WingNews logo WingNews GitHub [2]
top | item 46093518

Zigbook Is Plagiarizing the Zigtools Playground

475 points| todsacerdoti | 3 months ago |zigtools.org

145 comments

order
[+] nusl|3 months ago|reply
Repo seems to be gone? User action or GitHub action?

Regardless, for visibility as to maybe-why this happened, here are screenshots of the user editing comments to insult/make them say something they never did;

https://imgur.com/a/LsvBXY1

https://web.archive.org/web/20251130091635/https://github.co...

The tool itself claims "Zero AI" (https://www.zigbook.net/) yet is very obviously A-Lot-AI.

[+] jonathrg|3 months ago|reply
It's unbelievable to me that Github allows repo admins to edit other people's comments.
[+] NoteyComplexity|3 months ago|reply
The responds and edits are simply unprofessional and immature. I don't hate AI and in fact I use it for many research based tasks, helping me narrowing a lot of tough topics, but it is the People with these kind of attitude turns me off.
[+] mcintyre1994|3 months ago|reply
I find GitHub to be very prompt and responsive to abuse reports, so I wouldn’t be surprised if it was them if people reported the comments etc.
[+] nusl|3 months ago|reply
Follow-up: seems they've been banned
[+] xrd|3 months ago|reply
Did you make up A-Lot-AI? Can I suggest "A-Lott-a-AI"?

If you did, this is the greatest thing created in 3 ABC ("After Bullshit ChatGPTification"; ChatGPT launched in 2022.).

NB: Since ChatGPT is basically the new Messiah for many, I really think we should now be using dates like 3 ABC or 5 POS. POS stands for "Prior to Overlord Slop/Shit". I suggest we give up AD/BC.

But, please, I'm not the messiah! (hopefully you have watched Life of Brian!)

[+] arccy|3 months ago|reply
probably user reports to GitHub's moderation team
[+] gnarlouse|3 months ago|reply
Had a conversation with the Zigbook maintainer. It’s either a young kid or somebody that has some serious growing up to do. Just generally weird behavior.
[+] lillecarl|3 months ago|reply
https://github.com/zigbook/zigbook/pull/45#issuecomment-3592... Would this be grounds to report zigbook to GitHub maybe? This is wild
[+] Crestwave|3 months ago|reply
Oh wow. Your original comment is pretty darn prophetic.
[+] keyle|3 months ago|reply
The whole thing looks very childish, I'm not sure I even fully understand the conversation of #43. Are they troll accounts?
[+] nusl|3 months ago|reply
Grifter or not, editing user comments to make it look like they're saying something they're not isn't okay.

Edit: It appears that the repo is gone? User removed it or GitHub?

[+] SSLy|3 months ago|reply
zigbook edited a 3rd party comment to say "I’m autistic and sperging out over stuff on the internet that doesn’t actually matter. Don’t mind me."

Just your run off the mill AI grifter.

EDIT: https://lobste.rs/s/pbn3zy/zigbook_learn_zig_programming_lan...

"Quick research - author's actual profile is https://github.com/zk-evm, and he's a potential scammer from crypto spaces, who also happens to be running fake GitHub Organisation of the Cursor editor, along with related BuyMeACoffee claiming it being official page of the "Cursor AI Editor"."

[+] wyldfire|3 months ago|reply
Plagiarism is a moral wrong.

But copyright infringement is a legal wrong (a civil liability).

Is what they're doing infringing on a copyrighted work? Or does it fail to uphold license terms? Many open source licenses have some amount of attribution as a requirement, so that'd be something to consider.

[+] bjt|3 months ago|reply
It's addressed in the post. MIT license. Zigbook is not honoring the attribution requirement. A PR to change that was closed and obfuscated.
[+] claudiug|3 months ago|reply
not so much to AI companies :)
[+] lenkite|3 months ago|reply
AI is actually beginning to encourage "restricted source", public-only-gets-binary debates to simply avoid such legal issues.

Write a snail-mail letter to get the real sources. Repositories are private with a small well-vetted list of contributors. Also avoid slop-PR headaches that away.

