12 ms·

For the young players: this is what hacker in “Hacker News” stands for. This is 101 and it’s very simply explained which makes it a great step by step example o

For the young players: this is what hacker in “Hacker News” stands for. This is 101 and it’s very simply explained which makes it a great step by step example of a typical journey. Hack-a-day is full of these if you want more. The author is clearly curious and leads in knowing a lot to begin with. The work-behind-the-work is looking up data sheets for the chips involved, desoldering them without damaging them, in the case of memory resoldering with hookup wire and hopefully its access is slow enough that it can work fine over the length of the wire, following hunches, trying things, and knowing (for next time) the possibility of using a pinhole camera or something of the sort when drilling shallow holes and looking through for tamper traces to avoid in further drills, if so desired be. As others have mentioned, it would be interesting if the author stuck in and got past the tamper checks to see if it would work as normal. Oh well!

goodpoint 1y ago
"Hacker" news was never about that tho. It came out from SV...
deleted 1y ago
[deleted]
zidoo 1y ago
Amen for the first sentence. One more LLM wrapper today, and I would die.
- account-5 1y ago
  It's so tiresome and is slowly ruining HN for me personally.
  - deleted 1y ago
    [deleted]
- lucianbr 1y ago
  Hear hear.
- paulddraper 1y ago
  Or UI pontifications
- belter 1y ago
  Yeah, this has been LLM News for a while...
  - ronsor 1y ago
    50% people shilling LLM products, 50% people complaining about LLMs (or indirectly by complaining about crawlers) However, this place used to be JS framework news not too long ago
    - herval 1y ago
      and "Crypto News" for a long time too
      - bigfatkitten 1y ago
        And "Why I Left Google" News before that.
    - uoaei 1y ago
      There's more finance and VC here than anyone wants to acknowledge. But it's not unexpected given that Y Combinator is a VC firm. However these folks aren't known for their technical expertise so there's a lot of unnecessary noise feeding into the AI hype cycle of late.
      - ljlolel 1y ago
        Almost all YC companies this batch are LLM wrappers
- airstrike 1y ago
  It does feels like a good use of AI (ML, really) would be to write a "disaggregator" for HN that tags submissions by category and lets users browse the bits they care about. Wish I had time to do it....
  - miki123211 1y ago
    And a TL;DR, both for the articles themselves as well as the discussions. I don't think a TL;DR can replace most articles that appear on HN, but it can certainly tell me whether the article is interesting, much better than any headline ever could. Especially so if the TL;DR is written by a neutral AI with no interest in making me click anything, and hence no qualms about surfacing the most important information to the top. I actually tried to do this, but it was with GPT-3.5, and I didn't exactly like how it worked. I should look at this again, I wouldn't be surprised if the code I used back then could just be ported over to 2.5 Flash and produce much better results.
  - kirubakaran 1y ago
    Here it is ;) https://histre.com/hn/ https://histre.com/hn/
    - rendaw 1y ago
      Oh that's great! I wish it kept the HN style, the contrast and density is too low for me
      - kirubakaran 1y ago
        Thanks. I'll create a HN-like theme. In the meantime, if you install the browser extension, you can get the tags directly in HN itself. Would that address the ui issue? Source: https://gitlab.com/histre/hn-tags https://gitlab.com/histre/hn-tags Chrome: https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/hacker-news-tags/iinmfmdejkafpmakbofheoiddalpobca https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/hacker-news-tags/i... Firefox: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/hacker-news-tags/ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/hacker-news-t...
- ajsnigrutin 1y ago
  It's either LLM or "<existing software> written in <languge of the week>"
  - Y_Y 1y ago
    I rewrote J in C, or D in F#, or Whogivesafuck in Rust and it's 8% better but don't ask me for my benchmark because it's secret sauce.
    - MyPasswordSucks 1y ago
      And I ported DOOM to it. Well, it's actually just a hardcoded slideshow of E1M1 while something vaguely approximating the main riff of At Doom's Gate plays inconsistently in the background, but you'll have to watch all 15 excruciating minutes of this poorly-narrated Youtube video I'm linking to figure that out.
      - xarope 1y ago
        I ported DOOM to it. In 100 LOC. BTW it's just a a line shooting a ball of zero width, at another line. And there's some movement left and right. But not forward, nor backwards. So there's no real strafing. And the other line doesn't shoot a ball of zero width back. But it's the spirit of DOOM!!! /s
    - ajsnigrutin 1y ago
      I started reading hackernews from very old posts to new ones, so i'm still rewriting stuff to ruby, because that will definitely be the universal programming language for the future!
  - DANmode 1y ago
    Do you know why people started doing rewrites in other languages? It's usually to help teach them the other language. The rewrite part makes it easier for observers to learn and compare/contrast techniques in different environments for themselves. Why this would ever be criticised, I can't imagine.
