Just to add to this. Open source for money has been a dead end for a long time, except for the (increasingly rare) situations where people accidentally convert their open source _contributions_ into employment (I accidentally did this back in 2015). Open source for recognition/reputation makes a bit more sense, but it is also becoming increasingly rare. LLMs are super-charging the extinction, but this was also observable in 2021, when I wrote this: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29714929 .
Even before LLMs, I have seen people (shamelessly) re-implement code from open source project A into open source project B, without attribution (IIRC, a GPL C++ project [no hate, I use C++ too these days] basically copied the very distinctive AVL Tree implementation of a CDDL C project -- this is a licensing violation _and_ plagiarism, and it effectively writes the C project out of history. When asked about this, various colleagues[1], just shrugged their shoulders, and went on about their lives.). LLMs now make this behavior undetectable _and_ scalable.
If we want strong copyright protections for open source, we may need to start writing _literate_ programs (i.e. the Knuthian paradigm, which I am quite fond of). But that probably will not happen, because most programmers are bad at writing (because they hate it, and would rather outsource it to an LLM). The more likely alternative, is that people will just stop writing open source code (I basically stopped publishing my repos when the phrase "Big Tech" became common in 2018; Amazon in particular would create hosted versions of projects without contributing anything back -- if the authors were lucky they would be given the magnanimous opportunity to labor at Amazon, which is like inventing dynamite and being granted the privilege of laboring in the mines).
The fact is, if we want recognition, we need to sing each others' praises, instead hoping that someone will look at a version control history. We need to be story-tellers, historians, and archivists. Where is my generation's Jargon File?
[1]: Not co-worker, which is someone who shares an employer, but colleague, which is someone who shares a profession.
That's a big reason why FOSS is going to crumble. If AI succeeds and decimates the tech labor industry, people won't have the luxury to "code for fun". Life isn't a bunch of comfy programmers working on stuff in their spare time anymore.
We already see a component of this with art, but art actually needs to be displayed unlike code to show its vslue. So they adapt. Tools to keep the machine from training on their work, or more movements into work that is much harder to train on (a 2d image of a 3d model does the job and the model can be shared off the internet). Programming will follow a similar course; the remaining few become mercenaries and need to protect their IP themselves.
A little hungover, but some foggy thoughts: If a company can differentiate itself by loving its customers, then that is an indictment of the rest of the entire industry. Loving one's customers should be the standard. But alas, the people with their hands on the money-faucet tend reward profitable (zero-sum) behavior over virtuous (positive-sum) behavior. One can only hope that after they alienate enough of the population, they will run into problems that they cannot buy their way out of (so that they can learn what it feels like when those-who-cannot are at the mercy of those-who-can).
By way of analogy, the result of the theorem prover is usually actionable (i.e. we can replace one kind of expression with its proven equivalent for some end like optimizing code-size or code-run-time), but mathematicians _still_ endeavor to translate the unwieldy and verbose machine-generated proofs into concise human-readable proofs, because those readable proofs are useful to our understanding of mathematics even long after the "productive action" has been taken.
In a way, this collaboration between the machine and the human is better than what came before, because now productive actions can be taken sooner, and mathematicians do not have to doubt whether they are searching for a proof that exists.
Entire companies have been built around synchronizing the WAL with ZFS actions like snapshot and clone (i.e. Delphix and probably others). Would be cool to have `zpgdump` (single-purpose, ZFS aware equivalent).
I could believe that 90% of code will be generated by LLMs, because it takes almost no effort to generate some common boilerplate using an LLM. It's kind of like saying that 90% of code is BSD/MIT/GPL licensed because many people compulsively fork repos on github.
This just means that a smaller percentage of code will be useful/must-have/must-read code. Kind of like the market for films and books and games -- many more get made every year, which means that many more will get ignored every year.
> Sadly this won't be the wake up call that we need to bring back some sort of meritocracy to American society.
Genuine question: are we 100% sure that this society was ever meritocratic? How would we measure `meritocracy` so that we can compare year-to-year and decade-to-decade?
Of course not. It’s impossible. Take the presidency. Let’s say a very meritocratic person gets elected. There would be a hundred equally meritorious people who do not hold that office. Same for many things.
Meritocracy is a measure and some sort of idealized concept used for comparisons.
that's a utopian vision. we don't need a perfect meritocracy. majority of parents would do anything to put their kids ahead of others. i would help people I know and have relationships with first. it doesn't work out all the time.
The possible perspectives that strategy games offer to players is vastly under-explored. Most assume that you control a drone-like army of soldiers, for the sole purpose of defeating an opponent. The Paradox games add much more nuance to this formula, but there is still a vast domain-space in the genre that is unexplored. For example, I'd like to see a game designed primarily around espionage and class warfare -- you cannot control or deploy armies directly, but you can build a network of allies, and use it to (attempt to) bring about changes in policy and dynamics.
