4 ms·

Hobby groups projects like this are less fun for a lot of people who used to enjoy interacting with smart people. It's definitely become a game of just spam cla

Hobby groups projects like this are less fun for a lot of people who used to enjoy interacting with smart people. It's definitely become a game of just spam claude for answers with zero understanding or care for how anything actually works. That's fine to get things done and fine for a lot of side projects, but it definitely ruins the joy that people have in understanding systems and working with intellectuals.

deleted 17d ago
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vouaobrasil 17d ago
In general, society is experience a decoupling of fun from work. I can't say I enjoy every aspect of my job, but it's nice to enjoy some of it, and lots of people do find a lot of their job at least somewhat rewarding. People who hate their job of course like to come out of the woodwork and say no one should enjoy it, but isn't it nice to have a society where at least some people can enjoy their work? I used to enjoy teaching but I'd never get a teaching job now because of how AI is being used in that sector. Technophiles will say that we should embrace the future because its inevitable but how many good people quitting does it take before they realize that a vibe-coded future of fun isn't all there is to life?
- p-e-w 17d ago
  > but isn't it nice to have a society where at least some people can enjoy their work? That’s an interesting question. I thought about it for a minute and was surprised that I came to the conclusion that the answer isn’t obviously “yes”. An analogous question is “isn't it nice to have a society where at least some people are rich?”, and I think that question should make it clearer to many people why that is so.
  - latexr 17d ago
    > An analogous question is “isn't it nice to have a society where at least some people are rich?” There’s a crucial difference between the two questions. “Rich” is a relative term: If everyone had the same amount of money, no one would be rich, you need someone to be worse off (poor) to have someone better off (rich). But someone enjoying their work has no bearing on someone else’s enjoyment of theirs.
    - CamperBob2 17d ago
      you need someone to be worse off (poor) to have someone better off (rich). The fact that so many people believe this is what bums me out. You need to understand something: the people who want you to think this way do not have your best interests in mind, any more than the rabid right-wing Trumpers do.
      - latexr 17d ago
        You completely misunderstood the point. In no way do I mean that someone has to suffer for someone else to thrive. We could (and should) all thrive and have our needs met. I’m just saying the term is relative, like “tall” and “short”. If we were all the same height, no one would be tall or short, we’d just be. If we all had the same amount of money, no one would be rich or poor.
        CamperBob2 17d ago
        An economy isn't a zero-sum game. Wealth doesn't just pop into existence when someone in the government clicks a button on a screen. Money is created that way, but wealth isn't. It has to be created by creating something that someone else values enough to pay for willingly. No one has to lose anything, in the sense that no one has to give up more than they think the product or service is worth to them. In your example, it's possible for everyone to grow taller.
        latexr 17d ago
        > No one has to lose anything Holy shit, for the third time that is not the argument. Read what I wrote and try to steal man a bit. Get your preconceived argument out of your head and understand we are in agreement. The difference between wealth and money isn’t in question, that is something you just added to the argument and decided with zero basis that I disagree. The fact that so many people jump to conclusions and immediately dunk on others who agree with them is what bums me out. What a waste of a conversation. Why are you spending time criticising those who support the same points?
- vjvjvjvjghv 17d ago
  Us techies have taken the fun out of a lot of professions with the tools we are developing and selling. I guess it was only a matter of time until we killed the fun in our profession.
- carefree-bob 17d ago
  You have to fight to keep work fun. It requires skill and some cunning. People are not going to hand you a "fun job", that part falls on you.
  - vouaobrasil 16d ago
    True. I agree. But I think it's also not very nice of AI programmers to actively work to take that fun away. And part of the skill of keeping a job fun is working against those who do attempt to take the fun away.
tristor 17d ago
> Hobby groups projects like this are less fun for a lot of people who used to enjoy interacting with smart people. This is definitely the case for me. Before AI tools became mainstream, it was already a difficult proposition to find other smart people who you could get along with and talk to, do something interesting together. The Internet made all the difference in my life because I was able to get outside my geographic region to do big things through open source and hacker communities. Now, that very important filter mechanism no longer works. It's Eternal September all over again. In a way, it's very much a domination of "ends" over "means" in the wider community that is being forced upon those who long focused on "means". For a lot of intelligent people, understanding something is /valuable on its own/, but for the wider world there is no value in simply knowing things, but what you do with that knowledge (or now that lack of knowledge). I even experienced this recently at DEFCON 34 where I saw other participants in some of the CTFs with me using AI tools and not really understanding what the tools were doing or what was happening, but just kind of bruteforcing/tokenmaxxing their way through. This isn't to say that those AI tools are fundamentally a bad thing to use in building open source software, security research, or even as a tool in a CTF, but that the "understanding" step needs to still be present or it destroys the fun in everything. I'm certainly not having as much fun with computers these days, even as I've invested a lot of effort myself in local LLMs and trying to understand the tools and understand how to apply them reasonably, I've found I prefer much more analog entertainments. Thankfully there's always photography and lockpicking to entertain me at the moment and provide a pathway to meet other interesting fellows.
