News for hackers. Stuff that matters.

wand3r

Re:After 28 years walking across the globe, he's almost home on Thursday October 29, 2026 @05:22PM (#50296228)
Many qualities of people who accomplish extraordinary things do not correlate with strong interpersonal relationships. The comment was a little overly judgmental so I totally understand your comments, but put politely, it isn't particularly unreasonable.
It's not an unreasonable point, but let's not pretend these are naive chumps who crumble at the sight of a woman. In this case, Jensen could have been coordinating with intel agencies to feed disinformation or a honeypot honeypot. Obvious speculation, but clearly he understands the game on the table better than us. Still, it is a tactic as old as time, so I am sure plenty fall victim to some degree
The "sex stuff" is doing A LOT of heavy lifting here.
Re: on Wednesday October 28, 2026 @07:07PM (#50282233)
The Twitter profile seems full of pretty absurd claims. Not my area of expertise, but I am highly skeptical of their posts.
I got banned on cloudflare yesterday for refreshing the a page too many times during a failed "human check" and am still bitter about it. You are 100% correct though, this isn't cloudflare. I still stand by the point though. Having massive consolidation in the space is dangerous.
Tangentially related gripe: Cloudflare has ruined the internet. I can't even read an article about a turtle using a US VPN with US IPs without solving 2 captchas. I assume some uptick is the amount of scraping labs are doing as well as a plethora of tools and bots made with AI, but it is extremely annoying how consolidated players dictate what is possible on the internet and there is no escape from surveillance capitalism. These little bits of friction add up.

Edit: I was using the VPN. The turtle was not using the VPN

Re:Dream-1 on Saturday October 24, 2026 @03:39PM (#50224390)
Yeah. I didn't want to be rude, because real people building things they are passionate about is a great ideal. However, it is REALLY starting to feel like 1999. There is a new paradigm with clearly amazing potential, but we do not have all the pieces in place to execute on the forward thinking ideas, much less the businesses. Just imagine if that robot arm destroyed a ton of super expensive machinery. It was an extremely fair prompt, very clear and very simple instructions. Also, 90 Million to tweak an AI model to not achieve a task in an unvalidated market? IDK if that is too harsh and I just don't understand? There is 100% chance that myself or Dream-1 is out of touch, but I am concerned I can't tell which is which.
Ok. I was sympathetic to that historically for all the reasons you stated. If you put the effort in, why are you constrained. I think we are in a different world now. So what would you do in my thought experiment?

You are the QA head and the new model could literally find and exploit ANY bug? Would you release the model? Genuinely curious. Its not totally science fiction. I think there is a difference in a couple smart people punishing 1 sloppy company that underinvested in security. The internet is a stack of protocols, hardware, infrastructure, applications etc. It could be the case that almost everyone has capabilities on par with yours. Great you say, security will improve! However, there will be a meltdown in the middle where potentially digital currency is exploited, exchanges, banks, utilities. It isn't just a team working for 3 months, finding some issues in a company.

Or is this way overblown?

I know you a bit by reputation so that was my assumption. I assume you mean responsible disclosure? I thought your statement was implying otherwise, maybe the unsaid implication was against the "extortion" argument?

In any case, what I want to say is this: All technology has tradeoffs but this has shown we are locked in a game theory mechanic not dissimilar to extortion AND the security implications are part of that.

- We have to build AI or someone else will.

- You need our tools to protect yourself from our tools or similar ones

- You need to use AI or someone using AI will take your job.

Many examples but it is very "i created the disease to sell you the cure". If this were any other technology, we would expect more reasonable mitigations, extraneous factors like software bugs existing aside. It speaks to a fundamental lack of control on the part of the labs that we take for granted: they simply don't have control of the PRODUCT, much less how it is even used.

I genuinely would like to know your opinion on what the next steps would be then? If every single exploit was available tomorrow accompanied by a working exploit to operationalize it, or combine it in a chain to compromise any software that has such a vulnerability, would you post it on the internet?
We are where we are, I think most people here understand that. However, if where we are is the right now is just the starting line, and it is already shaking the foundation of all modern society, then I think it is right to be concerned; parent comments quip aside.
Re:Airbnb bans making guests do dishes and take out the trash on Thursday October 22, 2026 @07:35PM (#50202589)
If I were supreme leader? Both of these models create a tragedy of the commons of sorts and meaningfully distort incentives. So I would have the tax revenue go to public good like universal health care. Again, not a policy that could ever occur but it would be great to raise funds for something positive while incentivizing business models that actually charge for value. It would be good to stop advertising be strapped into previously purchased products or subscriptions, or stop incessant stalking for attribution of sale.

