Hacker News Reader

"That's not how citations work." (Dude on the interwebz, 2026)

But more seriously, this is my first time seeing that as well, and I'm not sure I like it. Citing an LLM is a little like citing Wikipedia to me, you cite the primary source the LLM is quoting directly, not the secondary source.

Far worse from my perspective is that it's not a fixed citation that it's not falsifiable. It's just a mutable, generalized source, which is stochastic in nature.

It may as well say "(Socrates, probably)"

It’s the formatting and formality that bother me. Say “I looked it up with Gemini,” don’t give me some weak attempt at “proper citation” to legitimize the bare minimum effort you put in.

Why waste keystrokes when less do trick?

Because a facsimile machine isn’t a reputable source lol

A Wikipedia link can be nice when you get several different sources provided.

So much of present day feels like being back in middle school around the turn of the millenium, with classmates (and even some teachers!) new to the internet insisting that "source: internet" or "source: google" was totally fine.

Even worse is that Gemini's knowledge cutoff is still Jan '25.

2026 equivalent of “my Mama told me”