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First - and I know this is immaterial - there's something sad about the announcement being clearly 100% AI-generated and then bemoaning AI and calling for a ren

First - and I know this is immaterial - there's something sad about the announcement being clearly 100% AI-generated and then bemoaning AI and calling for a renewed human connection. Like, we want to have a community, but no one is willing to do the work. Second, BUGTRAQ existed because it had no alternatives. There was no social media, vulnerability research orgs had no marketing teams, there were no commercial clearinghouses, etc. Today, what's the incentive to use a mailing list? Case in point: two other security mailing lists, fulldisclosure@seclists.org and oss-security@lists.openwall.com, still exist but get relatively little use.

michaelmior 2mo ago
The announcement didn't read as AI-generated to me at all. Of course this is far from foolproof, but ZeroGPT says 0% AI.
- pajamasam 2mo ago
  It contains four emdashes, it overuses the Rule of Three (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Signs_of_AI_writing#Rule_of_three https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Signs_of_AI_writing#...), it has the typical "not X, but Y" sentence, it unduly emphasizes the significance of Buqtrack (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Signs_of_AI_writing#Undue_emphasis_on_significance,_legacy,_and_broader_trends https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Signs_of_AI_writing#...) ("preservation for the ages", really?). Also, in my experience, LLMs seem to love to say something went "dark" or "silent", to mention a "generation" of people, and to say something "matters". "no corporate filter" also seems like a strange thing to say.
  - IsTom 2mo ago
    I think it's just regular corporate speech. LLMs do this, because they've learned on this kind of posts.
  - acdha 2mo ago
    Em-dashes were in common use long before LLMs existed — anyone saying that’s a sign of LLM use should not be listened to. They’re used by LLMs because they were trained on good writing and we shouldn’t avoid using them any more than we should stop using correct punctuation for the same reason.
    - pajamasam 2mo ago
      > anyone saying that’s a sign of LLM use should not be listened to You don't need to believe me. You can read the studies about its statistically higher occurrence in LLM writing vs human writing (https://arxiv.org/pdf/2603.27006 https://arxiv.org/pdf/2603.27006) or you can do the analysis yourself. Also, no one said you should stop using them. But overusing them, along with emulating some of the other common traits of LLM generated writing, will give people the impression that you didn't bother to write something yourself.
      - acdha 2mo ago
        You’re misunderstanding the problem: LLMs using emdashes more than the average human still doesn’t tell you that the poster you’re interacting with now is an LLM and not one of the many humans who used emdashes before LLMs existed and are the reason why LLM training picked that up as a good trait. Humans shouldn’t stop writing well just because bots were trained to mimic them. One other problem with this as a heuristic is technical: they used to be hard to enter on Windows so mostly only professionally-edited text there had em-dashes while the ease of entry on Mac, iOS, Android, and to a lesser extent Linux meant that they were more common there. I suspect that this list disproportionately lists Mac users: https://www.gally.net/miscellaneous/hn-em-dash-user-leaderboard.html https://www.gally.net/miscellaneous/hn-em-dash-user-leaderbo...
hannob 2mo ago
oss-security gets relatively little use? You must know another oss-security. The one I'm subscribed to is very much alive and an important source of information for me.
- some_furry 2mo ago
  I had to create an inbox filter for oss-security to go into a different label/folder to make my email usable.
- b112 2mo ago
  Some hate mailing lists, not understanding how valuable the format and medium is. So they deride out of reflex, I suppose. Mailing lists are a lot like democracy. Imperfect, but nothing else is less-Imperfect.
- matherial 2mo ago
  It gets little use in the sense that only a small fraction of vulnerabilities are reported there, and there are very few non-advisory discussions (often by the same 2-3 people). It does get use in the sense that every now and then, some vendor sends 50 emails that could've been one (most recently, some Apache Qpid thing). But I wouldn't call that part valuable.
  - jamal-kumar 2mo ago
    So where's the residue of vulnerabilities that don't get sent there? You know of anything better?
PaulRobinson 2mo ago
> clearly 100% AI-generated First, show your working - just reads like generic announcement/PR speak from the last 30 years to me. Secondly, could everyone who wants to make comments about AI text in submissions please consider re-reading the comments section of the Guidelines: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html - I'm not sure these comments are in the spirit of the HN community. We should stop this in the same way we try and stop "HN is just turning into Reddit" noise. > Today, what's the incentive to use a mailing list? Social media is trash that makes your life worse. Deleting the apps demonstrably improves mental health. I'm a case in point, but everyone I know or read about who gets rid of social media concurs. Major, major life upgrade. I should not have to be on X to get notifications about new security issues. I should not have to sift through Meta's latest algorithm enhancements to find out if my servers are currently hanging their backsides out on the information superhighway. Secondly, I don't want all security research to go via commercial channels, either via clearinghouses, orgs with "marketing teams" (I actually want to scream at the idea this is OK), or even through platforms like social media that exist to sell advertising. Mailing lists are clean, simple, filterable, and readable - or ignorable - on any device of my choosing. I can route emails to ticketing systems without fear an API token is going to get revoked, an RSS feed is disabled by a "product owner", or a web scraper fails because somebody added a new react component for "improved usability". Email is email, and it's glorious, in a way no other communication mechanism has ever come close to matching because it's so simple. Those two other security mailing lists suffer from not having critical mass. Bugtraq may or may not get critical mass back. I hope it does, not just for nostalgia reasons, but because we need a critical mass movement behind security research given the current threat landscape.
- efficax 2mo ago
  > Today, we bring it back. > I have acquired securityfocus.com and the Bugtraq name. Not to build a museum - to restart the conversation. The mission is unchanged: full disclosure, researcher-first, no corporate filter. This has the ai patter, the rhythm, the “not this, but that” trope, the list of threes, everything about it screams LLM to me
  - 2mo ago

michaelmior 2mo ago

The announcement didn't read as AI-generated to me at all. Of course this is far from foolproof, but ZeroGPT says 0% AI.

