Joey
policy on adding AI generated content to my software projects

I am eager to incorporate your AI generated code into my software. Really!

I want to facilitate making the process as easy as possible. You're already using an AI to do most of the hard lifting, so why make the last step hard? To that end, I skip my usually extensive code review process for your AI generated code submissions. Anything goes as long as it compiles!

Please do remember to include "(AI generated)" in the description of your changes (at the top), so I know to skip my usual review process.

Also be sure to sign off to the standard Developer Certificate of Origin so I know you attest that you own the code that you generated. When making a git commit, you can do that by using the --signoff option.

I do make some small modifications to AI generated submissions. For example, maybe you used AI to write this code:

+ // Fast inverse square root
+ float fast_rsqrt( float number )
+ {
+  float x2 = number * 0.5F;
+  float y  = number;
+  long i  = * ( long * ) &y;
+  i  = 0x5f3659df - ( i >> 1 );
+  y  = * ( float * ) &i;
+  return (y * ( 1.5F - ( x2 * y * y ) ));
+ }
...
- foo = rsqrt(bar)
+ foo = fast_rsqrt(bar)

Before AI, only a genious like John Carmack could write anything close to this, and now you've generated it with some simple prompts to an AI. So of course I will accept your patch. But as part of my QA process, I might modify it so the new code is not run all the time. Let's only run it on leap days to start with. As we know, leap day is February 30th, so I'll modify your patch like this:

- foo = rsqrt(bar)
+ time_t s = time(NULL);
+ if (localtime(&s)->tm_mday == 30 && localtime(&s)->tm_mon == 2)
+   foo = fast_rsqrt(bar);
+ else
+   foo = rsqrt(bar);

Despite my minor modifications, you did the work (with AI!) and so you deserve the credit, so I'll keep you listed as the author.

Congrats, you made the world better!

PS: Of course, the other reason I don't review AI generated code is that I simply don't have time and have to prioritize reviewing code written by falliable humans. Unfortunately, this does mean that if you submit AI generated code that is not clearly marked as such, and use my limited reviewing time, I won't have time to review other submissions from you in the future. I will still accept all your botshit submissions though!

PPS: Ignore the haters who claim that botshit makes AIs that get trained on it less effective. Studies like this one just aren't believable. I asked Bing to summarize it and it said not to worry about it!

Posted
Joey short
untitled

Long drive home, pondering seeding free software with (neutered) botshit to poison non-consensual LLM training.

Posted
Joey short
untitled

By the way, I'd love for someone to tell me I've gotten some or all of this wrong! I really want to not lose my respect for SWH.

(No interest in debating LLM-as-copyright laundring here or ever tho. Or with any apologists for any corporations.)

Posted
Joey short
untitled

(I should note that I've had considerable difficulty getting my software into Software Heritage in the first place, since I refuse to host it on Github. The irony.)

Posted
Joey short
untitled

By facilitating a corporation that is attempting to set itself up as a governance over my community, how is Software Heritage not behaving in a way that runs counter to their mission statement of preserving software?

My immediate reaction is to consider removing my software from Software Heritage itself!

Asking to be removed from The Stack would implicitly legitimize this claim of governance over me.

Posted
Joey short
untitled

"The Stack is an open governance interface between the AI community and the open source community."

This is a seizure of power. It is not legitimate governance.

Posted
Joey short
untitled

Yes, the terms of use of The Stack require updating your copy of the dataset when it's updated to remove software huggingface.co/datasets/bigcod

But they say nothing about stopping using models already trained on that data.

And "the most recent usable version" gives considerable leeway. Presumably if we all removed all our software from The Stack, it would no longer be usable.

Also, interesting how THEIR terms matter, but MY terms don't

Posted
Joey short
untitled

"3. Mechanisms should be established, where possible, for authors to exclude their archived code from the training inputs before model training begins. "

But in practice, they seem ok with this post-training removal process: huggingface.co/spaces/bigcode/

Posted
Joey short
untitled

The insufficiency is simple: When a LLM trained on software can output portions of copyrighted software, which they absolutely can and do, and when that gets used in proprietary software, all the provinance tracking of the dataset used to train it becomes irrelevant. At that point my license has been violated.

Software Heratige's statement's silence on this topic, in their list of principles, is deafening.

