What is the point of converting this software?
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@gpcureton @samir But wait, it gets better (or worse?).
I checked IFP on ProPublica, in the 2022 and 2021 Form 990 filings (https://projects.propublica.org/nonprofits/organizations/872449729/202300699349300540/full), the org name is "INSTITUTE FOR PROGRESS AND ALTRUISM".
Part III 4a mentions "[...]. As a non-profit research and advocacy organization, IFP brings the best ideas from the progress studies and effective altruism communities to policymakers in Washington, DC."
In their 'preparing for launch' page they mention they borrow ideas from defensive accelerationism (https://ifp.org/preparing-for-launch/).
So yeah, IFP is that type of woo-woo techbro policy-wonk.
@alextecplayz @gpcureton Fucking hell.
I bet they make a lot of money from this bullshit, and it produces exactly zero useful pieces of software.
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@samir "rust rewrite" is rapidly becoming a nebulously security-flavored term that people lacquer onto something indiscriminately, like "encryption" or "vpn". all things that are real and work and are good, but lacking any of the context of when or why they are good
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@samir Ah, but the AI will maintain it.
That way, we can bring more FOSS under oligarch control!
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RE: https://mastodon.social/@ieeespectrum/116030177478995194
What is the point of converting this software?
Who’s gonna maintain it?
Unless you have interest from the maintainers, you have a bunch of code that no one uses and no one maintains. Good job, folks.
I see nothing on these sites that explain how they hope to drum up maintenance, or even engage the maintainers of the original code.
Once again, the critical part of FOSS is ignored. It’s the people.
@samir @rogersm @ieeespectrum It’s also a pity that people seem to have forgotten about the foundations of computer science. The Halting Problem is still a thing…
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RE: https://mastodon.social/@ieeespectrum/116030177478995194
What is the point of converting this software?
Who’s gonna maintain it?
Unless you have interest from the maintainers, you have a bunch of code that no one uses and no one maintains. Good job, folks.
I see nothing on these sites that explain how they hope to drum up maintenance, or even engage the maintainers of the original code.
Once again, the critical part of FOSS is ignored. It’s the people.
This can only end well...
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@mkoek Yes, it’s true, but you could also generate a Cmake file which automatically downloads a malicious dependency from GitHub.
The problem is the “hallucination”, not the choice of programming language.
@samir agree that that would be equally bad, but have not seen people be that silly… that’s probably me though
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@samir agree that that would be equally bad, but have not seen people be that silly… that’s probably me though
@samir Goodness, I am behind the times. Some searching tells me that this is the way people handle dependencies now - just pull in some github repo from your makefile. We are not getting better at this security thing, are we.
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@samir Goodness, I am behind the times. Some searching tells me that this is the way people handle dependencies now - just pull in some github repo from your makefile. We are not getting better at this security thing, are we.
@mkoek Nope. It’s the same everywhere. And I can’t fault it; it can take between “months” and “never” for a dependency to arrive as a Debian package. (And sometimes you do need an exact version.)
I personally like nixpkgs as a solution to this, but it’s a big change for most people.
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@mkoek Nope. It’s the same everywhere. And I can’t fault it; it can take between “months” and “never” for a dependency to arrive as a Debian package. (And sometimes you do need an exact version.)
I personally like nixpkgs as a solution to this, but it’s a big change for most people.
@samir True. Apparently that’s the price of having some checks in place.
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RE: https://mastodon.social/@ieeespectrum/116030177478995194
What is the point of converting this software?
Who’s gonna maintain it?
Unless you have interest from the maintainers, you have a bunch of code that no one uses and no one maintains. Good job, folks.
I see nothing on these sites that explain how they hope to drum up maintenance, or even engage the maintainers of the original code.
Once again, the critical part of FOSS is ignored. It’s the people.
