Hacker News: edot

New comment by edot in "Malware developers added nuclear and biological weapons text to to their spyware"

edot — Sat, 13 Jun 2026 03:57:08 +0000

This triggered Opus 4.8 the other day for me. Said “nuke that folder” and it said I was violating TOS.

New comment by edot in "If you are asking for human attention, demonstrate human effort"

edot — Fri, 12 Jun 2026 14:37:29 +0000

Yep, I manually listened to the meeting recordings (easy to find the spots based on the transcript timestamps) for any quotes. There are also meeting minutes and agendas with supporting docs to corroborate against (e.g. for dollar amounts). They really don’t make stuff up all the time if you root them in data.

New comment by edot in "If you are asking for human attention, demonstrate human effort"

edot — Fri, 12 Jun 2026 01:30:49 +0000

I rolled my own. I hadn’t heard of this one, but I looked into stuff like OpenStates (now privately for-profit owned, ugh). My city just uses a Wordpress site so it’s structured enough. I’m looking at building something to ingest cities with Granicus and one other big local government meeting recorder via API whose name I forget. That should get decent coverage. There’s no way to catch the long tail of every local government’s recording process. Some cities people will just have to do manually. But it’s easy enough with LLM help.

New comment by edot in "If you are asking for human attention, demonstrate human effort"

edot — Fri, 12 Jun 2026 00:24:17 +0000

Citizens monitoring their government is literally THE foundation of democracy (ok, maybe voting comes before it, but then you have to monitor who you voted for to see if they’re doing what you voted for).

New comment by edot in "If you are asking for human attention, demonstrate human effort"

edot — Fri, 12 Jun 2026 00:00:49 +0000

Nope, I used a minute fraction of the technology they have, along with open records as is my right in this country, to stand up for my Fourth Amendment right to travel without creeps stalking my every move. I need to make my specific framework a bit more generic and then I'll put it here on HN. Or just offer a platform where people can bring an OR key and it can run on their city.

New comment by edot in "If you are asking for human attention, demonstrate human effort"

edot — Thu, 11 Jun 2026 23:42:52 +0000

For some things, yes. But I'm half-assing some really cool stuff right now. Made a scraper to pull my city's meeting minutes, agendas, recordings, made transcripts. Regex for "Flock", found every mention, passed those files into a cheap model (DeepSeek V4), had an understanding of who in my city is down with building the surveillance state and who isn't. I've got research on everyone, and had emails drafted for each one based on what they said. Quotes and figures and all. I lightly polished each email and fired 'em off. Already got some replies back. Plenty more in the quiver too (pulled and analyzed CSVs of FOIA'd datasets).

If they're gonna spy on me with AI cameras, I can oppose them with AI research. :)

New comment by edot in "Notes on DeepSeek"

edot — Thu, 11 Jun 2026 04:59:53 +0000

Agreed. I’ve cancelled all plans except OpenCode Go. OpenRouter for API spend. Feels so nice to a) not feel like I have to code when I don’t want to just because I need to make my subscription worth the cost and b) know that this level of performance won’t be yanked away. Super pleased with DeepSeek V4 Pro.

Anthropic's Fable 5 Silent Sabotage Mode

edot — Wed, 10 Jun 2026 12:12:30 +0000

Article URL: https://everettdutton.com/anthropic_trust_destruction

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48475109

Points: 3

# Comments: 0

New comment by edot in "Rich Sutton on AI creativity and discovery"

edot — Wed, 10 Jun 2026 02:53:42 +0000

I don't quite follow his point. Is it: a) that we need a new foundational algorithm that integrates a goal (one with "taste") directly into the training step, or b) that we need to point trained models towards goals as they iterate?

If it's a), he doesn't propose such an algorithm, and I don't know how you'd do it at such a low level because how do you quantify abstract goals? Did he suggest such an algorithm and I misread? If it's b), that already exists, see AlphaEvolve or any number of things he said. Or, to be a bit of a smart-ass, just type /goal and let it rip ...

I also think he's just categorically wrong that LLMs cannot do good and novel things. And if it can, then you could just say "well that's not novel, that's derivative". A simple example, if I make up a programming language with an LLM and it works well for my purposes, then is that not novel and good? I mean, is any language other than FORTRAN not novel?

Everything is derivative and you can put an LLM in a loop to evaluate LLMs trying things. I must be misunderstanding because he's too smart to be this wrong.

New comment by edot in "Claude Fable 5"

edot — Tue, 09 Jun 2026 23:50:15 +0000

Same here when I said to “nuke” a process.