As for short term rentals: the first time the housing market was financialized the economy crashed. People with money bought up all the pieces and are ransoming back what used to be the American dream. You pay money for a quasi-luxury experience and in reality you fund airbnbs profits and become an employee in someones REIT and are fined for the pleasure.

Not totally serious, but not totally unserious about it either.

Re:Airbnb bans making guests do dishes and take out the trash on Wednesday October 21, 2026 @09:58PM (#50190212)
Potentially unpopular opinion: The renting of short term residential property should be taxed at 15% of revenue. Digital advertising should be taxed at 20% of revenue.
Re:Airbnb bans making guests do dishes and take out the trash on Wednesday October 21, 2026 @08:34PM (#50189557)
I think that AirBnB just feels much more annoying because of the fee structures. Yes, renting private homes at a lake cabin, shore house, timeshare or ski lodge have their own customs. AirBnB feels much worse (to me) because you select $200 a night, and end up paying $400 after all of the fees. So it used to make it difficult to search for places in your price range because of all the absurd fees piled on top most of which is cleaning. Then you have to clean yourself via a list of chores they give you, then you could be fined by them. All the while a massive corporation makes a ton of money simply matchmaking. It is much different when you are paying it forward in a small community. I didn't articulate it well, but for me the feeling is entirely different. Less that you participate in a community and culture and more that you are disposable labor for what is increasingly a luxury experience typically provided by a rich landlord.
Re:Alternatives to Animal Testing Are Finally Taking Off on Monday October 19, 2026 @04:40PM (#50157770)
Thanks! I was thinking of this concept just yesterday, specifically comparing AI to the internet. I didn't realize it had a name, although I knew it was a known phenomenon.
Thats why I found the article so interesting. I was literally thinking about this yesterday: how your story shapes who you are. It isn't particularly profound, but it is interesting how your perception is shaped by how you present yourself, what is on the internet about you, your story and crucially, who vouches for you.

Then I got to the end of the article and saw all of those other articles with other people with "reputation issues". It was so meta. Even having this story hit the top of Hacker News might have been calculated.

Re:My Reddit AMA on the Law of Web Scraping on Monday October 12, 2026 @03:07PM (#50061265)
Honestly interesting article and general topic. As with most things it depends on who you are. If you are Spotify, Google, OpenAI or Anthropic, its fine. As mentioned, this is why gray areas and unsettled laws are so malicious. They protect the rich and powerful and can be used to absolutely destroy regular people. It is adjacent to scraping, but Aaron Schwartz is a good example. He faced decades in jail for what is effectively best practice for an LLM data pipeline
That isn't what I said. 50% of the country can not read. People, myself included, are susceptible to influence. Democracy is dead because of money in politics, low intelligence of voters and a 2 party system that heavily manages the ideas and people that appear on the ballot.
This is such a crazy statement. Democracy in the US is dead. People are incredibly dumb and I believe you have the causal relationship reversed, even for relatively smart people.

The will of the American people is deeply influenced by interested parties dumping money into various areas. Rich elite own almost all media and even "democratized" social media is heavily influenced. You can't even use a search engine these days.

Ultimately, the 70% plus "will" of the people is money out of politics, stock bans for elected officials, no foreign wars and universal healthcare. Things both parties unite to curtail

The same FTC that sued ABC/Kimmel for saying mean things about them?
> This is like a pen manufacturer not wanting their pens used to sign drone strike order

I am pretty receptive to the "guns don't kill people, people kill people" argument, but we are taking a big leap from pen to llms/artificial intelligence. I am sympathetic to some of your other points, but I simply must reject this analogy.

Yeah, it surprised me when I found out. I can intellectually understand why average people choose MAGA and try and be somewhat understanding even if I find it distasteful. My conclusion is that if you aren't personally worth at least $5M or have the direct phone number of someone who can get a Trump admin official on the phone, then it was probably a bad choice.

Of those who meet that criteria, and especially those with MUCH more money and closer connections, it actually is an extremely smart choice. However, it represents a level of reprehensible naked self-dealing and complicity that I simply can't condone. It really is comparable to the looting if public goods and coffers during and after the fall of the USSR. Nationalism and patriotism are dead.

