Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Pseudpocalypse

dynomight.net

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

51–60 of 92 posts

Re: Pseudpocalypse

#51

Post by thinking_cactus »

Rendello wrote: post #12

There's been some interesting threads about stylometry over the years [1]. The top link was quite decent at unmasking HN alt accounts with basic ngram analysis whipped up in one day [2]. 1. https://hn.algolia.com/?q=stylometry 2. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33756141

If that's as effective as comments suggest, then it seems indeed unmasking pseudonyms has only been a matter of effort for a while.

I still think people underestimate the power of even minor inconvenience. While you can't just click a button to reveal all pseudonyms of someone (e.g. you need to download some obscure tool or even perform statistical analysis yourself), I think this provides significant (and surprising?) protection for pseudonymous individuals, I'd say even (although to a reduced extent) for sophisticated threats like state-level actors. I hope LLMs continue to be unable to do so for the near future (I just tested and LLMs can't do it with a simple prompt).

Which is why I think privacy safeguards still work quite well even while being technically mostly bypassable.

So probably tools like this should be kept private if possible.

Re: Pseudpocalypse

#53

Post by totetsu »

To achieve this level of total surveillance it would trillions and trillions of dollars to be invested in a massive roll out of data centers. I just dont see it happening.

Re: Pseudpocalypse

#54

Post by dozerly »

totetsu wrote: post #53

To achieve this level of total surveillance it would trillions and trillions of dollars to be invested in a massive roll out of data centers. I just dont see it happening.

Right now… it would have been science fiction 10 years ago and not a trillion dollar problem.

Re: Pseudpocalypse

#55

Post by King-Aaron »

totetsu wrote: post #53

To achieve this level of total surveillance it would trillions and trillions of dollars to be invested in a massive roll out of data centers. I just dont see it happening.

> I just dont see it happening.

It is though.

Re: Pseudpocalypse

#56

Post by MassPikeMike »

Perhaps remarkably, the US intelligence community is funding work on this problem in the open, as part of IARPA HIATUS [1].

The program's initial phase is winding down now, so some of the performers' papers ought to be hitting the ArXiV before too many more months.

[1] https://www.iarpa.gov/research-programs/hiatus

Re: Pseudpocalypse

#57

Post by Alive-in-2025 »

tarpitt wrote: post #38
Rendello wrote: post #12

There's been some interesting threads about stylometry over the years [1]. The top link was quite decent at unmasking HN alt accounts with basic ngram analysis whipped up in one day [2]. 1. https://hn.algolia.com/?q=stylometry 2. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33756141

I remember this! it got me pretty good. I have a bad habit of generating alts because I forget the password. It makes me wonder if we could use non-instruct LLMs to slightly alter the wording of text while keeping the meaning the same meaning. Perhaps by using perplexity or some other metric. I don't know, maybe you compare the distance of the "meaning" vectors. You might also want to have some "style" vector associa…

Yep, I was thinking the exact same thing. Write something, get your llm to rewrite it to "standard Steve Yegge form" to hide your identity. If we all do the same we are probably safe.

Re: Pseudpocalypse

#59

Post by doitLP »

two-sandwich wrote: post #18

I wondered something almost the opposite the other day. With consistent interaction with chat bots and AI output, their linguistic ticks are surely bleeding into every day speech ("smoking gun" and other turns of phrase). What if our linguistic output starts to conform? > Do they, incorrectly, position their adverbial clauses? Underrated line.

Already happening.

https://mapwriting.substack.com/p/living-subscription-free-i...

Re: Pseudpocalypse

#60

Post by Avicebron »

YeGoblynQueenne wrote: post #31

"Pseudpocalypse"... why not "pseudocalypse" or "pseudoapocalypse"? As an aside, it's always surprising to see how English speakers split Greek words like "Apocalypse". That is to say, they always split them in the middle of Greek syllables, or just drop letters like "pseud[o][a]pocalypse" and often in a way that ends up sounding clunky and weird even in English. Can't think of other examples now. Brain going to sleep…

It's a speech and attention thing. With the American accent you weigh the pseud part higher than the -onym because it's the downward part of the word. pseudocalypse highlights the -ocalypse on the upswing which detracts from the pseudo- so to maximize traction use both recognition highlights pseud- and -pocalypse.
Post reply on HN