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When did AI take over Hacker News?

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Re: When did AI take over Hacker News?

#191

Post by colinsane »

pavel_lishin wrote: post #43
snowwrestler wrote: post #21

Would be fun to do similar analysis for HN front page trends that peaked and then declined, like cryptocurrency, NFTs, Web3, and self-driving cars. And actually it’s funny: self-driving cars and cryptocurrency are continuing to advance dramatically in real life but there are hardly any front page HN stories about them anymore. Shows the power of AI as a topic that crowds out others. And possibly reveals the trendy na…

Is cryptocurrency advancing dramatically? Maybe this is an illustration of this effect, but I haven't seen any news about any major changes, other than line-go-up stuff.

on the commerce front, it's really easy to find small-to-medium size vendors who accept Bitcoin for just about any category of goods now.

on the legal front, there's been some notable "wins" for cryptocurrency advocates: e.g. the U.S. lifted its sanctions against Tornado Cash (the Ethereum anonymization tool) a few months ago.

on the UX front, a mixed bag. the shape of the ecosystem has stayed remarkably unchanged. it's hard to build something new without bridging it to Bitcoin or Ethereum because that's where the value is. but that means Bitcoin and Ethereum aren't under much pressure to improve _themselves_. most of the improvements actually getting deployed are to optimize the interactions between institutions, and less to improve the end-user experience directly.

on the privacy front, also a mixed bag. people seem content enough with Monero for most sensitive things. the appetite for stronger privacy at the cryptocurrency layer mostly isn't here yet i think because what news-worthy de-anonymizations we have are by now being attributed (rightly or wrongly) to components of the operation _other_ than the actual exchange of cryptocurrency.

Re: When did AI take over Hacker News?

#192

Post by camillomiller »

zahlman wrote: post #170
camillomiller wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

i don’t, but I know certain users have a strong flagging penchant. check my recent submission, the vitriol it received, and read this https://daringfireball.net/linked/2025/03/27/youll-never-gue...

Your recent submission in my view absolutely merits flagging, because it's about booing a company you don't like and doesn't come across as charitable or asked in good faith. And I agree with jakeydus: I'm not seeing anything I could call "vitriol" in the top-level comments. I do, however, see people resent having their way of life (and of making a living) called into question. The one particularly snide top-level co…

Look, if criticizing Meta because they enabled genocide in Myanmar and induce depression in teenage girls (as per their own admission) is booing, I don’t know what to say. The question was clear: Meta has been proven beyond doubt to be a company led by people who couldn’t care less about their impact on society. Therefore, here’s the question, what makes you still work for them apart from money, if you have any sliver of ethics.

Re: When did AI take over Hacker News?

#193

Post by camillomiller »

jakeydus wrote: post #145
camillomiller wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

i don’t, but I know certain users have a strong flagging penchant. check my recent submission, the vitriol it received, and read this https://daringfireball.net/linked/2025/03/27/youll-never-gue...

Calling the comments on the meta post ‘vitriol’ is a bit on the hyperbolic side don’t you think?

Luckily they are not the top comments, but there were some of the nastiest I’ve seen allowed on here. Some users went as far as creating throwaway accounts to post nasty comments. It never ever happened to me on HN, and it’s a Reddit-level toxicity that I’ve never seen displayed here. Clearly my post struck a nerve.

Re: When did AI take over Hacker News?

#195

Post by ludicrousdispla »

paulcole wrote: post #53
jacquesm wrote: post #29

I'm more annoyed at the - clearly - AI based comments than the articles themselves. The articles are easy to ignore, the comments are a lot harder. In light of that I'd still love it if HN created an ignore feature, I think the community is large enough now that that makes complete sense. It would certainly improve my HN experience.

> In light of that I'd still love it if HN created an ignore feature This is why I always think the HN reader apps that people make using the API are some of the stupidest things imaginable. They’re always self-described as “beautifully designed” and “clean” but never have any good features. I would use one and pay for it if it had an ignore feature and the ability to filter out posts and threads based on specific ke…

Earlier this year I made some good progress on creating an automated weekly (or monthly) topical digest of HN with the use case being that a person could just check if there were posts on a particular topic of interest to them.

I've paused development on it for a bit to work on something else, but let me know if you have an interest and I'll post some sample output to github.

Re: When did AI take over Hacker News?

#196

Post by frm88 »

dangus wrote: post #181
svara wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I’m open to them becoming more than a statistical token predictor, and I think it would be really neat to see that happen What exactly do you mean by that? I've seen this exact comment stated many times, but I always wonder: What limitations of AI chat bots do you currently see that are due to them using next token prediction?

