Is Linux Collapsing Under Its Own Weight?  ## Metadata - Author: [[The Changelog: Software Development, Open Source]] - Full Title: Is Linux Collapsing Under Its Own Weight? - Category: #podcasts - URL: https://share.snipd.com/episode/3f155575-1494-4c6e-8293-c21119235c40 ## Document Notes ## Highlights - **Rust for Linux Developer Resigns** - A Rust for Linux developer, Wedsen Almeda Falhoho, resigned due to non-technical issues. - Asahi Lina also voiced frustrations about Linux kernel maintainers and Rust integration. Transcript: Jerod Santo Okay, let's get into the news. Developer, Wedson Almeida Falho, resigned from the project after an unfortunate interaction with another maintainer. Wedson's parting words, quote, I am retiring from the project. After almost four years, I find myself lacking the energy and enthusiasm I once had to respond to some of the non-technical nonsense. So it's best to leave it up to those who still have it in them." End quote. After that, Asahi Lina, who is a developer of the Apple GPU drivers for Linux, sounded off with her own frustrations with maintainers and Rust from the DRM perspective. Her conclusion, quote, "'But I get that feeling that some Linux kernel maintainers just don't care about future code quality or about stability or security anymore. They just want to keep their C code and wish us Rust folks would go away. And that's really sad and isn't helping make Linux better. End quote. The post I'm linking to is in response to those two events. The author, who goes by CB, thinks they, quote, signal deeper issues in Linux, both technical and cultural, end quote. Some of the technical and cultural issues are explained in the post. What does this mean though? For the Rust for Linux project? CB says, I think Rust for Linux as a project is in danger, because of technical reasons, but because of social ones. It's trivial for a maintainer who doesn't want Rust to sandbag integration efforts for their subsystem for whatever reason. Not liking it, not wanting the workload, etc. Just refusing to help." ([Time 0:00:38](https://share.snipd.com/snip/d854a25a-1fea-4a62-8317-0a917c1959e3)) - **DynamicLand Makes Real World Computational** - Brett Victor's DynamicLand project aims to make the real world computational. - RealTalk, their communal computing system, is presented as a practice, not a product. Transcript: Jerod Santo End quote. So what does this mean for the future of Linux? The author seems to believe an eventual fork is likely. Brett Victor introduces Dynamic Land. Brett Victor, a well-known interface designer and computer scientist who's best known for his amazing talks on the future of technology, has been working quietly on a new project, Dynamic Land, for many years. Turns out he's done being quiet about it. Dynamic Land is essentially making the real world computational, then giving people what they need to compute it however they like. You really should watch the six minute introduction video which is filled with amazing statements like you don't have to simulate a virtual world when the real world simulates itself. And this one which is just bonkers. So everything I've shown is taking place in our communal computing system called Real Talk and this is it. Real Talk is not a code base, it's a poster gallery or a bulletin board or a binder. To call this endeavor ambitious would be an understatement. Here's the sum, which if they pull it off and maybe they already have, would be a big technical achievement and an enormous cultural achievement. Dynamic land is nonprofit and real talk is not a product. You don't buy communal computing, you don't download communal computing. Our goal is to invent a form of computation which local communities of non-specialists can make for themselves, from the ground up for their own needs, which they fully understand And control. A form of computation which is learned and taught, not downloaded and used, like reading and writing, or mathematics, or the arts. Not a product, but a practice. SRE ([Time 0:02:23](https://share.snipd.com/snip/168e6e3a-5c02-4643-966f-c11516bccbec)) - **SRE Title Loses Meaning** - Rachel by the bay argues that the Site Reliability Engineer (SRE) title has become diluted and no longer reflects a distinct skill set. - She emphasizes SREs needing both system administration and programming skills. Transcript: Jerod Santo Doesn't mean anything useful anymore. Rachel, by the way, laments her realization that site reliability engineer, SRE, has become useless as a way to categorize people with a very particular set of skills, much like every Other title has before it. Quote, clearly somewhere along the line, someone lost the thread and it has completely destroyed any notion of what an SRE was supposed to be. Just so we're operating on a level playing ground here, I'll lay down my own personal definition of the term and what I expect from people in that role and what I expected from myself. To me, an SRE is both a sysadmin and a programmer, developer, whatever you want to call it. It's a logical and, not an XOR." End quote. She goes on to detail what is meant by assisted men and what is meant by programmer. But what she's been seeing in her attempts to hire are SREs who are just ops people. I agree with Rachel, but not just about SREs, I ([Time 0:04:02](https://share.snipd.com/snip/f0f2cf41-8396-4f9d-8cc4-500ecbde5537)) - **Hire Junior Developers** - Doug Turnbull advocates for hiring junior developers, emphasizing their potential for innovation and cultural growth. - He highlights the value of coaching juniors, creating a learning environment. Transcript: Jerod Santo Check it out by following the link in the newsletter, and thank you to Socket for sponsoring changelog news. Your company needs junior devs. Doug Turnball does a good job laying out the case for hiring junior devs a drum that I've been beating off and on for years. Quote, lately Big Tech only wants elite squads of staff devs that can quote hit the ground running on the big often AI initiative. It's been remarked over and over that AI will completely replace junior developers. Juniors after all, exist to do code monkey work, easily replaced with an LLM. However, that misses the mark on why we have junior employees. Coaching junior employees becomes its own force multiplier for innovating at scale. It's not about the added labor, it's about a psychologically safe culture that values teaching and learning and the innovation that this unlocks." End quote. Doug makes a lot of great points in this article. I'll add one. Junior developers are plenteous. That means you can take your time and find the ones that will really gel with your organizational culture. Also, you don't have to pay them as much while you train them up and make them more valuable so you can pay them more. ([Time 0:06:15](https://share.snipd.com/snip/07b4234d-9e64-4132-ac39-035d9b0833a5)) - **LLM Honeymoon Phase Ending** - Baldur Bjarnason warns about the increasing vulnerability of LLMs to manipulation and malicious attacks. - He describes how malicious token streams can bypass prompt security, posing a significant threat. Transcript: Jerod Santo You may be asking that age-old question, but what if we train them up and they leave? The answer to that is, what if you don't train them up and they stay? The LLM honeymoon phase is about to end. Balder Bjarnesen has been consistently bearish on the current crop of AI tools and products since I've been following him. I don't agree with him in all aspects but he does a good job of arguing his position so I appreciate his writing on the subject. In this latest post, Baldur explains how weaknesses and how LLMs work are making them great targets for manipulation. We've also known for a while that prompts are effectively impossible to secure. It should not come as a surprise that some researchers decided to see if prompt security could be bypassed with a malicious token stream that completely bypasses the whole comprehensible Language part. The process for discovering these malicious token streams quite similar to what Profound, the company mentioned earlier, seems to be doing. You automate a process of shoving customized prompts into one end of the LLM black box and you map the output to discover token streams that have an unusually big impact on the output." End quote. Given the opportunity for businesses to gain an unpaired advantage, we all know what they'll do with it. Balder thinks this is going to go from bad to much, much worse as these techniques are uncovered. Quote, this is going to get automated, weaponized and industrialized. Tech companies have placed chatbots at the center of our information ecosystems and butchered their products to push them front and center. ([Time 0:07:33](https://share.snipd.com/snip/68f3a2a6-3d03-4251-abbc-385ebf7a707d))