Hacker News

points by ecto 15 hours ago | 0 comments

I disagree. Hand-authored articles can be slop too. This research is great, and your subjective feelings about word cadence don't affect the information. I guarantee you read AI output every day and don't know it.

[–] ahartmetz 14 hours ago

Hand-authored engagement or clout (LinkedIn) farming articles and corporate press releases are usually slop, most others aren't. I'd be surprised if corporate press releases today weren't largely AI-written - no one would know the difference.

[–] otterley 15 hours ago

The criticism can be restated, then, as “you used AI to write it, and unlike others who use AI to write things, you did a bad job directing it and editing the work.”

[–] ProllyInfamous 15 hours ago

This comment is not directed at you, but this is the best place I could find to insert my thoughts on this "nO LLm slOP" distraction:

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The research is jaw-dropping enough for the average reader to comprehend (e.g: I am not a techie, but a former IBEW datacenter wiretwister).

It could be covered in pube-sprinkled-turds and would still be worth reading.

To me the "slopLOL" crew is akin to people who'll take their time to correct others' their/they're/there usage:

Just read the fucking sentence (LLMs can and do and aren't so poopy-you-suck-for-being-human).

[–] otterley 14 hours ago

We know there’s interesting information in there. That’s not the point.

How news is delivered matters. If you don’t believe that, why would news outlets compete with each other? Even if the facts are the same, would you prefer to get them from a good or bad writer?

[–] ProllyInfamous 14 hours ago

>would you prefer to get them from a good or bad writer?

I am smart enough to not need perfection. I just want the data. Write however tf you want, good'll'be read.

And so will LLMs.

I'll suggest adaptation.

>why would news outlets compete with each other?

Competition for the masses' con$umption$?

It seems to generally work; shouldn't have to obfuscate the `man` pages for this always-running daemon... how many people even know what `man`pages are (obviously not here)? how to access them? why they would even want to?

[–] pjscott 7 hours ago

> always-running daemon

This is completely tangential to your point, but I'd bet that this daemon isn't always running. Apple is fond of putting as much system functionality as possible into daemons that (a) can be spun up quickly when needed in response to Mach IPC messages, (b) can be killed safely at any time to free up memory, including with SIGKILL if necessary, and most importantly (c) operate in the tightest, most locked-down sandbox they could devise.

For background computational tasks like this one, it can also be helpful for getting thread prioritization right. If some computation doesn't need to happen quickly, a daemon can easily make sure that it gets assigned to efficiency-optimized CPU cores, tell the OS scheduler to give priority to more important stuff, reduce precision of timers to coalesce wakeups, and make sure that any thermal throttling affects the background stuff before it slows down anything the user will notice. It's a pretty slick system.

[–] otterley 14 hours ago

Well, good for you for not caring, I suppose. The vast majority of society does.

> I am smart enough

Knock yourself down a peg, kid.

[–] ProllyInfamous 14 hours ago

I will, sure, but I've been writing about this for almost a decade; and I know more than most people about this topic, despite being a bluecollar electrician.

Also, my IQ scares even me; I've chosen bluecollar so I don't have to be evil as much with it.

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Companies do not give two shits about most users, with (e.g:) AMD saying the quiet part out loud, recently, with their recent gamers-last announcement.

Also see: Apple's invasive attempts to categorize all local data, by default; if you want to opt-out (some service, like OP's, you cannot!), it takes dozens of clicks for each new software – intentional dark-patterns to make opting-out cat-and-mouse.

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>Well, good for you for not caring, I suppose.

I care too much, is the problem (at least from my POV). Companies are soulless, and only care for shareholder value (legal requirement).

Data is the new_oil is the new_steel is the new_tin is the...

[–] otterley 11 hours ago

> I've been writing about this for almost a decade; and I know more than most people about this topic

> Also, my IQ scares even me

Oh, brother.

I mean this with the best of intentions and care: have you been psychiatrically evaluated lately? The language you’re using is consistent with friends I know who are off their stabilizing medications.