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

The revolt of the reader

bcantrill.dtrace.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

11–20 of 310 posts

Re: The revolt of the reader

#11

Post by mplanchard »

CharlesW wrote: post #10
bcantrill wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is (obviously?) false, but considering how well-capitalized we are at the moment, you do have me wondering what a quid pro quo would be for; perhaps in this fictional universe Pangram has lucked into some of the PCIe clock buffers that we've been scrambling to secure enough of?

By "quid pro quo" I wasn't suggesting that Pangram's PR people's podcast placement was pay-for-play, just that they traded access for your positioning of their tech and their exec in your content marketing efforts. That's pretty normal, but the point is that a blog post which is 35% Pangram promotion may not actually be less annoying than the use of AI to help write blog posts.

It is less annoying, at least to me. I can read a semi-promotional post. I just bounce right off LLM writing

Re: The revolt of the reader

#12

Post by bcantrill »

CharlesW wrote: post #10
bcantrill wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is (obviously?) false, but considering how well-capitalized we are at the moment, you do have me wondering what a quid pro quo would be for; perhaps in this fictional universe Pangram has lucked into some of the PCIe clock buffers that we've been scrambling to secure enough of?

By "quid pro quo" I wasn't suggesting that Pangram's PR people's podcast placement was pay-for-play, just that they traded access for your positioning of their tech and their exec in your content marketing efforts. That's pretty normal, but the point is that a blog post which is 35% Pangram promotion may not actually be less annoying than the use of AI to help write blog posts.

Yeah, fair -- and definitely not: I am earnestly just a fan of what they built (and I also think it's really important as a way of getting a check against rampant LLM use).

Re: The revolt of the reader

#13

Post by Lerc »

How can you tell if people can accurately identify AI generated text?

If a person reads AI generated text and does not notice, they by definition will not know about it.

There have been numerous cases of people accessing human created content as being AI.

There are instances where it seems relatively uncontroversial that it is AI generated, but without knowing both the amount of AI content people are exposed toand the amount that they register I don't think you can draw a conclusion of the overall state.

Re: The revolt of the reader

#15

Post by CharlesW »

bcantrill wrote: post #12
CharlesW wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

By "quid pro quo" I wasn't suggesting that Pangram's PR people's podcast placement was pay-for-play, just that they traded access for your positioning of their tech and their exec in your content marketing efforts. That's pretty normal, but the point is that a blog post which is 35% Pangram promotion may not actually be less annoying than the use of AI to help write blog posts.

Yeah, fair -- and definitely not: I am earnestly just a fan of what they built (and I also think it's really important as a way of getting a check against rampant LLM use).

Your love shines through! I'll work on turning down my "assume the worst" knob, thank you.

Re: The revolt of the reader

#16

Post by noir_lord »

duhhhhh1212 wrote: post #3

Someone should make a browser extension to label HN posts with Pangram results of the top 100 posts, so I don't waste my time reading crap. Always a pleasure reading Bryan's writing; it's like Bryan is sitting there with you and saying the words (hard to convey the feeling).

Agreed, I like the Oxide podcast as well, even though it’s hardware I’m unlikely to ever see never mind use, it’s nice that someone somewhere is still trying to be what they are trying to be.

Having dealt with Enterprise Hardware(TM) in a previous job, it’s refreshing simply to see someone look at that pile of crap and go “it doesn’t have to be that way” and then actually set out to prove it.

Re: The revolt of the reader

#18

Post by jimbobimbo »

I see this at work. People are "writing" specs and design proposals with bots. This is noticeable and is a huge turn off. I don't have issues with using bots to aid research, but I'm not reading the doc you slopped together.

Re: The revolt of the reader

#19

Post by dwattttt »

Lerc wrote: post #13

How can you tell if people can accurately identify AI generated text? If a person reads AI generated text and does not notice, they by definition will not know about it. There have been numerous cases of people accessing human created content as being AI. There are instances where it seems relatively uncontroversial that it is AI generated, but without knowing both the amount of AI content people are exposed toand th…

Pieces that people aren't revolted by will be fine. Readers aren't revolting because of a flood of high quality writing though.

Re: The revolt of the reader

#20

Post by duhhhhh1212 »

noir_lord wrote: post #16
duhhhhh1212 wrote: post #3

Someone should make a browser extension to label HN posts with Pangram results of the top 100 posts, so I don't waste my time reading crap. Always a pleasure reading Bryan's writing; it's like Bryan is sitting there with you and saying the words (hard to convey the feeling).

Agreed, I like the Oxide podcast as well, even though it’s hardware I’m unlikely to ever see never mind use, it’s nice that someone somewhere is still trying to be what they are trying to be. Having dealt with Enterprise Hardware(TM) in a previous job, it’s refreshing simply to see someone look at that pile of crap and go “it doesn’t have to be that way” and then actually set out to prove it.

They have a ton of rfds publicly available that are worth reading. Recently, read this one: https://rfd.shared.oxide.computer/rfd/0161 because I'm researching clickhouse for my work (there is also a podcast ep on it). Even if you never use their hardware, just reading their work around the software they use/make is incredibly valuable as an engineer.
Post reply on HN