It's nice to have alternatives but I don't understand why we can't have a fully FOSS implementation of overlay networking without needing a company trying to up-sell us to premium features. I don't like to rely on companies to maintain a product that's a critical part of my infrastructure.
Typical "centrist" playbook. This guy is an AI booster pretending to be on the fence with no vested interest.
I have no particular financial interest in AI companies. I own whatever the standard share of them is via boring index funds. I have some seed stage investments, but just due to the timing and what's gotten big, that part of my portfolio is underweight on AI.
Oh just a few seed stage investments, I'm barely even a venture capitalist, bro. My portfolio is light on AI, bro. These people live in a world where they think we're all seed-stage investors.
And I'm not even going to address the flaws in his arguments because as soon as he pulls up revenue numbers and completely fails to mention the circular investments that are goosing the numbers you know that this is a disingenuous piece.
But it's often pretty hard to address that, because every article he writes is a 10k word gish gallop.
Personally for me, the spirit of self-hosting is incompatible with using Cloudflare and Synology services, but I understand that less technical users may prefer commercial services.
The probability of going for p repeats without hitting the lower end of the range is ((N - M) / N) ^ p where N is the size of the input range and M is the size of the largest integer multiple of the output range, which falls exponentially towards zero as p increases, so the chance of the process not terminating is zero.
With OP's example, with an input range of 256 and an output range of 202, this would mean the probability of making 10 unsuccessful attempts would be (54/256) ^ 10 = 0.00000017 or about 1 in 6 million. The probability of making 20 unsuccessful attempts would be 1 in 36 trillion, and so on.
only when the number of elements in bigger range is evenly divisible by the number of elements in smaller range. eg, 0-2 ( 3 elements ) 255 % 3 = 0 in this case the likeliness of an element being chosen doesn’t change.
In the range 0-255 there are 256 values, so you need to test 256 % n, which in your example 256 % 3 = 1, so this would give a very slightly uneven distribution.
As to your main point, you're right, and I believe the standard procedure is to just roll the random variable again any time it falls outside the largest integer multiple of the desired output range.
Yeah because they refer to the same ICANN root servers for the ICANN root domains. The point of an alternative DNS root is that they can provide their own specific top-level domains, so sites that are targeted by this kind of censorship can register a domain in an OpenNIC managed TLD and then they are only subject to moderation by OpenNIC instead of ICANN.
sloppers can just keep burning new accounts (as long as they have access to new IP addresses) while real developers deserving of praise and reputation thrive.
Becoming a Debian developer requires you to meet an existing Debian developer in person and have your public key signed by them. It's not possible to keep burning new accounts unless you go and meet a different Debian developer each time and there's a limited number of them in each region and they usually meet together, so more than one person will see your face.
I disagree with your reading of the proposals. My interpretation was that only proposals (1) and (7) have severe limits on LLM use. Each of the other proposals allows LLM use with some very minor concessions or no concessions at all. It felt to me as though they were all worded very sneakily to try to attract votes from anti-AI developers while actually being very permissive, by waffling about the harms of AI in the preface before completely dropping the ball in the requirements section.
Removing all of the waffle, the proposals can be boiled down to:
Completely outlaws all use of LLMs in Debian contributions, whether code or documentation or communication etc.
Allows any and all LLM use provided that:
the tools are not legally problematic
the LLM output does not violate another copyright
the contributor assumes full responsibility
they're not used for bulk operations without prior discussion
private data is not sent to cloud services
Allows LLM use for everything except for human-to-human communication. Also permits individual maintainers to ban LLM contributions to the project that they maintain (implying that maintainers may also permit LLM contributions to the project they maintain).
This one is particularly pernicious since it also "requests" (as in, a non-binding encouragement) that nobody uses LLMs, whilst acknowledging that for decision makers this "will involve uncomfortable compromises."
Allows any and all LLM use provided that the contributor takes full responsibility, tags the contribution as LLM-assisted, and doesn't use cloud services for private data.
Says absolutely nothing of substance. 8 paragraphs of waffle to place no restrictions on anything but to say that contributors are already bound by the Debian Social Contract and existing rules, and that they should be held responsible for their contributions accordingly.
Exactly as (5), but this time 9 paragraphs of waffle to say nothing of substance.
"In order to safeguard the project's mutual understanding, trust and respect, we disallow the output of generative AI as direct contributions to Debian."
12 paragraphs of hand wringing about the climate boils down to: "this text is just a position statement. This said however, we appreciate the disclosure of LLM usage."
So by my reading, that makes:
Bans AI: (1), (7)
Allows AI: (2), (4), (5), (6), (8)
Allows AI with a restriction: (3)
Now read the titles of these proposals and their introductory preamble and ask yourself whether they are representative of the actual rules they will put into effect.
It's nice to have alternatives but I don't understand why we can't have a fully FOSS implementation of overlay networking without needing a company trying to up-sell us to premium features. I don't like to rely on companies to maintain a product that's a critical part of my infrastructure.