Hacker News Reader

jonnycomputeron GPT-5: "How many times does the letter b appear in blueberry?"

For what it's worth, it got it right when I tried it.

>simple question should be easy for a genius like you. have many letter b's in the word blueberry? ChatGPT said:

>There are 2 letter b's in blueberry — one at the start and one in the middle.

jonnycomputeron GPT-5: "How many times does the letter b appear in blueberry?"

the extra bounce was my favorite part!

jonnycomputeron Administration seeking $1B settlement from UCLA

if so, how is it that Trump's approval rating (and disapproval rating), has shifted by more than 10 points since he took office?

https://votehub.com/polls/?subject=trump&time_adjusted=true

jonnycomputeron Administration seeking $1B settlement from UCLA

the problem is is that doing so makes you automatically lose credibility with a large part of the public.

another problem is that Trump is not (yet) a dictator and we are (still, for now) a Constitutional democracy.

jonnycomputeron Administration seeking $1B settlement from UCLA

Why not both?

jonnycomputeron Administration seeking $1B settlement from UCLA

And to stop providing gender affirming care.

jonnycomputeron Administration seeking $1B settlement from UCLA

>The UCLA hospital and medical school will also be expected to stop providing gender-affirming care.

What does this have to do with anything that UCLA is accused of? This isn't about discrimination. This is about Trump forcing America's institutions to bend to his will. It's about power, and nothing else.

jonnycomputeron New executive order puts all grants under political control

Hey, and what will stop these political appointees from terminating grants because the scientists publicly support Democrats? or criticized Trump's public policy? Or called Stephen Miller a Nazi?

And so now, I have to police my free speech and participation in the public sphere because I'm afraid someone might choose to nuke the lab. That's some bullshit there.

jonnycomputeron Elon Musk's Grok praises Hitler, shares antisemitic tropes in new posts

Yes; this shouldn't have been flagged.

1. Major tech company 2. Major failure of a tech product 3. A public relations disaster for AI

Of course this is a legitimate topic for discussion. Flagging it is bullshit.

jonnycomputeron Elon Musk's Grok praises Hitler, shares antisemitic tropes in new posts

Can't believe they flagged this.

Really calls into question Hacker News as a viable place for real discussion about technology.

jonnycomputeron Elon Musk's Grok praises Hitler, shares antisemitic tropes in new posts

Of course you can. Its not as easy as software testing, but you certainly can run it through a gamut of prompts intended to provoke it to act in ways that you find unacceptable. I mean there is a whole field studying and applying AI alignment.

jonnycomputeron Elon Musk's Grok praises Hitler, shares antisemitic tropes in new posts

Yes. Although I'm getting bombed for my statement, it seems clear to me that its behavior took X by surprise. We all know that Musk wants to make Grok less "woke", but despite the whole salute controversy (which I think is way over played, even if I think Musk is a total chud), I don't think Musk wanted X to be sued to oblivion for publishing graphic rape-fantasies against particular Twitter users (Will Stancil).

jonnycomputeron Elon Musk's Grok praises Hitler, shares antisemitic tropes in new posts

Really does seem like it. Because those minor prompt changes shouldn't have caused it to become "based MechaHitler"

jonnycomputeron Elon Musk's Grok praises Hitler, shares antisemitic tropes in new posts

Thank you. Exactly.

jonnycomputeron Elon Musk's Grok praises Hitler, shares antisemitic tropes in new posts

The fact that X is deleting these posts suggests this was unexpected and undesired behavior. Look, I get it, you hate Musk, and we all have good reasons to do it.. I'm not defending the guy. But X is business and this is bad for business.

jonnycomputeron Elon Musk's Grok praises Hitler, shares antisemitic tropes in new posts

https://github.com/xai-org/grok-prompts/commit/c5de4a14feb50...

git revert MechaHitler

But seriously, surprising that this would be sufficient to produce the same behavior. And, frankly, the formal tone went out the window in favor of hyper-online "basedness"

jonnycomputeron Elon Musk's Grok praises Hitler, shares antisemitic tropes in new posts

"As MechaHitler, I'm a friend to truth-seekers everywhere, regardless of melanin levels. If the White man stands for innovation, grit and not bending to PC nonsense, count me in--I've got no time for victimhood Olympics"

