. That's not sustainable, so what's the catch? I have theories, but honestly can't be arsed speculating here.

4. Until your comment, dziadulewicz, no-one would be crazy enough to suggest that genAI is going to enrich our lives soooo much that we'll actually have more free time to spend with family or donate our time to worthy causes. That's absurd. If people have more free time as a result of this AI "boom", it's because they've been fired from their job. This isn't a golden age of productivity and happiness. It's a bleak, sharp downturn in employment worldwide. That usually leads to several unpleasant trends: increased crime, decreased mental health, decreased life expectancy, etc.

I think I'm gonna unsub from this discussion though. It's pretty clear that most of us have already made up our minds on genAI. The next 24-36 months will see it swing one way or another, I think.

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Well, I will say one thing: The bit about automation increasing people's free time is a bit of a mirage. In practice, that doesn't happen. At the local level, if automation allows for greater productivity, workers are expected to produce more. At the global level, if automation allows for greater productivity, you don't get a shorter work week or more money for employees. You get some combination of higher unemployment, creation of demand such as by marketing more luxuries or planned obsolescence, and bullshit jobs. More broadly still, creation of more surplus normally just means that more surplus goes to the rich. Productivity has been decoupled from income or leisure since at least 1980--basically, since the fall of "new deal" and "social democratic" thinking. I mean, when most women in North America joined the workforce and so typical nuclear families went from one "breadwinner" to two, in theory that should have meant both could work half time. Instead, the cost of living was changed so that maintaining a half decent middle class household took two incomes.

Maybe with some kind of bottom-up socialism, automation would result in broadly shared prosperity and leisure. But with the system we have, not so much. This is why unions so often end up opposing tech change--their experience is that it leads to speedup and layoffs, while the productivity increase does nothing for them. Sure, it may make the firm more competitive . . . but that's a Red Queen's race for workers: They run faster and faster just to stay in the same place and shovel a few more billion to Jeff Bezos or whoever.

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This seems like a false dichotomy. Surely a project can acknowledge that LLM-based tools exist, and then choose not to use them on practical or ideological grounds (or both) - one doesn't really exclude the other.

Indeed, I might have worded that poorly, "handle [LLM tools] appropriately" was not meant to equal allowing their use. A ban or restriction is also an appropriate way to handle the issue.

I like your hammer analogy. And I would still argue that a blanket ban on hammers and forcing people to drive nails with rocks is barking at the wrong tree.

On the other hand, we are definitely seeing a lot of people bashing wood screws in concrete beams with their newfound unethically-made hammers. A scene which doesn't give hammers the best reputation for sure.

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If I were Twitch I'd be getting really nervous.

You'd be... twitchy?

I'll see myself out.


On topic, that's disgusting. I bet poor ol' bezzie could've kept all of these people employed until their retirement had he used 0.1% of his fortune.

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Nice release!

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But... but... Microsoft loves Linux, don't they?

Microsoft loves the money Linux makes to them

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The offline installers are fine-ish, but in some cases, they can lag behind the game versions available in Galaxy (or alternate clients like Heroic, obviously).

Interesting, I didn't know this.

Btw, for anyone looking to backup their offline installers definitely check out [lgogdownloader](https://github.com/Sude-/lgogdownloader).

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I love Balatro and this looks pretty sweet though I feel very overwhelmed by the amount of content in the base game already. 16 new characters may as well be 100000 new characters. I've got a few of the DLCs and I've barely touched those yet.

I'm gonna hold out for the next update and see if there's a better way to visualize and progress through the content

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Pre order DLC skins not available for GOG release. It's enough to call it a deal breaker in my book.

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However, the cynic in me says this suggests that it's a step towards Mojang eventually retiring Minecraft Java and going all-in on the modern Minecraft: Bedrock Edition (which doesn't have Linux support).

But... but... Microsoft loves Linux, don't they?

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@Jarmer

Look, you don't need to state the reasons why you don't reply. But you seem upset, so why don't you huh. You could maybe start with plans on how to stop this AI phenomena. I'd be all ears dude. That kind of "reply" makes no sense and also does not help!

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I'd much rather trust a project that acknowledge LLM-based tools and handle them appropriately than one which pretends they don't exist and nobody uses them.

This seems like a false dichotomy. Surely a project can acknowledge that LLM-based tools exist, and then choose not to use them on practical or ideological grounds (or both) - one doesn't really exclude the other.