- drcxd 16d ago
  It feels like understanding is no longer required to produce code, as long as the program can pass the tests. Also, most software rarely causes severe real world damage, so it simply requires less guarantee and quality than other engineering such as buildings, bridges, etc.. With LLMs, code is just like cars, it carries you to your destination, you do not have to understand how it works.
aeonflux 17d ago
> Hobby groups projects like this are less fun for a lot of people who used to enjoy interacting with smart people. Same thing did happen to many work places. People at all levels proxy questions through LLMs and don't even bother to read/trim/edit the response. Funny, how suddenly a tight, 1-2 sentence response on point is a sign of skill.
- devin 17d ago
  I think a lot of workplaces would do well to ban LLM-based replies in certain spaces.
  - kjs3 17d ago
    While I don't disagree with you, they shouldn't have to. This should be one of those things like covering your mouth when you cough in a crowd and not playing loud music in your cube that people with basic social skills should know not to do. Unfortunately, like much basic courtesy, we apparently now have to make rules.
    - devin 17d ago
      I agree, but it seems that some people actually need to be told that copy/pasting a bunch of LLM slop into chat is like farting on an elevator. I wouldn't even say that it comes down to "social skills" in a lot of cases, it's just people who seem to be performatively using AI. I'd classify them as corporate climber "yes, boss" types more than lacking in social skills.
      - kjs3 17d ago
        Your analogy is better than mine. :-)
- lultimouomo 17d ago
  > Funny, how suddenly a tight, 1-2 sentence response on point is a sign of skill. Wasn't it always?
hypfer 17d ago
> Hobby groups projects like this are less fun for a lot of people who used to enjoy interacting with smart people It is insane just how miserable the experience of FOSS hardware hacking in public is. The expectation does not even the slightest match reality. You'd think "ah yes many eyes meaning all bugs get shallow", but instead you get worst of XDA-Developers and toxic wastelands where no sane person even answers anymore. But this predates LLMs and was as miserable as it is now before as well. In fact, I might even argue that LLMs made this _better_, because you can now avoid the "opening up in hopes of finding 1 helpful person below 99 annoying ones" through simple GPU compute. Previously, you had to hope that through this self-inflicted horror, you'd find an expert that can augment you. Now that expert rests on huggingface. It's still.. not perfect, of course. But it might be less miserable - provided that you adapt to the current state of things and stop with the "trawling for volunteers". __ Of course, this does not help you against "skids let claude find bugs that you'd need and burn it for no reason" as per the twitter thread, but I wouldn't rule out that they would not have done that, if less information was public. And.. that too was an issue before LLMs. Information wants to be free, but so does your cat, and your cat gets run over by some crackhead in a 30 year old rusty pickup if you just put it outside without thinking. So don't let it go out unattended. That said, this "pep talk" is more directed at myself than at poor Andy. This must all suck big time.
- concinds 17d ago
  It's the oldest unsolved problem of the internet: how to attract high-value people and keep out low-value contributors.
  - ethbr1 17d ago
    Text only forums?
- casey2 17d ago
  Isn't the problem just that open source, by it's very nature, is low quality since it comes from the unix-like ecosystem where everything is built atop everything else. So inevitably when the skid comes to you with a bug you can say "ah that's a bug in a specific build of your shell with these environment variables, myyyy code is clean as a whistle, minimal, and follows best practices" (if we ignore that in practice it depends on a billion different programs versions all of which are incorrect) Complaining about the inevitable toxic noise when the same boneheaded development decisions are made over and over like everyone has gone insane. You don't have to build a death trap on the land your cat and children roam.
