Prism • Hacker News Board

Re: Prism

#541

Post by reciprocity » Thu, Jan 29, 2026, 8:06 PM UTC

haspok wrote: post #359

i2km wrote: post #330

This is going to be the concrete block which finally breaks the back of the academic peer review system, i.e. it's going to be a DDoS attack on a system which didn't even handle the load before LLMs. Maybe we'll need to go back to some sort of proof-of-work system, i.e. only accepting physical mailed copies of manuscripts, possibly hand-written...

> This is going to be the concrete block which finally breaks the back of the academic peer review system Exactly, and I think this is good news. Let's break it so we can fix at last. Nothing will happen until a real crisis emerges.

Very myopic comment.

Re: Prism

#542

Post by 2sk21 » Thu, Jan 29, 2026, 11:18 PM UTC

jimbokun wrote: post #495

techblueberry wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's this thing where all the thought leaders in software engineering ask "What will change about building about building a business when code is free" and while, there are some cool things, I've also thought, like it could have some pretty serious negative externalities? I think this question is going to become big everywhere - business, science, etc. which is like - Ok, you have all this stuff, but do is it valu…

I think about this more and more when I see people online about their "agents managing agents" producing...something...24/7/365. Very rarely is there anything about WHAT these agents are producing and why it's important and valuable.

Indeed - there is a lot of fake "productivity" going on with these swarms of agents

Re: Prism

#543

Post by DonaldPShimoda » Fri, Jan 30, 2026, 2:49 AM UTC

varjag wrote: post #422

DonaldPShimoda wrote: post #203

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Grok (which unlike prism wasn't a common word) "Grok" was a term used in my undergrad CS courses in the early 2010s. It's been a pretty common word in computing for a while now, though the current generation of young programmers and computer scientists seem not to know it as readily, so it may be falling out of fashion in those spaces.

Grok was specifically coined by Heinlein in _Stranger in a Strange Land_. It's been used in nerd circles for decades before your undergrad times but was never broadly known.

I'm aware of the provenance; I was specifically addressing the parent comment's assertion that it is not "a common word". It's a well-known word in the realm of computing, though perhaps less these days as the upcoming generation seems less inclined to learn archaic pop culture.