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I'm Archiving Picocrypt

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Re: I'm Archiving Picocrypt

#91

Post by KaiserPro »

FergusArgyll wrote: post #71
KaiserPro wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mean your analogy is almost there. The loom is pretty old. What your grasping for is https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Power-loom_riots Where a precipitous drop in earning power, combined with longer working hours, high inflation and large companies making people unemployed cause large social unrest. And yeah, I can see why they rioted.

Yeah, life has just been on a steady decline since 1826. Who wants all this food and medicine anyway

I mean if you want that argument then sure, but given that those riots were one step in a long path to workers rights. The lesson here is that if we avoid exploiting workers and/or throwing them out on their arses, we can sidestep a load of social upheaval.

or we can not and just end up having a blood bath.

Re: I'm Archiving Picocrypt

#92

Post by stoneyhrm1 »

rikafurude21 wrote: post #47
latexr wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Considering the author is explicitly going into AI research, has an AI-generated profile picture, and claims front-and-centre on their website they are excited about LLMs, I don’t think that analogy works. Or rather, it is like a knitter throwing away their needles to eagerly go work in the loom manufacturing industry.

I dont think many people would be excited at the thought of going from handcrafted artisan knitting to babying machines in the knitting factory. You need a certain type of autism to be into the latter.

I'd think it would be more autistic to continue to use and have interest in something that's been superseded by something far more easier and efficient.

Who would you think is weirder, the person still obsessed with horse & buggies, or the person obsessed with cars?

Re: I'm Archiving Picocrypt

#94

Post by qualeed »

chromehearts wrote: post #75
whilenot-dev wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Advancements in intelligent AI and LLMs get me excited. Large and centered on the authors website: https://evansu.com/

What a hypocrite lmao

You can dislike what AI/LLMs are doing in the software development field, but be excited about their medical applications, as an example.

Re: I'm Archiving Picocrypt

#95

Post by shiomiru »

epolanski wrote: post #25
raincole wrote: post #15

I don't get it. (I'm not trying to throw shades at the author. I know they have no obligation to maintain an open source project. I'm simply having a hard time gasping what's happening.)

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. (Compared to paying professionals who might even care about doing a good job, that is.)

Re: I'm Archiving Picocrypt

#96

Post by iaiuse »

uludag wrote: 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…

MIT isn’t “weak” because it allows LLM training; it’s weak because it puts zero obligations on the recipient.

Blocking “LLM training” in a license feels satisfying, but I’ve run into three practical issues while benchmarking models for clients:

1. Auditability — You can grep for GPL strings; you can’t grep a trillion-token corpus to prove your repo wasn’t in it. Enforcement ends up resting on whistle-blowers, not license text.

2. Community hard-forks — “No-AI” clauses split the ecosystem. Half the modern Python stack depends on MIT/BSD; if even 5 % flips to an LLM-ban variant, reproducible builds become a nightmare.

3. Misaligned incentives — Training is no longer the expensive part. At today’s prices a single 70 B checkpoint costs about \$60 k to fine-tune, but running inference at scale can exceed that each day. A license that focuses on training ignores the bigger capture point.

A model company that actually wants to give back can do so via attribution, upstream fixes, and funding small maintainers (things AGPL/SSPL rarely compel). Until we can fingerprint data provenance, social pressure—or carrot contracts like RAIL terms—may move the needle more than another GPL fork.

Happy to be proven wrong; I’d love to see a case where a “no-LLM” clause was enforced and led to meaningful contributions rather than a silent ignore.

Re: I'm Archiving Picocrypt

#97

Post by ryandv »

latexr wrote: post #27
subscribed wrote: post #19

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…

Exactly. The self-contradiction exposes this farce of an arrangement for what it is: talented engineers are presented with immense monetary incentives to automate themselves out of the workforce, their carefully honed craftsmanship to be replaced by hordes of monkeys at typewriters producing voluminous slop.

Anybody can plainly see that the emperor is without clothes, but so long as the C-level rhetoric is sung to the tune of "Either you have to embrace the AI, or you get out of your career," [0] you may as well put on your own clown nose and wig and start dancing while the music is still playing and there are still seats out.

Farcical circumstances prompt paradoxical responses.

[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44808645

Re: I'm Archiving Picocrypt

#99

Post by Tepix »

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.

Re: I'm Archiving Picocrypt

#100

Post by zamadatix »

In regards to "As long as you can run the code, archiving this project means nothing, really." I think this section misses the main concern of archived software - what happens when one of those bugs is run into (either something not yet noticed or something due to external changes down the road) and there is no actively maintained version (which could include one you're willing to hack st yourself) to just update to?

The simpler the software the less urgent the concern but "I haven't had a problem in the last 2 years" is something I could say of most software which I end up needing to update, and it makes sense to make myself able to do so at a convenient time rather than the moment the problem occurs.

This project seems popular enough I'm sure eaiting a bit and seeing who the successor project is would be a safe bet as well though.

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