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LWN.net

Debian votes to allow "responsible use of generative AI"

The results of the Debian general-resolution vote on the use of large language models have been posted; the winner is choice 5: Responsible Use of Generative AI. Debian neither endorses nor prohibits the use of generative AI tools in the development, maintenance, or documentation of software, packaging, documentation, and other media published within the Debian Project. We recognize that such tools can substantially improve the productivity of contributors when used responsibly, allowing volunteers to spend more of their limited time on work that requires technical expertise, judgment, review, and collaboration. The Debian Project nevertheless expects that all contributions submitted to Debian, regardless of how and with which tools they were produced, satisfy the same standards of quality, correctness, maintainability, and legal compliance. The use of a generative AI tool does not diminish the contributor's responsibility for the work they submit. Contributors are expected to understa

Phoronix

Another x86 Advisory From Some Entity Other Than Intel Or AMD

Last October I highlighted an interesting post on the Linux kernel mailing list around an x86 corporate entity other than Intel or AMD that left mysterious intrigue. The developer that detailed those x86 opcode/CPUID/MSR allocations back in July then detailed 16-tile and 32-tile AMX implementations again for something outside the current scope of Intel/AMD processors. Today another message is being relayed from that "corporate entity other than Intel/AMD."..

LWN.net

Ryabitsev: Creepy crawlies

Konstantin Ryabitsev has written a blog post with hard numbers about the impact of AI crawlers on the Linux kernel repositories at git.kernel.org: Today, git.kernel.org receives about 6M daily requests demanding to see random commits. Of these, 66% are still immediately batted away with the Anubis challenge, but 33% are now solving the math and getting through to the main site β€” because apparently what we have to offer is worth spending a ton of cycles to calculate the Anubis challenge. It's impossible to tell with certainty which of these are bots and which are real humans β€” but chances are, if it's asking for an old commit in a random old fork, it's probably not a real developer trying to do their work. With a bunch of generous assumptions, legitimate requests are only about 2% of git.kernel.org traffic β€” everything else are scrapers.