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FreeBSD doesn't have Wi-Fi driver for my old MacBook, so AI built one for me

vladimir.varank.in

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Re: FreeBSD doesn't have Wi-Fi driver for my old MacBook, so AI built one for me

#221

Post by josephg »

dhon_ wrote: post #207
overfeed wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The line between AI-assisted clean-room reverse-engineeing and open-source-license-laundering is a thin one, and I think the one described in the article crosses over to laundering. In classic clean-room design, one team documents the interfaces - not the code.

In this case though, the new driver has the same license as the project it was based on and explicitly credits the original project ISC License Copyright (c) 2010-2022 Broadcom Corporation Copyright (c) brcmfmac-freebsd contributors Based on the Linux brcmfmac driver.

This surprised me - but sure enough, they're right. The linux brcmfmac driver is ISC licensed:

https://github.com/torvalds/linux/blob/master/drivers/net/wi...

// SPDX-License-Identifier: ISC

Re: FreeBSD doesn't have Wi-Fi driver for my old MacBook, so AI built one for me

#222

Post by secbear »

dumbfounder wrote: post #65

The future is that people stop buying software and just build it themselves. The spam filter in thunderbird was broken for me, I built my own in hours and it works way better. Oh that CRM doesn’t have the features you want? Build one that does. It will become very easy to built and deploy solutions to many of your own bespoke problems.

Totally agree. I've found in many cases it's easier to roll your own software/patch existing software with AI than to open an issue, submit a PR, get it reviewed/merged, etc. Let alone buying software

Re: FreeBSD doesn't have Wi-Fi driver for my old MacBook, so AI built one for me

#223

Post by okanat »

deaux wrote: post #205
skydhash wrote: post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> if you can formalize your instructions Isn't that...code?

No. Think of all engineering disciplines that aren't software. Those all depend on human-language formal instructions.

Formal instructions paired by tables are almost as rigid as code. Btw normal engineering disciplines have a lot of strict math and formulas. Neither electrical nor mechanical engineering runs on purely instructions.

Re: FreeBSD doesn't have Wi-Fi driver for my old MacBook, so AI built one for me

#224

Post by slopinthebag »

selridge wrote: post #155
slopinthebag wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You mean Moore's law? Which is now dead?

No I don't mean that. I mean the LLM parameter scaling laws. More importantly, it doesn't matter if I mean that or Moore's law or anything else, because I'm not making a forward looking prediction. Read what I wrote. I'm saying is if you bet AGAINST [LLM] scaling laws--meaning you bet that the output would peter out naturally somehow--you've lost 100% so far. 100% Tomorrow could be your lucky day. Or not.

This weekend I had 100% success at the blackjack table, until I didn't and lost.

I guess we'll see :)

Re: FreeBSD doesn't have Wi-Fi driver for my old MacBook, so AI built one for me

#225

Post by okanat »

jwatte wrote: post #188
bootwoot wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

True. But also -- how do humans do it? There are docs and there's other similar driver code. I wouldn't be surprised if Claude could build new driver code sight-unseen, given the appropriate resources

Humans do it with access to the register-level data sheets, which are only available under NDA, and usually with access to a logic analyzer for debugging. Usually, the problem with developing a driver isn't "writing the code," it's "finding documentation for what the code should do."

... and then figuring out where the hardware company cheapened out and created a whole unfixable mess (extra fun when you first ship your first 10k batch and things start failing after the vendor made a "simple revision"). Then finding a workaround.

Re: FreeBSD doesn't have Wi-Fi driver for my old MacBook, so AI built one for me

#226

Post by hoherd »

matthewfcarlson wrote: post #186

I know this is me coming from my spoiled perspective of Linux and macOS, but the advice of running a VM that manages the WiFi hardware and passing it back to the OS seems insane to me

In my experience, AI is really good at creating bloatware, which makes it doubly frustrating that it is eating up all the RAM.

Re: FreeBSD doesn't have Wi-Fi driver for my old MacBook, so AI built one for me

#227

Post by scuff3d »

jdub wrote: post #215
alwillis wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Unlikely. The future will be some people will do this, but honestly I think it will largely be people who were already tinkering with building things, whether full on software development or not Billions of dollars of stock market value disappeared because of the concern AI can create core SaaS functionality for corporations instead of them spending millions of dollars in licensing fees to SAP, Microsoft, etc. This…

Did you see the network security stock sell-off after Anthropic announced a code security analysis feature? There's a sliver of nothing between mob mentality and wisdom of the crowd.

It's too soon to bother making predictions. Shits gonna be wild for the next few years, then some type of market correction will happen, and we'll start to get an idea of how things will actually look.

Re: FreeBSD doesn't have Wi-Fi driver for my old MacBook, so AI built one for me

#228

Post by bluGill »

rayiner wrote: post #169
slopinthebag wrote: post #78

> I didn’t write any piece of code there. There are several known issues, which I will task the agent to resolve, eventually. Meanwhile, I strongly advise against using it for anything beyond a studying exercise. Months of effort and three separate tries to get something kind of working but which is buggy and untested and not recommended for anyone to use, but unfortunately some folks will just read the headline and…

I don’t get this response. This is amazing! What percentage of programmers can even write a buggy FreeBSD kernel driver? If you were tasked at developing this yourself, wouldn’t it be a huge help to have something that already kind of works to get things started?

Fairly high could - but some could start today some need a few months of study before they know how to start (and then take 10x long than the first person to get it working)

Re: FreeBSD doesn't have Wi-Fi driver for my old MacBook, so AI built one for me

#229

Post by h4kunamata »

jonlong wrote: post #88
h4kunamata wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>I don’t think Apple is any different than any other vendor Read my previous comment again!! If you buy a genuine display and install it, it won't work because Apple locks the hardware ID via firmware. It must be installed by Apple only. No other vendor does that, the Linux community always found its way to get a non-supported hardware working. Windows until recently with the AI slope, was the only major OS used ever…

Apple may not design for repairability, but what you are saying is not true. I have personally purchased and installed genuine replacement displays on MacBooks with no involvement from Apple. Apple publishes repair guides for this (e.g., https://support.apple.com/en-us/120768 ) as does iFixit. Genuine parts are available for purchase and tools are available to rent by individuals (see https://support.apple.com/self-s…

>Apple may not design for repairability, but what you are saying is not true. I have personally purchased and installed genuine replacement displays on MacBooks with no involvement from Apple.

Which year?? It used to be like that, no anymore.

It is public knowledge that Apple has locked its hardware via firmware. It must be performed by authorised only. You can check YT, that guy in the USA that defends the "right to repair" movement, etc.

Re: FreeBSD doesn't have Wi-Fi driver for my old MacBook, so AI built one for me

#230

Post by tclancy »

mixdup wrote: post #69
dumbfounder wrote: post #65

The future is that people stop buying software and just build it themselves. The spam filter in thunderbird was broken for me, I built my own in hours and it works way better. Oh that CRM doesn’t have the features you want? Build one that does. It will become very easy to built and deploy solutions to many of your own bespoke problems.

Unlikely. The future will be some people will do this, but honestly I think it will largely be people who were already tinkering with building things, whether full on software development or not My mom and dad, my brother who drives a dump truck in a limestone quarry, my sister-in-law, none of them work in tech or consider themselves technical in any way. They are never, ever going to write their own software and wil…

Yeah, I think (completely biased as a long-time developer who is happily playing with AI for building stuff) people using AI to build their own tooling will be like a hot rod scene from the '60s. Lots of buzz, definitely some cool stuff, but in reality probably physically smaller than the noise around it.

Off to bust my virtual knuckles on something.

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