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I don't buy the analogy. The problem with Kessler syndrome is that low earth orbit is physically crowded, you run into collisions. I don't care about the garbag

I don't buy the analogy. The problem with Kessler syndrome is that low earth orbit is physically crowded, you run into collisions. I don't care about the garbage. I don't care about the AI era. I've been writing code in Emacs for 20 years, I'll be writing code in Emacs in 20 years, every open source project I contribute to still looks the same because all these AI people, like the blockchain people do is just make new stuff up in their own incestuous tupperware salesmen ecosystems. I do pity the bug bounty people who rely on goodwill in their programs given that everything with a financial incentive is vulnerable. But otherwise the great thing about digital spaces is that there is, for practical purposes, unlimited space. Every day there's another "how do you deal with the AI-apocalypse" article, I don't just ignore it

chongli 7mo ago
I think by "internet" they mean search engine results pages. If you restrict yourself to short, common queries and only look at the top 10 results on the page, then the space really is very limited. If all those top 10s for common queries start to get crowded out with AI slop, then people are going to start abandoning search.
bsza 7mo ago
Well, if you open-source anything these days and it does make it big, you can be prepared for a flood of low-effort slop PRs that you must either review for free or stop accepting external contributions altogether, making it effectively closed-source. You can't choose to ignore the garbage, it will collide with your stuff, unless your stuff is small enough to avoid collisions (in which case no one will see it).
- xnorswap 7mo ago
  Zero-contribution open source doesn't at all make it closed source. It delivers on the value of open source, that anyone using your software is permitted to make and distribute their own changes. SQLite is an example of a project that is open source but closed contribution.
  - bsza 7mo ago
    Maybe, but that's hardly comforting (and definitely not in the spirit of open source) if you're forced to take that decision, knowing it will hurt your project, because the alternative is getting DDoSed.
    - iib 7mo ago
      If by the spirit, you only mean the bazaar model, then yes. But it's in the original spirit of free software. GNU preferred to keep the development somewhat contained, even so many years ago.
  - SQLite 7mo ago
    Minor correction: SQLite is not closed to contributions. It just has an unusually high bar to accepting contributions. The project does not commonly accept pull requests from random passers-by on the internet. But SQLite does accept outside contributed code from time to time. Key gates include that paperwork is in place to verify that the contributed code is in the public domain and that the code meets certain high quality standards.
    - xnorswap 7mo ago
      Thank you for the correction, I should have said "not open contribution" rather than "closed contribution".
    - Zigurd 7mo ago
      I was about to try to make this point: there have always been projects that attract more potential contributors than there are competent contributors. And there have always been techniques for identifying quality contributions from new contributors.
Ygg2 7mo ago
> I've been writing code in Emacs for 20 years, I'll be writing code in Emacs in 20 years Bold assumption. On what will you run Emacs if average PC costs $12000? Yes. Even Raspberry Pi. It's not called war on general computing for nothing. If you say the cloud, that will be cut up and reused by the next AI crawler.
- knowhy 7mo ago
  AI will not be able to eat up all chip manufacturing capabilities forever. At some point the market will be saturated and PCs will get affordable again.
  - nextaccountic 7mo ago
    True, but as they say, the market can remain irrational longer than we can remain solvent We simply don't know how long this bubble will last
  - Ygg2 7mo ago
    And COPA didn't succeed at first, but try and try and you get COPPA, and now age verification laws. I don't think we'll see PC affordable in my lifetime. It didn't happen after Bitcoin crash, didn't happen post pandemics. New price gets normalized and the cartels just agree to not make anything for PCs. And if you get everyone on cloud? Then you can control Internet same way you can control TV or the press.
    - Dylan16807 7mo ago
      > I don't think we'll see PC affordable in my lifetime. It didn't happen after Bitcoin crash, didn't happen post pandemics. New price gets normalized and the cartels just agree to not make anything for PCs. What's your definition of affordable? What years were PCs affordable? By my reckoning PCs are affordable today. If you're not trying to run games they're downright cheap. I'm not sure what issue you're referring to with bitcoin, but if you want to use bitcoin to buy something it's about as easy/awkward as it ever was. Food prices went up 15-20% more than they would have with 2% inflation. If PC prices do anything similar, it's not a big deal in the long run. Cartels just agree not to make anything for PCs? Why would that happen? The point of restricting supply to a market is to maximize profits, not to refuse forever and lose out. They wouldn't even want everything to be in the cloud, because a hundred rarely-idle cloud cores can replace a lot more than a hundred mostly-idle consumer cores, so they end up selling a lot less hardware.

