Goodbye, and Thanks for All the Bikesheds • Hacker News Board

Re: Goodbye, and Thanks for All the Bikesheds

#71

Post by refulgentis » Sat, Jul 18, 2026, 7:07 PM UTC

delusional wrote: post #55

st3fan wrote: post #27

"LLM-assisted code review won't be a huge disruptor" is quite the prediction. Because it already is in a very big way. The take on LLMs seems incredibly out of date and out of touch with reality. (Which of course, has moved/advanced very fast the past months/year)

Did you continue reading? His argument is exactly that, like all the previous model checkers, LLM's are going to give us some bugs for a while. Then that is going to stop. His argument is not that they aren't going to find any bugs, but rather that at some point those bugs will be fixed. At which point we will continue on as usual.

I did, his argument is that we've already discovered ~50% of all bugs discoverable by LLMs.

I'm treading lightly after you said "did you read it" to OP, I do believe we both understand that argument isn't nearly air-tight. (i.e. it implies either humans get so good at code that bug-introduction-rate falls percipitously, or, LLMs are so awesome they write all of our code bug-free. Neither of which jives with the thesis, that LLM code review is a nothingburger long term)

The best steelman we could say is "he meant 50% of all existing bugs in all currently existing code", which is still incompatible with a time-bound on their usefulness, unless we expect the rate of new code to fall percipitously.

The steelman I'm using, is they're speaking both loosely and strongly and intend us to understand these are strong opinions, held loosely, and they care for us enough to share.

Re: Goodbye, and Thanks for All the Bikesheds

#72

Post by ball_of_lint » Sat, Jul 18, 2026, 7:08 PM UTC

close04 wrote: post #2

> And before you ask: Yes, I’m laying this one squarely down before (and partly on the toes of) the tech bros: We could have designed our protocols to be minimally compatible with “a nation of laws,” but the tech bros insisted that compromise was treason, and, as a result, we will lose more privacy than necessary. Ah, the famous “maybe if I take a step back they’ll appreciate it and not push harder”. Or maybe it’s “i…

This. Author does talk about a lot of facts but seems very defeatist wrt whether an anonymous, encrypted internet can be preserved.

I do recognize their point that it's been made very hard to catch and prosecute cyber criminals. I think there are ways to improve that that don't destroy the privacy of everyone. But if that's the real goal, why isn't it the big pitch line of the Parent's Decide Act?

Re: Goodbye, and Thanks for All the Bikesheds

#73

Post by delusional » Sat, Jul 18, 2026, 7:09 PM UTC

saghm wrote: post #63

delusional wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is anyone proposing age verification to file taxes? I'd hope you already have to provide some sort of stronger proof of identity to file a tax return anyway.

That's exactly my point; websites that already have absolutely no threat from having kids access them are literally unavailable due to the operating system put up a block that isn't necessary due to a hypothetical kid using the device to access an entirely different hypothetical website. The regulation is absurdly overbroad for what it's trying to actual protect against.

I don't know what regulation you're talking about. Nothing of the sort is being proposed in the part of the world PHK occupies.

Re: Goodbye, and Thanks for All the Bikesheds

#74

Post by saghm » Sat, Jul 18, 2026, 7:10 PM UTC

dash2 wrote: post #52

saghm wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I strongly disagree. There are no kids in my household, and no one else ever uses my devices, so the idea that I need to prove that I'm not a kid for me to be able to pay bills or file taxes on a stock device is ridiculous.

I don't understand the force of that argument. Where is the "so" coming from?

I don't understand what's hard to understand. Regulation that affects people and devices that have no risk of being used for the purported thing that's supposed to be protected against is not well-scoped.

Re: Goodbye, and Thanks for All the Bikesheds

#75

Post by simoncion » Sat, Jul 18, 2026, 7:10 PM UTC

SoftTalker wrote: post #21

Scaled wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Age verification is not the will of the voters. It is the will of large political donors (specifically tech companies and religious censorship groups). It is certainly not the will of adult citizens who use adult websites, who have overwhelming shown in their usage patterns they will abandon any website that tries to do age verification. Parental controls remains the right way to do age gating. It works today and has…

Parental control does not work today, it's too fragmented and too difficult.