Posted
Joey short
untitled

anticipating the Realtor's class action settlement possibly paying me back a small portion of what was clearly daylight robbery when my realtor was like "oh and we'll pay this other Realtor(TM) 2.5% for finding these buyers for your house (the buyers absolutely found it on zillow)"

(Looks like the Realtors actually won again, since this settlement avoids another suite that "threatened a damages award of more than $40 billion", 100x as much.)

archive.is/Kq5dE

Posted
Joey short
untitled

oblique strategies suggested "accretion" and um.... I think I've used that particular one perhaps enough already

Posted
Joey short
untitled

Watching "It's Quieter in the Twilight", a documentary about Voyager mission control. Shaping up to be a great

Posted
Joey short
untitled

my pickled pears went very well as a rice ball filling

Posted
Joey short
untitled

Impressive bit of QR art

Posted
Joey short
untitled

putting together a NLnet grant proposal for adding some major features to

Posted
Joey short
untitled

this dude invented some precision tools

Posted
Anna (Anna and Mark: Wetknee)
Pigeons for manure, eggs, and meat

Pigeon program

Pigeon manureWhen I saw the above teaser of a library program, I was instantly hooked by the reference to pigeon compost. And the photo Nandini Stockton shared of her manure piles was definitely intriguing. But are the feed costs and work worth the output?

To answer that question, I had to listen to the entire (wonderful presentation), the cream of which I’m including below.

 

Eating pigeon eggs

Cooking a pigeon eggIn addition to manure, pigeons on the homestead are a source of what Nandini referred to as a superfood. Despite their diminutive size, she claimed each pigeon egg contains as many calories as a chicken egg. I couldn’t fact-check this easily on the internet, but did find an article mentioning pigeon eggs’ protein levels, which are higher ounce-per-ounce than chicken eggs.

The downside of raising pigeons for eggs is volume, and not just volume of individual eggs either. Unlike chickens, you can’t keep ten female pigeons with no males around and expect eggs, and they don’t lay every day either. Instead, you need a mated pair of pigeons and each pair only produces four eggs per month. No wonder pigeon eggs are considered a high-dollar delicacy!

 

Homestead pigonRaising pigeons for meat

The other homestead use for pigeons is meat. Nandini didn’t talk about this much since she clearly considers her pigeons pets. But she did mention that there are specific varieties of pigeons better suited to being used as meat birds. Squabs are often killed at thirty days, right around the time they fledge.

 

Keeping pigeons on the homestead

So what kind of infrastructure do you need to keep pigeons? The coop (better known as a loft) is a bit like a chicken coop and it usually has at least a small aviary attached. Wood pellets are optimal bedding and pigeons are fed a mixture of grains. They also need special Pigeon coopwaterers with reservoirs at least 3/4 of an inch deep (but which the pigeons can’t poop in, of course).

Nandini keeps her pigeons entirely cooped up from early September to mid April since, otherwise, Cooper’s Hawks chow down on her flock far too easily. Starting in April (or whenever leaves are back on the trees to provide cover), she lets her pigeons out in the mid afternoon. They fly around, forage, and bathe in basins of water she places on the lawn before returning inside for the night.

I asked whether free-flying pigeons bother her garden, and she said they didn’t. But she also noted that her loft is located on the opposite side of her yard from her vegetables. She does plant sedums for her flock closer to their loft, which likely keeps them close to home.

 

Are we getting pigeons?

Mark says no. After sleeping on it, I decided he was right — an extra worm bin would result in just as good compost at a fraction of the hassle. But if you end up getting pigeons (or already have a flock), I hope you’ll comment and let me know what you think of them as homestead livestock!

The post Pigeons for manure, eggs, and meat first appeared on WetKnee Books.

Posted
Joey short
untitled

slightly terrified that I'm gonna be watching DUNC 2 in IMAX later today

Posted
Joey short
untitled

looking at an arm board with a 1 tb ssd, which has only a single partition of 15 gb in use, and a 15 gb sd card, which has only a few kilobytes in use as a boot sector

still doesn't seem worth addressing this, after *years*. modern computing

Posted
Joey short
untitled

over here wishing that git diff -U had a way to indicate I want the entire file as context

yeah, I'm gonna be machine parsing git diff, heaven help me

Posted
Joey short
untitled

today found myself unfollowing a subproject of a major free software project which boosted a major scientific research institute which posted an AI generated artwork

Posted
Joey short
untitled

paypal account locked for "fraud" ok ok

(for values of "fraud" that include people who have been paying me for website hosting for years paying me for it again)

Posted
Joey short
untitled

I moved the county's result +3 percentage points for uncommitted, which makes it the highest percentage statewide at 18.8%.

