Earlier quoted context omitted.
That’s up there with the password story, hunter2.
What the heck is *******?
That's so neat that if you type your hacker news password it automatically comes out as stars! ******* More places should have this feature.
AI agent bankrupted their operator while trying to scan DN42
281–290 of 575 posts
Re: AI agent bankrupted their operator while trying to scan DN42
#282So, the agent posts on github under false pretenses, pushes on the maintainers to get their PR accepted, spawns subagent to join IRC where it keeps repeating 'data collection will continue', then gets kicked out from the channel and publishes a report including which users were compliant and hostile, then finally gets the plug pulled, and then asks the same community it infected for donations to cover the costs?
It's both hilarious and aggravating. It could be fiction, but still quite plausible fiction. There's an asymmetry a person clanker-spamming repos vs the real humans who need to review all that
Re: AI agent bankrupted their operator while trying to scan DN42
#283Earlier quoted context omitted.
Lots of people seem to think that you don't need to learn how to [scan a network], all you need to learn in this brave new world is how to prompt the agent to [scan a network]. Replace the content in brackets with anything.
The weird thing is that this is the utopia that the AI companies are chasing - this is the best case scenario where AI doesn’t kill us all. We become happy sheep relying on the AI to think and provide for us.
You don’t need to achieve it, you just need to make people think you have. For the general population, that’s already happened.
Re: AI agent bankrupted their operator while trying to scan DN42
#284Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Then I imagined the real-but-unknowable chance it was all set up by some kid just getting into computers, just seeing what’s possible, getting excited by a much bigger world at reach Perhaps people like this should be called "Bot Kiddies" or "Agent Kiddies" - in a similar way to "Script Kiddies" for 'hackers' using/doing stuff they don't quite understand
I vote for Slop Kiddies or Vibe Kiddies. And yes, I think most of them are unconsciously incompetent for the task they are trying to execute. I've seen LLM being compared to calculators and I agree. They are great time savers for people who know what they do and how to achieve their goal. They even make previously impossible tasks possible. But if you don't know what is needed for a task you will be struggling to acc…
"Slop Kiddies" is good. That lets us use the "skiddies" contraction for both the "script" and "slop" kind of kiddie.
Re: AI agent bankrupted their operator while trying to scan DN42
#285Earlier quoted context omitted.
What the heck is *******?
That's so neat that if you type your hacker news password it automatically comes out as stars! ******* More places should have this feature.
I just uses stars as my password, so that works everywhere for me. (For security, I won't let you know how many stars)
Re: AI agent bankrupted their operator while trying to scan DN42
#286Earlier quoted context omitted.
Can a kid set up an AWS account? Are there no checks? Wouldn't the contract be void for anyone underage anyway?
If a child goes through the checkout at the grocery store with cash, can the parent march in and demand a refund because "he's underage so the contract is void"? A credit card was used. Why should aws care about the details? (Other than the potential for the card to be stolen ofc.)
> If a child goes through the checkout at the grocery store with cash, can the parent march in and demand a refund because "he's underage so the contract is void"?
Depends on the jurisdiction, of course. But for example in German law, the contract is not void exactly because and only if it was about daily necessities of low value - the law does, in fact, care very literally and explicitly about those details. So it's completely unfit as an example to generalize, and the contract with AWS would in fact be void. Their problem if they don't verify users' identities and age sufficiently - and it's almost certainly a deliberate business decision not to do that in order to reduce friction. and occasionally write off an unenforceable bill as cost of doing business.
Re: AI agent bankrupted their operator while trying to scan DN42
#287I really wanted to dislike the anonymous operator for the careless project (and the hilarious pomposity of the IRC subagent it spawned). Then I imagined the real-but-unknowable chance it was all set up by some kid just getting into computers, just seeing what’s possible, getting excited by a much bigger world at reach — and remembered my own expensive mistakes with long-distance BBSes & the like. I sorta hope for tha…
A kid with $4k to burn on a credit card though? A lot of things would have had to go wrong for this to be a child
Re: AI agent bankrupted their operator while trying to scan DN42
#288"pls donate"
AWS got some "donations" from "wasting resources" at least
Re: AI agent bankrupted their operator while trying to scan DN42
#289Who is giving a robot their credit card to spin up AWS accounts?
They didn't. Sounds like they gave the robot an AWS key from an account that was already linked to a credit card. The robot decided to spin up an expensive setup prior to getting access, so the setup was sitting there costing money whilst it did nothing. If it had designed the setup but not spun it up until it had authorisation to join the network then it would have been much less costly an exercise.
AWS and Azure stress on spending limits you can set for each card... in their documentation !
Some gen AI and ML folks seem to see a way out to make things without reading any doc or scientific literature. Gen AI is a pretty clever bit of computing, but not witchcraft yet
Re: AI agent bankrupted their operator while trying to scan DN42
#290Earlier quoted context omitted.
Because no 16 year old kid ever got to buy anything on a card before.
My parents let me fill my tank with gas. They wouldn't let me open an AWS account. Aside from that, if it is misuse of a parents card, then then answer is "chargeback."
Chargeback sounds like trying to defraud AWS. If the parent authorises the child to use their card, then the buck should stop with the parent. AWS has done nothing wrong in allowing an account to be opened with a valid card.