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Gentoo bans AI-created contributions
(lwn.net)
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this post was submitted on 19 Apr 2024
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This has to be a joke. The team behind a distro that compiles everything from scratch all the time is concerned about wasting power now? The only distro for which I ever setup a compile cluster?
Give me a break. This is the new luddite movement.
Gotta say your comment makes an insightful impression, however Gentoo compilations are peanuts compared to the massive energy sucking hype that A.I. is. I am glad that people speak out publicly against this insane madness. A.I. hyping during climate crisis ? Overwhelming sales of SUVs Plans to move to planet Mars Who would have guessed that years ago ?
Well it's the training of LLMs that consumes so much energy, simply using them (for say software development purposes) (inference) probably takes less power than recompiling your Gentoo.
Nobody can argue that ChromeOS (gentoo) Is the fastest and lightest and more polished distro available, though
Their overall impact is low because they're niche. It wouldn't be if Gentoo were more popular. Imagine all of the AWS EC2 instances running Gentoo. And all of the Docker container builds still compiling glibc over and over.
Fact is they still built a horrifically inefficient system for deploying software. It's a crazy hypocritical stance to take. AI at least provides benefit - something that can't be said of Gentoo's waste.
When you have multiple Gentoo machines, you compile soft once and distribute it. You would be mad to compile everything every time.
Swing and a miss.
There is a distcc/d for having compile hosts with cache, which directly links to just a binary package host - essentially set up flags once, compile everything to your liking, and download within your network.
You've missed my main point by so much if you're explaining distcc to me.
You really went looking for something to hate on there didn't you. That is the only sentence in the whole article that even mentions power consumption, all the other arguments both fit and against are for a variety of other topics.
It seems to be that you are more likely caught up in some kind of movement if one argument from one person is enough for you to label everyone there luddites
The rest of the ridiculous moralizing was pretty bad as well. This was just the most egregiously stupid thing listed in the article.
I thought your comment was more ridiculous
1 person making a query has thousands of hours of computing behind it
1 person compiling software themselves does not
I'm not saying AI is not energy intensive. I'm saying the team who developed the least efficient Linux distribution throwing shade about AI being "energy inefficient" are hypocrites.
But again it wasn't the team, and it wasn't " throwing shade" it was one guy, who listed it as one reason against AI. Power consumption is also a valid reason against using gentoo. People are able, and indeed should be aware of potential problems and downside of things, even if they are involved in other things which also has those issues. I am sure most of the gentoo team would readily acknowledge that energy consumption is a downside of gentoo compared to other distros.
Perfect, we agree then
If being a luddite means keeping man in the loop so be it.
The original Luddite movement was literally a worker's rights movement, and the "irrationally afraid of technology" characterization was manufactured by the ruling class, so yes. The Luddites were right then and they're right now too.
The only problem the Luddites had is they went and busted the machines instead of the rich owners' kneecaps.
If you say, "they did that too!" Well, NOT ENOUGH!!
I'd rather they do both.
There was an episode of Cool People Who Did Cool Stuff that covered the luddites, I had no idea beforehand what they actually stood for, fascinating stuff
Amen, https://thenib.com/im-a-luddite/
As someone who regularly saves time by automating, I can’t get on board for a movement which directly opposes process improvement by improving efficiency.
They're not, they're opposing a process that leads to garbage output and horrible systemic efficiency.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luddite
I’ve also read a book on the subject of Luddites and it was clear to me that it was a response to higher efficiency machinery replacing the need for a good portion of their jobs.
This led to mass starvation as the workers no longer could feed themselves and no industry replaced the lost work. The textiles produced were of lower quality too, and sold for less which harmed the local economy leading to a rise in food prices along with the lower wages. Since the vast majority of arable land was used for cotton too no local food could lower the prices. Many people died as the luddites predicted.
There was mass starvation
They were right. This is not "anti-automation" this is against lower wages, mass unemployment, and an economic decrease. The automation was the cause of this, yes, but the concept of automation was not the issue. The issue was it's use here.
If the workers were provided an alternative job, if there was some plan to avoid starvation, and if the textiles were of a reasonable quality then there would be no issue.
History proved the luddites correct
The Luddites lost, but you should read the rest of this wiki article to learn how that happened, and consider again which side you're on.
But the lump of labour fallacy is wrong - in the end automation makes us all wealthier as goods become cheaper, and people can do more productive work (and be better educated for it too).
This is how it should be, but it isn't the present day reality. Productivity goes up, wages go down, and the rich get richer. We're headed straight for technofeudalism buddy...
To a certain extent other distros rely on more obscure distros like gentoo which uses package compilation as the default. If upstream are not publishing code which can be reproducibly built then the gentoo maintainers are the first to know and can raise an issue.
Cool story.
Tell me you don't know how FOSS works without telling me you don't know how FOSS works...
wut? Your reply had absolutely nothing to do with any point or argument I was making. Near as I can tell you think I'm assaulting Gentoo or something? Missed my point by a wide margin though.
Also I think nobody so far weighed the energy consumption of e.g. using copilot against the environmental footprint of a human doing the legwork manually
Well I'm a Luddite (and so can you!) https://thenib.com/im-a-luddite/
More luddites please.
Ah, thanks for that link! I actually read the first few pages on the latest MIT Tech Review some days ago, thought I'd ready the rest and forgot, now I can.
It really is. Degrowth is destitution and death - just look at Germany.
We need to decouple electricity production from environmental damage - build renewable power and nuclear power station en masse and invest heavily in nuclear fusion.
Degrowth is a hilarious word to use here because degrowth is literally necessary for us to not run the natural resources of our planet dry. Infinite growth in a finite planet is just logically impossible.
The first part is at best controversial. The middle part is actually reasonable. And the last part is just ridiculously random and out-of-touch.
Wat
Even with infinite free electricity, it still takes tons of water to cool all the gpus