New comment by edot in "If Claude Fable stops helping you, you'll never know"

edot — Tue, 09 Jun 2026 23:44:28 +0000

Wow, this is horrible. Local LLMs are the future. Thanks, China! Seriously crazy that I’m saying that, but the American companies are being so anti-freedom they’re making the CCP look libertarian.

Also, Fable’s sensing is hypersensitive. Feels like they just have regex for phrases. No nuance. If I say I’m working on something using “GPUs to train” xyz then, will that trigger this sneaky silent screw-my-stuff-up mode?

New comment by edot in "Making peace with your unlived dreams (2023)"

edot — Mon, 08 Jun 2026 13:30:10 +0000

I think I’d separate “entertainment to be entertained” from “entertainment to feel good about myself”. Watching football for the fun or awe of it is completely fine. It’s impressive for sure. Watching football and feeling a true self-confidence or otherwise emotional boost when some other dude scores or “your team wins” is … stupid.

And to be clear, Joe Rogan is an idiot, I don’t watch his stuff anymore. Idiocracy is also the same trope as that little clip you can find on YouTube (which doesn’t even give him money because it’s a recording from like 20 years ago).

New comment by edot in "Making peace with your unlived dreams (2023)"

edot — Mon, 08 Jun 2026 01:29:18 +0000

Is this mindset why people like watching sports so much? I’ve never understood it, really. You’re not playing, exercising, practicing, getting injured, losing, or winning, nor are you getting paid, so … why care?

I could just be an asshole but if we go to Mars tomorrow, I’ll go “ok that was cool” and then go to the grocery store, cook dinner, go to bed, and go to work tomorrow. It just doesn’t matter. I am not we and neither are you (unless you go to Mars or play in the NFL, then you’re definitely allowed to feel “our” accomplishments).

Edit: I almost feel that this mindset is a bad thing for the world. Think of the average Joe (like me) who isn’t capable of building a smartphone. Yet I can buy one for a few hundred bucks. I shouldn’t feel proud of “our” invention, should I? No, some really smart, hardworking people have worked for decades to bring this to my pocket. I should be inspired to work harder and learn a such craft or skill, not go “man, we’re so smart”, because I didn’t help build it. I just bought it … it’s the Joe Rogan pyramids standup bit.

New comment by edot in "Show HN: Lathe – Use LLMs to learn a new domain, not skip past it"

edot — Sun, 07 Jun 2026 17:52:45 +0000

Can you give some examples of the deterministic tasks? So in your example, was the deterministic task “fetch this team’s backlog”? And then the LLM parts are “process each backlog” and “combine a summary”?

New comment by edot in "Anthropic's open-source framework for AI-powered vulnerability discovery"

edot — Fri, 05 Jun 2026 01:48:24 +0000

Anthropic, no s, is owned by some Australian guy.

New comment by edot in "The FBI Wants 'Near Real-Time' Access to US License Plate Readers"

edot — Sat, 23 May 2026 15:57:39 +0000

Wait, but I was told that my local police department owned the Flock data, and that Flock doesn't own it and cannot share it? Was I lied to, to further expand the surveillance state?

New comment by edot in "Setting up a free *.city.state.us locality domain (2025)"

edot — Wed, 13 May 2026 23:12:15 +0000

Might help with phone numbers, but addresses are trivial to find and cannot be removed, if you own property in the United States. Every county publishes property records, searchable by name. Unless you own your house with an LLC, if someone knows or can guess the state you live in, they can 1) search on the property records website of the top 10 counties by population, and if that fails 2) expand to searching other counties until you pop up. Not sure how to mitigate this, other than the LLC method.

New comment by edot in "AI didn't delete your database, you did"

edot — Tue, 05 May 2026 17:15:45 +0000

Exactly. Thus the blame when an LLM does something dumb should fall on the human who owns the implementation of said LLM. A dead simple example: if I paste confidential information into ChatGPT, that’s on me. If I let Codex have access to an environment where it can get to confidential information, that’s also on me. At best I could also blame my IT department for giving me technical permissions to do such a thing, but still it’s humans at fault (and I believe in taking Extreme Ownership, so I wouldn’t even do that). LLMs are just technology like any other.

New comment by edot in "AI didn't delete your database, you did"

edot — Tue, 05 May 2026 14:41:40 +0000

This is why you don’t hire interns! They can delete things and cause havoc!

The same people who would blame AI for their failing to properly configure permissions would also blame interns for deleting production whatever.

Blame should go up, praise should go down. People always invert these.

New comment by edot in "Investors pile into clean energy as Iran war drives push for energy security"

edot — Sun, 03 May 2026 14:00:17 +0000

Yes, it’s amazing the things you can see fitting into this same mold once you realize that many of our issues in this country are due to old men (and old companies) holding onto power when they should really let the next generation take control.