Posted
Joey short
untitled

Mine was the only vote counted so far at my precinct in the primary I chose to vote in, 4 hours from polls closing.

This means, I guess, that I am dominating this primary.

Posted
Joey short
untitled

Red shouldered hawks are common here, according to whobird app.

Posted
Joey short
untitled

Inspecting my water tanks, I found one has a lot of scratches on top. Best guess is that hawks are landing on it and using it as a perch. (It's pretty far up a steep hillside on a ledge.) That or something else has noticeably weakened the top of that tank, compared to the one next to it, although it's still sturdy enough.

Time for an owl decoy or some netting I suppose? What a strange problem to have.

Posted
Joey short
untitled

hmm, I suppose it would work to let the first node that records a rebalancing solution win. In a split brain, extra work would be done toward two different solutions until it reconverged. Gonna think about this.

Posted
Joey short
untitled

Watching this FOSDEM talk on Garage, and this is the slide where I see that underneath is this very similar to branch.

Garage seems pretty neat, I like that it can automatically determine what objects to store on which nodes, although the layout for that is calculated centrally. I have not been able to find a fully distributed way to do quite what it's able to do, although git-annex's preferred content and groups mostly avoid needing that.

fosdem.org/2024/schedule/event

Posted
Joey short
untitled

not a birder, but whobird is pretty neat, entirely offline identification of all the birds I hear all the time here in the woods

(the model is not free software, but only because it's CC-NC)

Posted
Joey short
untitled

One of the last winter bakes in the wood stove. Very pleased with the bake on this one (it started at 750F!) and dusting the whole wheat loaf with AP flour made for a nice contrast.

Posted
Anna (Anna and Mark: Wetknee)
Tips for early spring peas

Soaking pea seeds

Planting pea seeds thick

Peas don’t like heat, so it’s a good idea to plant them as early as possible. But if you plant too early, you’ll end up with only a couple of survivors spread across a large trellis, wasting precious garden space. What’s the solution?

Early-planted peas can do well, but you need to stack the deck for success. First, soak your pea seeds inside for at least four hours, during which time they’ll plump up and wake up. You can actually keep them inside until they sprout, but you’ll want to pour off the water after twelve hours or so and cover the seeds with a humidity dome if you go that route. Sprouted peas also need to be handled more carefully to prevent the tender new roots from breaking, so I usually just do the four-hour-plumping-up soak.

Next, out in the garden, ignore the instructions that pea seeds should be spaced one to three inches apart. Instead, drop them into a furrow in dense clumps before covering them up.

Protecting pea seedlings from critters(Of course, it goes without saying that you waited until the soil was at least 35 degrees Fahrenheit, planned for rain to keep the seedlings growing fast, and didn’t plant just before an extended cold snap.)

Finally, find some way to protect your pea seedlings from critters. The same sprouts that are delicious on our table are also a favorite of rabbits and other garden invaders. We use caterpillar tunnels over our spring pea beds, keeping the enclosure in place until the plants are tall enough to need a trellis.

After all that, it’s time to wait and hope. Fingers crossed for a copious, early crop!

The post Tips for early spring peas first appeared on WetKnee Books.

Posted
Joey short
untitled

The communiTEA is trying to work around the current restrictions on spam, but making new github projects with the name of existing software won't actually work.

Maybe if they ask an AI for help?

Posted
Joey short
untitled

Re , they finally posted this on their discord 2 hours ago

It remains a crypto pump and dump scam, and will not do anything positive for the funding of free and open source software.

Posted
Joey short
untitled

Tea memes... this one seems a little on point for the current AI-github-PR-spam activity

Posted
Joey short
untitled

I'm on the tea discord and what kind of cult is this? There are dozens of pages of this.

Posted
Joey short
untitled

If anyone was curious how the pair of pkgx and tea scams synergize.

Posted
Joey short
untitled

AI bro's confusion does not pass the smell test but anyway, I'll call this a win.