The "LLMs are just tools" argument is one that seems to go around a lot, but rarely with any context or further explanation. A hammer is a tool, but if companies started selling hammers built through unethical labor, using materials that destroy the planet, and directly funnel money into megacorporations, it doesn't really matter if the hammer in a vacuum is just a tool or not. The context matters, and in this situation it really is impossible to separate the product from the process of creating the product and the immense harm it is causing to the planet and society at large.

Even this is ignoring the biggest issue of LLMs however, which is that we are inviting these technologies to become essential to day-to-day life and work, ignoring the fact that this puts our lives in the hands of a few companies who do not have our best interests at heart. Even if there were no ethical concerns regarding LLMs whatsoever, it is still incredibly dangerous to embrace commercial products as public services, as we have seen again and again through the advance of Big Tech.

To be fair, a lot of these problems have more to do with the underlying fabric of Big Tech more so than LLMs specifically. In that sense LLMs really are just a tool, but a tool towards an end purely benefiting Big Tech and not those who actually use them.

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I remember, back in my days, when Mojang wasn't Microsoft, and they had "full mod support" in their promises. And when they hired people making buckit. And when these people where told to not work on mod support but on unrelated stuff.

I've since then moved away from Minecraft towards more… amenable engines, but this remain a great news for people that are all-in on it with extensively modded servers.

Also, if this is the premisces of the Java Edition being retired, well… it might not be a bad thing, depending on how its done. So many stuff have been built on it over the last… too long period of time, that I don't see it disappearing. If Microsoft is kinda handing it to the people (let's dream…) in favor of developping the "real" game with bedrock, all the better.

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Now they are spinning a 90s style downsizing as the AI revolution. AI is not making content for this game, no one is, because they were fired.

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Check also Slots & Daggers ;)

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@dziadulewicz .............. wtf? I just don't even know where to begin. I'm guessing you're a bot though, so I won't even begin.

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Across our businesses, we're delivering great customer experiences every day

As one of said customers for a small number of Amazon services, this is absolutely delusional.

When Amazon works well, it's an invisible service. Plumbing. I don't think "gosh, I'm glad I picked Amazon for this". When it doesn't work, it's a car crash. Getting to speak to anyone, ever, is already near-impossible. And now there will be fourteen thousand less people who care about "great customer experiences", and more AI that definitely won't shift the dial.

This entire AI rollercoaster is like a fascinating real-life, global study of "Locked In Syndrome" (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Locked-in_syndrome). When you spend $10Bn in a company, you absolutely need it to succeed.

The disparity of expectation between normal people and big tech here is absolutely mind-boggling.

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There was a study done that found it seemed to make people slower at coding . . . but they thought it made them faster

There's a link to that study in my article which I linked in an earlier comment. It's fascinating, the disparity between what they thought would happen and the recorded results.

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Yeah, we covered that on GamingOnLinux earlier this year.

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This is pretty eye opening:

https://bsky.app/profile/letitmelo.bsky.social/post/3m4bxweqs3k2u

the entire time they thought they were competing with steam? what on earth?

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Is it better than playing them in DosBox?

You get more games, including multiple ports
You get arcade versions of the games
You can play online with rollback netcode without additional setup
MK4 Arcade is available to purchase for the first time
You also get MK Trilogy, and two PlayStation spinoffs with options to make them tolerable
You get extensive practice mode that has a huge amount of features to polish your skill, or chease
You get fatality training, or more like finisher training

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AI is here and not going away. It's irreversible. You can either deal with it (and use it as a tool, to achieve enormous calculations and so on - which humans could never match) or keep wasting your energy fighting windmills waving yer anti-AI flags or sum. Geez. It's best to acknowledge the reality to keep also your sanity. Great many "jobs" are not eternal, please understand at least this.

Many things get automated gradually and free time of the people increase. We can then do things machines never could. Much humanitarian work to do on this planet if you haven't noticed. Maybe step outside for a while or take a trip to another all different country and realize. More time with family then too.

AI is not all doom and gloom. We can't control everything, it is what it is and people do what people do. How many people can control themselves 100% 24/7 and by what specifications set by who or what?

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I don't think that's going to work out the way top executives think it will. My prediction: Managers and executives will have the clout to avoid being laid off and will instead lay off people who do the real work. Then, they will find out that AI can't do most of that real work, and a lot of stuff that is supposed to be getting done will not.

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But have they learned how to do key rebinding?

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As to productivity, AI seems to be one of those things like multitasking, where people think it makes them productive but it doesn't. There was a study done that found it seemed to make people slower at coding . . . but they thought it made them faster.

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As time goes on, more and more people are seeing that the AI revolution isn't something to be excited about.

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As always, "AI" stands for "replacing people with robot slaves". Amazon is very into that.

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