<rss version="2.0" xmlns:dc="http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/" xmlns:atom="http://www.w3.org/2005/Atom"><channel><title>Hacker News: nullc</title><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=nullc</link><description>Hacker News RSS</description><docs>https://hnrss.org/</docs><generator>hnrss v2.1.1</generator><lastBuildDate>Wed, 20 May 2026 21:20:12 +0000</lastBuildDate><atom:link href="https://hnrss.org/user?id=nullc" rel="self" type="application/rss+xml"></atom:link><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by nullc in "Qwen 3.7 Preview"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>Bad is mystifying.  Unassisted but for handing it a pile of PDFs of relevant academic papers and my initial codebase, I had hermes agent based on qwen-3.6 27B implement karatsuba multiplication of characteristic-2 polynomials in C++ in an existing codebase with an internal field arithmetic library. It correctly found the 'obvious' optimizations using the field properties. Then I had it implement the recursive halfgcd algorithm for these polynomials using it.<p>It wrote extensive test cases and validated them with mutation testing (per my standard instructions)-- took many tries getting the algorithms right but with the tests handy it found and fixed the errors.<p>It's inconceivable to me to call it bad!</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Mon, 18 May 2026 23:58:34 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48187544</link><dc:creator>nullc</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48187544</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48187544</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by nullc in "Alignment pretraining: AI discourse creates self-fulfilling (mis)alignment"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>Not just discourse about real AI-- but there have been pretty clear examples of AI riffing on fictional AI (which is usually evil) in response to prompts saying that it's AI.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Mon, 18 May 2026 23:43:30 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48187422</link><dc:creator>nullc</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48187422</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48187422</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by nullc in "Where OpenClaw Security Is Heading"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>Better to run a simple full virtual machine.  It's easy to spin one up on any modern linux distro (okay, not as easy it is in Qubes-- only three mouse clicks, but still pretty easy).<p>There are many advantages of running it in a VM: really clean and strong sandboxing and it's easy to put that VM behind its own VPN / firewall external to the VM to reduce the escape risk.).  It's also handy if you run a different distro than the agent ecosystem, since you can just run whatever OS works best for the agent.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Mon, 18 May 2026 01:47:18 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48174847</link><dc:creator>nullc</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48174847</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48174847</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by nullc in "New arXiv policy: 1-year ban for hallucinated references"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>It's been pretty eye opening watching Craig Wright (of bitcoin fakery fame) flooding out LLM generated 'academic' papers and even having some of them accepted.<p>He's toast if SSRN were to adopt a similar policy.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Fri, 15 May 2026 01:01:33 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48143229</link><dc:creator>nullc</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48143229</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48143229</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by nullc in "Removing the modem and GPS from my 2024 RAV4 hybrid"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>> Kias have a “Massachusetts mode” flag hidden behind a service menu (that needs a dealer code) that disables telematics at the owner’s request.<p>I would be very concerned that the flag just continues to submit your data but with a "telematics disabled" bit set on it. This is absolutely how location privacy is implemented in some devices.  Moreover, even if it is effective it could be remotely reset including accidentally as part of an update.<p>Better than not setting it, I suppose! :)</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Thu, 14 May 2026 19:55:34 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48140360</link><dc:creator>nullc</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48140360</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48140360</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by nullc in "Removing the modem and GPS from my 2024 RAV4 hybrid"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>> then the car will use your phone as an internet connection and send all the same telemetry data back to Toyota [...] so I exclusively use CarPlay via USB.<p>I would be concerned that a passenger connecting their phone to it while I was driving.<p>In other cars I've been successful picking up the relevant modules for peanuts from surplus/scrap then just desoldering the RF-active components (like bt radios, etc) and swapping them in.  YMMV but if it doesn't work you're just out the cost of a junk part.<p>Even if some radio feature is benign its existence means that its hard to be confident that there isn't some other telemetry feature you missed.  With no connectivity at all you don't need to worry that you missed something because you can monitor the car with a spectrum analyzer and observe its never transmitting.<p>Unfortunately in some newer cars you can't swap any modules without a dealer tool to pair the module to the car, presumably in a bid to prevent third parties from fixing the car (presumably preventing people from lobotomizing their surveillance isn't on their radar yet).</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Thu, 14 May 2026 19:51:42 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48140316</link><dc:creator>nullc</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48140316</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48140316</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by nullc in "Toxicity on Social Media"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>> that might even still be the case.<p>No way, hasn't been true for many years.  Try viewing the site from a few different people's systems.