rsync goes AI slop, breaks your backups

[davidgerard@circumstances.run]

rsync goes AI slop, breaks your backups

36 commits by ‘tridge and claude’

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V0EAo9jo-U4&list=UU9rJrMVgcXTfa8xuMnbhAEA - video
https://pivottoai.libsyn.com/20260603-rsync-goes-ai-slop-breaks-your-backups - podcast

time: 7 min 34 sec

https://pivot-to-ai.com/2026/06/03/rsync-goes-ai-slop-breaks-your-backups/ - blog post

[alienghic@timeloop.cafe]

@davidgerard

Good balance between the social struggles of being a free software maintainer, people not being happy about your choices, and the problem that real resources need to be available to keep important software maintained.

And good luck on your move!

[ahhhhhhhhhhh@mastodon.social]

@davidgerard this has been causing log memory cascades for me. Need to find time to switch to openrsync.

[nobody@mastodon.acm.org]

@davidgerard

> > if human intelligence is just finer grained stochastic prediction as well.
>
> Yeah, we do know, it isn’t

Mmmnaaaah, I agree with you on virtually everything else, but I'd argue that all of the circumstantial evidence we've got suggests that "human reasoning" must be "iterative plagariasm" perturbed by environment inputs after all.

A model as naive as a modern LLM being able to reproduce a surprising chunk of human work, even w/ some generalization, only supports the case...

[davidgerard@circumstances.run]

cc @lproven surprised the closest to press coverage of this is osnews and then me, I'd think this is your bag

[dysfun@social.treehouse.systems]

@davidgerard @lproven i would not imagine that el reg miss an opportunity to snark here.

[davidgerard@circumstances.run]

@dysfun @lproven and unlike my video audience, could cover jonny on the insanely shitty tests clearly and the disparity between tridge's confident assertions and actually looking at the awful new code

[dysfun@social.treehouse.systems]

@davidgerard @lproven "scoop me, you bastards"

[davidgerard@circumstances.run]

@nobody you know that's not the claim that claim is making

[nobody@mastodon.acm.org]

@davidgerard yeah but it's a very common trope, so I just assumed he must be coming from a similar intuition, and that if he'd spent another minute formulating his claim...

[chx@chx.contact]

@davidgerard @dysfun @lproven yeah the problem is not that he doesn't use pytest, if he thinks that's not good for his purposes, so be it. Rather the problem is his tests are shit.

[ivor@social.ivor.org]

@davidgerard nice summary, and good luck with the moves.

[lproven@social.vivaldi.net]

@davidgerard It's the Isle of Man TT Races this week and I have a week off. (I've been marshalling, in between the rain storms.) After a visit to London for the Ubuntu Summit, so I've been out for nearly 10 days. Bad timing, both of Canonical and the race organisers, I'm sure you'll agree.

[davidgerard@circumstances.run]

@lproven considering I'm having a week or so off ...

[lproven@social.vivaldi.net]

@davidgerard Should have come over here. We can lend a sofa.

[lproven@social.vivaldi.net]

@davidgerard

A colleague did this...

'Please do not vibe f--- up this software': Broken backups spark AI coding row in rsync project

Users probe backup failures find Claude-assisted commits. Veteran engineer retorts: 'I did not just vibe-code 'convert test suite to python'.'

theregister (www.theregister.com)

[davidgerard@circumstances.run]

@lproven no no it's a week to move house!

i suppose Glasgow is *technically* closer to Man than London is