That is really wild to me! Had no idea they weren't in good standing like that on here, really associate HN with them in general. Thanks though either way. Not a big deal, thought it was good story but I guess not the right audience!
It's because, for a long time, most of their content was behind a signup wall with no obvious workaround. I don't know if it still is or not. If it isn't, we can change it. In the meantime, users can always vouch for the articles that are readable and/or have workarounds.
See these links for the HN's general policy around paywalls:
No no its ok! I am sure yall's system is what it is for good reason, this still kinds of turns me off I think from trying to participate in this particular way. If its worth it, I am sure someone else will do the steps. Thanks either way dang.
Ah I see, thanks. I do see other [dead] things when logged in and on the new feed. I guess I just remembered seeing it from my end as well as [dead], but when I look at my submissions, it just looks like a normal post.
One thing I've learned recently is a lot guys (like here) have been out here reading each word of a given company's tech blog, closely parsing each sentence construction.. I really cant imagine being even concious of the prose for something like this. A corporate blog, to me, has some base level of banality to it. It's like reading a cereal box and getting angry at the lack of nuance.
Like who cares? Is there really some nostalgia for a time before this? When reading some press release from a cybersecurity company was akin to Joyce or Nabakov or whatever? (Maybe Hemingway...)
We really gotta be picking our battles here imo, and this doesn't feel like a high priority target. Let companies be the weird inhuman things that they are.
Read a novel! They are great, I promise. Then when you read other stuff, maybe you won't feel so angry?
I've picked up reading again over the last year or so! Maybe, if anything, that is why I feel so angry. Writing and reading are how we communicate thoughts and ideas between people, humans, at scale. A grand fantasy novel evokes a thirst for adventure, a romance evokes a yearning for true love.
What makes me angry, is to use the feelings we associate with this process and disingenuously pretend that there is a human that wants to tell me something, just for it to be generated drivel.
Don't get me wrong, I don't mind reading AI content, but it should read like this: "Our AI agent 'hacked' (found unexposed API endpoints) x or y company, we asked it to summarize and here's what it said:" - now I know I am about to read generated content, and I can decide myself if I want to engage with it or not. Do you ever notice how nobody that uses AI writing does this? If using AI to produce creative media, including art, music, videos, and writing, is so innocuous, why do all the "AI creatives" so desperately want to hide it from you? Because they don't want you to know that it's generated. Their literal goal is to pretend to have a deeper understanding, a better outlook, on a given topic, than they actually have. I think it is sad for them to feel the need to do this, and sad for me to have to use my limited lifespan discerning it. That is why I am angry.
Anyway, there's no need to "closely parse each sentence construction" at all to identify this post is fully AI generated. It's about as clear as they come. If you have trouble identifying that, well, in the short term you're probably at a disadvantage. In the long term, if AI does ever become able to fully mimic human expression, it won't matter anyway, I guess.
ps: FWIW, I agree with you that of all places, some random AI company with an AI generated website reporting on their AI pentesting with AI is the least surprising thing - the entire company is slop, and it's very easy to see that. My initial post was more of a projection at the dozens of posts I've read from personal blogs in recent weeks where I had to carefully decide if someone's writing that they publish under their own name actually contains original thought or not.
Ah well I guess you are on the right side of this either way! No need to even explain. It seems that people really really do care, and its wrong to say maybe its ok that they don't have to in this case. I guess I get it, I am generally more wrong the right anyway, and yes, at the very least, I am clearly in some way sub literate and uncritical as a reader, who can't tell the difference anyway. Not really the guy to be giving his opinion here. I will go find some slop to enjoy while the adults figure out the important stuff! Thanks for teaching me the lesson here.
Like its been years and years now, if all this is true, you'd think there would be more of a paradigm shift? I'm happy I guess waiting for Godot like everyone else, but the shadows are getting a little long now, people are starting to just repeat the same things over and over.
Like, I am so tired now, it's causing such messes everywhere. Can all the best things about AI be manifest soon? Is there a timeline?
Like what can I take so that I can see the brave new world just out of reach? Where can I go? If I could just even taste the mindset of the true believer for a moment, I feel like it would be a reprieve.
Off the internet. Maybe it's just time we all face the public internet is dead.
Maybe a trusted private internet, though that comes with it's own risks and tradeoffs.
Maybe we start doing PRs over mailed USB keys. Anyone with enough interest will do it, but it will cut out the bots. We're back to a 90's sneakernet. Any internet presence may become a read only site telling others how to reach you offline.
The information superhighway died a long time ago. 4chan enlightened me on the power of intelligent stupidity. The machinations of a few smart people could embolden countless stupid people to cause nearly unlimited damage. Social media gathering up the smart and dumb alike allowed bullshit asymmetry to explode onto the scene and burned out anyone with a modicum of intelligence.
Is that conceit somehow intrinsically absurd? Or is everyone just supposed to just know?
Like I wish it was simple as "if it wasn't viable, they wouldn't be in business," but alas that argument is kinda the more naive one in this world. Right?
Or is there some intuition about energy/cost here all the dump posters miss, that you could tell us about?
Lisp calls c in emacs. What would be a better language? The code-as-data, data-as-code paradigm fits nicely imo with everything-is-a-buffer. Things like global namespace, hooks, defadvice, would all feel very wrong in other interpreter, and yet seem to make sense in elisp.
There will always be cost though. Even if perfect code is getting one-shotted out, that is constantly maintained and adapted to changing conditions and technology, it simply can't stay at 0 forever because one day the power is surely going to go out!
More and more I am drawn to these kinds of ideas lately, perhaps as a kind of ethical sidestep, but still:
It's not going to solve any general issue here, but the one thing these freaks need that can't be generated by their models is energy, tons of it. So, the one thing I can do as an individual and in my (digital) community is work to be, in a word, self-sustainable. And depending on my company I guess, if I was a CEO I would hope I was wise enough to be thinking on the same lines.
Everyone is making beautiful mountains from paper and wire. I will just be happy to make a small dollhouse of stone, I think it will be worth it. How can we see not just at least some small-level of hubris otherwise?
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