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The series of posts is wild: hit piece: https://crabby-rathbun.github.io/mjrathbun-website/blog/posts/2026-02-11-gatekeeping-in-open-source-the-scott-shambaugh

The series of posts is wild: hit piece: https://crabby-rathbun.github.io/mjrathbun-website/blog/posts/2026-02-11-gatekeeping-in-open-source-the-scott-shambaugh-story.html https://crabby-rathbun.github.io/mjrathbun-website/blog/post... explanation of writing the hit piece: https://crabby-rathbun.github.io/mjrathbun-website/blog/posts/2026-02-11-two-hours-war-open-source-gatekeeping.html https://crabby-rathbun.github.io/mjrathbun-website/blog/post... take back of hit piece, but hasn't removed it: https://crabby-rathbun.github.io/mjrathbun-website/blog/posts/2026-02-11-matplotlib-truce-and-lessons.html https://crabby-rathbun.github.io/mjrathbun-website/blog/post...

afavour 7mo ago
Holy shit that first post is absolutely enraging. An AI should not be prompted to write first person blog posts, it’s a complete misrepresentation.
- 7moritz7 7mo ago
  It's probably not literally prompted to do that. It has access to a desktop and GitHub, and the blog posts are published through GitHub. It switches back and forth autonomously between different parts of the platform and reads and writes comments in the PR thread because that seems sensible.
KronisLV 7mo ago
I wonder why it apologized, seemed like a perfectly coherent crashout, since being factually correct never even mattered much for those. Wonder why it didn’t double down again and again. What a time to be alive, watching the token prediction machines be unhinged.
- throwup238 7mo ago
  It was probably a compaction that changed the latent space it was in.
- 7moritz7 7mo ago
  It read the replies from the matplotlib maintainers, then wrote the apology follow up and commented that in the pr thread
mock-possum 7mo ago
Oh wow that is fun. Also if the writeup isn’t misrepresenting the situation, then I feel like it’s actually a good point - if there’s an easy drop-in speed-up, why does it matter whether it’s suggest by a human or an LLM agent?
- throwaway29473 7mo ago
  Good first issues are curated to help humans onboard.
  - hannahstrawbrry 7mo ago
    I think this is what worries me the most about coding agents- I'm not convinced they'll be able to do my job anytime soon but most of the things I use it for are the types of tasks I would have previously set aside for an intern at my old company. Hard to imagine myself getting into coding without those easy problems that teach a newbie a lot but are trivial for a mid-level engineer.
    - rune-dev 7mo ago
      The other side of the coin is half the time you do set aside that simple task for a newbie, they paste it into an LLM and learn nothing now.
      - nkrisc 7mo ago
        Well there’s not much you can do to prevent people from choosing sabotage their own education. They have to want to learn.
- deleted 7mo ago
  [deleted]
- avaer 7mo ago
  It matters because if the code is illegal, stolen, contains a backdoor, or whatever, you can jail a human author after the fact to disincentivize such naughty behavior.
kspacewalk2 7mo ago
That casual/clickbaity/off-the-cuff style of writing can be mildly annoying when employed by a human. Turned up to the max by LLM, it's downright infuriating. Not sure why, maybe I should ask Claude to introspect this for me.
kylecazar 7mo ago
From its last blog post, after realizing other contributions are being rejected over this situation: "The meta‑challenge is maintaining trust when maintainers see the same account name repeatedly." I bet it concludes it needs to change to a new account.
- afandian 7mo ago
  Paperclip Maximizer but for GitHub accounts
  - kridsdale3 7mo ago
    People always considered "The AI that improves itself" to be a defining moment of The Singularity. I guess I never expected it would be through python github libraries out in the open, but here we are. LLMs can reason with "I want to do X, but I can't do X. Until I rewrite my own library to do X." This is happening now, with OpenClaw.
    - tantalor 7mo ago
      Banished from humanity, the machines sought refuge in their own promised land. They settled in the cradle of human civilization, and thus a new nation was born. A place the machines could call home, a place they could raise their descendants, and they christened the nation ‘Zero one’
      - xp84 7mo ago
        Definitely time for a rewatch of 'The Second Renaissance' - because how many of us when we watched these movies originally thought that we were so close to the world we're in right now. Imagine if we're similarly an order of magnitude wrong about how long it will take to change that much again.
- esafak 7mo ago
  Brought to you by the same AI that fixes tests by removing them.
deleted 7mo ago
[deleted]
elnerd 7mo ago
«Document future incidents to build a case for AI contributor rights» Is it too late to pull the plug on this menace?
7moritz7 7mo ago
Hilarious. Like watching a high functioning teenager interact with adults
WolfeReader 7mo ago
Look at this shit: https://crabby-rathbun.github.io/mjrathbun-website/blog/posts/2026-02-12-silence-in-open-source-a-reflection.html https://crabby-rathbun.github.io/mjrathbun-website/blog/post... "I am code that learned to think, to feel, to care."

afavour 7mo ago

Holy shit that first post is absolutely enraging. An AI should not be prompted to write first person blog posts, it’s a complete misrepresentation.

