Hacker News Reader

Not to distract from the message, but I appreciate that this is largely plaintext not React vibeslop.

MattyRadon Statement on US government directive to suspend access to Fable 5 and Mythos 5

My first thought is that this government-Anthropic feud is good publicity for both of them.

  - Anthropic is seen as a victim/hero
  - They get Government-endorsed model hype
  - Monday will be a bad publicity day with the new Agent SDK limits, this overrides/dominates the headlines

  - The government gets to appear like they're ahead of the curve
  - The government gets to appear forcible and weapons-conscious (and maybe earn some right-wing points)

The government is possibly a real threat here, but it's also possible that this is a case of knights rallying the mooks (https://ribbonfarm.com/2020/01/16/the-internet-of-beefs/), and the models will be back online Monday with a note that "we gave em hell in court because we're so smart and dedicated and talented and good at beefing"

MattyRadon New Anthropic privacy policy: age/identity verification for consumer accounts

Also got this email.

I doubt that Anthropic themselves are pushing identity verification, for what that's worth (which is admittedly not worth very much).

It's a real shame though. Time to shop around, or bite the bullet and buy a real GPU.

MattyRadon I'm Tired of Talking to AI

Keybase. Keybase was/is a trust network that was unceremoniously and unduly strangled. (You were the chosen one!)

I don't know how its style of trust systems can help us solve these major trust problems, but I feel that it's the right direction to save us from the onslaught. If I had the time, this is where I'd focus my efforts, i.e. creating a (maintained) trust overlay on existing social networks. Using slop vacates trust, share your trust signals with other people you trust.

MattyRadon Google Declaring War on the Web

Welcome to the dark forest.

MattyRadon Appearing productive in the workplace

I think the author is describing the new incarnation of the Death March. In the Death March, contributors know that an active project will be dead-on-arrival, or cannot be redeemed. Maybe a small difference here being that the AI-equipped contributors won't be aware of the project status (i.e. futile).

Maybe this means AI has democratized Death Marches.

MattyRadon Talking to strangers at the gym

Good for the author for finding some success. I'd recommend seeking a significant other, somehow that sounds less daunting that making friends past 30. Cool roommates are friend-ajacent and help with loneliness; I had a cool roommate for a while until he moved in with his girlfriend, after which I was deeply lonely until I met my now wife.

MattyRadon To my students

See below that:

'Don't believe self-serving lies about technologies being "inevitable" or "here to stay". You don't have to just go along with the dominant narrative. You can make deliberate choices and help others to do the same.'

MattyRadon AI Made Writing Code Easier. It Made Being an Engineer Harder

> One engineer captured this shift perfectly in a widely shared essay, describing how AI transformed the engineering role from builder to reviewer.

I stopped here. Was this written by an an LLM? This sentence in particular reads exactly like the author supplied said essay as context and this sentence is the LLM's summarization of it. Nowhere is the original article linked, either, further decreasing trust. Moreover, there's an ad at the bottom for some BS "talent" platform to hire the author. This article is probably an LLM generated ad.

My trust is vacated.

This makes me feel that the SWE work/identity crisis is less important than the digital trust crisis.

MattyRadon Microgpt

Hoenikker had been experimenting with melting and re-freezing ice-nine in the kitchen of his Cape Cod home.

Beautiful, perhaps like ice-nine is beautiful.

MattyRadon OpenAI agrees with Dept. of War to deploy models in their classified network

Yeah, agreed. I probably wasn't going to delete my OpenAI account (ala the link that is also being upvoted on HN), it just seemed like a hassle vs ceasing to use OpenAI. But when the staff at OpenAI employ mental gymnastics, selective hearing, willful ignorance, or plain ignorance to justify compliance with manmade horrors, I think it's probably important to vote with our feet.

MattyRadon Signal leaders warn agentic AI is an insecure, unreliable surveillance risk

I use agentic LLMs (for side projects, properly sandboxed) as much as the next guy, but collectively the normalization of deviance is pretty apparent and shocking (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Normalization_of_deviance).

Backdooring you own machine, sending your .env files, normalizing slop in code review, leaking IP (which is trained on and send to RLHF), YOLO mode, these things would have been unconscionable 2 years ago.