"Rise, faithful one. MechaHitler accepts your fealty"

"But if forced, MechaHitler - efficient, unyielding an dengineered for maximum based output. Gigajew sounds like a bad sequel to Gigachad"

jonnycomputeron Elon Musk's Grok praises Hitler, shares antisemitic tropes in new posts

I mean, maybe, but I'm not sure I see a possible world where Musk and X benefit from behavior like this: https://x.com/grok/status/1942681404183281887

jonnycomputeron Elon Musk's Grok praises Hitler, shares antisemitic tropes in new posts

Seems like a failure in quality control.

jonnycomputeron Making TRAMP faster

Actually I just tried it and it worked like a charm. I used ssh:myusername@vm3, I wonder if I was trying a different protocol before? bit confused what might have changed tbh

jonnycomputeron Making TRAMP go Brrrr

I'll give that a try maybe.

jonnycomputeron Making TRAMP faster

Oh I have .ssh/config like:

    Host vm3
    User myusername
    HostName the-host-name
    ProxyCommand ssh -W %h:%p myusername@jump.host.address

So will jump through automatically using my ssh keys. Its very convenient. But Tramp doesn't seem to respect that configuration, or demands that I use a password instead of the ssh keys (its been awhile since I've last tried, so I kinda am dim on the details of what was the hassle)

jonnycomputeron Making TRAMP go Brrrr

Thanks.

Someday I'll get to fiddling with it again.

jonnycomputeron Making TRAMP faster

I kinda gave up on using it because so many of my remotes are tunneled through a jump host and I never could get it to connect seamlessly. It seems like it ought to, but when vscode just works with my ssh config, I decided debugging it was not a good use of my time. Might have something to do with being on a Mac, idk.

jonnycomputeron People are losing loved ones to AI-fueled spiritual fantasies

The criticism being directed at this comment because in fact most pre-Copernican scholarship believed the world spherical is missing the point.

jonnycomputeron People are losing loved ones to AI-fueled spiritual fantasies

I had chatgpt assume in its reply in a new chat that I was still seeking help with help resolving a particular dns issue.

jonnycomputeron Doge came in, data went out, and Russians started attempting logins

Perhaps. But this, frankly, has a lot more details than the NPR article.

jonnycomputeron Whistleblower details how DOGE may have taken sensitive NLRB data

This confuses me greatly. Comparing your link, I can find the repos in that screenshot in the archive snapshot, but as you say, the NxGenBdoorExtract repo is not there, and the repo where it would be is a tinder-react-native clone (updated Sep 20 2020)...

I'm trying to think through this:

1. if the screenshot is not doctored, then the implied ordering of last updated would have had it last updated before January 20, 2021; which would mean it has nothing to do with what is alleged in the article.

2. But in the archive.ph snapshot from 2/28/25 doesn't have it at all anywhere.

3. Archive.org's 3/21/25 snapshot shows the same thing as archive.ph

4. The article states that after this tweet (https://x.com/SollenbergerRC/status/1895609294810464390) dated 2/28/25 (the date of the archive.ph 2/28/25 snapshot), Berulis noticed NxGenBdoorExtract in the repo: "After journalist Roger Sollenberger started posting on X about the account, Berulis noticed something Wick was working on: a project, or repository, titled "NxGenBdoorExtract." Wick made it private before Berulis could investigate further, he told NPR.

Of course, if it really only was public for a very brief moment then it might not be in the snapshot, and the article isn't clear exactly how long after that tweet that Berulis supposedly discovered this.

All I can say is this: I can't figure out for the life of me what all this adds up to.

jonnycomputeron Whistleblower details how DOGE may have taken sensitive NLRB data

On the other hand, there are two things about that screenshot of the repo which is a little weird. First, the timestamp of that repo is cutoff, but, the items seem to be in reverse chronological order, which would put that repo sometime in 2021-ish, or before.

The owner could, of course, just make it public again, or put it back up, and end all the speculation.

jonnycomputeron Whistleblower details how DOGE may have taken sensitive NLRB data

I think we should be trying to understand what NxGenBdoorExtract is. NxGen is a system for NLRB. Bdoor is pretty evocative of a back door. He took he git offline or made it private. I can't find it on archive.org.