Live data from Hacker News

Anonymous GitHub account mass-dropping undisclosed 0-days

github.com

201–210 of 407 posts

Re: Anonymous GitHub account mass-dropping undisclosed 0-days

#202

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They're just so handy! I do think LLMs tend to use them in a specific way, though. So maybe tweaking your usage (ex. no spaces around them) or using a technically incorrect en-dash might offer the desired effect while subtly signaling that your message isn't AI-generated. I still use them — mostly for pauses — but I'd like to think my voice sounds distinct enough from an AI that people can tell.

I for one am striving for clarity and couldn't care less about being confused with AI. However I've only ever used regular dashes. How do you type an em-dash? Is it OS specific? I've taken to using Emacs insert-char with a list of frequently used ones in my scratch buffer. My memory for Unicode is unreliable.

In emacs, c-x 8 RET prompts you for unicode character names (or hex) so for rare use you can just spell it out. There's also C-x 8 _ m for em dash and C-x 8 _ n for en dash. (Hit c-x 8 c-h to get a full list of those bindings, like any normal secondary map - they're about as idiosyncratic as the XCompose bindings, but you might find some of them "stick" in your head better (I personally like "C-x 8 1 / 2" better than "Compose 1 2" even if it's a lot more typing...)

Re: Anonymous GitHub account mass-dropping undisclosed 0-days

#203

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don’t give a flying fuck what people think. Most colleges copied or adopted my (for a few semesters) school’s style guide, so LLMs are essentially copying me , and I won’t change my punctuation usage because they suck.

Yeah, I get it, they do suck. It all sucks. But people at work who are copying responses from LLMs into emails to others also suck, and I want to distance myself from them as much as possible. I'm kinda hoping we will eventually have a wave of "what the fuck are we paying you for if you're just copying stuff from an LLM to Slack" firings.

This is a pointless and infinitely losing arms race. LLMs will learn to use hyphens instead of em dashes, and so what? You’re going to start using em dashes again?

Just focus on not producing slop.

Re: Anonymous GitHub account mass-dropping undisclosed 0-days

#204

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The biggest mitigation is that gitea documentation discourages you from using action runners from untrusted users. This recommendation seems incompatible with third-party collaboration, at least on its face!

Potentially, but for many projects things like that are tools that you want to control access to anyway. Anyone wanting to update the CI/CD process who isn't a trusted part of the project should be having their changes properly reviewed by someone who is anyway, at which point the reviewer is the trusted user not the random external entity.

I don’t disagree with that, but I think GitHub has shown that projects want to have their cake and eat it too. GitHub has also shown that it’s incredibly easy to design an insecure CI/CD that satisfies that goal, but I see that more as a symptom of them being first-to-market rather than an inherent quality of the problem.

Re: Anonymous GitHub account mass-dropping undisclosed 0-days

#205
post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They're just so handy! I do think LLMs tend to use them in a specific way, though. So maybe tweaking your usage (ex. no spaces around them) or using a technically incorrect en-dash might offer the desired effect while subtly signaling that your message isn't AI-generated. I still use them — mostly for pauses — but I'd like to think my voice sounds distinct enough from an AI that people can tell.

I've only ever been using "regular" dash, a minus, for that. How do you even type yours? If I ever needed differently-sized dashes (and I don't know the difference between them) I always used wiki to copy them. (disclaimer: I feel like this obsession with dashes is special to native English speakers, which I'm obviously not)

It’s an obsession with literature and/or typography nerds specifically.

Option-shift-hyphen types an em-dash, option-hyphen an en-dash. You can also hold the hyphen key (on a Mac or iPhone) and it will allow you to select either. Em dashes are used—like—this—as something spiritually akin to a parenthetical. En-dashes are used within ranges: Feb 14–17.

Re: Anonymous GitHub account mass-dropping undisclosed 0-days

#206
post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, it's a joke because the problem becomes apparent after you think a bit about it. The exact same reasonig can be applied to anything illegal, criminals are criminals because they don't respect the law, so you could try to say that laws are useless. Reality is, if something is illegal not only someone can be punished after the fact, but in some cases also preventive measures can be taken. Regarding the comment, i…

I mean I do actually think laws are basically useless. Good people don’t need em, bad people don’t listen to em. I guess “bad” is excessive. I regularly observe traffic laws with less rigor the your average police officer would prefer.

As you're basically saying, the world isn't black or white. There's also a category of people that needs an incentive to behave. Also, without any laws, it would be problematic to punish "the bad guys". At that point, what you can or cannot do would be only a matter of relative power: who is stronger can do whatever they want to weaker people.

Re: Anonymous GitHub account mass-dropping undisclosed 0-days

#207

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, I get it, they do suck. It all sucks. But people at work who are copying responses from LLMs into emails to others also suck, and I want to distance myself from them as much as possible. I'm kinda hoping we will eventually have a wave of "what the fuck are we paying you for if you're just copying stuff from an LLM to Slack" firings.

This is a pointless and infinitely losing arms race. LLMs will learn to use hyphens instead of em dashes, and so what? You’re going to start using em dashes again? Just focus on not producing slop.

At this point, I believe the LLM "style" is on purpose. Perhaps the labs want to be able to distinguish their slop from human content for future training; I don't know. But it feels very deliberate that they've kept the style so consistent for so long.

Re: Anonymous GitHub account mass-dropping undisclosed 0-days

#208

      Do NOT, under any circumstances, use any material in this repository
      maliciously. This is good-faith, open-disclosure vulnerability 
      research intended to get more people interested in exploring 
      this area of cybersecurity.
Reminds of the message in the The Anarchist Cookbook before one the recipes that essentially said: "This is really dangerous, don't ever do it, here is how you do it."

Re: Anonymous GitHub account mass-dropping undisclosed 0-days

#209
post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What is the typical motivation to start using em-dashes? Why go the extra way to have a slightly elongated dash when a normal one would just as well do the job? I might be conpletely off here but I've never seen a situation where using a normal dash where a long one should be causes any sort of syntactic trouble.

I think people who care about correctness and also read a lot automatically see the difference and it seems (and is) technically incorrect to use a hyphen where an em dash belongs. That’s really it. Kind of like you wouldn’t just leave out the apostrophes in your writing even though in most contexts they are not strictly necessary for comprehension.

Leaving out apostrophes isn't the same though, is it? If you leave out apostrophes you have syntactic effects while a (sortof)dash is still sort of a dash?

Re: Anonymous GitHub account mass-dropping undisclosed 0-days

#210
post #102
post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, big pet peeve of the new world. Every em dash is apparently an AI trigger. Back in my day, they were a sign of great respect within my people.

I propose that humans use Unicode U+2E3B three em dash ⸻ it is an impressively long character.

Lets just use random number of dashes.
Post reply on HN