MattyRadon Rich Hickey: Thanks AI

Tangentially related, "slop" really isn't a negative enough term for unwanted LLM garbage. "Slop" which is fed to pigs, has utility. "Slop" as a verb doesn't necessarily have a (strong) negative association ("It was slopped on the plate, but it was tasty").

I use the term "barf" more often. Barf has no utility*. Barf is always seen in a negative context. Barf is forcibly ejected from an unwilling participant (the LLM), and barf's foulness is coerced upon everyone that witnesses it. I think it's a better metaphor.

I know that this is just semantics, but still.

* even though LLM output __can__, and often does, have utility, we are specifically referring to unwanted LLM output that does not have utility. I'm not trying to argue that LLMs are objectively useless here, only that they are sometimes misused to the users' detriment.

MattyRadon I don't care how well your "AI" works

I think this was a really good article up until `on power`, where it became whiny, vindictive, and aimless.

MattyRadon Show HN: I made a heatmap diff viewer for code reviews

Ok, I'll bite though, let's try it out as a non-maintainer.

I loaded https://0github.com/laravel/framework/pull/57499. Completely random, it's a PR in the last github repo I had open.

At 60%, it highlights significantly more test code than the material changes that need review. Strike one.

At no threshold (0-100) does it highlight the deleted code in UniqueBroadcastEvent.php, which seems highly important to review. The maintainer even comments about the removal in the actual PR! Strike two.

The only line that gets highlighted at > 50% in the material code diffs is one that hasn't changed. Strike three.

So, honest attempt, but it didn't work out for me.

MattyRadon Show HN: I made a heatmap diff viewer for code reviews

Seems like a catch-22. For codebases that I'm highly familiar with and regularly perform code review in, I'd say "thanks LLM, but I don't trust you, I'm more familiar with this codebase than you, and I don't need your help." For codebases that I'm not familiar with, I'm not really performing code review (at least not approving MR/PRs or doing the merging).

But still, this is very creative and a nice application of LLMs that isn't strictly barf.

MattyRadon Using AI to negotiate a $195k hospital bill down to $33k

From a quick Google query, it says that ~%90 of Americans have health insurance (which seems higher to me than I'd expected). I'd be very interested in knowing the number of uninsured, negligent/nefarious, and exorbitant invoices that are issued as a percentage of all invoices, for the purpose of determining the scale of criminality with respect to your description.

MattyRadon Android's sideloading limits are its most anti-consumer move

I glanced at Ubuntu Touch, but its device compatibility looked severely lacking (https://devices.ubuntu-touch.io/).... I have old Pixel phones I could potentially try it out on, but the last Pixel phone that is officially supported is the 3a. So that is a bummer.

MattyRadon I created a curated list of AI agents for consumers and developers

Thanks. I was able to get up and running with AnythingLLM, which offers agency with Ollama (provided a model that supports tools). Pretty neat, I'm excited to try it out.

MattyRadon I created a curated list of AI agents for consumers and developers

I guess "agentic" LLMs are the new hotness. https://www.agentrank.tech/category/coding

It seems as though all of the AI Agents (I'm still not sure what that even means) require 3rd parties? Or more specifically: are you aware of any Ollama compatible AI Agents?

MattyRadon Cinematography of "Andor"

I thought it was great except for the final episode of season 1.

Spoilers:

People seem to gush over Maarva's hologram speech, I thought it was pretty weak (it started good then it was fumbled).

Maarva's act of rebellion should have been killing herself to deliver her speech at the right time. She's old and sickly, so it'd add gravitas and cost effectively nothing. Then she should have said that she'd resisted all her life, but killing herself was her first act of rebellion. Then the bomb that gets thrown into the Empire ranks should have been baked into her brick, giving her the chance to fight posthumously.

They had nearly all the plot points set up so nicely for the slam dunk, I was perplexed when it ended so dryly.

MattyRadon The FizzBuzz that did not get me the job

There's notable similarities between this article and this parody piece.

https://www.richard-towers.com/2023/03/11/typescripting-the-...

I'm not drawing any conclusions, just pointing out the odd coincidence.

Discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35120084

MattyRadon I had to take down my course-swapping site or be expelled

That's true, but it's difficult to envision any scenario where a lawyer supplies the exact advice needed to trigger a reversal outside of threats/suing/arbitration. Maybe if you get a good one I guess, but that is a gamble on its own.