- Pulcinella 1y ago
  "Prompt Kiddie" should be the new "Script Kiddie"
suobset 1y ago
Thank you so much. Been a long time lurker, only recently got an account to start commenting. Posts like this make my entire day: concise, well thought/researched/executed, and they put the "hacker" in HN.
AaronAPU 1y ago
I think this might have been the first post I actually upvoted. I do upvote comments often, but this post itself is actually .. about hacking!
aag 1y ago
The term "hacker," even in the computer field, originally had a larger scope than computer security. It had a more philosophical definition, too. I host a copy of the Jargon File[1], compiled by Guy Steele et al., on my web site. It defined "hacker" as[2]: HACKER [originally, someone who makes furniture with an axe] n. 1. A person who enjoys learning the details of programming systems and how to stretch their capabilities, as opposed to most users who prefer to learn only the minimum necessary. 2. One who programs enthusiastically, or who enjoys programming rather than just theorizing about programming. 3. A person capable of appreciating hack value (q.v.). 4. A person who is good at programming quickly. Not everything a hacker produces is a hack. 5. An expert at a particular program, or one who frequently does work using it or on it; example: "A SAIL hacker". (Definitions 1 to 5 are correlated, and people who fit them congregate.) 6. A malicious or inquisitive meddler who tries to discover information by poking around. Hence "password hacker", "network hacker". I'm guessing that PG had this broader definition in mind when Hacker News was started. No history of the term "hacker," however brief, would be complete with a reference to The UNIX-HATERS Handbook[3]. [1] https://speechcode.com/jargon/ https://speechcode.com/jargon/ [2] https://speechcode.com/jargon/jargon.info.Hacker.html https://speechcode.com/jargon/jargon.info.Hacker.html [3] https://web.mit.edu/~simsong/www/ugh.pdf https://web.mit.edu/~simsong/www/ugh.pdf
- bonoboTP 1y ago
  Or as RMS defines it, playful cleverness.
- BuildTheRobots 1y ago
  > The term "hacker," even in the computer field, originally had a larger scope than computer security. I've been helping run a Hackspace for a few years; I can't tell you how many times (sometimes per week or even day depending on what I'm doing) I have to have this conversation. I've gotten quite used to going through the patter with non-tech people - try dealing with the local council, or applying for insurance or even personal jobs when it's on your CV. Thankfully a lot of the older people remember the term "hack" meaning "amateur" which eases explanations in a workshop context. I always assumed IT people would realise the non-negative connotations, but that really isn't the case.
CooCooCaCha 1y ago
Given that this website comes from a VC startup incubator I highly doubt it’s meant to refer to hacking security. I think it’s meant to mean the “move fast and break things” style hacking. Which basically means churning out code fast and pushing through problems quickly instead of getting stuck on perfectionism.
wkat4242 1y ago
> As others have mentioned, it would be interesting if the author stuck in and got past the tamper checks to see if it would work as normal. Oh well! That's the kind of thing a lot of guys in suits would take very seriously. After all you have to connect it to the banking network to see if it works as normal. Not advised. It could also lead to lowlife types putting pressure on you to help them do that. Not the kind of thing to brag about.
- wkat4242 1y ago
  Ps: like the screenshot says the private keys are already gone so there's no way to get it reactivated on the same account.
kragen 1y ago
> For the young players: this is what hacker in “Hacker News” stands for. No, it is not, though there is a connection. As it happens, the founder of Hacker News wrote a very inspiring essay shortly before setting up the site on what the word "hacker" means to him, and it's not breaking into computers: https://www.paulgraham.com/gba.html https://www.paulgraham.com/gba.html > To the popular press, "hacker" means someone who breaks into computers. Among programmers it means a good programmer. But the two meanings are connected. To programmers, "hacker" connotes mastery in the most literal sense: someone who can make a computer do what he wants—whether the computer wants to or not. > To add to the confusion, the noun "hack" also has two senses. It can be either a compliment or an insult. It's called a hack when you do something in an ugly way. But when you do something so clever that you somehow beat the system, that's also called a hack. The word is used more often in the former than the latter sense, probably because ugly solutions are more common than brilliant ones. ... He goes on to explain in detail how he thinks about the connections between the different senses of the word. Because it requires no mastery or indeed any special level of ability, finding a passwordless root shell on an exposed serial port does not rise to the level of being a hack in this sense, only in the popular-press sense.
deleted 1y ago
[deleted]

goodpoint 1y ago

"Hacker" news was never about that tho. It came out from SV...

