Hacker News Reader

sciencejerkon Dopamine Fracking

I grew up with fake Maple Syrup (high fructose corn syrup), so when I first tried REAL maple syrup as an adult, I preferred the fake, thick corn product over the genuine watery, ultra sweet tree product.

sciencejerkon Anthropic's open-source framework for AI-powered vulnerability discovery

This isn't as useful as it sounds, unless we know that Claude efficiently spends tokens using this harness

sciencejerkon I built a vulnerable app and spent $1,500 seeing if LLMs could hack it

Opus 4.6 will still help with full pentesting including RCE. Just requires coaxing (no jailbreak)

sciencejerkon Hacking your PC using your speaker without ever touching it

Great research. Thanks for sharing

sciencejerkon The newest Instagram “exploit” is the goofiest I've seen

What kind of malware are we talking about here? On a non-rooted phone?

sciencejerkon I Am Retiring from Tech to Live Offline

Probably had a friend do it for him

sciencejerkon 1024000^2 Blocks, 2B2T Minecraft Server World Download Project, and Discoveries

With severe weaponized autism, the help of several people involved, thousands of dollars spent, and countless hours wasted, we present you the largest world download project ever

Never underestimate the power of severe weaponized autism!

sciencejerkon I turned a $80 RK3562 Android tablet into a Debian Linux workstation

How?

sciencejerkon The main thing about P2P meth is that there's so much of it (2021)

The article links the Rhodium site archive, which hosts recipes and chemistry lab setup for making P2P precursor and the real stuff

sciencejerkon Kickstarter is forced to ban adult content by payment processors

Thanks for this comment. This is a bipartisan movement

sciencejerkon Kickstarter is forced to ban adult content by payment processors

> Why people in America do not want to earn more money from commissions?

It's not easy money. It's reputationally risky money, that requires EXPENSIVE moderation, defensive litigation potentially fraught with fraud and chargebacks. Follow the money.

sciencejerkon Computer Use is 45x more expensive than structured APIs

My family (unfortunately) uses InstaCart and probably 15% of items are a shitty "replacement" "not what I wanted". For time sensitive items, having the shitty replacement item NOW is better than having to wait for the "item I actually wanted", so we often just accept the inferior product. This is a dark pattern that I could see AI adopting -- it buys tons of cheap crap you didn't want, some of it was right, and you're left with a mess of returns to sort out, esp. if those returns require you to physically take some sort of action like physically returning the item to the store

sciencejerkon Computer Use is 45x more expensive than structured APIs

Or human engineers limiting AI-consumable documentation to improve job security!

sciencejerkon System Card: Claude Mythos Preview [pdf]

Yep

sciencejerkon I used AI. It worked. I hated it

How did you make the transition to working for yourself? Genuinely curious

sciencejerkon I used AI. It worked. I hated it

The decline of intellectually stimulating work is nothing to celebrate, nor is a sort of machine-driven natural selection

sciencejerkon I used AI. It worked. I hated it

Did you not read the linked blog post? Author admits that Claude did a good job

sciencejerkon I used AI. It worked. I hated it

Maybe adapt and still die anyway?

sciencejerkon I used AI. It worked. I hated it

Large scale AI datacenters require a very expensive physical supply chain that includes cheap land, water, and electricity, political leverage, human architects and builders to build datacenters, and massive capital investments. Yes, AI will outperform humans, but at some point it may become cheaper to hire a human programmer.

sciencejerkon Is anybody else bored of talking about AI?

I think that they mean that "routine" work like AI agent prompting and config is repetitive, predictable and somewhat thoughtless work. Human employees that perform repetitive, predictable, thoughtless work are easy to replace with AI

sciencejerkon Cyber.mil serving file downloads using TLS certificate which expired 3 days ago

Fair point, but I think the situation is a bit more complicated when a user "needs the site for work", or something urgent. You might have smart cautious users that feel like they have no choice but to proceed and click through the warnings since the site is most likely still legitimate

sciencejerkon Cyber.mil serving file downloads using TLS certificate which expired 3 days ago

Yes. Visitors to the site are vulnerable to Man in the Middle (MitM) attacks, IF they click past the warning (which many people do)

sciencejerkon Do Not Turn Child Protection into Internet Access Control

I think the HN crowd is full of outliers. You folks are unrestricted internet success stories. Congrats! For every one of you there has to be 100 or 1000 gaming and social media addicts.

sciencejerkon ATMs didn’t kill bank teller jobs, but the iPhone did

Interesting perspective; medical regulation as a business moat

sciencejerkon Learnings from paying artists royalties for AI-generated art

Only 21 artists??

sciencejerkon Learnings from paying artists royalties for AI-generated art

Do we really want the entire world to be endlessly full of cookie-licking rent seekers who demand profit every time anyone does anything? Because they failed to capture the value they created, and thus demand a piece of the pie from those who are better at capturing value?

The starving artists I know would be extremely happy to get even one cookie to lick. I know an artist prodogy that paints on canvas and has work in a sizable gallery, at least one institution patron, and is constantly hosting paid workshop events. He architected and built his own custom 40ft ceiling pine art house covered in beautful stained wood and arches, with large metal cuttings and engravings of wild horses on the railings. This artistic prodigy is still starving and works as a handyman/construction worker part-time. He is strongly opposed to AI, by the way.

Most artists are "starving artists"; there are extremely few artists that can support themselves by their creations alone. Many artists make no money at all, and many artists seem to work or create alone as individuals, meaning that they almost always lack the funds or community resources to protect their creative work.

sciencejerkon Wikipedia was in read-only mode following mass admin account compromise

I wonder if any poisoned data made it into LLM training data pipelines?

sciencejerkon An interactive map of Flock Cams

I mentioned "left-leaning, anti-police" because this particular city attempted to reduce its police force, due to a general distrust in (local?) police authority. It appears that USA police forces might be more violent because they are far more likely to encounter armed criminals (see source below). Thus it makes sense that some communities would prefer to reduce their police force, and might oppose technologies like Flock that increase the chances of police encounters:

Firearm Prevalence: U.S. officers operate in a society with high civilian gun ownership. A 2019 study published in PMC found that the strongest predictor of police being killed on the job—and consequently, their higher rate of using lethal force—is the level of household gun ownership in that state. In this context, U.S. "caution" often manifests as "command presence" to prevent a suspect from reaching for a weapon.

Source:

https://www.heinz.cmu.edu/media/2020/February/gun-ownership-...

sciencejerkon An interactive map of Flock Cams

Based on comments here, I'm thinking that a lot of the Flock opposition is affiliated with the anti-ICE movements. Flock seems to be viewed here as a tool to persecute and hunt down law-abiding government enemies, potentially bypassing civil liberties.

I don't deny that Flock systems could and may have been used in that manner, but that doesn't seem to be its main purpose or use. Presently I'm seeing Flock as a net win for most law abiding persons, and I believe that its use should and can be highly restricted and monitored as a tool to make the country safer. No reason to throw the baby out with the bath water

sciencejerkon Something is afoot in the land of Qwen

The research costs are not free. The businesses need to recoup the cost in some way shape or form, even if in the long term. Seems expensive as an anti-moat to detrench competitors