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Off topic, but the laptop in the main picture is one I've wanted since I was a kid. Anyone know of any modern(ish) variant of that same form factor? Or, even, what is this one in particular?
this post was submitted on 17 Jul 2026
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Fuck AI
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A place for all those who loathe AI to discuss things, post articles, and ridicule the AI hype. Proud supporter of working people. And proud booer of SXSW 2024.
AI, in this case, refers to LLMs, GPT technology, and anything listed as "AI" meant to increase market valuations.
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In a nutshell he says that Linux is a technology project, where technology comes first. If LLMs help to improve the technology then it's fair game. If not, then of course not.
He also says something about Linux not being a place for 'social warriors', which is kind of ironic, given that Linux is basically a big 'fuck you' against corporations and closed source, i.e., a scoial statement. Given how much beef he famously had with Nvidia, this is somewhat unexpected.
But I interpret it as coming from a place of seeing LLMs really just as a new tool and nothing more. In an interview a couple of years back, Linus also said pretty much that. He grew up with basic tools, had to create new software tools to make him more productive and improve the quality of his work. He saw LLMs just as another tool that can aid in development. I suppose this hasn't changed.
Given, that most people usually don't program in assembler anymore, but use high level programming languages like C++, which simplifies the process of coding enormously, or even scripting languages like Python, which present another level of abstraction and simplification, LLMs do appear somewhat like a next step in this evolution.
Issue is, you have deterministic and formal guarantees in programming languages, whereas LLMs do not. This is by far not the only issue of course, as others in this thread have also noted.
I wonder whether he uses LLMs in his daily work. Might change his perspective a bit.
The thing is that they rigorously review their code internally with In the project. It needs to be reviewed and cleaned up before it gets submitted. Someone who keeps posting junk is gonna get chewed out and ignored. So, the biggest issue with LLM code is kind of irrelevant. If someone useses it responsibly and finds a way to make it an effective tool, they’re not worried about it. Banning its use is kind of pointless since the worst outcomes are already banned.
As I understand, they don't use it to generate code, but for scanning code for bugs. This is relevant as there are now many CVEs found by AI scanning tools.
Fun fact: Based on estimates of the value of the Linux kernel (around 2200 Million Euros in 2011), the size of the kernel (in 2011, version 2.6 was current, with a bit less than 20 million lines of code), abd average salary of kernel developers (for Germany, one could estimate 60,000 - 80,000 EUR/year), one can estimate the lines of new code that a full-time kernel developer produces - less than 1000 lines per year:
value=2200000000
cost_man_year = 60000
lines_of_code= 20000000
person_years = value / cost_man_year
lines_per_person_per_year = lines_of_code / person_years
I get to 545 lines per person-year that way.
Even if AI could reduce time to type in that code to zero, it would not speed up kernel development, since developers are 99% of the time doing something different than typing in code - determining what new code should do, organizing and structuring concepts, or fixing bugs (which is determining what existing code should do, determining what it actually does, and determining how to fix differences between the former and the latter).
The only difference between using C and an LLM is C doesn't consume thousands of gallons of water and gigawatts of electricity per second.
You forgot the part where the llm doesn't necessarily do what you tell it to do either
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Look, as long as the baby-shredder produces passable code, I'm all in.
🤦
I honestly expected better from him...
Wow, they are at best cherry picking the article they cite on productivity with AI, if not outright trying to lie. They say
Last year, an METR study found that open source coders using AI tools were 19 percent less productive than those who didn’t use them, even as those AI-using coders said they felt 20 percent more productive. But in a February update on a follow-up study, those same researchers said that “we believe it is likely that developers are more sped up from AI tools now—in early 2026—compared to our estimates from early 2025,” citing early raw results and conversations with study participants.
But if you, y'know, actually read this February update, you would see that the researchers are lamenting the fact that they cannot draw conclusions effectively because of the proliferation of AI use. To wit, they say:
Altogether, these issues make it challenging to interpret our central estimate, and we believe it is likely a bad proxy for the real productivity impact of AI tools on these developers.
In fact here is the full passage Arstechnica cherry-picked from (emphasis mine):
Based on conversations with study participants, we believe it is likely that developers are more sped up from AI tools now — in early 2026 — compared to our estimates from early 2025. However, because of the selection effects in our experiment, our data is only very weak evidence for the size of this increase.
Based on conversations, which is to say, not on their data. This after the study a year prior which suggested developers are not reliable reporters of their own productivity.
Yeah, METR is an industry group funded by Google, Microsoft, Anthropic etc. I happened to summarize their work just yesterday actually: https://lemmy.blahaj.zone/comment/21358850 but one thing I think it's important to point out is that there is no second study, not yet. The blog, and the open source dataset, are all we have, because the researchers decided to adjust their method. So the intimation arstechnica gives that they completed a second study is false.
And the selection effects they are talking about are pro-ai software developers being unwilling or unable to complete complex tasks without their precious ai anymore, whereas a year ago they were more willing to do both ways in order to prove how powerful ai is. In my opinion, as I stated, this reflects poorly on their levels of self confidence from using ai, more than saying anything about a speed boost/decline.
Ahaha. The research showed that developers don't know how fast they are, but when we talked to them they said that they're pretty fast, so we'd rather report on that. I see no problems or contradictions with this.
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Saying "just fork it" is obviously disingenuous anyway. Linux is gigantic at this point and would be completely infeasible to maintain without a huge group of talented people and funding. He knows very well no one can just fork Linux in a meaningful way, just like you can't just easily fork Chromium if you disagree with Google's high level shitbaggery. Even MS threw in the towel on maintaining their own browser for the same reason.
So, is Linus just dictator-for-life? Does he have the final say on everything?
More or less, yes
I mean, pretty much yes, as far as I am aware.
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Sad this article doesn't talk about why open source projects reject AI, specifically because of the legal implications of all the copyright violations baked into their training data
None of that will ever be prosecuted, because it was done through the wealthy and their favored praxis.
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sees list of sponsors
If not corruption, why corruption-shaped?
Anyone thinking about walking away might be interested in Haiku OS, which does not accept AI code
NetBSD is against tainted commits, including LLM-generated code.
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I mean, communities work best when debates stay constructive.
"Fork off", apparently
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