Hacker News: infinite_spin

New comment by infinite_spin in "The brain may be about to have its Ozempic moment"

infinite_spin — Wed, 26 Aug 2026 05:22:18 +0000

it's possible your doctor is treating you for depression as well as ADHD

New comment by infinite_spin in "We never use AI. For anything"

infinite_spin — Mon, 24 Aug 2026 10:07:17 +0000

My advice: let these people think what they want, it reduces competition in an already saturated market

New comment by infinite_spin in "How a Texas student blew the whistle on a rogue AI hacking attempt"

infinite_spin — Sun, 23 Aug 2026 21:47:48 +0000

Please stop dropping backhanded insults to other people here. It's not productive and violates guidelines.

New comment by infinite_spin in "How a Texas student blew the whistle on a rogue AI hacking attempt"

infinite_spin — Sun, 23 Aug 2026 10:50:28 +0000

And yet this "next-token predictor" is able to churn out well tested, valuable solutions, to complex problems. If you want to downplay that as nothing more than a fancy auto-complete, be my guest, I lose nothing from that.

New comment by infinite_spin in "How a Texas student blew the whistle on a rogue AI hacking attempt"

infinite_spin — Sun, 23 Aug 2026 09:39:43 +0000

> the ability to learn, understand, and make judgments or have opinions that are based on reason

Agentic systems do this all the time. For example, I can point an agent at my codebase, and it will learn, understand, and make judgements based on that input. If this weren't happening, then agentic coding wouldn't work.

New comment by infinite_spin in "How a Texas student blew the whistle on a rogue AI hacking attempt"

infinite_spin — Sun, 23 Aug 2026 09:33:01 +0000

You might want to consider the difference between "lying" and "hallucinations", wherein one is shown that the agent knew it was being inaccurate, yet chose an answer that achieved some goal set forth; and where hallucinations are essentially gibberish, or otherwise nonsensical responses.

https://arxiv.org/pdf/2509.03518

New comment by infinite_spin in "How a Texas student blew the whistle on a rogue AI hacking attempt"

infinite_spin — Sun, 23 Aug 2026 01:25:09 +0000

It's also a style that appears to deny the very first definition most dictionaries give for "intelligence"

> the ability to acquire and apply knowledge and skills.

New comment by infinite_spin in "Felony charges for citizen deleting phone data at US Border"

infinite_spin — Sat, 22 Aug 2026 01:59:43 +0000

The charges are the punishment. You are imprisoned, risk losing your career, risk losing reputation, and still have to hire a lawyer. The costs are incredibly asymmetric. This leads to the majority of people complying, which only emboldens the state.

New comment by infinite_spin in "Felony charges for citizen deleting phone data at US Border"

infinite_spin — Sat, 22 Aug 2026 01:57:08 +0000

Not to sound like a contrarian, but no. They would have thrown it in a faraday bag, cloned the device, and then would use one of the many existing forensic tools available to crack the pin.

https://cellebrite.com/en/blog/the-access-gap-is-closed-what...

https://www.magnetforensics.com/graykey-for-android-devices/

New comment by infinite_spin in "Anti-AI fonts are useless and harmful"

infinite_spin — Fri, 21 Aug 2026 19:44:21 +0000

I feel like both viewpoints are valid ways of determining what you personally view as "good", and I don't want to take away from that diversity of opinion

New comment by infinite_spin in "Anti-AI fonts are useless and harmful"

infinite_spin — Fri, 21 Aug 2026 07:03:01 +0000

Number of successful outcomes reported (e.g. with disabled students, cancer patients). Labor costs. Latency of services. Scientific discoveries found. Etc.

I'm not trying to discount the qualitative approach, but I think it's not impossibly hard to find metrics we can associate with "overall benefit to humanity" from a quantitative viewpoint.

New comment by infinite_spin in "Anti-AI fonts are useless and harmful"

infinite_spin — Fri, 21 Aug 2026 06:22:44 +0000

How do you propose assessing "overall benefit of humanity" without metrics?

New comment by infinite_spin in "Anti-AI fonts are useless and harmful"

infinite_spin — Fri, 21 Aug 2026 04:48:25 +0000

I'm advocating for a litmus test that can't be easily abused, and I'm advocating against unfair equivalences. I also am not calling "overall a benefit to humanity" a metric, it's more of a conclusion we could arrive at by an application of relevant metrics.

New comment by infinite_spin in "Aaron Swartz was prosecuted for scraping, while Meta does it without consequence"

infinite_spin — Fri, 21 Aug 2026 04:41:07 +0000

JSTOR was free for the public as well, but had a per-day download cap, which IIRC was 3 papers.

New comment by infinite_spin in "Anti-AI fonts are useless and harmful"

infinite_spin — Fri, 21 Aug 2026 00:50:31 +0000

That seems like an unfair equivalence. Lots of things you enjoy, including this very forum, benefit already wealthy private companies. That doesn't seem like it's a very good litmus test for whether something is overall a benefit to humanity.

New comment by infinite_spin in "GPT-5.6 Sol Pricing Cut by 50%"

infinite_spin — Tue, 18 Aug 2026 01:18:41 +0000

I've found it's worse for simple tasks too, and I have to give it stricter guidelines, and sometimes it doesn't follow the same patterns I've grown to expect. I've found using 5.6 (sol) is good for diagnosing issues though, especially in terms of optimization of some given path

New comment by infinite_spin in "GPT-5.6 Sol Pricing Cut by 50%"

infinite_spin — Tue, 18 Aug 2026 01:16:59 +0000

I'm not having that experience. So far each major model update has been at least slightly better than the last, in ways I've found useful. Can't say it's perfect, or able to do exactly what I want without a decent amount of instruction/implementation/docs, but it's been useful enough to keep paying for it.

New comment by infinite_spin in "GPT-5.6 Sol Pricing Cut by 50%"

infinite_spin — Tue, 18 Aug 2026 01:10:35 +0000

I have mine churning like butter and I'm rarely hitting a billion tokens per day, what's your workflow look like?

New comment by infinite_spin in "ICE Shot a Journalist and Threw Him in Detention. He's Approaching 300 Days"

infinite_spin — Sun, 16 Aug 2026 20:48:21 +0000

https://archive.is/N9hmS

New comment by infinite_spin in "Mushroom behind 'tiny people' hallucinations identified"

infinite_spin — Fri, 14 Aug 2026 01:56:33 +0000

The Hippy in me: "let's meet our new friends."

The CEO in me: "I need hundreds of think pads."