I'm still around.. I'm just not writing here | Hacker News Reader

I'm still around.. I'm just not writing here

rachelbythebay.com

52 pointsjanvdberg38 comments

  >  I run into problems, figure out solutions that don't seem to be documented anywhere else, and then I don't post about them.

I don't understand this. Presumably you've only been able to build software your entire career because, when you hit a wall, usually someone online had too and shared the solution.

This feels like throwing a sandwich in the trash rather than let a hungry person eat it.

It’s more like not tipping a billionaire.

https://xkcd.com/979/

I've been trying on and off over a few months to drop in at her site to see what's new - the site never loads and occasionally I run into wrong protocol ... maybe I don't have the right referer, wrong IP range, but I've tried a bunch of different browsers and it's unreachable for myself - the guess is the very heavy LLM bot traffic that's swamped the site. I could be wrong (however archive.is also circles endlessly failing to load) - the only thing I haven't done is tested to see if a smart phone browser is acceptable ... which I won't be doing.

The thing of it is, if one writes and it's primarily feeding bots which have the time to try and try again and the minority who are holding their tongue the right way who do get access - one is not really writing for the whole net any more.

There was a time before the Internet existed, and people were able to write programs. They reviewed the documentation, digested and understood the system as a whole, then worked on problems using that knowledge. That’s still possible today. When you hit a wall, you read through some more, try some things, and sleep on it. Often you wake up with the answer.

Not everyone is only copy/pasting from SO/Google/AI to know how to build stuff.

People are usually not specialists in every bit of software and hardware they use. The field also includes novices and budding enthusiasts trying or adopting, which when rarer snafu instances pop up are not going to spend weeks getting to the level of expertise to solve it themselves. Though many people do like a challenge to solve problems themselves, more often it's easy to see that maybe they do require some help, pre internet it was asking other people in the field, then with the web over the years it's been a pathway that's evolved from being predominantly on usenet asking, IRC, to forums until one didn't have to join a forum to ask, search results got to a point where the right keywords would find that information within the great number of help based areas. Of course quality data within forums and blogs are /were for good search engines. It's been a pity that some search engines and now LLMs have abused bandwidth forcing some forums and the like to tighten permissions / require password access.

> Not everyone is only copy/pasting from SO/Google/AI to know how to build stuff.

It's not just that. Back in the day, StackOverflow was also the place where besides some copy-paste-ready lines of code you would also get some detailed explanation.

Sure, you had to deal with SO's awful moderation policies...

> This feels like throwing a sandwich in the trash rather than let a hungry person eat it.

More like: giving up on making artisanal sandwiches to leave on a counter for free, after realizing the surge in people grabbing them aren't hungry, they're running off to resell them in sandwich shops.

Some people just want the information out there so it might help anyone. They see information sharing as a pure philanthropic path.

In this case being swallowed by LLM is fine.

Some people, however, chase the raise in status and credits. So they'd feel really pissed at giving it away.

If you believe that tech actually does more harm than good, then you don't need the motive of personal credits. The author actually mentions helping bad people in her article.

Direct link in case it's needed. https://rachelbythebay.com/w/2026/10/08/idle/

For some reason the first time I tapped the link it didn't go directly to the article, which confused me. Subsequent times it goes straight through.

Even ^ that ^ link goes directly to front page. i;m guessing they check HN referrer

Yes, I take it the author is not keen on HN.

> The web is broken. You can keep it.

I do have to agree, but I have a different reason for writing less.

I just enjoy doing stuff that ships. That tends to take up a lot of my bandwidth.

I couldn't care any less about whether or not someone (or something) uses my code (that's why it's MIT-licensed). I'm also not particularly interested in being credited for stuff (as long as I am not the target of a lawyerpult).

I've enjoyed using an LLM, and plan to do a lot more of it. I even let it write a bunch of stuff. It's maybe not stuff that has my "imprimatur," but that's fine. People seem to understand it better.

if they don't want to write anymore, that's okay, they don't owe it to anybody

but I will disagree with the rationale

I want enable and empower everyone, even though it includes bad actors, because I know it includes good actors

I believe that on balance, humans, the world, the future, are all good

I reject misanthropy and pessimism

her only problem was that someone profits off her contributions. not that other people benefit from it. Why is it that I couldn't care less that OpenAI profits from me but others are so concerned about it? Do others not believe in positive sum trades?

I have mixed feelings about this.

On one hand, sure: the FAANGS and other AI companies are scraping the web, including my miniscule portion of the web and I haven't been paid nor credited, and that's a bummer.

On the other hand: I get use super cool and crazy powerful tools (OpenAI and other companies' large language models) either for free or for crazy cheap: the $20/month ChatGPT plus subscription is a steal for the productivity boost i'm getting and for all the questions it's answering to me.

So... Yeah, I get the author's position, but at the same time that's just one side of that.

Oh, one of the few blogs I was following. Sad to see this news.

Hope she keeps her pimp hand strong.

I get this sentiment, but I think there's probably a LOT of people who are doing good things, cool things, helpful things, who are helped by Al Gore's free and open Internet. But most of them don't bother to upvote, or post a "thank you" or anything because the medium makes everything so frictionless. It's only the OSS zealots and the people who have issues who you'll hear from. The vocal minority. It's kinda shitty, but learning to ignore the haters and bad actors is table stakes. But feeding AI farms is the new threat, and that' definitely something unsolved. Going dark is certainly a solution. Small enclaves of invite-only blogs and tweets, I guess...

It's unfortunate to think that some people may want to restrain themselves from sharing as much in the form of blog posts, but on the other hand, if you're still using AI in your day to day work from cloud providers, perhaps we'll still benefit from that data in one way or another.

I mean, OpenAI couldn't guarantee that someone's data was not used for training, even though he had the "don't train on my data" setting turned on. I still don't understand what that means. And Anthropic probably does a similar thing, right? Did they share details how they derive from our data for training purposes?

I'm going to keep publishing my handmade material online for free because, for realsies, fuck those guys. I'm going to be a human light in the slop darkness, even though I know the content will be consumed and repeatedly vomited out as AI garbage. I will never, ever stop striving to be better than AI, and sharing what I can with the world. The sloplords will never reach 100% while I live! [Raised sword emoji] :)

> Put it this way: I've been pretty pissed off at "helping bad people" with my freely given information since roughly the summer of 2022.

I think this is slightly selfish. If you write and your stuff goes into LLM's, that's the best gift you can give to humanity.

> If you write and your stuff goes into LLM's, that's the best gift you can give to humanity.

That's your opinion, and there's nothing wrong with that.

However, there are a lot of people who have a very different opinion, and there's nothing wrong with that.

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