[+] kachapopopow|3 months ago|reply
I just can't get over how ridicioulus the "no ai" statement is.

I really love the part where llm.txt has the same notice, something humans will never read, or the fact that llm.txt exists considering that there is distaste for AI in every part of this llm generated book.

[+] booleandilemma|3 months ago|reply
"Not generated by AI" is something that every programmer everywhere is going to say about their own work, even when it's obviously AI generated. I've started to publicly call people out when I see they've posted something on social media (LinkedIn, etc.) when I see they've made an AI-generated post. The fraud has to stop.
[+] otabdeveloper4|3 months ago|reply
> I just can't get over how ridicioulus the "no ai" statement is

You don't have to. I'm sure there are lots of other communities that welcome low-effort slop with no effort put into it.

[+] vanous|3 months ago|reply
@Zigtools:

Thank you for your educative post, letting the community know.

Don't let it to drag you down in any way. This is emotionally draining and takes away motivation, but keep going.

[+] nmilo|3 months ago|reply
I remember reading the original zig book post and how weird it smelt. Even though it’s LLM written there’s more than a trivial amount of effort put into it. What could anyone possibly have to gain by doing this?
[+] Havoc|3 months ago|reply
I could see LLMs copying code as innocent mistake, but identical sha256sum on wasm files...jikes
[+] znpy|3 months ago|reply
The only stupid thing here is that the zigtools playground is mit licensed, so all zigbook had to do was acknowledging original copyright.
[+] koolala|3 months ago|reply
Playground wise, is Zigs wasm compiler able to compile out simd wasm in the browser? I'm trying to find the best languages that can. So far it's just assemblyscript and c/c++ and their compilers are big.
[+] robertwpearce|3 months ago|reply
I decided to start learning Zig this past week, and typing in "zig book" to a search engine led me to that project. After a handful of pages, I had no clue what was going on and couldn't follow it (that said, I am new).

I quickly found https://ziglang.org/learn/, and the guide is great. For ziglings, make sure you're on the latest dev build (as it says in the README)! (Edit: or get the tagged release for the version you have!)

[+] poetril|3 months ago|reply
I went down the same path last week, and found Zigbook to be a very poor resource for learning. +1 for ziglings, that's been my favorite so far
[+] PaulRobinson|3 months ago|reply
Disappointing.

When zigbook first appeared here, I took a cursory scan, and it looked pretty solid and a useful resource. Seems it duped me and got me good. I was even defending the use of AI a little - although the claim needed to go.

Seems they just were just trying to do over a nascent community that I'm interested in seeing growing and wasn't a member of yet.

Good riddance, then.

[+] flykespice|3 months ago|reply
This is just a vibe coder who tried spin his business onto a growing language. They don't care about their product (code) quality as long as it sells.
[+] darshanime|3 months ago|reply
since zig is famously decentralized, i don't think there is a way to effectively combat bad actors like these? there is no "official zig org" that can disown them
[+] pa7ch|3 months ago|reply
Its the opposite in my understanding. Zig has a BDFL.

Trademarks are the usual cudgel of choice to enforce a bad actor claiming to be part of offcial Zig.

[+] IncreasePosts|3 months ago|reply
In a decentralized but communicating community, this kind of post is raising awareness, and then the others in the community will make their own choices regarding the matter.
[+] conartist6|3 months ago|reply
Our rules are so easy to follow but I'm not sad that the the consequences for breaking them are serious, in terms of your social reputation at least
[+] do_not_redeem|3 months ago|reply
I wonder what tools the Zig team has to deal with trolls like this.

Is the zig name or logo trademarked? What about the mascot he's using as his github picture?

They're violating the terms of the MIT license as mentioned in the article, so maybe Zigtools has legal standing.

As for lying about no AI, being an asshole isn't illegal, so no angle there.

Any other ideas I missed?

[+] gnarlouse|3 months ago|reply
I’m doing AoC on Zig this year. Zigtools will be my reference. Cheers!
[+] kklisura|3 months ago|reply
There should be something of an OFAC Sanction List for SWE for people who blatantly transgress moral and ethical lines.