So my systems recently updated to rsync 3.4.3, and as soon as that happened my backup system - which does incremental backups using multiple --compare-dest= arguments - started to fail on anything but a full backup.

Revert to 3.4.1 and it works.

So I go look at the source in GitHub to see what might have changed, because there doesn't seem to be anything relevant in the changelog.

Since 3.4.1, 36 commits by "tridge and claude"

Oh for fuck's sakes.

@JeremiahFieldhaven this? https://github.com/RsyncProject/rsync/issues/915

@JeremiahFieldhaven fork everything, it's all slop now and needs new caretakers

@JeremiahFieldhaven figures

@JeremiahFieldhaven https://aidirtylist.info/citations/andrew-tridge-pushes-flurry-of-code-slop-to-rsync-respository/ thanks for catching that. I've cited your post here

@gryphonmyers @JeremiahFieldhaven checking the GitHub repo i see a lot of recent regressions... Lovely

@cap_ybarra @JeremiahFieldhaven on rsync, this is scary. It's getting to a point where just stopping updates for a while on crucial systems seems safer than applying them.

@mavu @cap_ybarra @JeremiahFieldhaven basically, we already stopped upgrading to newer versions where ensloppification happens, but it’s now being backported under the guise of security fixes, ill though-out ones (or not-at-all in the case of slop). This is a problem.

rsync is so critical, I wonder if there are people versed enough in it who could hard-fork the last workable pre-slop version and maintain it from there. No need for big fancy new features, just keep it working and safe and secure. (openrsync seems to be both incomplete and unportable at this point.)

@mavu @cap_ybarra @JeremiahFieldhaven 3.4.3 looks like mostly security changes (couple bugs say security fixes broke their thing, so it might be the case for your problem). If you only ever rsync with trusted machines, you're all good, but more broadly sitting out future security fixes is less appealing than sitting out future features

@rf @mavu @cap_ybarra @JeremiahFieldhaven not if they come with regressions :/ then you’d rather mitigate instead of applying the broken patches.

@mirabilos @mavu @cap_ybarra @JeremiahFieldhaven There is also github.com/gokrazy/rsync which i haven't tested yet.

@mirabilos @mavu @cap_ybarra @JeremiahFieldhaven "versed enough" and "getting versed enough" are both options, IMHO.

It's likely fine to take some time with the next round of updates.

@billchenchina
https://codeberg.org/small-hack/open-slopware#file-transferring lists the following rsync alternative as LLM free: https://github.com/kristapsdz/openrsync
@mirabilos @mavu @cap_ybarra @JeremiahFieldhaven

@JeremiahFieldhaven

every week I go "please, not this", "please not that too"

today it's

please, not rsync

😢

@JeremiahFieldhaven Christ if it’s coming for rsync of all things software is clearly done

@JeremiahFieldhaven cc @gryphonmyers for the list

@JeremiahFieldhaven These posts are like war correspondence: They got tridge

@sinbad @JeremiahFieldhaven What an idiotic thing to do to a piece of software with a venerable past and whose key feature is its reliability. All these OSS maintainers just burning decades of trust over a perceived 10-ish % “efficiency gain” with snowballing amounts of evidence to the contrary, and a looming bubble implosion on the horizon.

@distractal @sinbad @JeremiahFieldhaven Though I'm not sure how much the 10-ish % "efficiency gain" is when I can ask an agent to solve a problem for me in 5-15 minutes, or I can spend literally hours poring over a code base to understand what I need to do to fix it myself.

@chris @sinbad @JeremiahFieldhaven Here's my question... is it really, solving the problem for you? Like, actually? Given all of the costs in the full context of how it operates?

I don't believe that it is.

Can you trust everything it outputs? Are you able to catch any problems with it 100% of the time? Are you somehow able to avoid it anchoring your thinking around a particular method?

Let's assume it does solve the problem, and that somehow a purely ethical AI is produced that magically solves the labor, environment, plagiarism issues, and that is correct 100% of the time.

Even if it does, you are slowly eroding your ability to solve problems of that nature independent of the agent.

No matter how careful you are, no matter how smart, how skilled, how well-versed.

You cannot beat cognitive surrender.

@chris @sinbad @JeremiahFieldhaven So, given that we have NOT solved all those other problems, do you think there's even a 10% efficiency gain?

I think I was pretty generous with 10%.

@distractal @sinbad @JeremiahFieldhaven I'm fighting cognitive surrender every day. Either I get tasks done quickly, or I just give up and don't do anything at all. I mean, I could just go back to wallowing in self destructive ideation for hours on end.

@chris @distractal @sinbad @JeremiahFieldhaven i dont think you know what those words mean

and if your solveing depression with AI well thats depressing and sounds like how people talk about alcohol

@glassresistor @distractal @sinbad @JeremiahFieldhaven I must not know what any of that means, or I wouldn't have said it. You remind me of my brother, who compared my computer use with his gambling addiction. I'm sure those things are the same thing.

@chris @glassresistor @distractal @sinbad @JeremiahFieldhaven yeah, they literally are the same thing. The "hooked" loop. https://pivot-to-ai.com/2025/06/05/generative-ai-runs-on-gambling-addiction-just-one-more-prompt-bro/

@glassresistor @distractal @sinbad @JeremiahFieldhaven Is it not cognitive surrender if I want to turn my brain off on a regular basis? This thread is making me want to do that right now. I can do the next best thing and go play video games instead.

