Autonomous cars, drones cheerfully obey prompt injection by road sign • Hacker News Board

Re: Autonomous cars, drones cheerfully obey prompt injection by road sign

#191

Post by AngryData » Mon, Feb 02, 2026, 5:14 AM UTC

Retric wrote: post #187

AngryData wrote: post #186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You could revert to a granary system, but the whole point of farming subaidization was to leave the granary system that repeatedly throughout history ended up with massive famine and starvations. Stored food is not bullet proof, and takes up a lot more bulk space than you may think. It can also take numerous years to ramp up farming production in response to a drop in yields or disaster.

We’re vastly better at food preservation, farming, and birth control today. Suggesting we’ll run into the same issues as people before the green revolution is ignoring the progress of technology.

Yeah its better, but it is still far from perfect. You aren't going to increase farm tractor or farm implement production by 50% with a year or twos notice. Some crops like fruits takes years to establish, and unused farmland quickly succumbs to nature and starts growing trees. And if that field wasn't clear 5 years ago you now have to stump grind or bulldoze the fields because tree stumps and tree roots will mess up your farm equipment, doubly worse if its some super massive tractor and implement setup that would normally be the most productive.

And there is also all the political and financial barriers to taking unfarmed land and very quickly turning it into farmland. Who owns it and who owned it before? Who with the right knowledge to manage it properly will run it? What about other problems around them that are part to the famine.

And farming in itself is not very predictable business. Yields regularly vary by 30% just due to local weather without being considered unusual. Return on investments may be a decade down the road even if everything is done perfect. Getting people to invest long term for a potentially very short term problem is not super easy.

We got surviving rations from back in the US civil war that are still edible, but people still regularly starved and had famines despite massive leaps in food preservation technology. Hermetically sealing just a single persons food for a year is not an easy task, not to mention hundred million+.

Re: Autonomous cars, drones cheerfully obey prompt injection by road sign

#192

Post by nxpnsv » Mon, Feb 02, 2026, 5:29 AM UTC

ncruces wrote: post #163

thedanbob wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I once encountered an intersection with a big "NO ENTRY" sign on the other side. I turned but google maps wouldn't give me another route, so I did a u-turn and came back to it from the side. Which meant I was close enough to read the small text underneath that said "vehicles under 10 tons excepted". I don't think I've ever been so angry at a road sign.

I came across one in Italy that was meant to prevent you from using a street during school days from X to Y am, and Z to W pm, except on weekends, bank holidays and school holidays.

They don’t want cars near the school when kids are coming in or when they leave. That sounds like a sane approach to me…

Re: Autonomous cars, drones cheerfully obey prompt injection by road sign

#193

Post by Retric » Mon, Feb 02, 2026, 6:08 AM UTC

AngryData wrote: post #191

Retric wrote: post #187

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We’re vastly better at food preservation, farming, and birth control today. Suggesting we’ll run into the same issues as people before the green revolution is ignoring the progress of technology.

Yeah its better, but it is still far from perfect. You aren't going to increase farm tractor or farm implement production by 50% with a year or twos notice. Some crops like fruits takes years to establish, and unused farmland quickly succumbs to nature and starts growing trees. And if that field wasn't clear 5 years ago you now have to stump grind or bulldoze the fields because tree stumps and tree roots will mess up…

Economies of scale are huge here. You can store well below -40 when you're talking food for 100 million people, that just doesn’t work well when you’re talking one person.

Of note I didn’t say a year or 2’s notice 10 years of food on hand would be fairly cheap and we currently have the surplus to hit that number quickly. And that’s for 100% replacement, most situations aren’t going to drop food production to zero giving us more time.

Re: Autonomous cars, drones cheerfully obey prompt injection by road sign

#194

Post by 1718627440 » Mon, Feb 02, 2026, 10:08 AM UTC

estimator7292 wrote: post #137

Ekaros wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It just sounds insane concept. Why stop signs, when you could have equal intersection. Slow enough to observe traffic from right. If none passthrough. Stop signs should be special. Reserved only to those places where there simply is not enough visibility or time to observe.

That requires a level of consideration for others that your average American simply cannot comprehend. No stop sign means you have unlimited right of way bestowed by god himself and fuck anyone and everyone else. The other option is the person who sits at a 4-way stop until all traffic in a one block radius stops before they move, totally ignoring right of way and all sense of safety and propriety.

> No stop sign means you have unlimited right of way bestowed by god himself and fuck anyone and everyone else.

Such a person, should simply not drive on a public road. That is e.g. what the first paragraph of street regulation in Germany is about.

Re: Autonomous cars, drones cheerfully obey prompt injection by road sign

#195

Post by 1718627440 » Mon, Feb 02, 2026, 10:10 AM UTC

olyjohn wrote: post #172

cucumber3732842 wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Roundabouts excel when traffic volumes on the intersecting are comparable. They are crap when traffic volumes are highly disparate

If the volume is disparate, then the road with less traffic can wait... kind of like a stop sign! Except the road with more traffic won't back up and cause massive problems.

If the traffic intensity of the main flow is so high, that there are never any gaps, then it is near the saturation and will cause traffic jams anyway. Which first needs to be fixed anyway and second will also cause gaps to be created again, because the main flow comes to a halt.