deleted 1y ago

[deleted]

zidoo 1y ago

Amen for the first sentence. One more LLM wrapper today, and I would die.

account-5 1y ago
It's so tiresome and is slowly ruining HN for me personally.
- deleted 1y ago
  [deleted]
lucianbr 1y ago
Hear hear.
paulddraper 1y ago
Or UI pontifications
belter 1y ago
Yeah, this has been LLM News for a while...
- ronsor 1y ago
  50% people shilling LLM products, 50% people complaining about LLMs (or indirectly by complaining about crawlers) However, this place used to be JS framework news not too long ago
  - herval 1y ago
    and "Crypto News" for a long time too
    - bigfatkitten 1y ago
      And "Why I Left Google" News before that.
  - uoaei 1y ago
    There's more finance and VC here than anyone wants to acknowledge. But it's not unexpected given that Y Combinator is a VC firm. However these folks aren't known for their technical expertise so there's a lot of unnecessary noise feeding into the AI hype cycle of late.
    - ljlolel 1y ago
      Almost all YC companies this batch are LLM wrappers
airstrike 1y ago
It does feels like a good use of AI (ML, really) would be to write a "disaggregator" for HN that tags submissions by category and lets users browse the bits they care about. Wish I had time to do it....
- miki123211 1y ago
  And a TL;DR, both for the articles themselves as well as the discussions. I don't think a TL;DR can replace most articles that appear on HN, but it can certainly tell me whether the article is interesting, much better than any headline ever could. Especially so if the TL;DR is written by a neutral AI with no interest in making me click anything, and hence no qualms about surfacing the most important information to the top. I actually tried to do this, but it was with GPT-3.5, and I didn't exactly like how it worked. I should look at this again, I wouldn't be surprised if the code I used back then could just be ported over to 2.5 Flash and produce much better results.
- kirubakaran 1y ago
  Here it is ;) https://histre.com/hn/ https://histre.com/hn/
  - rendaw 1y ago
    Oh that's great! I wish it kept the HN style, the contrast and density is too low for me
    - kirubakaran 1y ago
      Thanks. I'll create a HN-like theme. In the meantime, if you install the browser extension, you can get the tags directly in HN itself. Would that address the ui issue? Source: https://gitlab.com/histre/hn-tags https://gitlab.com/histre/hn-tags Chrome: https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/hacker-news-tags/iinmfmdejkafpmakbofheoiddalpobca https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/hacker-news-tags/i... Firefox: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/hacker-news-tags/ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/hacker-news-t...
ajsnigrutin 1y ago
It's either LLM or "<existing software> written in <languge of the week>"
- Y_Y 1y ago
  I rewrote J in C, or D in F#, or Whogivesafuck in Rust and it's 8% better but don't ask me for my benchmark because it's secret sauce.
  - MyPasswordSucks 1y ago
    And I ported DOOM to it. Well, it's actually just a hardcoded slideshow of E1M1 while something vaguely approximating the main riff of At Doom's Gate plays inconsistently in the background, but you'll have to watch all 15 excruciating minutes of this poorly-narrated Youtube video I'm linking to figure that out.
    - xarope 1y ago
      I ported DOOM to it. In 100 LOC. BTW it's just a a line shooting a ball of zero width, at another line. And there's some movement left and right. But not forward, nor backwards. So there's no real strafing. And the other line doesn't shoot a ball of zero width back. But it's the spirit of DOOM!!! /s
  - ajsnigrutin 1y ago
    I started reading hackernews from very old posts to new ones, so i'm still rewriting stuff to ruby, because that will definitely be the universal programming language for the future!
- DANmode 1y ago
  Do you know why people started doing rewrites in other languages? It's usually to help teach them the other language. The rewrite part makes it easier for observers to learn and compare/contrast techniques in different environments for themselves. Why this would ever be criticised, I can't imagine.
Pulcinella 1y ago
"Prompt Kiddie" should be the new "Script Kiddie"

suobset 1y ago

Thank you so much. Been a long time lurker, only recently got an account to start commenting. Posts like this make my entire day: concise, well thought/researched/executed, and they put the "hacker" in HN.

