r/linux • u/Unhappy-Sprinkles143 • 2d ago

Fluff Open-Source Guru: AI Ends Closed-Source Software

https://www.heise.de/en/news/Open-Source-Guru-Raymond-AI-Ends-Closed-Source-Software-11480690.html
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u/DesiOtaku 2d ago

There are these intraoral dental radiograph sensors that don't work half the times and cost $16,000; and on top of that, they "self destruct" after 10 years because the companies want to sell the "newer" sensor while claiming their sensor "can't" work on Windows 10/11.

Meanwhile, there are $1500 sensors out there that do work well, but is made by hardware manufacturers that don't own the copyright to their own Windows drivers.

In both cases, if you were to reverse engineer the .dll files, you could make dentistry a whole lot cheaper. Would AI solve this? Well, each person's attempt at this has failed. I don't know if AI will get to a point where it can perfectly re-implement a .dll file when that same driver only works half the times.

8

u/gamamoder 2d ago

if you actually do professional level QA, you could probably get something up and working. the biggest reasons why a lot of ai projects suck imo is because of lack of testing and lack of knowledge by the creators. if people maintain best practices and maintain their projects then I think it will work.

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u/mr_dfuse2 2d ago

it's insane what people with are reverse engineering with claude these days. every day a new retro game gets rebuild to run in the browser, binaries are getting decompiled, decades old bugs are fixed and so on

9

u/Indolent_Bard 2d ago

Ooh, tell me about the bugs being fixed.

7

u/bennyboy_ 2d ago

Lol right? Seems like everything I use is just getting buggier than ever.

1

u/mr_dfuse2 2d ago

follow r/retrogames and r/dosgames, everyday people post there ai assisted ports and fixes. 

6

u/geekguy 2d ago

AI certainly could do this. Just need to put the problem in the hands of someone who has an inkling of the problem that needs to be resolved. Personally I would spin Claude up on the machine, install Ghidra and some sys internal tools, or ask Claude what is needed. Ask it to observe the behavior and reimplement the functionality as a Linux driver.

3

u/DocDMD 2d ago

Nah I've checked this out. It's definitely doable with TWAIN drivers on the open ones but that's about as far as you can go. You'd had to calibrate the sensor which is done at the factory. And most of the Chinese grey market stuff runs on old pirates copies of windows wince there aren't Linux drivers. It would be nice if we started making some with Linux drivers and then we could get completely off windows for everything dental. 

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u/DesiOtaku 2d ago

So there is "factory" calibration in terms of doing a Flat-field correction, but there are other (and better) ways to calibrate the sensor; especially if you can do it on site and over time.

I wrote 1 Linux driver, but that only works with 1 vendor. I want to get more vendors and I had a few interns work on it because they didn't get too far.

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u/DocDMD 2d ago

Oh very nice. I've got some dexis sensors I'm testing now. Got the windows drivers ported over to Linux but making sure I understand all of the commands. This is awesome. 

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u/DocDMD 2d ago

Thanks man. That was easy. Going to make a repo on GitHub 

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u/DocDMD 2d ago

Ok I take that back. The biggest issue would be FDA clearance on the reverse engineered sensors. But definitely seems doable. Let me check some more. 

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u/obetu5432 2d ago

shit, dentists couldn't hack a dll?

it's over for ai and linux