chongli 7mo ago

I think by "internet" they mean search engine results pages. If you restrict yourself to short, common queries and only look at the top 10 results on the page, then the space really is very limited. If all those top 10s for common queries start to get crowded out with AI slop, then people are going to start abandoning search.

bsza 7mo ago

Well, if you open-source anything these days and it does make it big, you can be prepared for a flood of low-effort slop PRs that you must either review for free or stop accepting external contributions altogether, making it effectively closed-source. You can't choose to ignore the garbage, it will collide with your stuff, unless your stuff is small enough to avoid collisions (in which case no one will see it).

xnorswap 7mo ago
Zero-contribution open source doesn't at all make it closed source. It delivers on the value of open source, that anyone using your software is permitted to make and distribute their own changes. SQLite is an example of a project that is open source but closed contribution.
- bsza 7mo ago
  Maybe, but that's hardly comforting (and definitely not in the spirit of open source) if you're forced to take that decision, knowing it will hurt your project, because the alternative is getting DDoSed.
  - iib 7mo ago
    If by the spirit, you only mean the bazaar model, then yes. But it's in the original spirit of free software. GNU preferred to keep the development somewhat contained, even so many years ago.
- SQLite 7mo ago
  Minor correction: SQLite is not closed to contributions. It just has an unusually high bar to accepting contributions. The project does not commonly accept pull requests from random passers-by on the internet. But SQLite does accept outside contributed code from time to time. Key gates include that paperwork is in place to verify that the contributed code is in the public domain and that the code meets certain high quality standards.
  - xnorswap 7mo ago
    Thank you for the correction, I should have said "not open contribution" rather than "closed contribution".
  - Zigurd 7mo ago
    I was about to try to make this point: there have always been projects that attract more potential contributors than there are competent contributors. And there have always been techniques for identifying quality contributions from new contributors.

Ygg2 7mo ago

> I've been writing code in Emacs for 20 years, I'll be writing code in Emacs in 20 years Bold assumption. On what will you run Emacs if average PC costs $12000? Yes. Even Raspberry Pi. It's not called war on general computing for nothing. If you say the cloud, that will be cut up and reused by the next AI crawler.

knowhy 7mo ago
AI will not be able to eat up all chip manufacturing capabilities forever. At some point the market will be saturated and PCs will get affordable again.
- nextaccountic 7mo ago
  True, but as they say, the market can remain irrational longer than we can remain solvent We simply don't know how long this bubble will last
- Ygg2 7mo ago
  And COPA didn't succeed at first, but try and try and you get COPPA, and now age verification laws. I don't think we'll see PC affordable in my lifetime. It didn't happen after Bitcoin crash, didn't happen post pandemics. New price gets normalized and the cartels just agree to not make anything for PCs. And if you get everyone on cloud? Then you can control Internet same way you can control TV or the press.
  - Dylan16807 7mo ago
    > I don't think we'll see PC affordable in my lifetime. It didn't happen after Bitcoin crash, didn't happen post pandemics. New price gets normalized and the cartels just agree to not make anything for PCs. What's your definition of affordable? What years were PCs affordable? By my reckoning PCs are affordable today. If you're not trying to run games they're downright cheap. I'm not sure what issue you're referring to with bitcoin, but if you want to use bitcoin to buy something it's about as easy/awkward as it ever was. Food prices went up 15-20% more than they would have with 2% inflation. If PC prices do anything similar, it's not a big deal in the long run. Cartels just agree not to make anything for PCs? Why would that happen? The point of restricting supply to a market is to maximize profits, not to refuse forever and lose out. They wouldn't even want everything to be in the cloud, because a hundred rarely-idle cloud cores can replace a lot more than a hundred mostly-idle consumer cores, so they end up selling a lot less hardware.