Re: Autonomous cars, drones cheerfully obey prompt injection by road sign

#196

Post by 1718627440 » Mon, Feb 02, 2026, 10:13 AM UTC

josephcsible wrote: post #175

lillecarl wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If this is the case you can install stop lights and traffic sensing at roundabout ingress points, you can also provide a "turn right" lane that bypasses the roundabout entirely. Intersections are dangerous.

> If this is the case you can install stop lights and traffic sensing at roundabout ingress points But those options are a lot more expensive and need a lot more maintenance than just a regular roundabout or four way stop. > you can also provide a "turn right" lane that bypasses the roundabout entirely. How would that work? Consider a 4-way roundabout, where there's a constant flow of cars from west to east, and one…

Putting a stop sign or traffic light in your scenario will just cause traffic jams. If the density is low enough to allow flow with a gap created by a stop sign, without causing traffic jams, then there will also be gaps for the secondary flow.

Re: Autonomous cars, drones cheerfully obey prompt injection by road sign

#197

Post by fc417fc802 » Mon, Feb 02, 2026, 11:23 AM UTC

Retric wrote: post #167

fc417fc802 wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I fully support having huge stockpiles in addition to subsidies. There's a lot of things midway on the scale between "business as usual" and "meteor strike" where minimizing supply chain disruptions would likely prove to be of great benefit. I completely agree that the current way things are being handled appears to have its share of problems and could stand to be better optimized. But that doesn't mean it's useless…

Subsidies as a concept includes spending 1% as much on subsidies. Subsidies as they exist now however are a specific system that’s incredibly wasteful. Producing dramatically less food and ending obesity are linked. If the average American eats 20% less obesity would still be an issue, but that’s a vast amount of farmland we just don’t need. The current system isn’t designed to accommodate increased agricultural prod…

You want to solve obesity by ... making food cost more? Assuming I've understood you correctly then I think it would be difficult for us to be more opposed to one another. I want basic necessities to be as cheap as possible. Preferably free.

I'm happy to debate what sort of free food the government should or shouldn't be handing out, what measures could be put in place to minimize waste, etc. But from my perspective the ideal is a free all you can eat buffet that's backed by the government.

Re: Autonomous cars, drones cheerfully obey prompt injection by road sign

#198

Post by Gander5739 » Mon, Feb 02, 2026, 2:17 PM UTC

falcor84 wrote: post #122

I should probably confess that as someone who lives in an area with a lot of construction work, I'm also very vulnerable to "prompt injection" when there's a person standing on the middle of the road holding a sign telling me to change course.

Obligatory xkcd: https://xkcd.com/1958/

Re: Autonomous cars, drones cheerfully obey prompt injection by road sign

#199

Post by Throaway1982 » Mon, Feb 02, 2026, 2:28 PM UTC

theamk wrote: post #182

Throaway1982 wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is such a bad characterization of the Luddite cause, and it's not even close to what they stood for or why they were spurred to action. Please do a bit of actual educating yourself on the Luddites.

If you think someone is wrong, and want to help them realize what the truth is, I recommend (1) actually explaining where they are wrong and (2) saying what the right thing is. Just saying "This is all wrong you should do a bit of actual educating", without stating any facts will never convince anyone. That said, I don't really see how is it wrong? - New technologies provided better service for general public, so peo…

The Luddites destroyed machines because industrialization destroyed the only living wage they could have. There was no recourse for them other than accepting an even worse quality of life.

Neither of your links say anything about cheap textiles stopping people from freezing to death. The Luddites' concerns could easily have been addressed by factory owners while still offering cheaper fabrics.

Neither of your links ALSO say that the majority of Luddite groups did as you say in destroying machinery without a goal in mind. The fact is that the Luddites were reacting against extremely unfair labour conditions, not progress. What you have said here is 100% untrue.

Re: Autonomous cars, drones cheerfully obey prompt injection by road sign

#200

Post by Throaway1982 » Mon, Feb 02, 2026, 2:31 PM UTC

theamk wrote: post #183

Throaway1982 wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Luddites were trying to stop themselves & their families from starving to death. The factory owners were only interested in profit. It isn't like the Luddites were given a generous re-training package and they turned it down. They had 0 rights, I mean that literally: 0.

You missed MR2Z's argument: there are more people in the world than luddites and factory owners. During industrial revolution, the clothes (and other fabrics) were getting dramatically cheaper. A family that could only afford cheapest clothes could now get a higher quality stuff. A family that could not afford any clothes at all, could now get cheap stuff. This is what the luddites wanted to stop. It's not "luddites…

Except for the fact that the Luddites' labour grievances could easily have been addressed by the factory owners (rise in pay, better conditions) while still offering cheaper fabrics through industrialization. There was simply no desire to do so. No one was saved from freezing to death by cheaper textiles.

People did starve to death and turn to things such as alcohol due to labour displacement during Industrialization. At the time, the prevailing wisdom was that lower-class people were naturally inferior. Robert Owen challenged this theory.

And yes, that was the choice given to the Luddites. Have no work (and therefore no food), because the factory owner can replace you with machines, and you have no labour rights, so he will simply cast you out and make more profit. I did not miss Mr2Z's argument, yours is just incorrect.