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Wed, 13 May 2026 06:33:36 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48118528</link><dc:creator>nullc</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48118528</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48118528</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by nullc in "Guitar tuner that uses phone accelerometer"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>This is why grapheneos creates 'sensors' as a permission.  On android all apps can spy on you this way.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Wed, 13 May 2026 06:30:00 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48118507</link><dc:creator>nullc</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48118507</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48118507</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by nullc in "Restore full BambuNetwork support for Bambu Lab printers"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>Thanks for the cluestick!<p>Can you read the filaments installed in the printer over MQTT too?</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Wed, 13 May 2026 01:21:11 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48116735</link><dc:creator>nullc</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48116735</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48116735</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by nullc in "Restore full BambuNetwork support for Bambu Lab printers"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>> clients can send prints locally<p>Using an AGPL violating mystery meat binary plugin that you run on your host, which potentially compromises any airgap you put around your printer (it attempts to connect to bambu servers, or did last time I checked it) and potentially your entire host.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Tue, 12 May 2026 23:56:55 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48116146</link><dc:creator>nullc</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48116146</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48116146</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by nullc in "Hardware Attestation as Monopoly Enabler"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>I have sympathy for the desire but that isn't something you actually get through google's surveillance-ware.<p>You can change the information you put into the hash in my example to get them one go per site per day or one per year or even one per site ever.  But without giving cross site linkablity that does you no good or giving google visibility into everyone all the time.<p>But that still doesn't get you to your desired unevadable bans, but with suitable parameters it can get as close as google's spyware approach while being much more private.<p>I think time a time oriented rate limit makes the most sense considering the limits in practice (attacker just gets access to another discarded phone, or tricks someone into authenticating for them via theirs)-- basically means the best you can do against dedicate attackers is rate limit them.  So why subject honest users who may have good privacy reasons to use multiple accounts over time to worse effective limits than attackers?<p>But you don't have to agree with that to accept that schemes much more private than google's are possible.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Tue, 12 May 2026 08:20:02 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48105614</link><dc:creator>nullc</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48105614</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48105614</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by nullc in "A.I. note takers are making lawyers nervous"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>> word choice in AI notes that might have a sinister connotation<p>Potentially sinister due to the biases of the model, as the model may have been trained using internet content that has a lot more fictional titillating evil overlord board meetings than the actual mind-numbing real thing.  Training that included extremist anti-corporate dogma might even bias the language models towards hallucinating the worst possible misinterpretation.<p>I've seen whisper hallucinate whole legal arguments whole cloth when the AGC was broken in it and the audio went quiet-- so I think the language models in it are more than powerful enough to politically load a transcript.<p>Good practice should be to minimize any unnecessary stored records because ANY record just means more processing costs in discovery and god knows how much extra cost in litigation should it happen to have an unfavorable interpretation in light of some impossible to anticipate future litigation.<p>But if AI transcription must be used it would be might be prudent to save a copy of the original audio along with it.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Tue, 12 May 2026 00:19:20 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48102559</link><dc:creator>nullc</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48102559</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48102559</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by nullc in "Google says criminal hackers used AI to find a major software flaw"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>Presumably the attacker used Google's own LLM and they searched the history of all user chats to find the transcript.<p>I say this only slightly in jest, as that's about the only thing I can think of which would legitimately give them 'high confidence'.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Mon, 11 May 2026 23:56:35 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48102371</link><dc:creator>nullc</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48102371</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48102371</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by nullc in "Hardware Attestation as Monopoly Enabler"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>> If you care about your car, truck, tractor, or dozer being maintainable and reliable, don't get one with a computer in it.<p>Got a list of widely available cars and trucks 'without a computer'? :D</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Mon, 11 May 2026 12:39:03 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48094210</link><dc:creator>nullc</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48094210</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48094210</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by nullc in "Hardware Attestation as Monopoly Enabler"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>> Vandalism can be reduced by excluding fare evaders because that's a class of people rather than a class of devices.