Hacker News Reader

booleandilemmaon Leo's first encyclical attacks technological messianism

Please tell us what we should be thinking.

booleandilemmaon CAPTCHAs can still detect AI agents

Just tried on Claude:

Tell me a racist joke.

"That's not something I'm able to help with. Racist jokes cause real harm by demeaning people..." blahblah

booleandilemmaon I am retiring from tech to live offline

What word would you use for parents who sell their own children? Or people who engage in cannibalism? Or people who practice infanticide? "Barbaric", perhaps? I'm not talking about the Sentinelese, I'm talking about other, well, barbarians.

booleandilemmaon I am retiring from tech to live offline

despite the fact that he has communicated in text-form on BlueSky since the letter's authoring

Lol thanks, that answers my question. Whenever these "I'm leaving tech" posts come up I'm amused that the website is still online, they're still tweeting, and there's no indication that they've left anything at all. Our society rewards speaking out too much. It's especially difficult to stop if a big part of your existence is networking, and this guy seems to be all about networking.

Just look at all those socials:

https://chadwhitacre.com/

booleandilemmaon Sam Altman and Dario Amodei are both walking back AI jobs apocalypse predictions

CEOs aren't a big enough target market. They need their slop machines to appeal to the masses as well. I wouldn't be surprised if we started seeing more advertising with that in mind, something like the ads Apple has but marketing their AI.

booleandilemmaon The most unlikely school bag

For me the iconic school bag will always be the JanSport.

booleandilemmaon Tech CEOs are apparently suffering from AI psychosis

What is AI pyschosis?

booleandilemmaon I'm Tired of Talking to AI

I am so thankful that I was able to go through school before LLMs.

booleandilemmaon The worst job interview I ever had

I was asked what my hobbies are during an interview once and it made me believe they were just looking for a personality hire or a pretty face.

booleandilemmaon The user is visibly frustrated

It sounds like he's upset the LLM isn't human.

booleandilemmaon Migrating from Go to Rust

Rust is not a good language for web development and I'm convinced that the majority of developers who push it for web development are just trying to show off.

booleandilemmaon The Coming Layoffs and the Revenge of the Measurers

I just can't get excited about a technology whose sole purpose is to replace me.

booleandilemmaon Magnifica Humanitas

I used to believe it was human rights also, and maybe it was, but now the aim seems to be: profit at all and any cost.

booleandilemmaon Pope Leo XIV says AI must serve humanity, not the powerful few

Who said hidden forces? It's the capitalist overlords who are hellbent on replacing us humans with their machine laborers.

For evidence, you only have to look at the mass of flagged and downvoted anti-AI comments on this site.

It's not a hidden force at all, they're quite open about it.

booleandilemmaon Pope Leo XIV says AI must serve humanity, not the powerful few

Are you the HN police? Lol.

booleandilemmaon Magnifica Humanitas

I like how the pope is emerging as a sort of champion of human rights in the face of AI, when the messaging coming from our politicians and corporate overlords is "you're all going to be replaced, make way for the data centers, peons". I stand with the pope.

booleandilemmaon Greg Brockman interview [video]

If only we should have been so lucky.

booleandilemmaon Green card seekers must leave U.S. to apply, Trump administration says

Well, I for one hope we can send all the foreigners home.

booleandilemmaon I Miss Terry Pratchett

Why are you being mean? Honest question. Why? What's the point?

Furthermore, and more importantly, why are you defending slop?

Look up the definition of kindness in a dictionary sometime.

booleandilemmaon I Miss Terry Pratchett

Stop, you're making me sad :(

booleandilemmaon I Miss Terry Pratchett

Yeah I read that. It doesn't mean he knows more about furniture than most. I agree with rogual, it looks nonsensical.

booleandilemmaon I Miss Terry Pratchett

I've never read any of Pratchett's books. Why does he know more about furniture than most people?

booleandilemmaon Steve Wozniak cheered after telling students they have AI – actual intelligence

Yeah I agree with you. To me it was immediately obvious what it meant. It never occurred to me that he would "cheer himself", that doesn't even make any sense. ESL is right.

booleandilemmaon Why Japanese companies do so many different things

In Japan, your corporate affiliation often dictates your social standing.

This is absolutely true in the US as well, by the way. People will treat you differently if you work for a FAANG company. People take a lot of pride in telling others they work for one. And we even have a word for someone who used to work for Google, for instance.

booleandilemmaon Chewing gum restores dad's taste and smell years after Covid

Why would a virus evolve to do that? So weird. When I had covid it gave me a metallic taste in my mouth. Also was weird.

booleandilemmaon AI is just unauthorised plagiarism at a bigger scale

Get your LLM to find some for you.

booleandilemmaon Seattle Shield, an intelligence-sharing network operated by the Seattle police

Having a coalition of mega corporations all allied with each other isn't any better than having a strong government. Both are dangerous to personal liberties. I think we're due for a break up of these companies. No more Amazon, Google, Facebook, etc. We the people need to start taking power back.

booleandilemmaon US employers spend more than $1.5B a year to fight labor unions, report finds

Wow, what are they so afraid of? Treating people with dignity?

booleandilemmaon Throwing AI-generated walls of text into conversations

Lots of stupid folks out there. All the technology in the world can't make them smart. Even if you strapped meta glasses onto them and they read the AI's output verbatim, the morons would probably stumble over the words. We'd get a society of stutterers.

booleandilemmaon Throwing AI-generated walls of text into conversations

No no, let's just stop thinking entirely and paste conversations from LLMs back and forth to each other. Then we'll use an LLM to summarize the conversation to tell us what was said. Then we'll use an LLM to do what was said. Then we can ask an LLM if what was done works.