@samir
It reminds me a bit of the xkcd comic about the standards. Only now we have two (slightly different) implementations which need to be maintained
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@samir There is also the possibility that Rust as a language will evolve, fragment or move on from where it is now, leaving a large codebase marooned. Surely it needs a formalised ISO standard, and a group with a will to support that, before embarking on mass codebase conversions.
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@monospace @samir What language are you referring to?
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RE: https://mastodon.social/@ieeespectrum/116030177478995194
What is the point of converting this software?
Who’s gonna maintain it?
Unless you have interest from the maintainers, you have a bunch of code that no one uses and no one maintains. Good job, folks.
I see nothing on these sites that explain how they hope to drum up maintenance, or even engage the maintainers of the original code.
Once again, the critical part of FOSS is ignored. It’s the people.
-
RE: https://mastodon.social/@ieeespectrum/116030177478995194
What is the point of converting this software?
Who’s gonna maintain it?
Unless you have interest from the maintainers, you have a bunch of code that no one uses and no one maintains. Good job, folks.
I see nothing on these sites that explain how they hope to drum up maintenance, or even engage the maintainers of the original code.
Once again, the critical part of FOSS is ignored. It’s the people.
@samir Yes! I think it is better to verify that existing software is memory safe, ideally automatically, but with the help of some type-like annotations if needed. There are still some rough edges, but Codex (the static analysis library) is close to provide that!
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RE: https://mastodon.social/@ieeespectrum/116030177478995194
What is the point of converting this software?
Who’s gonna maintain it?
Unless you have interest from the maintainers, you have a bunch of code that no one uses and no one maintains. Good job, folks.
I see nothing on these sites that explain how they hope to drum up maintenance, or even engage the maintainers of the original code.
Once again, the critical part of FOSS is ignored. It’s the people.
@samir I think I read an article in the 1980s about how people can write FORTRAN in every language. They meant in the style of FORTRAN, not the language itself.
And you can write C in Rust.
I'm not sure if this is automagically free of bugs.
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@samir I think I read an article in the 1980s about how people can write FORTRAN in every language. They meant in the style of FORTRAN, not the language itself.
And you can write C in Rust.
I'm not sure if this is automagically free of bugs.
@Stefan_S_from_H I translated some C to Rust recently. I used the
unsafekeyword a lot. I don’t think this made it more safe. -
@samir Yes! I think it is better to verify that existing software is memory safe, ideally automatically, but with the help of some type-like annotations if needed. There are still some rough edges, but Codex (the static analysis library) is close to provide that!
@MatthieuLemerre I am all in favour of porting C and C++ to Rust! If the maintainers want to. And as you say, if not, there are tools to check safety, which should be wielded by knowledgeable maintainers. Otherwise you end up with the Ubuntu OpenSSL debacle.
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@samir It took a while but IEEE seems to be going all in on GenAI and in the process becoming less relevant to me almost daily.
@pa28 I think it’s part of a larger pattern of journalists forgetting how to ask even the most basic of questions, like “What is the motivation for this?” and “What happens afterwards?”
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RE: https://mastodon.social/@ieeespectrum/116030177478995194
What is the point of converting this software?
Who’s gonna maintain it?
Unless you have interest from the maintainers, you have a bunch of code that no one uses and no one maintains. Good job, folks.
I see nothing on these sites that explain how they hope to drum up maintenance, or even engage the maintainers of the original code.
Once again, the critical part of FOSS is ignored. It’s the people.
@samir Also, what is the deal with converting everything to Rust, considering that language is far from perfect.
A bunch of code that no one uses, maintains and that costed 10x more development time.
Maybe for security-critical parts, but even with those, the programmers could spend extra effort to secure it in the original language.
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@samir @rogersm @ieeespectrum It’s also a pity that people seem to have forgotten about the foundations of computer science. The Halting Problem is still a thing…
@pascal_costanza @samir @ieeespectrum
IT is in a strange position: decided to forget computer science but never moved into computer engineering.
We’re a pop discipline, following the fad of the hour.
