Beaker Browser was so cool! Paul Frazee and Tara Vancil. It was always super experimental. I think it ended when Paul left to join other decentralization-focused devs starting to build Bluesky and the AT Protocol.
The way I remember it, back then they were building Beaker on dat in collaboration with dat devs, which I think was basically just Mathias Buus (mafintosh) who was part of an org called Hyperdivision. Now Mathias is continuing the dat/hypercore stuff at Holepunch (building Keet and Pears). It still seems cool, but I think a lot of the most exciting stuff in the dat ecosystem stopped when Paul Frazee left
So I think that original Beaker/dat/hypercore vision has probably moved mostly into the AT Protocol (Bluesky, tangled, etc.). I haven't been following that as much lately. I wonder if anyone is working on something like Beaker Browser for the AT Protocol, or if that even makes sense
paul pfrazees beaker browser was just one of many dat ecosystem proje ts even though a popular one. keet is also a dat ecosystem project.
quibble is just the latest addition and linked elsewhere in this thread and an open source version of keet.
there is an active dat rust implementation.
you also have a sql relation database primitive on top of dat and the hyper stack now
and datweb will be released soon.
at proto has nothing to do with p2p at all and its just pfrazee who moved on.
the holepunch company mainly focuses on building the closed source keet app and the bare and pear runtime to make it easy to built cross platform p2p application.
they also maintain a lot of the underlying hyper stack that has grown and matured and is essentially the foundation of dat ecosystem, but there are many projects.
you also have an interview of mathias buus presenting holepunch/keet on the dat ecosystem blog, so sadly your view seems quite distorted for some reason, ...unless you are getting paid to plug at proto
"yeah, absolutely false" is offputting to read, especially when you're not contracting anything said there. you're confirming a bunch of it, and adding more.
as a reader with only a little emotional investment here (but some), i want to tell you your message would spread much better if you could shape it some other way. your post has a lot of good material. but man that is really not fun to read, couched so adversarially.
this is something i work on myself. often i think there is real reason to take a person to task, and to respond strongly, but trying to keep the broader audience in mind. and: i don't think that was the case here.
unfortunately open source is unthankful and if you work on something novel and different its even harder, so if anyone secures funding by compromising and then using that to spread different marketing it can be very frustrating.
the thread started woth the post of the dat ecosystem website.
...since then it was declared dead by some.
then at proto was framed as some sort of "successor.
then iroh used the opportunity to plug their project.
all of them with their own marketing budget and funding, so this makes it really tough for very passionate and personally invested open source community with no VC funding
so fai enough, a calmer answer would read nicer, but its not always easy.
...if you are interested in more particular issues i can of course elaborate and provide more details - technically or otherwise.
It sounds like you are more tapped into this space than me. I'm not trying to push any angle. Apologies if it sounded like I was trying to diminish dat or other projects. I think all of these projects are interesting
A few years ago, I was pretty excited about this but just as a casual observer. I'm out of the loop now
I'd be interested to hear what projects you think are the most exciting to follow these days
There is a lot of effort being invested towards finally enabeling dat in regular web browsers.
There is quibble linked in different comments on this hackernews post and there is https://keet.io ...both p2p messengers, the former open source, the latter more mature.
There is paraQL for a p2p sql relational database.
There is datrs for an implementation of the core primitives in rust.
there is the already linked https://holesail.io to make any kind of service available via p2p
and a lot of other things.
and then you have the cross platform pear runtime for building p2p apps and bare runtime as a lean minimal but extensible and embeddable js cross platform runtime.
you'll see new apps released soon. One i am waiting for is a p2p enabled bitcoin wallet, the other one a "rss reader" combined with a p2p blogging engine. i assume that will happen within this year.
It sounds like it has no CI / merge gating solution. This doesn't look like a substitute for pull requests -- just a way of sharing edit history.
