Post

Solly
@directxman12.dev

apparently hot take: it is far more important for the internet archive, government services, and other critical pieces of public infrastructure & the commons to continue to function than people to feel 100% morally pure in their consumption. there's certainly a space for moral stances, but...

Solly
@directxman12.dev

... "backporting a critical patch to an unmaintained-but-core-piece-of-infrastructure before serious damage is done" is not one of them.

4 reposts55 likes

eevee
@eev.ee

am i allowed to take the moral stance that "we fed an 11k-line patch to the magic automatic intern and then asked it to gauge whether it did a good job" is not a reassuring response to a security issue

Solly
@directxman12.dev

that is ur perogative, but that's definitely a different stance that im talking about here. I expect ur also significantly more informed about the difficulties patching older software than most folks in the original thread.

eevee
@eev.ee

hm, depends whether security devs have any moral obligation and i'd guess the sentiments all trace back to some flavor of "this thing sucks up people's hard work to produce endless junk that we're constantly assured is just as good". not many people object to the water usage of a thing they love

Solly
@directxman12.dev

furthermore: bsky.app/profile/beat... i don't really think u get to complain about the tools folks use to fix this kinda thing until u've had ur day/night/morning/afternoon/night-again ruined by being on a sirt for a zero day

Beatricks 🎃@beatrix.bsky.social

the Internet Archive thing is an example of the fascinating trend recently where people consuming products they’re not paying for seem to believe they also have the right to dictate how much human labor is spent producing them.

Solly
@directxman12.dev

there's reasonable places to fight llms! but those are where they're causing measurable harm (screwing over artists, flooding the web with trash, burdening oss maintainers with nonsense prs, using polluting power sources, etc). fight there!

Solly
@directxman12.dev

starting from a pt of "this thing is ontologically evil" won't give u a useful framework for picking ur battles & just makes u look like an asshole demanding that volunteers burn more time so u don't feel icky. i don't even like using llms, but i do think uve gotta engage w/ the world realistically.