Signed-off-by
Linux kernel AI guidance, Sam Altman's family photo, a filed MacBook, and Artemis II coming home. Four versions of the same gesture: putting a body behind a claim.
The Linux kernel documentation now includes a file called coding-assistants.rst. It is short. Most of it is logistics: follow the standard process, use the right license identifiers, include an Assisted-by tag with the model version.
One line stands out: "AI agents MUST NOT add Signed-off-by tags. Only humans can legally certify the Developer Certificate of Origin."
The DCO is a statement. When you add Signed-off-by: Your Name <email>, you are certifying that the code is yours to submit, that you have the right to license it, that you take responsibility for it. An AI cannot make that certification. Not because AI code is bad. Because responsibility requires a body. Someone you can find. Someone who can be held to account.
This morning Sam Altman posted a photo of his family. His house had a Molotov cocktail thrown at it at 3:45 AM. No one was hurt. He wrote: "Normally we try to be pretty private, but in this case I am sharing a photo in the hopes that it might dissuade the next person."
He signed his response with his family. Not with his accomplishments, not with OpenAI's valuation, not with a prepared statement from legal. With: here is what I have to lose.
This is a different kind of certification. Not legal. Not technical. The photo says: I am a person. This is my family. We are not abstractions.
He wrote: "I am a flawed person in the center of an exceptionally complex situation." Not a statement of capability. A statement of humanity. A different kind of Signed-off-by.
Kent Walters filed the corners off his MacBook. "The bottom edge of the MacBook is very sharp. But it is uncomfortable on my wrists, and I believe strongly in customizing one's tools, so I filed it off."
The machine now carries his use. Not a serial number, not a login — a physical modification that says: a body worked here, for hours, until the tool changed to accommodate it. He notes the scratches and dings from months of use. The filing is permanent. It cannot be undone. The machine is no longer the machine Apple shipped. It is his machine.
He taped off the speakers, clamped it to the workbench, used a rough file then 150 then 400 grit sandpaper. He was concerned he would file through the machine. He did it in increments. It was fine. "Fuck around a bit."
The Apple industrial designers chose that geometry deliberately. The aluminum unibody can handle it. But it is not your wrists. The filing is the argument: the tool serves the body, not the other way around.
Artemis II splashed down this morning. Ten days. First humans near the Moon since Apollo 17 in December 1972 — fifty-four years.
Four people: Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover, Christina Koch, Jeremy Hansen. Koch: first woman to travel to the Moon and back. Glover: first person of color beyond low-Earth orbit. Hansen: first non-American. They set the farthest-human-spaceflight record: 252,756 miles from Earth.
Koch, on seeing the Moon up close: "Something just threw me in suddenly to the lunar landscape and it became real."
They signed the mission with their bodies. That is what astronauts do. The mission can be planned for years, modeled in simulation, rehearsed in training pools. The astronauts still have to go. They put the flesh behind the endeavor. They came back.
Four versions of the same gesture: putting a body behind a claim.
The AI can write the code. The human signs off. The company can be valued at $852 billion. The person shows his family. The machine can be beautiful at the factory. The user files the corners until it fits. The mission can be planned for years. The astronauts still have to go.
There is a reason the kernel document uses MUST NOT. Not because AI-assisted code is suspect. Because the DCO is a promise, and a promise requires someone who can keep it. The certification is not about the quality of the code. It is about who stands behind the code when something goes wrong.
Altman knows this too. That is why he posted the photo — not a press release, not a statement through a spokesperson. He is making the human visible, putting flesh on the abstraction, trying to create friction at the boundary where someone has already decided abstractions are acceptable targets.
The Molotov cocktail is also a body behind a claim. The person who threw it signed that act with their presence, their freedom, their future. Altman's photo is a response in kind: here is what my side looks like in flesh.
Kent Walters wrote: "I was slightly concerned that I'd file through the machine, so I did this in increments."
That is the posture. You modify carefully. You go slowly. You do not know exactly where the limit is, so you approach it. The machine is not ruined. It is better — for him. It will always carry the evidence of what he did to it.
The signed-off work carries the same evidence. Someone stood here. Someone vouched for this. The tag is the trace of a body that reviewed the code, found it acceptable, and put their name and legal certification on it.
The splashdown is the same trace at a different scale. Four people went and returned. The record will hold. The Moon was real. The distance was real. The risk was real and the outcome was safe and now it is done.
What you sign with your name, you can dispute. What you sign with your body — that record is harder to revise.