in eternal darkness, you had to choose a red-green-blue cosmic being to side with and you would fight the cosmic being of the opposite color, but if you NG+'d it three times the timelines would merge and all three cosmic beings would get obliterated

brb gotta test something

zulip added slop to their codebase a long time ago (1, 2) but now they’ve released this bullshit blog post with some choice nonsense:

I seriously considered banning LLM use for Zulip contributions. But our view is that contributors should be allowed to use modern tools in the service of producing great, reviewable work. AI-assisted work is of course subject to the same rigorous review processes we’ve always used for community contributions.

So we decided to invest in creating, refining, and enforcing a new AI use policy, which has the following key tenets:

• End-to-end human responsibility for work and the communication around it. You always need to understand, test, and explain the changes you’re proposing to make, whether or not you used an LLM as part of your process to produce them.
• Clear and concise communication about points that actually require discussion. While we allow carefully edited AI-generated PR descriptions, we’ve had to ban AI-generated chat messages in the development community as too disruptive. Manual enforcement of this policy has been rough, with far more PRs closed without review, stern warnings, and outright bans of repeat offenders than we’ve ever had to apply before. (What do you do when someone apologizes for submitting AI slop… by copy-pasting an apology from ChatGPT, including surrounding quotation marks?) We expect that next fall, automation or other major changes will be required for the PR triage process to be manageable.

The results [of using Claude] were promising (and far better than just a few months prior) — enough for us to start investing in teaching Claude Code how to self-review its work, and how to produce PRs that are easy for maintainers to review. This has largely been an AI-supported process of digesting our contributor documentation into CLAUDE.md, and iterating when we see the model struggle.

i liked zulip 😞

89.90999999…% uptime 🐐

do people just not feel shame anymore?

I would love if there were a way to filter out pro-AI companies. Nothing would make me happier than to have an interviewer tell me “we don’t allow slop here.” Instead, I have to gauge how truthful I can be. Usually, the best I can get away with is “I haven’t personally found it very useful, because I spend more time diagnosing its errors than I would have writing the code from scratch.” (But the truth is I haven’t ever used this sloppy shit. Letting a stochastic parrot speak for me is bonker balls.)

many have expectations to set up an ide day one and it start churning out patches

I just don’t understand the thought process. They must realize that this level of automation wouldn’t require anyone to hire them?

i don’t think of myself as a young person (i’m closer to 40 than 30), but i agree with the sentiment. i often worry that it’s just don quixote energy and the windmills aren’t going to thank me when i’m in the ground with work experience that employers look at and scoff. 🤷

saw a family member today for the first time in three years. they immediately told me “with your background bro you should just go work in AI and get super rich.”

told them that the ai shit doesn’t work and that everything involving LLMs is downright unethical. they respond

“i had a boss that gave me the best advice: you can either be right or you can be rich.”

recently, i saw someone use the phrase “got my bag nihilism” and i feel it really captures the moment. i just don’t understand how people can engage in this kind of behavior and even live with themselves, let alone ooze pride. it’s repulsive.

(family member later outright admitted that his job is basically selling things to companies that they don’t need.)

promptfondler: would you like a shit sandwhich?
human: no
promptfondler: don’t worry, here is the ingredient list, i even included where they were sourced

• shit (from my butt between my ears)
• bread (from the store)

to ensure there are no issues i will prepare the sandwich in public view

I replied basically “I am disappointed, LLMs are bad, what the shit” and got this reply:

Thank you for your feedback, this is the info Bitwarden can provide.

With an open source development process, Bitwarden provides the most trusted and transparent approach available. If you have any further questions, please don’t hesitate to ask.

oh your code is open source guess that resolves everything then

well, i’m learning three months late that bitwarden has begun allowing slop into their server code. emailed customer service about my concerns and they replied

Bitwarden uses AI tooling for development purposes, not within the product itself. No code ever gets placed into the product without a human review, whether that is augmented by AI or a human. All code has and continues to go through multiple layers of review, both human and tool driven.

gotta find a replacement. keepassxc, the alternative i would have suggested a year ago, is now a slopshop.

fuck me i am so god damn sick of this shit

sloperator is so good, i can’t believe i never thought of it

It is computer science in the southern united states (though I am open to finishing my PhD in Europe, especially because cryptography is an area of interest). Sorry for not mentioning this in the original post.

a field that will accept a second go at a PhD, but won’t accept a well documented HR complaint against a supervisor, is not one worth working in.

Thank you, I think this is something I needed to hear (read).

Off topic: I am looking for some advice. I enrolled in a PhD program several years ago. After years of verbal abuse, I left my advisor’s lab. Shortly after, he tried to get me kicked out of the program by giving me a failing grade, then he tried to physically intimidate me in his office (moved across the room to get in my face and scream at me). I reported this to the campus police but they said nothing could be done because he didn’t touch me or explicitly threaten violence. Later that day, he removed my name from work I had done for him, which is definitely plagiarism and a violation of the academic honesty policy.

I have an audio recording from that day of him screaming at me, as well as him basically admitting to retaliating by giving me a failing grade (I filed a grievance about this with the university and they changed my grade). I also recorded a long exchange that may not be incriminating but reinforces that he is an overbearing asshole.

I tried changing advisors but the options of available professors were limited (and the university decided that my abysmal $500 USD a week salary would get dropped to something like $300 a week), so I mastered out.

I was hoping to eventually finish my PhD elsewhere and I fear that I won’t be able to (that no advisor would want to risk working with me) if I go public with this. At the same time, the thought of him continuing to teach there and not suffer any accountability is killing me. (In my grievance, I requested a public apology and he refused, telling the chair that he would instead be comfortable with a meeting moderated by the chair — absolutely farcical.)

Does anyone have advice? Would it be worth going public (e.g. reaching out to the local press or the student paper)? I suppose I could just email human resources with the information and see what happens. Experience in this precise situation is probably limited (although academia has a lot of abusers, so maybe not).

(A week ago I was confident I would go public sometime soon. Now I just feel apprehension.)

this is why i only self-host low risk crap and it’s all behind my tailnet

half the time i put my shirt on backwards, i am not going to put my password db on the public internet myself

one thing i did not see coming, but should have (i really am an idiot): i am completely unenthused whenever anyone announces a piece of software. i’ll see something on the rust subreddit that i would have originally thought “that’s cool” and now my reaction is “great, gotta see if an llm was used”

everything feels gloomy.

Little Slop of Horrors is a good one

cream of the slop

sloptart (accidentally profane maybe)

that’s all i got

edit: actually the first one might be profane too

I’m thinking “take something with a word in it that rhymes with slop” like “Slopic Thunder” or “A Slop in the Bucket”

but also i am an idiot and have bad taste

cleaning the egg off my face (but egg prices are pretty high rn so i may just keep it)

thanks @swlabr@awful.systems for the link and @blakestacey@awful.systems for the skeptical post, my dumbass dropped the ball there