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I'm Archiving Picocrypt

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Re: I'm Archiving Picocrypt

#151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Seems like the author is abandoning software because in his opinion due to AI explosion employers don't care anymore about code quality and only quality. I don't get it either, because that has always been the case, thus most of his post is borderline non sense. Imo, what happened is that he took the opportunity of him entering academia to vent some stuff and quit maintaining his project.

> I don't get it either, because that has always been the case, thus most of his post is borderline non sense. Yes, making software development cheaper has been the main priority of the industry for a long time. The new development is that there's now a magic "do what I want" button that obviously won't quite do what you want but it's so cheap (for corporations, not humanity...) that you might as well pretend it does…

The irony is that it is precisely because we all, collectively as software engineers, allowed the bar to be that low for so long, that AI coding is viable at all right now.

Re: I'm Archiving Picocrypt

#153
post #65

I've felt similar to the author, a sort of despair that the only point of writing software now is to prop up the valuation of AI companies, that quality no longer matters, etc. Then I realized that nothings stopping me from writing software how I want and feel is best . I've stopped using LLMs completely and couldn't be happier. I'm not even struggling at work or feeling like I'm behind. I work on a number of persona…

Now that I think about it, it's a funny idea to poison LLMs to write suckless programs, so the next electron chat app will be more lightweight.

Re: I'm Archiving Picocrypt

#154
post #99

The (current) last commend by hakavlad (same as hakavlad on HN perhaps?): @HACKERALERT Your decision may be somewhat irresponsible towards those who donated to the audit. That audit was one year ago. The money didn't go towards the author. The source continues to be available. The author doesn't own you zilch.

>The money didn't go towards the author. Perhaps many would have refused to donate if they knew that the project would be archived in a year. Collecting for audit and then archiving the project is, in a way, a violation of expectations.

What are expectations? Audit is invalidated by the first change after it, so archivation is basically necessary. VeraCrypt was audited too, lol.

Re: I'm Archiving Picocrypt

#155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've been a web application developer for nearly 30 years now. I care about the craft and discipline immensely. Then you pull up something like the Jack-In-The-Box menu site and fully realize that managers/executives don't give a damn if the stuff works well... 48MB of built JS?!? My daughter expressed how badly the site was working on her phone, and I got curious. What's funny, is some will say, "use the app" instea…

To be fair, the app may be developed by a completely different team. If your argument is still that you don't want to trust a company that can't make both functional, well... maybe you shouldn't be going to Jack-In-The-Box in the first place.

I looked inside an average proprietary authenticator mobile app with 2 button interface and can confirm it's dumpster fire with 26mb of compiled code.

Re: I'm Archiving Picocrypt

#156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As far as I was able to tell, every single coding LLM out there still violates the terms of the MIT license, because the license requires attribution - and LLMs rarely (if ever?) provide any.

I've not used AI to program and have very little interest in using AI to program, but I fail to see how laundering code through massive probabilistic lossy compression (silicon) should be treated any differently than laundering code through massive probabilistic lossy compression (biological). Should humans have to keep track of which software codebases they learn each pattern from, too?

Calling humans massive probabilistic lossy compressors is an insult to curiosity, creativity, compassion, and any number of other traits that push us to advance technology. We've invented everything from Babbage&Ada's, vacuum tubes, punch cards, to GPUs.

Code regurgitators can't even design a coherent API.

Re: I'm Archiving Picocrypt

#157

Seems like a nice project. I'm still a little bit concerned with the VirusTotal result: https://www.virustotal.com/gui/file/81bbdffb92181a11692ec665...

That is to be expected by a project that contains encryption code, I'd say. Maybe their userbase isn’t big enough to report all false-positives and gain the reputation needed.

It could also be that some ransomware crap has used their codebase as a foundation for their system and then it gets flagged.

It's a very very common problem in the Demoscene, demoscene authors striving to impress in the 64k category created better generic EXE compressors to shrink more content into their 64k binaries, just when any tool is publicly released it is almost immediately flagged by AV software since virus makers scour our forums knowing that once in a while a useful tool comes to hide their malicious code.

Re: I'm Archiving Picocrypt

#158
post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I always found this stance puzzling. If the point of open source is to give your code to the public, why do people get upset when corporations do exactly what you told them they could do? If you didn't want to give it to everyone , you shouldn't have chosen that license. And if you choose a non-commercial license, people get upset that it's "not technically open source because the OSI says so" as if they are somehow…

> why do people get upset when corporations do exactly what you told them they could do? A lot of people have been taught `corporations == bad`, part of the anti-capitalism efforts taught to our youth for a couple generations.

It is not conspiracy, it is human nature.

Bernard shaw put it best:

    If at age 20 you are not a Communist then you have no heart. If at age 30 you are not a Capitalist then you have no brains.

Re: I'm Archiving Picocrypt

#159
post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's wrong with it?

It was clearly AI generated. So the author is clearly OK with using AI to generate slop in an area they don’t work in, while simultaneously decrying its use in an area they do work in. If they believe so strongly that AI use is destroying their industry, they should reflect on its effect on other industries too (it is well-documented how artists are being negatively impacted). I agree with the commenters above that i…

Oh, I understand you now. Thank you.

It didn't make this impression on me: I saw its generated or at least edited with LLM, but I assumed it's satire.

Thanks for not fobbing me off!

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