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Quacker News

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Using an LLM kind of takes the sting out of an aloof parody of HN.

Not just that. Scraping the website with AGPL-licensed code and then feeding it into OpenAI's GPT-4 API [1], a corporation led by someone about as "tech bro" as it gets, which they are paying for in attempt to mock? This may be some generational thing, but the layers of "satire" here are reminding me of a snake eating its own tail and I feel more cringe than anything else.

[1]: https://github.com/dfeldman/quackernews

Unrelated, why is the duck in the "logo" looking at the back of their screen while typing?

Edit: Took me a while to remember, but if we are talking satire using a large language model, this is how it is done: https://www.goody2.ai Wrote them a thank you e-mail when I first saw it and of course they responded with an e-mail generated with their GOODY-2 prompt to give me yet another great laugh.

> Unrelated, why is the duck in the "logo" looking at the back of their screen while typing?

Having seen far too many AI-generated chibi images, I can say with 95% certainty the logo was generated by AI.

Absolutely. It’s unmistakable, even without the backwards screen.

But why? Why does it have such a characteristic look? I wonder what causes this sort of recognisable ‘AI style’ to emerge.

I am not an expert when it comes to image generation, but know a fair bit about large language models and machine learning in general. My guess is that like all gradient-based models, they will find certain minima based on the the training data and be somewhat reluctant to deviate too strongly from it as this would most likely penalise both training and test loss. Thus, a "style" can easily "emerge" simple due to the way we formulate these models mathematically. By intuition, consider how say a comedian or workman would often be reluctant to deviate from whatever is tried and tested. Machine learning models tend to be somewhat conservative by default, although there is plenty of literature on how we can sample them to try to avoid this at the cost of reduced accuracy/precision.

There was a guy that ran a kind of parody summary of HN manually for a few years.

It was mildly entertaining at times.

However, ever since a couple of years ago now there has not been any further posts on said site.

Not even a “goodbye” note.

I wonder what happened. Maybe (hopefully) the guy that ran it got tired of posting and moved on to something else.

it's a fun project, but the actual output makes me think of my favourite quote about AI writing - "if no one could be bothered to write it, I certainly can't be bothered to read it"

OK fine, this might be one of the best use cases for LLMs that I've seen. The output is pretty witty and impressive for the low cost of some basic scraping infra and a really short but effective prompt (https://github.com/dfeldman/quackernews/blob/38893fdfbc047ac...)

Well done OP

For similar fun, Whacker News:

https://rachelbythebay.com/fun/hrand/

(refresh page for a fresh shuffle)

Would love to see this in the style of that “brutalist” hn from a few weeks ago so I can immediately immolate from acute second-hand embarrassment.

It seems a bit mean-spirited as it picks specific commenters from threads to mock. Satire is one of those things where if you're not punching up it's just bullying.

> Meanwhile, commentators embellish this mundane dance of gradient descent with philosophical waxing that could put a caffeinated philosopher to shame.

I’m pretty sure it’s mocking… me. Whatever. It’s probably right.

> mean-spirited

Of whom? The person who made Quacker News?

I don't think "AI" can be mean-spirited. Surely it's analogous to standing in front of those Crazy Mirrors at sideshows that distort your appearance. The mirror takes your input and returns an unflattering output, that's its job. Quacker News is the crazy mirror.

> Of whom? The person who made Quacker News?

Yes.

The “AI” didn’t do anything by itself, it was tasked to produce this. The author then made the decision to publish its output.

The fun-house mirror analogy breaks down because those being depicted aren’t opting in to this experience. It’s like a fun-house mirror that’s scraping people’s social media profile photos and mocking them for their looks.

Okay but if the content is automated, the author avoids making publishing decisions about specific output.

I take your point about mirrors and consent. But if the mirrors are installed in a public place such as local park, passers-by are opted in.

One question is, should we feel offended by algorithmic insults? Isn't that like being offended by a thesaurus? If it's an "AI insult dog" web app you're visiting, you'd expect insults.

I thought this read as "Quaker News" which would be more compelling if the revival behind it played out.

> I thought this read as "Quaker News" which would be more compelling if the revival behind it played out

I also initially misread this as "Quaker News", but don't understand what you mean by "if the revival behind it played out". Could you elaborate on what you mean by that?

I was raised as a Quaker. I assume you were referring to the religion but maybe you were referring to something else.

This is brilliant, made only better by the comments so far.

Interestingly, all but one of the descriptions on the front page start with the word "In".

The only one that doesn't is about Quacker News:

  > 11.  ▲ Quacker News (quackernews.com)
  Another day, another hilarious stumble through Quacker News, the sanctuary for eager tech-luminaries-in-their-own-mind to echo their clichéd beginnings with "In". Because, naturally, pretending you’re starting an epic 19th-century novel guarantees the profundity of your tech musings will reach biblical proportions.

Wow congrats this is useless.

Most art is

A landing page duck could turn pun to punchline.

I miss n-gate

Some weeks would go by and I would just check n-gate to see what happened on HN.

I just checked it yesterday. I guess the writer died during COVID? I really miss his war on users take.

This is based on almost nothing but I always suspected it was done by maciej cegłowski. He has a very similar sort of semi-sincere contempt for the fixations of tech people and the writing style isn't that different from his social media persona. He also disappeared around the same time n-gate went inactive tho he eventually came back.

I don't think Maciej cares as much about HN as n-gate did.

This is the first time I'm hearing of n-gate. But if it's awesome then yeah, it was me.

https://x.com/atax1a/status/1529525996507914240

> An Internet (business model: Uber for tech industry criticism), who previously regularly updated on a weekly basis, hasn't been seen since August of 2021. They leave behind the following cryptic remark on Tweeter

  [Oct 2021] Rumors of my death are almost as exaggerated as my writing style.  Sorry for the delay; I'm catching up.

A Reddit comment claimed that n-gate was sued to stop publishing.

omg rofl x 1000 :-p

https://twitter.com/webshitweekly/status/1332452940104179712

I miss their about page

http://n-gate.com/about/

It's literally just ChatGPT told to sound like n-gate. The prompt begins:

> Create a humorous and mocking summary in the style of n-gate.com.

https://github.com/dfeldman/quackernews/blob/1d7591338579162...

I wonder whether the result would be closer to n-gate if the prompt left out "humorous and mocking".

My favorite part of having something featured on hn was seeing it on n-gate the next week.

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