<p>Just observing: People who don't own an iPhone or modern android are also, generally, of a class -- and probably one banks would prefer to not do business with for profitability reasons.<p>People who don't have spyware/lockinware for principled reasons are currently rare enough to not matter in this analysis-- though sure, they're probably customers the bank wants.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Mon, 11 May 2026 12:34:23 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48094169</link><dc:creator>nullc</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48094169</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48094169</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by nullc in "Hardware Attestation as Monopoly Enabler"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>Small models were originally built from distilling, using synthetic training materials, and filtering training material with much larger models. There is a bit of a bootstrapping problem where to build a good LLM you need a working LLM and if you don't have one the costs are absolutely eye watering.<p>One observation is that the LLM is a next token predictor but if you train it on the internet/textbooks/etc you get a predictor of that--- but <i>that</i> isn't the behavior we actually want. None of these sources tend to contain "Solve this problem for me. OK, here is the solution:".<p>It wasn't physically impossible to start GNU the other way around, by bashing machine code into a system until you had a working operating system.  But doing so would have been a lot less reasonable-- much more expensive, making progress much less quickly, etc.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Mon, 11 May 2026 12:28:29 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48094123</link><dc:creator>nullc</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48094123</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48094123</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by nullc in "Hardware Attestation as Monopoly Enabler"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>Apple doesn't own re-captcha. Apple's walled garden is still a tragedy but its a tragedy of willing participants.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Mon, 11 May 2026 12:10:57 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48093971</link><dc:creator>nullc</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48093971</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48093971</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by nullc in "Hardware Attestation as Monopoly Enabler"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>I know it from personal experience using GNU tools on Sun early on (really Solaris in my case, I wasn't quite that early a user), and I think from a talk or essay by RMS but for a moment I worried it might have been personal correspondence.  Finding a citation seemed like a fun challenge:<p><a href="https://www.gnu.org/gnu/thegnuproject.html" rel="nofollow">https://www.gnu.org/gnu/thegnuproject.html</a><p>> [...] the easiest way to develop components of GNU was to do it on a Unix system, and replace the components of that system one by one. But they raised an ethical issue: whether it was right for us to have a copy of Unix at all.<p>> Unix was (and is) proprietary software, and the GNU Project's philosophy said that we should not use proprietary software. But, applying the same reasoning that leads to the conclusion that violence in self defense is justified, I concluded that it was legitimate to use a proprietary package when that was crucial for developing a free replacement that would help others stop using the proprietary package.<p>> But, even if this was a justifiable evil, it was still an evil. Today we no longer have any copies of Unix, because we have replaced them with free operating systems. If we could not replace a machine's operating system with a free one, we replaced the machine instead.<p>Still leave open the the question of RMS personally using SunOS (as opposed to some other proprietary unix) but I think at this point I'd just go dig up very old GNU sources for evidence of that, but I suspect your question was primarily about RMS' ethical reasoning which is well answered above.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Mon, 11 May 2026 00:27:51 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48089653</link><dc:creator>nullc</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48089653</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48089653</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by nullc in "Hardware Attestation as Monopoly Enabler"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>I'll be the first to admit that the technology can be abused-- that it's even ripe for abuse.  That sort of problem can be avoided by allowing 'enough'-- and if the goal is to just prevent a site being flooded out 'enough' could be pretty high.<p>Of course, I think the effective purpose of google's attest feature is to invade everyone's privacy which we should assume is part of why they don't use privacy preserving techniques.  Privacy preserving techniques could still be abused, however.<p>Maybe they're even worse for humanity because they make bad schemes more palatable. I think right now I lean towards no: the public in general will currently tolerate the most invasive forms of these systems, so our issue isn't that they're being successfully resisted and the resistance might be diminished by a scheme which is still bad but less bad.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Sun, 10 May 2026 23:52:08 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48089381</link><dc:creator>nullc</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48089381</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48089381</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by nullc in "Local AI needs to be the norm"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>Small models are more useful for "doing stuff" than "knowing stuff" to begin with.  Add in an agentic harness and a small model can happily read more current information on demand (including from e.g. a local wikipedia snapshot).</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Sun, 10 May 2026 23:46:21 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48089337</link><dc:creator>nullc</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48089337</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48089337</guid></item></channel></rss>