I feel like the logic of your question is actually inverted from reality. It’s kind of like you’re saying “prove god doesn’t exist” when it’s supposed to be “prove god exists.” If a problem isn’t documented LLMs simply have nowhere to go. It can’t really handle the knowledge boundary [1] at all, since it has no reasoning ability it just hallucinates or runs around in circles trying the same closest solution over and…

Thank you for that link. So very true. (I admit, I laughed)

Re: When did AI take over Hacker News?

#197

Post by svara »

dangus wrote: post #181
svara wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I’m open to them becoming more than a statistical token predictor, and I think it would be really neat to see that happen What exactly do you mean by that? I've seen this exact comment stated many times, but I always wonder: What limitations of AI chat bots do you currently see that are due to them using next token prediction?

I feel like the logic of your question is actually inverted from reality. It’s kind of like you’re saying “prove god doesn’t exist” when it’s supposed to be “prove god exists.” If a problem isn’t documented LLMs simply have nowhere to go. It can’t really handle the knowledge boundary [1] at all, since it has no reasoning ability it just hallucinates or runs around in circles trying the same closest solution over and…

Not at all.

I don't want to address directly your claim about lack of generalization, because there's a more basic issue with the GP statement. Even though I will say, today's models do seem to generalize quite a bit better than you make it sound.

But more importantly, you and GP don't mention any evidence for why that is due to specifically using next token prediction as a mechanism.

Why would it not be possible for a highly generalizing model to use next token prediction for its output?

That doesn't follow to me at all, which is why the GP statement reads so weird.

Re: When did AI take over Hacker News?

#198

Post by dns_snek »

DyslexicAtheist wrote: post #111
popalchemist wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most people do not realize it, but the tech industry is largely predicated on a cult which many people belong to without ever realizing it, which is the cult of "scientism", or in the case of pro-AI types, a subset of that, which is accelerationism. Nietzsche and Jung jointly had the insight that in the wake of the enlightenment, God had been dethroned, yet humans remained in need of a God. For many, that God is simp…

your Nietzsche reference made me wonder about one of his other sayings that if you stare into the abyss for too long the abyss will stare into you. And that seems fitting with how AI responses are always phrased in a way that make you feel like you're the genius for even asking a specific question. And if we spend more time engaging with AI (which tricks us emotionally) will we also change our behavior and expect eve…

> will we also change our behavior

Yes, absolutely, we're shaped by everything we do, every interaction we have and every behavioral pattern we repeat over time. I don't think that's a controversial idea in the slightest. The extent of this is going to vary from person to person and probably depend on what proportion of time you spend interacting with bots vs well-adjusted humans and the younger people are, the stronger the effect will be, generally speaking.

Re: When did AI take over Hacker News?

#199

Post by mcmoor »

ryandrake wrote: post #20

I noticed at one point a few days ago that all 10 out of the top 10 articles on the front page were about AI or LLMs. Granted, that doesn't happen often, but wow. This craze is just unrelenting.

After GPT-5 release I realized it's actually winding down quite significantly. I don't really know if it's actually the normal rate or the hype is really declining.

Re: When did AI take over Hacker News?

#200

Post by sensanaty »

srcreigh wrote: post #89
rising-sky wrote: post #9

What I found insightful about this article was the framing of another article cited. > " This pretty negative post topping Hacker News last month sparked these questions, and I decided to find some answers, of course, using AI" The pretty negative post cited is https://tomrenner.com/posts/llm-inevitabilism/ . I went ahead to read it, and found it, imo, fair. It's not making any direct pretty negative claims about AI,…

> rather questioning first if the future being peddled is actually what we want The author (tom) tricked you. His article is flame bait. AI is a tool that we can use and discuss about. It's not just a "future being peddled." The article manages to say nothing about AI, casts generic doubt on AI as a whole, and pits people against each other. It's a giant turd for any discussion about AI, a sure-fire curiosity destruc…

If it were just any regular tool people (speaking for myself here mostly, but I see similar sentiments on HN) would be less annoyed and argumentative about it.

Instead it's being shoved down our throats at every turn and is being marketed at the world as the Return of Christ. Whenever anyone says anything even slightly negative the evangelists crawl out of the woodwork to tell you how you're using the wrong model, or not prompting good enough, or long enough, or short enough, or "Well I've become a 9000000x developer using 76 agents in parallel!" type of posts.

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