Re:California is chasing wealth that has feet on Friday September 25, 2026 @07:34AM (#49843131)
The Chinese model fixes this problem, albeit with a heavy hand. The state's power can never be subordinated, billionaires are checked by the state and strict capital controls stop them from having a backup bunker of gold bars outside China. I think they also limit dual citizenship to some extent. Heavy handed though it may be, for 99% of Americans you would have 0 negative impact, but it would align incentives better. With a cooperative tax policy between states there would be less of a race to the bottom and tax-integrity could be maintained. A home would count as a residence regardless of whether you "reside" there. Maybe then we would promote both nationalism and state/community integration. Having to bear the full brunt of state residency tax ramifications could enforce less empty homes and more investment in states they reside.

I understand why LVT is compelling. Wealthy people can subordinate or borrow state capacity and monopoly on violence, while driving legislation. There needs to be some check on power.

In your example, you are 100% correct. It doesn't stop at Austin; we have a transnational class of people who no longer care about the nation itself.

Re:Stanford R&DE Uses AI to Race Swap Students for Advertising on Tuesday September 22, 2026 @10:41AM (#49802132)
I don't understand what you mean? For me, it appears all 3 students have been changed. The 3rd student is changed into a black female. I am not doubting they want to inject diversity (although i didnt say it above) my contention is they likely view the original as a blank background, which they inserted 3 "new" anonymized students into. Its not that they turned 1 person "black", its that they changed ALL 3 PEOPLE entirely
Re:Stanford R&DE Uses AI to Race Swap Students for Advertising on Tuesday September 22, 2026 @10:37AM (#49802054)
I am not a bot.
Re:Stanford R&DE Uses AI to Race Swap Students for Advertising on Tuesday September 22, 2026 @10:16AM (#49801678)
Really seems like they used it to anonymize the students, but that is a lot less polarizing. Does it matter if they swapped the race? They also swapped all identifying facial features of anyone in the picture. That might have even been the prompt they used in the first place.

I am not a big fan of gen ai, but freak outs about nothingness detract from the real issues. I would be more concerned if they swapped the 3 students into a background or setting they were never in, than use the public setting and swap out the students for ai models.

Edit: please stop saying I didn't read the article. The article is almost exclusively opinion based on the observers reaction. "Slimmed down" is what I an saying is anonymized. As I also said, they put letting on top, so it is a tiny tile in a much larger piece. No problem if people don't agree, but the contention the article gives a lot of info and supporting claims is not true. We only really learn Stanford took the photo from the article, the rest of the conclusions are drawn from the 2 pics

I am not defending this morally, but these are clearly a group of the least competent stewards of the military in a long while. They were "completely clear on OPSEC", with a left-leaning Atlantic reporter in the signal group chat. This bombing also coalesced support in Iran and had a big rally around the flag effect. Data in Iran is hard and the timetable was extremely fast, again, due to incompetence and the inability to constrain a vassal. So its appalling to say, but a bunch of morons with LLMS and outdated targeting, pushed to meet the objectives of corrupt idiots is almost certainly the cause. I personally consider it a war crime, but I am not sure if it meets the legal definition.
Exactly. It helps they also control who can even run for office in any meaningful way. Nobody fights the left harder than Democrats. Good luck finding a representative that is against data centers, flock, Israel, congressional stock bans and pausing and regulating AI, views overwhelming popular with the majority of the actual American public.
This is a very engineer-centric view. I studied economics in school, so an analogy in that realm is ironically how all countries should specialize and raise the PPC curve. The reality of the situation was that in 2010 not many people understood how powerful big data actually was. Data sovereignty is actually quite logical when you consider the scale and power of not only the company, but the US as a whole. I can assure you that lawmakers were not thinking about efficient disaster recovery plans or back ups when they made the laws. You can also create reasonably diversified data silos within a country.

As an aside, it is quite crazy the world we live in. I am with the majority where I expected Amazon to be more redundant, but I still marvel at the assumption that a US dev can spin up multiple redundant and data sovereign servers in dozens of countries with efficient caching, failover and redundancy (enough to survive an earthquake or targeted missile attack) from their own home. Even a few hours of outage in a foreign country is considered unacceptable.

Older ยป