Yet another Hacker News

77 points edward 1 hour ago 22 comments

louwrentius 37 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 36 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 30 minutes ago | parent

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

monsieurbanana 28 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 16 minutes ago | parent

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

tommica 35 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 24 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 10 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 2 minutes ago | parent

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

monsieurbanana 32 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 24 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 15 minutes ago | parent

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

monsieurbanana 21 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 5 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?

pantalaimon 15 minutes ago | parent

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

cromka 4 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 gripe with Llama might be. Not the fact people use it but 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.

cadamsdotcom 30 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 27 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 19 minutes ago | parent

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

boredhedgehog 11 minutes ago | parent

So how often is this LLM wrong?