AaronAPU 1y ago

I think this might have been the first post I actually upvoted. I do upvote comments often, but this post itself is actually .. about hacking!

aag 1y ago

The term "hacker," even in the computer field, originally had a larger scope than computer security. It had a more philosophical definition, too. I host a copy of the Jargon File[1], compiled by Guy Steele et al., on my web site. It defined "hacker" as[2]: HACKER [originally, someone who makes furniture with an axe] n. 1. A person who enjoys learning the details of programming systems and how to stretch their capabilities, as opposed to most users who prefer to learn only the minimum necessary. 2. One who programs enthusiastically, or who enjoys programming rather than just theorizing about programming. 3. A person capable of appreciating hack value (q.v.). 4. A person who is good at programming quickly. Not everything a hacker produces is a hack. 5. An expert at a particular program, or one who frequently does work using it or on it; example: "A SAIL hacker". (Definitions 1 to 5 are correlated, and people who fit them congregate.) 6. A malicious or inquisitive meddler who tries to discover information by poking around. Hence "password hacker", "network hacker". I'm guessing that PG had this broader definition in mind when Hacker News was started. No history of the term "hacker," however brief, would be complete with a reference to The UNIX-HATERS Handbook[3]. [1] https://speechcode.com/jargon/ https://speechcode.com/jargon/ [2] https://speechcode.com/jargon/jargon.info.Hacker.html https://speechcode.com/jargon/jargon.info.Hacker.html [3] https://web.mit.edu/~simsong/www/ugh.pdf https://web.mit.edu/~simsong/www/ugh.pdf

bonoboTP 1y ago
Or as RMS defines it, playful cleverness.
BuildTheRobots 1y ago
> The term "hacker," even in the computer field, originally had a larger scope than computer security. I've been helping run a Hackspace for a few years; I can't tell you how many times (sometimes per week or even day depending on what I'm doing) I have to have this conversation. I've gotten quite used to going through the patter with non-tech people - try dealing with the local council, or applying for insurance or even personal jobs when it's on your CV. Thankfully a lot of the older people remember the term "hack" meaning "amateur" which eases explanations in a workshop context. I always assumed IT people would realise the non-negative connotations, but that really isn't the case.

CooCooCaCha 1y ago

Given that this website comes from a VC startup incubator I highly doubt it’s meant to refer to hacking security. I think it’s meant to mean the “move fast and break things” style hacking. Which basically means churning out code fast and pushing through problems quickly instead of getting stuck on perfectionism.

wkat4242 1y ago

> As others have mentioned, it would be interesting if the author stuck in and got past the tamper checks to see if it would work as normal. Oh well! That's the kind of thing a lot of guys in suits would take very seriously. After all you have to connect it to the banking network to see if it works as normal. Not advised. It could also lead to lowlife types putting pressure on you to help them do that. Not the kind of thing to brag about.

wkat4242 1y ago
Ps: like the screenshot says the private keys are already gone so there's no way to get it reactivated on the same account.

kragen 1y ago

> For the young players: this is what hacker in “Hacker News” stands for. No, it is not, though there is a connection. As it happens, the founder of Hacker News wrote a very inspiring essay shortly before setting up the site on what the word "hacker" means to him, and it's not breaking into computers: https://www.paulgraham.com/gba.html https://www.paulgraham.com/gba.html > To the popular press, "hacker" means someone who breaks into computers. Among programmers it means a good programmer. But the two meanings are connected. To programmers, "hacker" connotes mastery in the most literal sense: someone who can make a computer do what he wants—whether the computer wants to or not. > To add to the confusion, the noun "hack" also has two senses. It can be either a compliment or an insult. It's called a hack when you do something in an ugly way. But when you do something so clever that you somehow beat the system, that's also called a hack. The word is used more often in the former than the latter sense, probably because ugly solutions are more common than brilliant ones. ... He goes on to explain in detail how he thinks about the connections between the different senses of the word. Because it requires no mastery or indeed any special level of ability, finding a passwordless root shell on an exposed serial port does not rise to the level of being a hack in this sense, only in the popular-press sense.

deleted 1y ago

[deleted]