I don't buy the argument that being able to trace down the initial LLM prompts that led to a line of code will meaningfully accelerate review. That's just like a more advanced git blame. Reviewers will need to understand the code for themselves. A more advanced git blame doesn't really help with that
Just looking at the final version of the PR without all the intermediate history may be better since it won't sidetrack you with half-baked thoughts and assumptions from the development process. You can just focus on the result
There are cool things about this, but I'm not convinced it's actually useful. Even less convinced it's a replacement for pull requests. GitHub isn't great but I don't think this is really tackling the problems with GitHub
Ok I rewatched that now. Maybe this could work? I'm still not sure how much confidence to place in their system for merge gating
Having land as a skill seems weird to me. You could write in your land skill that it should make sure CI is passing, but I wouldn't want to leave it up to the LLM to decide if CI is passing. I'd rather that be a decision enforced by the git remote
I think to make this work the way I imagine merge checks should work, I'd have to set up my git remote to only allow fast forward merges with checks passing. I don't think this work very well with my org's current merge queue setup, but might work better for people not using a merge queue
Another inspiring book in this vein is Tending the Wild by M. Kat Anderson. It looks at how Native Americans in California lived and managed the landscape. It gets really specific about which plants they'd use and how.
A big part of the book is about reconceptualizing this idea of the romantic "wild" nature. I think it's interesting because it's an example of people who actually lived in a "back to nature" kind of way, but it doesn't look like a rural homestead or anything like that. It's also different in how it's collective not individualistic. The author cites Muir and Berry as influences
For me, yes. I was introduced to Scratch on a field trip as a 5th grader and went home and tinkered with it, making a bunch of games. I later got a Lego Mindstorms kit. As a teenager I learned Java through the Minecraft server modding community and YouTube. I'm now a software engineer for my career.
Very similar path for me too, though was all in High School/College courses for me.
Basic HTML class -> Scratch Android dev -> Java course that used Lego Mindstorms -> Exploring Minecraft mods in free time -> Realized I don't really like Java
How easy is it to set up and run this for private repos?
It looks like it has so many cool features -- stacked PRs, jujutsu support, CI in Nix VMs. But I've never tried it because it sounds like (at least by default) it's some sort of decentralized, peer-to-peer public thing
It's disingenuous because it's attacking something that the article didn't say. It didn't say "kernel devs should prompt less because it uses up water."
The real argument was that AI has many externalities that should be considered (climate change, water use, energy prices, putting people out of jobs) and that Linux, as a relevant and influential political actor, should engage with these topics. It's not even giving a final determination about what Linux should do, it's just disagreeing with Torvalds' total rejection of ethical arguments about AI.
Even if you believe that the technical merits outweigh the other costs, it seems at least reasonable to engage on those grounds. But Torvalds isn't doing that.
Also, simply stating that the "cat is out of the bag" and "Pandora's box is open" isn't really an argument. These are thought-terminating cliches; not logical arguments
> These are thought-terminating cliches; not logical arguments
Consider sometimes terminating some thoughts and replacing them with actually useful ones. It’s good for you and your goals regardless of what they are.
People burning thought-hours on pretending that we can make AI go away are basically doing nothing except emitting CO2 and consuming water. If you want change, start with yourself!
Anyway, so far zero actionable suggestions for Torvalds in the article or in this thread. Great job so far.
The article isn't trying to find a particular example. It's talking about the overall stance of Linux on AI use. It argues that maintainers should consider political/moral/ethical arguments around climate change, effect on water supplies, energy prices, etc.
Of course Linus realizes linux development is political, because he's lived that, however he might phrase it.
What I think both are actually saying:
Drew Devault (blogger): Linux development should place political/moral/ethical arguments in primacy (or at least more important?)
Linus: Technical reality should always come first, with other considerations secondary
If the above read is correct, I'm sympathetic to Linus' position. If the linux kernel doesn't work and improve, technically, then nothing else about the project matters.
Bikeshedding about political/moral/ethical qualms impairs the technical work.
Ergo, a strong lighthouse statement from Linus that the technical work always comes first, even if other considerations are made when appropriate.
The AI genie (referring broadly to 'any LLM-based tool that performs a useful development function') isn't going back in the bottle, and linux sticking its head in the sand for ethical reasons will harm linux.
