this post was submitted on 19 May 2024
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Big brain tech dude got yet another clueless take over at HackerNews etc? Here's the place to vent. Orange site, VC foolishness, all welcome.
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A well-respected terminal emulator for the Mac decides to slather on AI sauce, and most users are not happy. But there are others who are outraged that slathering AI sauce onto a product is even seen as a negative. Let's take a break from HN to take a look at the tortured souls on lobste.rs who won't let this aggression stand, man:
https://lobste.rs/s/7aglnr/psa_iterm2_now_has_chatgpt_integration
archive link in case mods decide to nuke it
Personal favs:
Hi, this is the internet, you must be new here.
Don't let the door hit you on the way out.
Edit as a bonus, here's the HN discussion. Same situaton there, the promptfondlers are surprised everyone is mad
ok. I tried writing something sarcastic and sneery but alas, I don't think I can mock this person hard enough to satisfy my ethical obligation.
wake up babe new slur just dropped
Soon they will discover that they can use AI to autogenerate new minority definitions for them and we on the left will be powerless to stop them.
(We will mock them for it, and tell them this new made up thing doesn't count, but we cannot stop them).
Saw this update yesterday and it pissed me really off. I've been using iTerm for almost 20 years at this point and it's a really good and well-integrated terminal application for Mac OS, and no one asked for it to add spicy autocomplete.
There's a fork already, lol.
Or maybe I'll just move over to Alacritty. I use that one my Linux machines and it's actually good, but the attitude of some of the developers when it comes to feature requests and contributions really makes me like it less than I could.
tbh the enforced civility and de facto ban on social issue discussion on lobste is not helping. (but after last “polite discussion” i had with the moderator i'm not going to bring it up anymore, just suspend the account or wait to be banned.)
yeah frankly that sort of shit is why I haven't even tried to get a lobsters account
bullshit should be called out as bullshit at any point in time. dressing it up in niceties is playing the wrong game, and has been abused by the worst people around for years
Noooooooooooooo! Argh, I'll have to seriously consider using the fork FML.
EDIT: Not strictly required since apparently you have to provide an API key for it to be enabled, still it's not encouraging that the main developer thought this would be a good idea.
You've got to love the prompt jank: https://github.com/gnachman/iTerm2/commit/755dc2ed881d853f495ffaea2498452915e5e8cd?diff=split&w=0
EDIT 2: Given direct access to bad AI code to a dev workstation is bad enough, but given that the console is a primary way to connect to servers, where more havoc could be wrought, this is terrifying, I mean sure devs were already capable of bricking enviromnents, but supercharging "knowing just enough to be dangerous" is NOT a good idea.
for people who thought this might not be related to the llm brainworms, the reasoning of the iterm2 author for inclusion of the feature (when promptedy by @gerikson@awful.systems) :
The latest beta has options to turn the shit off totally. The text mixes metaphors with wild abandon but I think it’s safe to say the promptfondling was not huge success
https://mastodon.social/@paulehoffman/112497241841185493
The whole debacle astounds me. Is there a more universally privileged application users frequently use than the shell? As a general rule it can elevate privs to full control far more aggressively than any other commonly used application, with minimal sandboxing at most.
Inorite? Even if there was the requirement of an API key being enabled that was only revealed after some time. If smeone says "my terminal has GPT now" of course your mind goes to it outputting
sudo rm -rf /
for some random prompt.Edit nevertheless I am thankful because I've had a lot of fun identifying promptfondlers on lobste.rs and pointing and laughing at them.
Putting the "evangelist" in product evangelist.
Update 4 days later, the main Karen in charge of the promptfondlers is calling for the banning of users impertinent enough to flag their comments.
thanks for mentioning this, I'm definitely going to have to nack that update and send a gfy mail
query mail sent
hell, if anyone else is curious to also poke: