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Well I suppose there was plenty of training material in the corpus for that specific nefarious workflow

I suppose there is worse sci-fi you could launch a cult from (Dianetics)

Similar to sending a "Let Me Google That For You" except somehow because it was an LLM not Google, they've forgotten it's more insulting than helpful, and aren't even in on the joke they themselves are making.

I mean I can't speak for everyone but in my mind, sending lmgtfy was not only always insulting, it was meant to be. It's saying "I know you have access to the tools you need to answer this question, why are you asking me, and here's some instructions on how you use this tool in the future so you don't need to be asking me foolish questions."

And while I generally believe we should be pro-social in our communications both with each other as software engineers and with others who don't know what we know, I think it's also fair game to point out that the thing being asked of you is commonly available knowledge. Google may suck as my sibling comment points out, and I agree, but filtering good info from info dumps, be that Claude or Google search, is a life skill that's more critical now than ever. And if you work in tech, really at any level, you know how to do that.


The issue with LLM copypaste by non-expert humans, and it took me a while to realize this, is ego.

What they feel like when they do it: "Man, I'm fucking brilliant. Look at me using new technology well. I was always the key provider of value here."

What they hear when you call out AI copypaste as less useful: "None of that is true."

Now we can debate on the factual merit of both sides, but that doesn't change the feelings.

Unfortunately, I don't see a way to change the feelings, because that dopamine burst of making non-experts feel like experts is something all the AI labs have a HUGE financial incentive to maximize in their products.


Well - the "let me google that for you" nowadays barely works, because google ruined the search engine. The search engine sucks now - and by default the first results are AI slop summaries that are IMO worthless.

Yep. Clown show.

> The hackers said they were able to access the Android system on the camera, and found two partitions—sections of its hard-drive, essentially. A few of these were unencrypted, the hackers said, including one called “vendor” and another called “media.” The latter contained an encryption key that unlocked another part, which contained much of the media—think, the videos and stills—the camera took.

> In early 2025, security researcher Jon “GainSec” Gaines reverse engineered a Flock license-plate reader and documented flaws that could be used to gain root-level access. After Gaines disclosed his findings, the company acknowledged the findings but downplayed their severity, writing that the flaws required physical access to the device and that even someone who gained access to a camera “would still not be able to gain access to footage” because images remained on the device only briefly after being transmitted to the cloud.

Source: https://www.404media.co/hackers-stole-flocks-camera-software...


How could anyone possibly physically access a device that is just sitting out in public?


Its impossible, I tell ya

TDIL my homebuilt Plex media server is more strongly encrypted than a Flock Camera

so is my all-passwords.txt file on my desktop

My passwords are in an encrypted block in a text file that can be unencrypted inline in an Emacs session with a keystroke sequence that looks like a cat just chased a mouse across the keyboard, and that's before entering the decryption password. To access it, an attacker would first have to learn Emacs. Pretty sure that's a post-quantum level of security.

They could use an LLM to lookup your HN posts and then to wrangle Emacs. Or just decrypt the text in another application - I doubt Emacs is the only platform for whatever crypto method you use. M-x rot13 ?

Oh, did I forget to mention the encryption is implemented in Emacs Lisp?

At some point, the attackers are just going to have to give up and start hitting me with a wrench. Joke's on them though - I'm an Emacs user, I like pain.


It's interesting and fun to implement this stuff; I totally agree. Emacs is amazing.

I worry people will get the wrong idea about security: The application used for decryption doesn't need to be the same as the one used for encryption, at least not for any serious attacker. That would be 'security through obscurity'. They need the encrypted text; they don't need Emacs.

More importantly, no matter who you are, that you implemented the encryption yourself (?) is a major flaw - unless you have a cryptography team that has matured the implementation over a decade or so. Nobody is good enough to do that by themself. As the saying goes, anyone can create an encryption routine that they can't break.


You do realize these are all jokes?

Maybe you do or did really believe those things - lots of people do. There's nothing wrong with it. Saying 'I was joking' is maybe true, maybe it's just using a very common tactic for covering.

emacs is not a joke emacs is life

https://youtu.be/urcL86UpqZc


Nefarious I like it

Obligatory relevant xkcd: https://xkcd.com/538/

It's a forever-fresh reminder about security versus your own government, but for malicious hackers and bots: the physical trip to visit you costs more than half their infrastructure.

Encryption matters, even if I would divulge everything long before the wrench appeared.


Runs Android. Has (wireless?) internet access.

It seems that some enterprising Jolly Roger could start running a public mesh net on top of them without Flock even noticing.


I suppose you might be able to force a Blender agent to do parametric modeling via geometry nodes. It would be a horrible, kludgy, slow workflow for a human, but the AI won't complain.

And if you believe a rate hike will happen but fail to control inflation due to various trade wars and hot wars, while stocks go down due to large correction on a small number of companies who accounted for most of the growth metrics...?

Then you have to time the market. Cash or short-term treasuries right now, moved into long-term treasuries when rates finished going up, moved into stocks when the economic damage becomes apparent. Getting the timing right is left as an exercise for the reader.

"I want to get off Mr Bones Wild Ride"

God help me this market has me considering BTAL, DBMF, TAIL puts, intl equity and gold......


"Do not fall into the trap of anthropomorphizing Larry Ellison.

You need to think of Larry Ellison the way you think of a lawnmower. You don’t anthropomorphize your lawnmower, the lawnmower just mows the lawn - you stick your hand in there and it’ll chop it off, the end. You don’t think "oh, the lawnmower hates me" – lawnmower doesn’t give a shit about you, lawnmower can’t hate you. Don’t anthropomorphize the lawnmower. Don’t fall into that trap about Oracle."

— Bryan Cantrill

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-zRN7XLCRhc&t=2308s


A frequent argument made in Flock's favor is that if you are in public there isn't an expectation of privacy. That Flock can see where you go just like any other driver. Particularly since Flock is a private entity not the government. This is the Other Driver behaving antisocially towards one driver EXACTLY as Flock does to all drivers.

I agree that that is not a good argument. I am perfectly fine with the government having access to things, for instance taxation or armed enforcers + bodycams, that are illegal for the youtuber.

In general I agree. I like having a State, whose definition is more or less the (hopefully judicious) monopoly on such violence.

But the State seems to be doing an end run on restrictions against unreasonable (warrantless) search which we've agreed it should be constrained on, by giving private entities carte blanche to lowjack the entire population and sell that data to whomever they like (so long as the State gets to cheat by buying from them too).

And so far, the most notable uses of this workaround by government seems to be..... cops stalking women for fun.

All in all l, I'm not particularly happy with the government having this power while it is clearly not being used responsibly.


I generally agree with courts that there is no reasonable expectation of privacy in the plate itself or, ordinarily, in being observed at a particular point on a public road. I feel similarly about these things to speed cameras. I appreciate that these cameras reduce police + civilian interactions that often escalate to police shootings. I don't fully understand where this outrage is coming from.

That said, I do support stricter access control standards. However, AFAIU Flock cameras used by the cops do not sell data to 'whomever they like.'


Back In My Day, you had to mod a PlayStation if you wanted to DIY a missile guidance system /s

C# is my primary, but the quiz tells me I'm a JS dev.

Feel like I should assign myself a couple dozen Jon Skeet posts to read now, to make up for this embarrassment.


To be fair to yourself, the fact that C# terminates pending tasks when the main method exits is something most C# devs don’t have to deal with because they’re mostly working in the context of long running servers and apps.

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