This article dives into a Newsroom mystery I had forgotten about: the Wire Service!

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47783343

Points: 3

# Comments: 1

In reading, which I did before reading the comments here, I wondered too if it was LLM written or assisted. It has the hallmarks of an LLM; the "this but not this" - the proclivity to be profound. In this case as if it had been told "I want to make something meaningful out of these events, but it shouldn't mean anything."

There is not about page. No links to other socials. The entire site could be LLM generated for all we can tell.

If anything at all, this "essay" and site serve as a reminder that there is an uncanny valley to LLM writing, and that real authentic human communication will likely become rarer and more valuable as this slop proliferates.

edit: from the OP's profile it looks like this is probably a well-meaining person interested in post-structuralism and meditation, but is likely using LLM to achieve that goal. Maybe they wrote in Japanese and are translating to English? Also I kind of like coming across stuff like this on HN but I feel it should still be adjacent or at least peripheral to the topics we normally discuss

As the author states traveling by train just a more pleasant experience.

I should note that even though there is technically wifi on every Amtrak train, it’s cellular based. You’ll find that at least from atlanta to NY, the train somehow threads the needle between cellular ranges. Both your phone and of course the train will often be either out of range of fast cellular service or out of range altogether. Supposedly Amtrak is getting starlink but we’ll see. So, don’t expect to be getting on any video calls.

It seems though, increasingly, that the ability to avoid addiction is less about pulling one up by one’s own bootstraps, and in many ways determined more by genetics. That is to say, what might have been possible for you is much harder for others.

Look no further than GLP-1. People who have struggled for years - decades - with overeating are almost immediately able to cut back on addictive eating. It’s not that they suddenly discovered willpower. It’s a biochemical effect.

It’s no wonder then that kids are more susceptible to addictive building behaviors. Their minds are pliable and teachable.

Why would we not legislate things that take advantage of that?

I hear you but at least as my bud described it, the software that most of the timber mill industry uses is buggy as hell, crashes all the time, and makes mistakes. One would wonder if even the licensed software is hardened.

Obviously caveat emperor but there are a lot of real world scenarios like this.

I think Anthropic and OpenAi are trying to all cool and apple-y with their branding but these use cases are just tools getting work done. Most normal people don’t need or want AGI, or even AI slop videos. They just want their invoicing system to just f-ing work for a change.

It's me. I have accumulated several dozen free games over the years through the Epic Store. Sorry Tim Sweeney!

It has nothing to do with fashion or retro vibes, as far as I can tell.

They’ve all lost too many AirPods through the years. AirPods just too easy to lose, and at their school, too easy to be stolen by someone else. And they’re expensive. Yes you can buy cheaper Bluetooth headsets but those often don’t sound as good and get lost just as easily.

So you’re either on a subscription basis relationship wih Bluetooth headsets, or you use wired headphones, which are actually harder to lose and less desirable to steal.

Just because you consider AI an interface in line with, perhaps, a paintbrush, typewriter, or spell checker, doesn’t mean it automatically is. It may even be true for you, and not for others. That’s the myopic part.

The binary part is that simply because you see it as an interface, it doesn’t have effects that are different than the interface of a brush. You wouldn’t get very far arguing with a judge that 80mph over the speed limit is exactly the same as 5mph over the speed limit.

Or, where would you draw the line. Is hiring someone to write your hacker news comments still your comment? Or what about spam bots? Are they not also an “interface?” Is banning spam bots outrightly also “ableist” by you?

But also, we have plenty of both media philosophical musing and evidence based data that shows that while mediums may not BE the message, they absolutely do affect the message.

In this case HN is simply saying that the process of humans generating words that we type onto a screen is the valuable part of communicating that we want to maintain. And that using AI is a bridge too far in losing the effort and output from that process.

As someone who’s played a lot of video games, very few gameshave come close to the experience that was Outer Wilds.

Textbook definition of a game I wish I could forget so I could play again for the first time.

The controls are wonky but it’s not a AAA title, so there are things about it that are a little rough for sure.

I’m not a huge ebayer but I’m usually watching one or two auctions at a time. The problem is that you can’t disallow marketing notifications. So, if I want to be usefully alerted for a new item in a search, or that I’ve been outbid, or the imminent end of an auction, I’ll also be getting notifications and emails about all kinds of shit I don’t care about. $5 off coupons (that only apply to 8 items that I don’t want). “You might like this!” notifications (spoiler: I never do). Group buying times (who cares?).

So I either disable ALL notifications (and have an LLM write a script that crawls searches manually and much more appropriately notifies me on its own), or I enable notifications and get a bunch of trash spam.

As it relates to specifically to buying, we’ve known for a long time that we’re all up against some kind of bot that’s timed the exact last moment and amount to outbid us. It’s no fun.

I’ve been an eBay user since 1998 and it’s been on a very slow roll of enshittification since then.

Make your experience better for humans and maybe we’d be less inclined to outsource negative experiences to AI.

Even the things that aren’t technically subscription feel like they are. I have a Kenmore fridge I bought in 2020. The extended warranty just ran out and the thing died. I called a tech. $400 to replace a series of motors. I looked into doing it myself and it’s outside of my time or ability. I have a basement beer fridge that is admittedly less efficient but it’s still kicking and it’s from the mid 80s. I realized I’m effectively ON a subscription plan for a fridge. $900-$1,200 for five years.

How much is a smartphone that lasts (do they even) and is NOT subsidized by cloud services? I have a 128gb iPhone and though I barely use any apps I’m constantly maxing my space because I take a lot of photos.

I hate to sound like a graduate student writing a thesis on capitalism but like water flow, it just feels like companies will always default to maximum profits. Didn’t instant pot and tupper ware just go out of business because they made a product everyone needed but only once? There’s no long term profit growth in any model where we’re not sucking off the teet of some company.