> Parental control does not work today, it's too fragmented and too difficult.

Then legally require it to be effective and easy-to-use-if-you-take-a-few-minutes-to-read-the-instructions.

Re: Goodbye, and Thanks for All the Bikesheds

#76

Post by dgellow » Sat, Jul 18, 2026, 7:10 PM UTC

st3fan wrote: post #27

"LLM-assisted code review won't be a huge disruptor" is quite the prediction. Because it already is in a very big way. The take on LLMs seems incredibly out of date and out of touch with reality. (Which of course, has moved/advanced very fast the past months/year)

That’s not his prediction, he made it clear they are useful. His conclusion for that section is this:

> The only real question for me is: Are the LLM-code-review tools economically viable outside the bubble?

Re: Goodbye, and Thanks for All the Bikesheds

#77

Post by SoftTalker » Sat, Jul 18, 2026, 7:11 PM UTC

red_admiral wrote: post #33

The whole age verification thing is being pushed by one "techbro", because he wants others to deal with cleaning up his mess.

I make this point pretty much every time I comment on this subject and it's generally downvoted. It's more than one, but one may be the most obvious. The social media and big tech companies made their bed here. They want to operate as if they have no social responsibility and just blame all the bad stuff on users and parents. This was never going to fly over the long term.

Re: Goodbye, and Thanks for All the Bikesheds

#78

Post by simianwords » Sat, Jul 18, 2026, 7:12 PM UTC

j45 wrote: post #38

I'm surprised to see a publication about ACM join in the blabbing about LLMs instead of show and tell. Talking isn't doing, just like word generation isn't an outcome.

I think the mechanism is that ACM has a certain archetype of "bro" self selected into the group. They all have similar views like hating big tech, loving FOSS, pro government regulation and so on. The author probably fills a gap of a priest. This publication itself needed a priest to do the sermon and who better than the author. He touches on all the points of interest here and there and keeps everyone satisfied.

At least, this is what I have come up with because this blog is mostly incoherent blabbering.

Re: Goodbye, and Thanks for All the Bikesheds

#79

Post by saghm » Sat, Jul 18, 2026, 7:12 PM UTC

delusional wrote: post #73

saghm wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's exactly my point; websites that already have absolutely no threat from having kids access them are literally unavailable due to the operating system put up a block that isn't necessary due to a hypothetical kid using the device to access an entirely different hypothetical website. The regulation is absurdly overbroad for what it's trying to actual protect against.

I don't know what regulation you're talking about. Nothing of the sort is being proposed in the part of the world PHK occupies.

The comment I was responding to said this:

> A sensible regulator would leave some responsibility to the parents, but require restrictions for consumer devices (smartphones, laptops). Maybe even enable age restrictions by default, block replacing the OS or the firmware, and only allow it once the age was confirmed.

If you think that this statement is too broad for this thread, I don't understand why you only have issue with my direct response to it. It seems like your issue is with the parent comment I replied to for not being on-topic enough.

Re: Goodbye, and Thanks for All the Bikesheds

#80

Post by armchairhacker » Sat, Jul 18, 2026, 7:13 PM UTC

saghm wrote: post #49

andix wrote: post #23

I don't think age restriction will impact FOSS in the long term. If there are some regulations that threaten FOSS now, they are going to be adopted in the long term. Regulations for age restriction are understandable. A lot of modern technology is harming kids (and I don't mean dirty videos, social media seems to be much more harmful). A sensible regulator would leave some responsibility to the parents, but require r…

I strongly disagree. There are no kids in my household, and no one else ever uses my devices, so the idea that I need to prove that I'm not a kid for me to be able to pay bills or file taxes on a stock device is ridiculous.

"Age restriction" can be implemented where stock devices are completely unrestricted. For example, just with better parental controls and education: children don't have access to property, so the parent takes their device and enables the parental controls, but you own your device so leave them disabled.

And this wouldn't affect Linux or FOSS: on a child's device their parent installs either a proprietary OS or a FOSS with parental controls, but again, on your device you install whatever you want.