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PS5 Linux lead quits: "a bunch of noobs using LLMs" that "they don't understand"

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Re: PS5 Linux lead quits: "a bunch of noobs using LLMs" that "they don't understand"

#131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Modern problems require modern solutions. Why not set up a triage bot with only read permissions on the project and restricted network access in order to triage issues? Perhaps this way one could turn the influx of spam into a source of useful information.

These exist. Very elaborate systems in many cases. Otherwise Hermes would probably have 30,000. Like a lot of agent tools they merge a ton of slop though so I wouldn’t consider them leaders.

> Otherwise Hermes would probably have 30,000.

It already does!

Re: PS5 Linux lead quits: "a bunch of noobs using LLMs" that "they don't understand"

#132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Funny, how suddenly a tight, 1-2 sentence response on point is a sign of skill. Wasn't it always?

"As brevity is the soul of wit, I shall be brief. [then bloviates on and on.]" ~Polonius

I’d have written a shorter comment, but I didn’t have the time.

Re: PS5 Linux lead quits: "a bunch of noobs using LLMs" that "they don't understand"

#134

Hobby groups projects like this are less fun for a lot of people who used to enjoy interacting with smart people. It's definitely become a game of just spam claude for answers with zero understanding or care for how anything actually works. That's fine to get things done and fine for a lot of side projects, but it definitely ruins the joy that people have in understanding systems and working with intellectuals.

In my hobby groups there has always been a second, smaller, more intimate invite-only space for people doing the deep work. It’s the only way to do the work in the age of 1000-member Discords where important conversations get lost in the scroll back instantly.

The experience in these spaces is largely the same. LLMs can be used there, too, but when the experts are using them with experience to back it up the results are a lot better.

The people who are really struggling in my few hobby groups (not PS5) are those who enjoyed some social status from their knowledge. They were heros and people sought them out and revered their work in 2023. LLMs came along and partially leveled the playing field. When a determined kid with a Deepseek subscription can produce a sloppy version of what took you years to find, that sense of being a heroic figure at the next level is gone.

I think this reveals another wrinkle, which is that the status hierarchy wasn’t that solid or worthwhile anyway. Outside of a few vocal people trying to enforce the status hierarchy, most people don’t care who releases their jailbreak or PS5 exploit. They just want it. Whoever gets it to them first becomes the new king.

This PS5 incident has some strange element where supposedly keeping the reveal secret for 2 more weeks would have changed something with the GTA6 release. There were also 3 people who found the same exploit independent and some large amount of money on the line for the first of them to report it. The person who reported it signed off to spend time with his dying mother, so can’t really fault them for doing the thing they earned according to the rules of the program.

Re: PS5 Linux lead quits: "a bunch of noobs using LLMs" that "they don't understand"

#135

Hobby groups projects like this are less fun for a lot of people who used to enjoy interacting with smart people. It's definitely become a game of just spam claude for answers with zero understanding or care for how anything actually works. That's fine to get things done and fine for a lot of side projects, but it definitely ruins the joy that people have in understanding systems and working with intellectuals.

Projects like this probably need a dedicated noob-fork where 'anything goes', so the noobs feel like they're contributing but where their blast radius is contained. And once in a blue moon something good comes out of it back to the real project.

With how verbose LLMs are and how much code churn they generate, it will be very difficult to extract anything and apply it back upstream

Re: PS5 Linux lead quits: "a bunch of noobs using LLMs" that "they don't understand"

#136

> it seems that vibe-coders, or “slop kiddies” as the modder dubbed them, used AI to detect a bug that they were using to crack consoles, and reported it to Sony for a bounty. That would indeed be incredibly demoralizing, even crushing. Quite a dick move. Now that said, I imagine it was only a matter of time anyway until Sony found/fixed or someone else did the same thing. It's just a different world now. As much as…

So the non-noob-but-asshole (supposedly talented) dev was relying on the fact that Sony would not run the same tools "noobs" did. Well, that's.. not smart.

Re: PS5 Linux lead quits: "a bunch of noobs using LLMs" that "they don't understand"

#137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Funny, how suddenly a tight, 1-2 sentence response on point is a sign of skill. Wasn't it always?

I agree, anecdotally I've always noticed a huge amount of my peers lacked professional communication skills even pre-LLMs. A lot of people get this idea that "more verbosity = better" instead of optimizing for conciseness and information-density. I largely blame minimum word-count essays from school assignments.

Would you like me to edit this mess for you? You’re way too verbose..

Re: PS5 Linux lead quits: "a bunch of noobs using LLMs" that "they don't understand"

#138

Misleading title, there's another major reason: it's an embargo agreement violation that jeopardizes Linux support on PS5. https://x.com/theflow0/status/2099987019954831744

I found it a bit hard to understand this discussion because I wasn't familiar with the background. If I've got this right, his project let you run Linux on a PlayStation 5 (thus also providing the ability to run modern games). Slop kiddies using AI discovered the PS5 hypervisor exploit it relied on for installation. Initially they agreed to his request to delay reporting it to Sony until after GTA6 came out (so users…

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Re: PS5 Linux lead quits: "a bunch of noobs using LLMs" that "they don't understand"

#139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Hobby groups projects like this are less fun for a lot of people who used to enjoy interacting with smart people. Same thing did happen to many work places. People at all levels proxy questions through LLMs and don't even bother to read/trim/edit the response. Funny, how suddenly a tight, 1-2 sentence response on point is a sign of skill.

> Funny, how suddenly a tight, 1-2 sentence response on point is a sign of skill. Wasn't it always?

Depends. A lot of the 1-2 sentence rapid responders from my past jobs weren’t really understanding the problem. They were virtue signaling that they were confident, fast to respond, and understood immediately (without elaborating)

It’s easy to send a pithy response that suggests experience and understanding without having either. Think of a middle manager spouting pithy buzzword laden cliches confidently in response to every request, then transferring the real problem to the grumbling employees who have to solve the actual hard parts of the problem which lie in the nuance.

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