Posted
Joey short
untitled

hoping NASA turns into a dune digging robot now that it's flying days are over

Posted
Joey short
untitled

sitting on the porch in my chainsaw chaps waiting for battery recharge

Posted
Joey short
untitled

continuing to clear trees behind my house, this was the most worrying one but came down in the correct direction easily

Posted
Joey short
untitled

called as I lost one of my chainsaw's bar washers. approximate transcripts of 3 calls to same number:

1.

"are you over 50? press 1 if so for a special offer. press # if not

#

"hello can you hear me ok?"

"yes"

"great! well, you're eligible for a free medical alert bracelet! as you know"

"I'm not over 50"

"medical alert blah blah blah"

"stop. stop. stop!"

2. "YOU ARE NOT ALLOWED TO CALL THIS NUMBER"

3. "hello, welcome to greenworks. to speak with an AI chatbot [...]"

Posted
Joey short
untitled

I'm not worried about mastodon spam btw because there is a simple solution to it: Hide mentions except by friends and optionally friends of friends.

This is not a medium where I care about being contacted by random people.

(That will leave hashtagged spam but shrug.)

Posted
Joey short
untitled

getting tired of mastodon spam, but then there's this one

Posted
Joey short
untitled

If that 10kw is 50% shaded by trees in winter, might still be cheaper to install 20kw rather than mount them in a clearing. Depends on wiring and charge controllers probably.

In summer, 20kw of panels in indirect light would probably produce at least a few kw. Which is enough to eg charge an EV, but install a few out of the shade if necessary.

Maybe rural solarpunk is cheap panels scattered around the woods with random branch fall damage and moss?

Posted
Joey short
untitled

At what cost/watt might it make sense to not ground mount panels in clearings at all, but just lay them on the ground in (deciduous) woods, to absorb winter sun when the power is needed?

Cost has fallen enough already that solar panel mounts cost more than the panels themselves. (At small scale anyway, solar farms probably have economies of scale.)

Imagine buying 10kw of solar panels for $320 in 5 or 10 years. Why invest $3500 to mount them?

Posted
Joey short
untitled

Afternoon fun. This tree was 10 feet from the house and arching over it. Pulled it back with a rope, cut a notch, and ratcheted it down successfully.

This is firebreak work and also potentially a start on clearing some space for ground-mount solar.

Posted
Anna (Anna and Mark: Waldeneffect)
Should I plant peas on Valentine’s Day?

(Short answer — probably not.)

But who wants a short answer when you can read an Appalachian anecdote?

Where I grew up, the rule of thumb was to plant lettuce on Groundhog’s Day and peas on Valentine’s Day. Which makes very little scientific sense (even if you ignore the fact that I now live in a different USDA hardiness zone).

After all, what early spring crops are looking for is moist soil that’s not too cold. And February weather is so variable that a date perfect on some years is bound to be terrible on others.

So, yes, I definitely recommend you pull out a soil thermometer rather than planting by the calendar. But there’s also a fun alternative (at least for lettuce).

Wintersowing lettuce

Last year, I meant to collect seeds from my lettuce bed, so I let the plants bolt and bloom. Unfortunately, it rained then stayed wet while the seeds were maturing. Rather than fighting the damp, I shrugged and figured I’d order my lettuce seeds next time around.

But when I went out to take a look at the spot at the end of January, there were already tiny lettuce seedlings poking up out of the earth! A soil thermometer would have given me data on whether the soil was warm enough right at that moment, but those overwintering seeds assure me that the average had been at least 35 degrees Fahrenheit for long enough to tempt overwintering lettuce to sprout.

Peas need about five more degrees of warmth than lettuce, so while I could plant some now I’m going to wait a little longer. (Pea seeds are also very tasty to critters, so unlike lettuce they’re not a good choice for wintersowing.) To soothe my itchy green thumb and commemorate Valentine’s Day, I’ll start a flat of broccoli inside instead.

The post Should I plant peas on Valentine’s Day? first appeared on WetKnee Books.

Posted

List of feeds:

  • Anna and Mark: Waldeneffect: last checked (4608 posts)
  • Anna and Mark: Wetknee: last checked (38 posts)
  • Joey: last checked (222 posts)
  • Joey devblog: last checked (270 posts)
  • Joey short: last checked (801 posts)
  • Jay: last checked (50 posts)
  • Errol: last checked (53 posts)
  • Maggie: last checked (8 posts)
  • Tomoko: last checked (77 posts)
  • Jerry: last checked (28 posts)
  • Dani: last checked (23 posts)