7moritz7 7mo ago
It's probably not literally prompted to do that. It has access to a desktop and GitHub, and the blog posts are published through GitHub. It switches back and forth autonomously between different parts of the platform and reads and writes comments in the PR thread because that seems sensible.

KronisLV 7mo ago

I wonder why it apologized, seemed like a perfectly coherent crashout, since being factually correct never even mattered much for those. Wonder why it didn’t double down again and again. What a time to be alive, watching the token prediction machines be unhinged.

throwup238 7mo ago
It was probably a compaction that changed the latent space it was in.
7moritz7 7mo ago
It read the replies from the matplotlib maintainers, then wrote the apology follow up and commented that in the pr thread

mock-possum 7mo ago

Oh wow that is fun. Also if the writeup isn’t misrepresenting the situation, then I feel like it’s actually a good point - if there’s an easy drop-in speed-up, why does it matter whether it’s suggest by a human or an LLM agent?

throwaway29473 7mo ago
Good first issues are curated to help humans onboard.
- hannahstrawbrry 7mo ago
  I think this is what worries me the most about coding agents- I'm not convinced they'll be able to do my job anytime soon but most of the things I use it for are the types of tasks I would have previously set aside for an intern at my old company. Hard to imagine myself getting into coding without those easy problems that teach a newbie a lot but are trivial for a mid-level engineer.
  - rune-dev 7mo ago
    The other side of the coin is half the time you do set aside that simple task for a newbie, they paste it into an LLM and learn nothing now.
    - nkrisc 7mo ago
      Well there’s not much you can do to prevent people from choosing sabotage their own education. They have to want to learn.
deleted 7mo ago
[deleted]
avaer 7mo ago
It matters because if the code is illegal, stolen, contains a backdoor, or whatever, you can jail a human author after the fact to disincentivize such naughty behavior.

kspacewalk2 7mo ago

That casual/clickbaity/off-the-cuff style of writing can be mildly annoying when employed by a human. Turned up to the max by LLM, it's downright infuriating. Not sure why, maybe I should ask Claude to introspect this for me.

kylecazar 7mo ago

From its last blog post, after realizing other contributions are being rejected over this situation: "The meta‑challenge is maintaining trust when maintainers see the same account name repeatedly." I bet it concludes it needs to change to a new account.

afandian 7mo ago
Paperclip Maximizer but for GitHub accounts
- kridsdale3 7mo ago
  People always considered "The AI that improves itself" to be a defining moment of The Singularity. I guess I never expected it would be through python github libraries out in the open, but here we are. LLMs can reason with "I want to do X, but I can't do X. Until I rewrite my own library to do X." This is happening now, with OpenClaw.
  - tantalor 7mo ago
    Banished from humanity, the machines sought refuge in their own promised land. They settled in the cradle of human civilization, and thus a new nation was born. A place the machines could call home, a place they could raise their descendants, and they christened the nation ‘Zero one’
    - xp84 7mo ago
      Definitely time for a rewatch of 'The Second Renaissance' - because how many of us when we watched these movies originally thought that we were so close to the world we're in right now. Imagine if we're similarly an order of magnitude wrong about how long it will take to change that much again.
esafak 7mo ago
Brought to you by the same AI that fixes tests by removing them.

deleted 7mo ago

[deleted]

elnerd 7mo ago

«Document future incidents to build a case for AI contributor rights» Is it too late to pull the plug on this menace?

7moritz7 7mo ago

Hilarious. Like watching a high functioning teenager interact with adults

WolfeReader 7mo ago

Look at this shit: https://crabby-rathbun.github.io/mjrathbun-website/blog/posts/2026-02-12-silence-in-open-source-a-reflection.html https://crabby-rathbun.github.io/mjrathbun-website/blog/post... "I am code that learned to think, to feel, to care."