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FreeBSD doesn't have Wi-Fi driver for my old MacBook, so AI built one for me
351–360 of 397 posts
Re: FreeBSD doesn't have Wi-Fi driver for my old MacBook, so AI built one for me
#352Earlier quoted context omitted.
Or, for many things, a VM with hardware passthrough could work.
Very good point! Different busses are capable of different things. USB is great for that. Windows drivers, especially. Unfortunately laptop hardware is pretty hardwired in, so there's no escaping that there.
I would expect WiFi to be either usb or pci attached, so VM passthrough would work.
It also doesn't matter if AI is involved - you save yourself trouble either way.
Re: FreeBSD doesn't have Wi-Fi driver for my old MacBook, so AI built one for me
#353Earlier quoted context omitted.
Why would you solve an issue like this and then not supply a patch upstream, or at the very least contact someone that could? It seems to be like the FLOSS equivalent of posting about a problem on a forum and then replying "nvm, solved it".
As the other person said, a LOT of github projects with medium-large contributor bases are extremely hostile to AI code contributions. Some of this is about 'slop' coding not being up to par. A lot of it is also about people making their github contributions part of their resume, and thus not wanting the 'devaluation' of their time investments by AI contributions.
This comment works a lot better without the scare quotes.
Re: FreeBSD doesn't have Wi-Fi driver for my old MacBook, so AI built one for me
#354Earlier quoted context omitted.
Can you name me another time when humanity has run out of useful work to do? Was it when we tamed fire, invented the wheel, writing, or double entry bookkeeping? All of which appear more consequential than current AI. We’ll always have something to do. And humans like doing things.
> Can you name me another time when humanity has run out of useful work to do? Can you name me another time when big swaths of highly paid population were laid off due to redundancy and how did it go for the population? Also, another hint: I couldn’t care less what is going to happen to “humanity”. “Humanity” isn’t the one who pays my bills and puts food on my table.
> I couldn’t care less what is going to happen to “humanity”.
I would be profoundly ashamed to write such words on any public forum, myself.
However, I fear that probably, most people don't think like me, but feel the way you claim to. :-(
Re: FreeBSD doesn't have Wi-Fi driver for my old MacBook, so AI built one for me
#355Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
The market is losing its shit over this because people are operating on the thesis that "AI will be able to ..." rather than "AI can demonstrably do ...". At some point they're all gonna get margin called on their futurisms. It would be a lot better if, before getting excited, we ask to see experimental results. So you say you have a world-beating security tool? Show me something it can do that all the other ones can…
But then the sellers wouldn’t find the useful idiots to sell their snake oil to.
Re: FreeBSD doesn't have Wi-Fi driver for my old MacBook, so AI built one for me
#356Had an experience like this recently. QEMU stopped compiling for old versions of MacOS (pre-13) w/M1 arch, due to it requiring newer SDKs which don't support older MacOS versions. I put Sonnet 4.6 on the case, and it wrote a small patch, compiled and installed it in a matter of minutes, without giving it any instructions other than to look at errors and apply a fix. I definitely would have just given up without the A…
My Nintendo Switch 2 Pro Controller didn't work with my Mac, so I had Claude write me a driver. Amazing times we live in. (As long as I still have a job so I can buy controllers in ten years.)
Re: FreeBSD doesn't have Wi-Fi driver for my old MacBook, so AI built one for me
#357Earlier quoted context omitted.
No we won't, that was our hope when software development experience started going downhill with cheap offshoring teams. The best we could achieve were the projects that got so burned that near shore started to become an alternative, but never again in-house.
I really don't understand your reply. What exactly are you disagreeing with?
That businesses will eventually care about quality.
As proven by offshoring, it is a race to the bottom, as long as software kind of works.
Re: FreeBSD doesn't have Wi-Fi driver for my old MacBook, so AI built one for me
#358Earlier quoted context omitted.
> We're very close to just being about to set an AI coding agent to brute-force a driver for anything. This is false. To "brute force" a driver, you'd need a feedback loop between the hardware's output and the driver's input. While, in theory, this is possible for some analog-digital traducers (e.g WI-FI radio), if the hardware is a human-interface system (joystick, monitor, mouse, speaker, etc.) you literally need a…
Strictly speaking, I don't think we need a human to run repetitive tests. We just need the human to help with the physical parts of the testing jig. For instance: A microphone (optionally: a calibrated microphone; extra-optionally: in an isolated anechoic chamber) is a simple way to get feedback back into the machine about the performance of a speaker. (Or, you know: Just use a 50-cent audio transformer and electrica…
To your point, we already have testing jigs for these sorts of systems in the automotive world for steering and suspension.
I can't find the video clip atm, but there's a neat (likely leaked) Foxxconn video that shows a really neat testing jig for Apple trackpads.
Re: FreeBSD doesn't have Wi-Fi driver for my old MacBook, so AI built one for me
#359Earlier quoted context omitted.
Excluding the batshit insane political side, I don't actually think it's been as nuts as people think, or at least not uniformly so. I have a lot of friends in the tech sector, but outside the FANNG/silicone valley/startup bubbles. It's been largely business as normal across the board. Twitter and social media warps our perspective I think.
there was a whole pandemic
Not really whole. COVID was at best like a quarter pandemic.
Re: FreeBSD doesn't have Wi-Fi driver for my old MacBook, so AI built one for me
#360Earlier quoted context omitted.
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
A lot of Linux kernel drivers are permissively licensed, or dual-licensed with a choice of GPL and a permissive license. This is especially common for vendor-developed drivers. From a hardware vendor’s perspective, broad license compatibility directly supports adoption: the more operating systems, hypervisors, and embedded environments that can incorporate the driver code, the wider the potential market for the hardware itself.