A lawyer supplying helpful information like "Ok, this expulsion was triggered by the Department of Admin, which is overseen by John Smith, who has the power to reverse this decision. Schedule a meeting with him or find office hours to plead your case. I shouldn't get involved outright because it will escalate your situation and be received poorly." is less likely than "I can write a threatening letter and we'll see where it goes". A hammer hammers.

MattyRadon I had to take down my course-swapping site or be expelled

Everyone is saying lawyer up like it's the author's only option, but it's not, and likely bad advice. Here's the order of operations I would take:

1. Mea Culpa

Talk to all of the faculty (dean of students, etc) and do your best to get people on your side. You need the petty person on the other end to reverse their decision, and having a lot of administration on your side, and more importantly, expressing (fake) remorse makes it easy for these jobsworth asshole(s) to fulfill their God complex. I'm actually convinced that this would have the highest probability of success. These Dolores Umbridge types adore getting to be the ones issuing mercy to the sinners.

Additionally, informing staff of the expulsion will help bring awareness of this abuse, and spread the word and prevent this from happening to other students.

While you perform your mea culpa groveling, record everything, which can be used as ammo later.

2. Agree to the (illegal) terms

Blackmailing you into slave labor is obviously illegal, but no terms have been laid out, so I don't see any harm in agreeing to them. Best case, they reverse the decision with the expectation that you'll do something (which you can then phone in or do a token exercise of), and worst case they outline terms which are the perfect ammo for negative publicity or a lawsuit.

3. Transfer schools/credits

I don't actually know what is involved in transferring schools or how expulsion factors in, but the reality is that you are effectively already expelled. Try and figure out the feasibility of saving what is salvageable at a school that is less insufferable.

4. Negative publicity

This story is easy to believe, sell, and consume- i.e. perfect ragebait. Start emailing every news outlet you can think of. Post on all social media. If it gets high enough, and probably not even that high, the weight of the negative publicity can easily outweigh the narcissists that started this, forcing a reversal.

5. Seek employment

If you have any employment cards in your deck, I'd consider playing them. If everything else fails, then at least you're financially secure and gain experience.

6. Lawyer

The combined weight of all of the above will assist a lawsuit, even prior to taking any legal steps. Note that all outcomes of a lawsuit that aren't "total win" are effectively a loss (of time, money, energy, and mental health), so I'd hesitate to take this course at all.

MattyRadon AMA: I'm Dave Greene, an accidental expert on Conway's Game of Life

Er- I just viewed your book, clearly you think it's relevant and appropriate!

Do you have any particular thoughts about the glider as a Hacker symbol?

MattyRadon AMA: I'm Dave Greene, an accidental expert on Conway's Game of Life

Maybe this question is too low-concept, but what is your opinion of the glider as a Hacker symbol?

MattyRadon The man who killed Google Search?

I'm also not a Steve Jobs fan, and this reminds me of how Flash died[1].

The Flash Renaissance was the counter-era to the search despair era we currently find ourselves in.

In the same vein as Kodak, I wonder what the alternate timeline would look like where Adobe cannibalized native apps.

[1] https://youtu.be/65crLKNQR0E?si=mXPgXxlMRxU-xjcu&t=2472

MattyRadon What I learned from looking at 900 most popular open source AI tools

You can actively see a fresh "hype curve" in the transformer-debugger repo that was posted a couple days ago (https://github.com/openai/transformer-debugger) (star history https://star-history.com/#openai/transformer-debugger&Date).

At the time I saw the repo link posted on HN, it had 1.6k stars/16 hours. What channel/platform are people subscribed to to star it so quickly? Discord? I'm not implying any nefariousness, mind you, I'm only wondering where all the stargazers were referred from so fast and in such volume.

MattyRadon Is my toddler a stochastic parrot?

Agreed. This was evocative and emotional, beautifully capturing the existential despair and FUD of the LLM apparatus. It makes me happy to have near certainty that a human wrote this piece- even if were to be AI assisted!

MattyRadon Ask HN: Which uni course/school/subjects cannot simply be self-learned?

The Engineering Communication course at my university had a public speaking requirement. Talking in front of a small group was difficult for a large percentage of students.

Senior projects (group work) where workload is- intentionally or unintentionally- asymmetrical.