@JeremiahFieldhaven

"This gives more predictable behaviour in case of bugs
where uninitialised or stale memory is accidentally accessed."

Gives off I don't want valgrind to tell me I am a bad coder energy.

@JeremiahFieldhaven Considering forking it. I think I could probably do a reasonable maintenance job.

If I forked it, who would would run my version?

@xdej @billchenchina @mavu @cap_ybarra @JeremiahFieldhaven which I mentioned above already, with reasons

@chris Learning is forever but a Claude Code subscription bills monthly.

@JeremiahFieldhaven *sigh*

```
$ cat /etc/portage/package.mask/rsync
# AI slop
# https://mastodon.gamedev.place/@JeremiahFieldhaven/116654345332213390
>=net-misc/rsync-3.4.2
```

@leah

Leah, you're far more active in the Voidlinux than I am; what's the state of Voidlinux regarding upstream AI slop? Any chance for there to be a void-repo-nonslop, or rather a void-repo-sloppy ?

@datenwolf In general we keep packaging what upstream deems stable.

@JeremiahFieldhaven You might want to check openrsync:
https://www.freshports.org/net/openrsync

@smyru @JeremiahFieldhaven

macOS has been shipping openrsync instead of rsync for a while.

I haven't used rsync much for a while, for syncing backups ZFS is much nicer, but I do occasionally find a need for it.

@Diziet @JeremiahFieldhaven I would encourage the Debian maintainer of rsync to hop over to another upstream if it was non-AI-slop.

@JeremiahFieldhaven
It looks like @korben 's one month old blog post defending rsync's stance on AI linked below does not age very well
https://korben.info/open-slopware-chasse-aux-sorcieres-ia-open-source.html

@xdej @JeremiahFieldhaven @korben he writes like someone threatened to take away his cocaine

@sunweaver @Diziet OpenBSD did a (as they do) small rewrite; could look at how usable the portable version of that is for us

@JeremiahFieldhaven All I can imagine is the original maintainers are gone, and someone else must be maintaining it now. Cause rsync is not new, nor is it "sexy". It is a tool that many of us have used our entire careers.

I worry if this is happening to things like rsync, what it means across the board. Who will continue to maintain the repos I have once I leave, retire, die, etc?

It does highlight the same thing we bring up over-and-over: we need to find ways to compensate experienced software developers to maintain open source software. Otherwise, script kiddies and LLMs will stomp all over it before long.

EDIT: I now see the messages about Tridge. I don't know what to say...

@charette @JeremiahFieldhaven As far as I understand, the "tridge" mentioned is the original rsync author. Sometimes people just catch a memetic virus.

Thank you @Diziet that'd be great. Sign me up for your fork! 👍 @JeremiahFieldhaven

@JeremiahFieldhaven many thanks to tridge for the creation and maintenance of rsync up to v3.4.1, but this LLM shit has got to stop.

For Arch users, I submitted a patch to the AUR `rsync-git` package: https://aur.archlinux.org/packages/rsync-git#comment-1073285

Similar pinning should be possible (and recommended) for other OSes.

@leah @datenwolf 😿

@JeremiahFieldhaven
Oh damn it all. Tridge has fallen

@mav @JeremiahFieldhaven
🎶
Andrew Tridge has fallen down,
fallen down, fallen down, ... 🎶

@sinbad @JeremiahFieldhaven I have so much fatigue wrt. working on my FOSS projects right now, considering the entire ecosystem is dying and I can but watch from the side

@jens @dalias @mavu @cap_ybarra @JeremiahFieldhaven I am receiving signals that people might be on it, though distro packagers are likely to be too wary of switching upstreams, unfortunately (but having both would at least allow users more choice to avoid bad-quality slop)

@billchenchina @mavu @cap_ybarra @JeremiahFieldhaven that’s not portable

@mirabilos @jens @mavu @cap_ybarra @JeremiahFieldhaven Switching upstreams might be an appropriate response once trustworthy ones are established, but the critical first response is declining to upgade (sticking with whatever good version they had) and just accumulating security patches.

@dalias @jens @mavu @cap_ybarra @JeremiahFieldhaven the problem specifically with rsync is that the patches for the security holes you’d likely want fixed are not only slop but also break functionality in bad ways

@mirabilos @jens @mavu @cap_ybarra @JeremiahFieldhaven That's where some collab to fix the security patches comes in.

@dalias @jens @mavu @cap_ybarra @JeremiahFieldhaven yeah, I’m hoping for this, and I got signals that people are beginning to work on them

@chris @distractal @sinbad @JeremiahFieldhaven curious how close to addiction itll feel like at 10x the cost

and my dude outside of $ loss if your gaming like an addict its an addiction

@glassresistor

I'd chime in here and say that good people suffer from substance abuse. Living in Las Vegas and watching the penny pinchers succumb to a big payout from a slot machine was both fascinating and very sad. AI gives a programmer the illusion that they are now the power code maker they always envisioned themselves to be. That isn't much different than cocaine. We're losing good people to this.

@chris @distractal @sinbad @JeremiahFieldhaven

"AI is like ~the internet is like~ television:
it makes smart people smarter and dumb people dumber"

@blausand You have put the strikethrough in the wrong place, but more to the point, no, I think that's wrong. I've yet to see any solid evidence it makes anyone smarter under any circumstances.

They say or maybe even *think* they're smarter, yes, but that is *not* the same thing.

This is all about appearance versus fact, and that's what you have muddled up.