pajamasam 2mo ago
It contains four emdashes, it overuses the Rule of Three (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Signs_of_AI_writing#Rule_of_three https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Signs_of_AI_writing#...), it has the typical "not X, but Y" sentence, it unduly emphasizes the significance of Buqtrack (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Signs_of_AI_writing#Undue_emphasis_on_significance,_legacy,_and_broader_trends https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Signs_of_AI_writing#...) ("preservation for the ages", really?). Also, in my experience, LLMs seem to love to say something went "dark" or "silent", to mention a "generation" of people, and to say something "matters". "no corporate filter" also seems like a strange thing to say.
- IsTom 2mo ago
  I think it's just regular corporate speech. LLMs do this, because they've learned on this kind of posts.
- acdha 2mo ago
  Em-dashes were in common use long before LLMs existed — anyone saying that’s a sign of LLM use should not be listened to. They’re used by LLMs because they were trained on good writing and we shouldn’t avoid using them any more than we should stop using correct punctuation for the same reason.
  - pajamasam 2mo ago
    > anyone saying that’s a sign of LLM use should not be listened to You don't need to believe me. You can read the studies about its statistically higher occurrence in LLM writing vs human writing (https://arxiv.org/pdf/2603.27006 https://arxiv.org/pdf/2603.27006) or you can do the analysis yourself. Also, no one said you should stop using them. But overusing them, along with emulating some of the other common traits of LLM generated writing, will give people the impression that you didn't bother to write something yourself.
    - acdha 2mo ago
      You’re misunderstanding the problem: LLMs using emdashes more than the average human still doesn’t tell you that the poster you’re interacting with now is an LLM and not one of the many humans who used emdashes before LLMs existed and are the reason why LLM training picked that up as a good trait. Humans shouldn’t stop writing well just because bots were trained to mimic them. One other problem with this as a heuristic is technical: they used to be hard to enter on Windows so mostly only professionally-edited text there had em-dashes while the ease of entry on Mac, iOS, Android, and to a lesser extent Linux meant that they were more common there. I suspect that this list disproportionately lists Mac users: https://www.gally.net/miscellaneous/hn-em-dash-user-leaderboard.html https://www.gally.net/miscellaneous/hn-em-dash-user-leaderbo...

hannob 2mo ago

oss-security gets relatively little use? You must know another oss-security. The one I'm subscribed to is very much alive and an important source of information for me.

some_furry 2mo ago
I had to create an inbox filter for oss-security to go into a different label/folder to make my email usable.
b112 2mo ago
Some hate mailing lists, not understanding how valuable the format and medium is. So they deride out of reflex, I suppose. Mailing lists are a lot like democracy. Imperfect, but nothing else is less-Imperfect.
matherial 2mo ago
It gets little use in the sense that only a small fraction of vulnerabilities are reported there, and there are very few non-advisory discussions (often by the same 2-3 people). It does get use in the sense that every now and then, some vendor sends 50 emails that could've been one (most recently, some Apache Qpid thing). But I wouldn't call that part valuable.
- jamal-kumar 2mo ago
  So where's the residue of vulnerabilities that don't get sent there? You know of anything better?

PaulRobinson 2mo ago

> clearly 100% AI-generated First, show your working - just reads like generic announcement/PR speak from the last 30 years to me. Secondly, could everyone who wants to make comments about AI text in submissions please consider re-reading the comments section of the Guidelines: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html - I'm not sure these comments are in the spirit of the HN community. We should stop this in the same way we try and stop "HN is just turning into Reddit" noise. > Today, what's the incentive to use a mailing list? Social media is trash that makes your life worse. Deleting the apps demonstrably improves mental health. I'm a case in point, but everyone I know or read about who gets rid of social media concurs. Major, major life upgrade. I should not have to be on X to get notifications about new security issues. I should not have to sift through Meta's latest algorithm enhancements to find out if my servers are currently hanging their backsides out on the information superhighway. Secondly, I don't want all security research to go via commercial channels, either via clearinghouses, orgs with "marketing teams" (I actually want to scream at the idea this is OK), or even through platforms like social media that exist to sell advertising. Mailing lists are clean, simple, filterable, and readable - or ignorable - on any device of my choosing. I can route emails to ticketing systems without fear an API token is going to get revoked, an RSS feed is disabled by a "product owner", or a web scraper fails because somebody added a new react component for "improved usability". Email is email, and it's glorious, in a way no other communication mechanism has ever come close to matching because it's so simple. Those two other security mailing lists suffer from not having critical mass. Bugtraq may or may not get critical mass back. I hope it does, not just for nostalgia reasons, but because we need a critical mass movement behind security research given the current threat landscape.

efficax 2mo ago
> Today, we bring it back. > I have acquired securityfocus.com and the Bugtraq name. Not to build a museum - to restart the conversation. The mission is unchanged: full disclosure, researcher-first, no corporate filter. This has the ai patter, the rhythm, the “not this, but that” trope, the list of threes, everything about it screams LLM to me
- 2mo ago