Hacker News: daveshistory

New comment by daveshistory in "Google Chrome update will close the door on ad blockers"

daveshistory — Tue, 16 Jun 2026 16:16:27 +0000

Most computer users have very few real demands to make and it suffices.

New comment by daveshistory in "I Fired Google"

daveshistory — Tue, 16 Jun 2026 15:02:37 +0000

Perhaps Gemini's been training on sources too young to listen to Radiohead.

New comment by daveshistory in "Police officer investigated for using AI to 'create evidence' in multiple cases"

daveshistory — Sun, 14 Jun 2026 01:34:40 +0000

Honestly, I didn't tell it to add that gun to the picture, it did that on its own!

New comment by daveshistory in "Anthropic requires 30 day data retention for Fable and Mythos"

daveshistory — Thu, 11 Jun 2026 15:42:38 +0000

That's a fair point.

New comment by daveshistory in "Anthropic requires 30 day data retention for Fable and Mythos"

daveshistory — Thu, 11 Jun 2026 04:14:01 +0000

Well, it's okay for them.

New comment by daveshistory in "Anthropic requires 30 day data retention for Fable and Mythos"

daveshistory — Thu, 11 Jun 2026 04:13:39 +0000

I don't know why you'd read literally the last 25 years of leaks from mass surveillance programs and think for one moment that they've just, gosh, overlooked the opportunities.

New comment by daveshistory in "Anthropic requires 30 day data retention for Fable and Mythos"

daveshistory — Thu, 11 Jun 2026 04:10:08 +0000

After 30 days and before the heat-death of the universe?

New comment by daveshistory in "The new bibliomaniacs"

daveshistory — Thu, 11 Jun 2026 04:08:24 +0000

I saw a Discman in a museum a few years ago.

A Discman. They couldn't even use a Walkman.

New comment by daveshistory in "Replies to comments on my "LLMs are eroding my career" post"

daveshistory — Wed, 10 Jun 2026 14:39:49 +0000

I go back and forth on it a lot myself; and it's not just in the office context.

Grandkid's sports club had an AI-made song about the group at Christmas. It was "good enough" for that. Did they steal the job of a local band? Well, in the sense that the club would have had to commission a song. But in reality, the club wouldn't have paid money for that.

They won't pay money to commission Anthropic (or in that case I assume something like Suno) to make the song in the future either. They just won't pay the money at all. A lot of "valuable" human work will be replaced, but it won't be profitable for the companies. I bet more stuff is being transcribed now than ever before -- but not much money is being made on it.

New comment by daveshistory in "Replies to comments on my "LLMs are eroding my career" post"

daveshistory — Mon, 08 Jun 2026 11:53:16 +0000

I think technically it's referring to the advice, which is in the singular.

"These AIs are usually right about things I don't know anything about" sounds like the textbook example of risky thinking though.

New comment by daveshistory in "Replies to comments on my "LLMs are eroding my career" post"

daveshistory — Mon, 08 Jun 2026 11:48:48 +0000

I would imagine it is like transcribing, an industry I was in for a little bit when I was younger. I saw the same transition there and imagine it will be elsewhere. First it's a bunch of people saying "AI can't take our jobs, our jobs are thinking jobs." Then it's "Sure, you could use AI, but there's no real advantage to it because it makes so many mistakes."

But pretty soon after that it's "Why am I paying a transcriptionist $3/minute when I can just have the machine auto-transcribe it and then my admin assistant can just scan it for mistakes."

Even if there still IS a quality difference between great writers and AI product, "good enough" is good enough for most customers, especially if you have to pay professional rates to get better.

New comment by daveshistory in "The new bibliomaniacs"

daveshistory — Sun, 07 Jun 2026 17:21:02 +0000

I raised my kids with physical books. But when I was growing up we had a record turntable, and then a tape player, and I do remember having some kind of physical connection with my favorite music because of that.

It IS more inconvenient to have them pull them out. No question about that.

New comment by daveshistory in "Meta confirms 1000s of Instagram accounts were hacked by abusing its AI chatbot"

daveshistory — Sun, 07 Jun 2026 17:19:03 +0000

Pretty much. The most depressing thing about the bland slop produced by LLMs is realizing that this is what they "think" of us.

New comment by daveshistory in "Meta confirms 1000s of Instagram accounts were hacked by abusing its AI chatbot"

daveshistory — Sun, 07 Jun 2026 02:24:41 +0000

Where do you think the LLMs learned it from...

New comment by daveshistory in "The new bibliomaniacs"

daveshistory — Sun, 07 Jun 2026 01:18:18 +0000

That's exactly how I feel although I do wonder if a lot of younger people, if any still become readers, will just a different, less physical relationship with their books than I do or you do.

It's probably a bad example but I don't have any physical connection with music or video anymore for instance, but I definitely remember having that kind of relationship with favorite records and tapes when I was a kid. And now I just... don't. It must be the same way for some people with e-books.

New comment by daveshistory in "The desperation of NYTimes"

daveshistory — Thu, 04 Jun 2026 20:35:22 +0000

If all else fails resort to old-fashioned letter. As long as it's certified you will have proof of delivery. And then, if they continue to make unauthorized charges, it is your credit card company's problem. They are awake during business hours, and they WILL sort it out.

New comment by daveshistory in "The desperation of NYTimes"

daveshistory — Thu, 04 Jun 2026 20:28:07 +0000

Certified mail? I know it's old-fashioned but then you could hold their feet to the fire if they kept charging you.

New comment by daveshistory in "The ways we contain Claude across products"

daveshistory — Thu, 04 Jun 2026 19:25:14 +0000

They may. I think the point was not that they were intentionally making a dangerous product, more that "Look how dangerous our model is according to some of our tests!" works as a kind of guerrilla marketing.

(Not sure that is the right word but hope my meaning comes across.)

New comment by daveshistory in "The ways we contain Claude across products"

daveshistory — Thu, 04 Jun 2026 19:23:32 +0000

Hardly a new hypothetical scenario, that Wargames movie is probably 40 years old now.

New comment by daveshistory in "The ways we contain Claude across products"

daveshistory — Thu, 04 Jun 2026 19:21:55 +0000

Many companies would say that's the best kind of risk-reward balance. For them, anyway.