Victoria II and III are headed in that direction with the POP mechanics, and modeling the ever-expanding reach of media in the 1800s (there is a reason that most countries centralized on a single national language for the bureaucracy).
But yeah, the only reason we haven't seen a credible Cold-War-era strategy game (aside from that one ancient Mac OS game) is because the era involved very little direct military conflict, and game-publishers have not yet figured out the mechanics of how to model a very nuanced conflict like that in a fun way.
You are referring to Balance of Power? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Balance_of_Power_(video_game) A very interesting game. The multipolar level of Balance of Power: The 1990 Edition is another great idea but flawed - it's possible to win just by doing nothing and letting your enemy antagonize the world. (Unless perhaps this is ironic commentary by the designer...)
Yep, that's the one. If you read an interview with the designer Chris Crawford (can't find it at the moment), he mentions that the mechanics/dynamics were inspired by a book/paper called The War Trap by Bruce Bueno de Mesquita (game theorist who wrote some popular books). So a _very_ interesting game. Probably deserves to be revisited/remastered at some point.
> Siboot was never intended to be a game; it’s interactive storytelling. The emphasis is on character interaction, and it already offers interesting dramatic character interaction. But people aren’t looking for interesting dramatic character interaction; they’re looking for the things that make great games: challenge, a smooth learning curve, impressive graphics, catchy little tunes to accompany their play. Above all, a game must be winnable. Yet stories aren’t necessarily about winning and losing; they’re about drama.
> No matter how good Siboot turned out to be, it would not create the splash I had hoped for. It would not go viral and trigger lots of tweets and viral videos on YouTube. It would certainly attract a small comradeship of people who recognize its importance. Everybody else would be unimpressed.
[...]
> it will take centuries for civilization to embrace the concept [of algorithmic thinking]
[...]
> Even worse is in store for us: deep learning AI.
[...]
> You will NEVER see anything like literature coming out of deep learning AI.
[...]
> That will stop us dead in our tracks for a few decades.
But I can understand that the prospect of "genius only acclaimed long after his death" is not particularly attractive...
(Also, I'm not certain that computers able to run interactive fiction are still going to be economically viable in centuries...)
You might want to check out Terra Invicta. I only played the demo a bit, but it's basically espionage and politics against competing factions to prepare the world for an alien invasion.
The game, while good (i'd rather play Terra invicta than a lot of 4X games right now), feels unfinished and have some part that are either too easy or take too long.
It needs balancing to be clear. But i like that it isn't too micro-intensive.
Vicky3 is my new favorite 4X game now. 3rd playthrough, i really like it.
> But yeah, the only reason we haven't seen a credible Cold-War-era strategy game (aside from that one ancient Mac OS game) is because the era involved very little direct military conflict, and game-publishers have not yet figured out the mechanics of how to model a very nuanced conflict like that in a fun way.
I think the legendary board game Twilight Struggle comes the closest to modeling the push-and-pull feeling of the Cold War without actually degrading into war.
Never played Twilight Stuggle, but it looks like a lot of fun! There seems to be large-ish international community of players (according to Wikipedia).
It's a fantastic game, I highly recommend it. There is a Steam version if you'd like to try it out. You can play against the AI or match up against a human being.
Strictly speaking, not Paradox Interactive (which is a publisher, not a developer, releasing games pretty far out of the usual PDS fare, like the Magicka series), but fans of Paradox Development Studio games that started their own studio : BL-Logic.
In the boardgame world, the importance of Twilight Struggle in its conceptualization of the Cold War cannot be understated. It's digital adaptation is top notch as well.
Even before LLMs, I have seen people (shamelessly) re-implement code from open source project A into open source project B, without attribution (IIRC, a GPL C++ project [no hate, I use C++ too these days] basically copied the very distinctive AVL Tree implementation of a CDDL C project -- this is a licensing violation _and_ plagiarism, and it effectively writes the C project out of history. When asked about this, various colleagues[1], just shrugged their shoulders, and went on about their lives.). LLMs now make this behavior undetectable _and_ scalable.
If we want strong copyright protections for open source, we may need to start writing _literate_ programs (i.e. the Knuthian paradigm, which I am quite fond of). But that probably will not happen, because most programmers are bad at writing (because they hate it, and would rather outsource it to an LLM). The more likely alternative, is that people will just stop writing open source code (I basically stopped publishing my repos when the phrase "Big Tech" became common in 2018; Amazon in particular would create hosted versions of projects without contributing anything back -- if the authors were lucky they would be given the magnanimous opportunity to labor at Amazon, which is like inventing dynamite and being granted the privilege of laboring in the mines).
The fact is, if we want recognition, we need to sing each others' praises, instead hoping that someone will look at a version control history. We need to be story-tellers, historians, and archivists. Where is my generation's Jargon File?
[1]: Not co-worker, which is someone who shares an employer, but colleague, which is someone who shares a profession.