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Can You Stop a Hypersonic Missile?

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Re: Can You Stop a Hypersonic Missile?

#41

Post by tptacek »

protortyp wrote: post #9
bos wrote: post #6

This is an exhausting and dispiriting article to try to read because of its short, choppy, clearly AI-generated sentences. The topic is interesting, but whoever caused it to be penned didn’t seem to care enough to make it appealing to read.

Curious which parts specifically felt that way for you? I spent over a week on this, and yes ofc, I used LLMs to help reformulate some sections, but "didn't seem to care enough to make it appealing to read" isn't it. Happy to look at the spots that felt choppy if you can point them out.

"Below it you are doing high-school physics. Above it you are running a small particle accelerator with a missile attached." is where I clocked out.

(Also "honest" assessments; the word "honest" has gone the way of "delve".)

Use LLMs to proofread and critique structure. Don't take a single word they generate and put it in your copy, not even simple vocabulary suggestions. The more work you put into a piece, the more important this rule is.

Re: Can You Stop a Hypersonic Missile?

#42

Post by swatcoder »

protortyp wrote: post #9
bos wrote: post #6

This is an exhausting and dispiriting article to try to read because of its short, choppy, clearly AI-generated sentences. The topic is interesting, but whoever caused it to be penned didn’t seem to care enough to make it appealing to read.

Curious which parts specifically felt that way for you? I spent over a week on this, and yes ofc, I used LLMs to help reformulate some sections, but "didn't seem to care enough to make it appealing to read" isn't it. Happy to look at the spots that felt choppy if you can point them out.

> and yes ofc, I used LLMs to help reformulate some sections

???

Why in the world would that be an "ofc"?

If you're trying to establish yourself as a writer and communicator, LLM's are the last thing you want to color your personal voice with. They may have a role in cleaning up interpersonal communication or in helping non-professional communicators shape up their prose for formal occasions, but they are not some kind of magic neutral way to improve a writer's writing.

As you're seeing here, all that work would have been better received without the compromises and tells of LLM-ese because it would have been your writing, in your voice, as an intelligent analyst and communicator. The idiosyncrasies of that prose voice (your prose voice), are a durable signature that people come to associate with you individually and help them interpret tone, inflection, emphasis, insight in ways that the genericism and accent of an LLM scrubs out.

Give yourself more credit and don't do this; or at least don't treat it as an "of course"!

Re: Can You Stop a Hypersonic Missile?

#43

Post by eightysixfour »

anonymousiam wrote: post #33

Lasers can stop a hypersonic missile, but the challenge is getting a beam on the target through the atmosphere. Some of the old SDI tests solved the problem by flying the laser above most of the atmosphere. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boeing_YAL-1

What is the math on how much additional heat a laser would deliver to a warhead which is presumably designed with some kind of ablative shielding that is pushing through air compressed into a plasma? It seems like the damage from a laser pointed from miles away through atmosphere wouldn't be enough to change anything.

Re: Can You Stop a Hypersonic Missile?

#44

Post by dylan604 »

anonymousiam wrote: post #33

Lasers can stop a hypersonic missile, but the challenge is getting a beam on the target through the atmosphere. Some of the old SDI tests solved the problem by flying the laser above most of the atmosphere. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boeing_YAL-1

There was also the Adaptive Optics where the beam was shaped by lot of individual articulated mirrors that could be used to correct the beam from not only the atmospheric distortion but how the heat of the beam itself would then change the atmospheric distortion. Supposedly, that tech became DLP.

Re: Can You Stop a Hypersonic Missile?

#46

Post by neilv »

bos wrote: post #6

This is an exhausting and dispiriting article to try to read because of its short, choppy, clearly AI-generated sentences. The topic is interesting, but whoever caused it to be penned didn’t seem to care enough to make it appealing to read.

I'm only a few more AI slop HN posts away from quitting HN.

I will only look at AI slop if paid to do so.

(Scouting ahead for alternatives, I wouldn't mind a Lobste.rs invite, to see whether that's pleasantly anti-slop.)

Re: Can You Stop a Hypersonic Missile?

#47

Post by caconym_ »

protortyp wrote: post #9
bos wrote: post #6

This is an exhausting and dispiriting article to try to read because of its short, choppy, clearly AI-generated sentences. The topic is interesting, but whoever caused it to be penned didn’t seem to care enough to make it appealing to read.

Curious which parts specifically felt that way for you? I spent over a week on this, and yes ofc, I used LLMs to help reformulate some sections, but "didn't seem to care enough to make it appealing to read" isn't it. Happy to look at the spots that felt choppy if you can point them out.

> ofc, I used LLMs to help reformulate some sections

This is not really meant to single you out, since there's a lot of this going around, but I really don't think this should be a matter of "of course". Why should it be the default to let a tool that doesn't have your context, or your voice, override your own usage of language?

Re: Can You Stop a Hypersonic Missile?

#48

Post by Jtsummers »

neilv wrote: post #46
bos wrote: post #6

This is an exhausting and dispiriting article to try to read because of its short, choppy, clearly AI-generated sentences. The topic is interesting, but whoever caused it to be penned didn’t seem to care enough to make it appealing to read.

I'm only a few more AI slop HN posts away from quitting HN. I will only look at AI slop if paid to do so. (Scouting ahead for alternatives, I wouldn't mind a Lobste.rs invite, to see whether that's pleasantly anti-slop.)

Submissions like this one are why I've pulled back from the site. I would like it if the comment guideline:

> Don't post generated comments or AI-edited comments. HN is for conversation between humans.

were extended to submissions as well. People submitting junk should get banned just as people commenting with LLMs do (or risk).

Re: Can You Stop a Hypersonic Missile?

#49

Post by [deleted] »

superkuh wrote: post #4

>Every “hypersonic intercept” the press has reported in the last three years was a different class of weapon: an air-launched aeroballistic missile, a quasi-ballistic short-range ballistic missile with a maneuvering reentry vehicle, or in one case a MIRV bus on an intermediate-range ballistic missile that the press could not stop calling hypersonic. Most people understand that no demonstrable air breathing lift-gener…

[deleted]
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