About an AI porting a Linux Wi-Fi driver to FreeBSD for an old MacBook.
Has this happened?
Yes 43 (38%)Not sure 48 (42%)No 22 (19%)
Votes cast 1–2 October 2026: 100,590 votes from 9,694 people.
Hacker News has set AI a lot of challenges over the years. Which ones has it met?
About an AI porting a Linux Wi-Fi driver to FreeBSD for an old MacBook.
Votes cast 1–2 October 2026: 100,590 votes from 9,694 people.
He had the full source code of a working Linux driver that does exactly the same thing, just in a neighboring kernel dialect. The task was to translate, not invent. Sure, it's still impressive (given the difference in kernel APIs), but it's not the same as writing a driver from scratch using only a PDF datasheet. Now, when an AI takes an undocumented Chinese chip and writes a driver by sniffing the bus with a logic analyzer - then I'll call it "reasoning"