Why not fix all the issues with private jets and yachts first? Why don't they use regular public transportation as we all do? Instead, let's bash poor Clanker, who reviews kernel code.
AI is just a tech like any other. Can be powered by CO2-neutral electricity like anything else. Otherwise, we'll have to protest against aluminum cans, airplanes, golf courts, lemon trees, and whatever else that uses water or electricity.
Well thanks, but I prefer to have airplanes, and maybe occasionally even golf courses. As for climate change - you'd need to protest against Chinese (and Western, but mostly Chinese) coal and gas power plants way way before than you protest against airplanes and golf courses. I don't see too many protesters holding signs like "stop Chinese coal plants". For some reason.
That's a false equivalence. AI is not the same as aluminum cans.
All technologies have political, social, ethical, and economic aspects, and not all technologies are the same. AI is not, in reality, powered by CO2-neutral electricity. As the article mentions, AI is the fastest-growing energy user in the world, so it probably merits a deeper look than aluminum cans.
Only insofar as you were able to keep a job. If you lose your job to automation, and there are no more jobs left, what do you do? Where do you get the money to keep your standard of living?
Having jobs for the sake of having jobs sounds like living in hell.
From what I can tell your argument works out to be as simple as we can’t do this because we want to keep people working, which the vast majority of people hate doing.
There is a small minority of people who enjoy work. It seems cruel to enslave a people in mass simply to keep them busy.
The current economic system is based on people working in exchange for payment. They can then use it on their own life, including living space, food, health and entertainment. Those who do not work do not get such "luxuries."
I'm not arguing for forcing people to work. If we get to a point where no work is economically feasible for humans to do I would very much like some form of UBI or similar to take care of people.
Speaking of enslaving people, the billionaire class has started speaking of removing peoples right to vote if they do not pay taxes (e.g. if they do not work.)
I very much wish that people would no longer have to do busy work and that they would have time for family and hobbies, but being the pessimist that I am, I'm not very hopeful we'll get there any time soon.
No they haven't. That whole news article is based on one two-word tweet in a thread about how old people dominate local politics.
Someone suggested that pensioners shouldn't get a vote, and the Shopify founder responded with "good system".
That's it. That's the whole story. Somehow you turned that into "billionaires are trying to enslave us", probably because you already believe that anyway.
That's a very uncharitable take on what I said. A comment that I've written semi-sarcastically as a reply to someone accusing me of supporting slavery.
Now, I'm fully aware that it's just one guy. But technically, under the proposed system it would be more like 5 guys.
Incredibly useful for some definition of incredibly useful. What I see:
- I now regularly receive AI-written spam emails (marketing pitches, "vulnerability reports").
- I was receiving AI-written garbage quality pull requests. It got so annoying I closed pull requests on my project's repo.
- When I try to contact some company's customer support these days there's a good chance I will be fed slop by an agent posing as a customer support person, this is absolutely infuriating.
- When I search for information on the internet, for certain queries, 90% of the results is slop.
- AI crawlers are DDoSing websites.
- The already mentioned things – hardware getting more expensive, climate impact, unethically sourced training data.
True in fact. Aluminum manufacturing is responsible for roughly 2% of global greenhouse gas emissions, and if you add in metal manufacturing as a whole it comes up to 11%. Refining ore is very energy-intensive.
Aluminum cans had a distinct use. AI just invades a perfectly working industry that made Torvalds filthy rich and adds nothing- And he defends it because he is corporate now.
The way I remember it, back then they were building Beaker on dat in collaboration with dat devs, which I think was basically just Mathias Buus (mafintosh) who was part of an org called Hyperdivision. Now Mathias is continuing the dat/hypercore stuff at Holepunch (building Keet and Pears). It still seems cool, but I think a lot of the most exciting stuff in the dat ecosystem stopped when Paul Frazee left
So I think that original Beaker/dat/hypercore vision has probably moved mostly into the AT Protocol (Bluesky, tangled, etc.). I haven't been following that as much lately. I wonder if anyone is working on something like Beaker Browser for the AT Protocol, or if that even makes sense