Re: Mirage-net-xen and Generic Segmentation Offload, and question about genAI and code

[Richard Mortier <rmm1002@xxxxxxxxx>]

Slightly tangential but FWIW: regarding AI and the language used to talk
about AI, I found

https://www.techpolicy.press/we-need-to-talk-about-how-we-talk-about-ai/

and

https://buttondown.com/maiht3k/archive/how-to-talk-about-ai-without-adding-to-the/


both interesting reads.


On 03/08/2026 16:31, pierre.alain@xxxxxxx wrote:
> Dear Hannes,
> Thank you for your reply.
>
> 3 août 2026, 16:38 hannes@xxxxxxxxxxx wrote:
>
>>
>> That sounds great - do you have some profiling what are the expensive bits 
>> compared to the linux firewall? A factor of 2 is still very high IMHO - a 
>> good selling point would be a factor of 0.2 ;)
>>
> That's just based on some quick experiments but so far I got up to 4Gb/s by 
> using a different hypercall that vectorises grant copies. That has kept the 
> firewall below 100℅ CPU (just under, at around 90℅), and it seems the next 
> step is to implement multiqueue communication to remove stress from sys-net. 
> So that's not a near future perspective :(
>>
>>  From my point of view, the first item is crucial: be transparent (as you 
>> are) about the usage thereof. Review all the changes in detail, and figure 
>> out whether that is the way to go or there would be some other way (which 
>> also means, be open for constructive feedback on PRs).
>>
>> The license issue is a real one, where I don't have any clue about. If the 
>> first point - you reviewed and now own the code - is done extensively, it 
>> shouldn't be a thing to re-implement the solution you saw with your own 
>> fingers -- but that certainly won't solve the licensing in any way (since it 
>> is not a clean-room implementation). I wonder what a good strategy is? Maybe 
>> other people who use AI a lot have some ideas about it? All I can tell is 
>> that last Friday in Germany some AI music generator lost in court against 
>> real musicians -- so the AI generated music violates copyright. I believe 
>> the same will be in the future being adapted to software and copyright.
>>
>> And obviously, using AI to find references, compare packets, ... is an ok 
>> utilization - as long as you agree to the terms and impact (to climate, 
>> politics, strengthening bigtech companies, likely more) of AI. [To make it 
>> transparent, I never used AI, and I don't plan to use any for writing code. 
>> If you're interested about some reasoning, I find the article 
>> https://superrr.net/en/blog/about-ai-and-unlikelihood very interesting, with 
>> lots of useful links. If you're more of an audio person, 
>> https://techwontsave.us/episodes also has tons of interesting episodes.]
>>
> To be honest l'm not thrilled to have actually found that tool so helpful. 
> I'm not happy with the climate impact, nor any of all impacts you mention. 
> Nor I'm happy about the social impact : I feel as though I have missed out a 
> good session of sharing and coding with peers as during my only mirage 
> retreat. I wanted to understand the hype with them, but I think I was too 
> naive :(
>
> Now the code exist, and I'm really keen to spare anyone the cost to recode it 
> under a clean-room protocol.
>
>> I am happy to review your PRs, and am not so happy to review random 
>> passing-by PRs which are heavily done by AI without any manual review (as 
>> https://github.com/mirage/mirage/pull/1647).
>>
>
> Thank you for your review proposal, and I'll be glad to defend/adapt my code 
> proposition :)
>
> About the PR you mention, the PR text clearly feels AI-generated, perhaps the 
> code too. Clearly it should have been disclosed if that was the case. On the 
> "how to implement that" it seems straightforward enough to me to approve, but 
> maybe it would have been better to decline due to AI usage.
>
> Best
> Pierre
>


--
Richard Mortier
rmm1002@xxxxxxxxx