armchairhacker (u/armchairhacker)

armchairhacker commented on Ask HN: Are AI filters becoming stricter than society itself? · Posted by u/tsevis

AI isn’t smart enough to permit edge-cases like artistic nudity, especially with people who’ll find and abuse any exemption for the edge-case to create something that doesn’t belong. AI is unreliable, so its censors are broad to minimize rare failures or bugs (“unintentional exemptions”) that people will find and abuse.

Despite this, AIs get fooled to this day. There are still jailbreaks for GPT-5 and nudity and piracy on YouTube.

The only way to distinguish “good” from “bad” is competence, which has never existed on a large scale.

armchairhacker commented on Developer's block underlap.org/developers-b... · Posted by u/todsacerdoti

armchairhacker · a day ago

Ironically, I overcome developer's block on new features with AI. I ask Claude Code to implement the feature, figuring out some details but leaving others for Claude to decide.

"Ironically" because I usually rewrite almost everything it generates (sans the file and class names, sometimes). But when I describe the idea enough to give Claude some chance of implementing it, I refine it and start planning the high-level implementation. Then the file of LLM slop, even though I have to rewrite most of it, is much less overwhelming than a blank file.

armchairhacker commented on AI tooling must be disclosed for contributions github.com/ghostty-org/gh... · Posted by u/freetonik

Waterluvian · 3 days ago

I’m not a big AI fan but I do see it as just another tool in your toolbox. I wouldn’t really care how someone got to the end result that is a PR.

But I also think that if a maintainer asks you to jump before submitting a PR, you politely ask, “how high?”

armchairhacker · 3 days ago

Agreed. As someone who uses AI (completion and Claude Code), I'll disclose whenever asked. But I disagree that it's "common courtesy" when not explicitly asked; since many people (including myself) don't mind and probably assume some AI, and it adds distraction (another useless small indicator; vaguely like dependabot, in that it steals my attention but ultimately I don't care).

armchairhacker commented on SimpleIDE github.com/jamesplotts/si... · Posted by u/impendingchange

armchairhacker · 4 days ago

I think development environments are an undervalued field (perhaps because people hate writing UI). Tiny open-source IDEs are a great learning tool and can be starters for research IDEs (whereas VSCode, while more practical for production IDEs, has complexity that gets in the way of experimentation).

Another tiny open-source IDE (for Java) is https://github.com/bobbylight/RText

armchairhacker commented on Analysis of the GFW's Unconditional Port 443 Block on August 20, 2025 gfw.report/blog/gfw_uncon... · Posted by u/kotri

armchairhacker · 4 days ago

> A Brief, Incomplete, and Mostly Subjective History of Chinese Internet censorship and its countermeasures

https://danglingpointer.fun/posts/GFWHistory

Posted 6 days ago (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44898892)

armchairhacker commented on We’re Not So Special: A new book challenges human exceptionalism democracyjournal.org/maga... · Posted by u/nobet

card_zero · 5 days ago

Evolution creates knowledge, but it certainly doesn't cogitate, otherwise it would design things rationally and with purpose. Instead we get eyes that filter light through their own nerve circuitry, and lots of side effects and happy accidents, and millions of kinds of beetle, and no wheels.

armchairhacker · 4 days ago

What is "purpose"? Evolution is rational: it constantly produces species that survive better. Sure, there are many ugly "hacks" and things it could do better; yet we also produce things with hacks, e.g. enterprise software. Evolution not producing wheels may be analogous to humans not solving very large problems (e.g. computing very large numbers) in our heads; today we solve very large problems with machines, but likewise evolution has "developed" wheels through us building them.

armchairhacker commented on We’re Not So Special: A new book challenges human exceptionalism democracyjournal.org/maga... · Posted by u/nobet

goatlover · 5 days ago

What function does the word "just" serve in these kinds of statements? Humans are "just" collections of atoms. So is all other ordinary matter, but what does that mean? Humans are "just" colony of cells. So is all other multi-cellular life, but what is the significance? Everything is "just" excited fields waving or strings vibrating, but again, what does that tell us above some fundamental level?

armchairhacker · 5 days ago

Unfortunately "just" is filler, I try to be concise but wasn't there. In fact it's worse, by "or" I really mean "and/or"; in a way, we're simultaneously the cells of cultures and religions and etc.

The point is that we typically think of humans as "conscious" and "alive", but consciousness isn't physical; whether a human is conscious or a "ghost in the shell" makes no difference to the universe. In theory, a cell or ecosystem could also be "conscious", "sensing" and "thinking", since it also makes no difference. Furthermore, although its sensations and thoughts would be much different than any human's, they aren't completely unimaginable.

For example, an ecosystem reacts to changes, experiments, and adapts via evolution (and cells react to things and display some level of sentience). Thus, evolution can be considered a form of thinking: like how we form and execute ideas to survive and prosper, an ecosystem forms and creates species to increase the coverage of life over the planet.

armchairhacker commented on We’re Not So Special: A new book challenges human exceptionalism democracyjournal.org/maga... · Posted by u/nobet

energy123 · 5 days ago

We are a nasty, self-centered species on a biological level. You can patch that with prosperity and culture, but these things are impermanent and subject to regression, so it's not a durable solution. The only durable solution is altering the biology, but that itself is not without significant risk.

armchairhacker · 5 days ago

Do you consider yourself nasty and self-centered? Or do you think you're particularly nice, and "we...species" is referencing other people?

Or just say "some people are still nasty and self-centered, although others have at least have decency to care for others after their own needs are satisfied".

armchairhacker commented on The End of Handwriting wired.com/story/the-end-o... · Posted by u/beardyw

armchairhacker · 5 days ago

My handwriting was especially bad even before smartphones, so I'm glad I rarely need to write anymore.

armchairhacker commented on We’re Not So Special: A new book challenges human exceptionalism democracyjournal.org/maga... · Posted by u/nobet

ljlolel · 5 days ago

When we go to space we will absolutely take fruiting plants with us. Are we just the legs and reproductive organs of the plants?

armchairhacker · 5 days ago

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Egregore

Or we're just the cells of cultures, or religions, or corporations, or governments, or the ecosystem consisting of all biological life, or the universe.

Or each of us is the more-structurally-defined society or construction of a group of cells, or DNA, or molecules.