deleted 17d ago
[deleted]
deleted 17d ago
[deleted]
GuinansEyebrows 17d ago
completely different world, but i've seen this happen in music spaces as well. the idea of gatekeeping is often seen as elitist or exclusionary (fairly enough in many cases) but i think this can be an exaggerated description of a culture that necessarily requires a standard of... let's say, desire to engage with material on a sufficiently deep level. many things can be for anybody, but they are not for everybody. in the past i've seen the phenomenon of "opening up" subcultures or previously-niche intellectual/art fields described as democratization but i think that ignores a big part of what causes this, which can more accurately be described as commodification. access to difficult things was formerly measured by one's ability to expend effort in order to get there (ignoring, for now, the structural conditions that set one up for success in that effort). when these things are commodified, these efforts and identities become products to purchase, the right to which is nearly never limited; in fact, it's almost seen as evil to imply that they should not be available to any individual at any time that individual may desire access. i know we all have to start somewhere, but there has always been some historical filtration that leads people who are not truly engaged with a subject on a deep level to disengage at some point. that's changing at a novel rate and scale across so many subcultures. it seems like a lot of us are just surprised at how many people even want access to what were once our sanctuaries and we're not capable of grappling with what it takes to adapt to these changes. i don't think this will pass or that things will return to "the way they were" but there will always be pockets that resemble previous subcultural forms. we just have to re-learn how to identify them with a keener eye and how to better avoid or more-appropriately interact with those who have a more superficial interest in them.
- kanzure 17d ago
  While you might have access to the subculture, there is no obligation for anyone else to respond, collaborate or engage with random you. This is a common mistaken understanding about open-source software projects where users often believe they have "rights" to compel or coerce volunteer developers to listen or reply to them. Developers collaborating together isn't a conspiracy, it's just preferences getting played out. No, I don't want to collaborate with someone that I don't like.... duh? It gets bad when the subculture inhabitants get confused and adopt the social norms of the passer bys instead of remembering the importance of well-kept gardens. And then they start to introduce "policy".. which is just a backdoor for attackers to destroy your well-kept garden by arguing policy (as if that was what the subculture was about!).
generalizations 17d ago
Projects like this probably need a dedicated noob-fork where 'anything goes', so the noobs feel like they're contributing but where their blast radius is contained. And once in a blue moon something good comes out of it back to the real project.
- sc68cal 17d ago
  With how verbose LLMs are and how much code churn they generate, it will be very difficult to extract anything and apply it back upstream
  - IAmBroom 17d ago
    The fence around the sandbox is the important part. Cherrypicking the occasional winner is just a side benefit.
thesuitonym 17d ago
This space is where AI usage is most confounding to me. Regardless of your stance on AI, this work does not need to be done. So if you don't enjoy it enough to actually do it, why are you even here? If you do enjoy the work, why are you letting the AI do your hobby? Don't you miss it?
- orangedog 17d ago
  Some people get value out of finding results not the actual work. It is still work, just different kind of work.
- suburban_strike 17d ago
  Power. It's people jockeying for power over groups. It doesn't matter if you have no interest in <autistic specialty>, the point is that you can force a bunch of nerds to bend to your will.
grey-area 17d ago
It is not fine.
Aurornis 17d ago
In my hobby groups there has always been a second, smaller, more intimate invite-only space for people doing the deep work. It’s the only way to do the work in the age of 1000-member Discords where important conversations get lost in the scroll back instantly. The experience in these spaces is largely the same. LLMs can be used there, too, but when the experts are using them with experience to back it up the results are a lot better. The people who are really struggling in my few hobby groups (not PS5) are those who enjoyed some social status from their knowledge. They were heros and people sought them out and revered their work in 2023. LLMs came along and partially leveled the playing field. When a determined kid with a Deepseek subscription can produce a sloppy version of what took you years to find, that sense of being a heroic figure at the next level is gone. I think this reveals another wrinkle, which is that the status hierarchy wasn’t that solid or worthwhile anyway. Outside of a few vocal people trying to enforce the status hierarchy, most people don’t care who releases their jailbreak or PS5 exploit. They just want it. Whoever gets it to them first becomes the new king. This PS5 incident has some strange element where supposedly keeping the reveal secret for 2 more weeks would have changed something with the GTA6 release. There were also 3 people who found the same exploit independent and some large amount of money on the line for the first of them to report it. The person who reported it signed off to spend time with his dying mother, so can’t really fault them for doing the thing they earned according to the rules of the program.
- hypfer 17d ago
  > Outside of a few vocal people trying to enforce the status hierarchy, most people don’t care who releases their jailbreak or PS5 exploit. They just want it. Whoever gets it to them first becomes the new king. "Commodification" might be a relevant word here. You can fight that by "building a personal brand", but then you're suddenly brand building instead of hacking, and hacking was what you actually wanted to do. I guess it works best if you're not in it for clout but because you want something to exist. But even then it is difficult. > There were also 3 people who found the same exploit independent and some large amount of money on the line for the first of them to report it. Ah yes, game theory. Oof.
- BrtByte 17d ago
  The status thing is probably part of it, but I'm not sure "a kid with Deepseek can make a sloppy version" actually shows that the old hierarchy was meaningless.
BrtByte 17d ago
For a hobby community, getting to the answer isn't necessarily the main value
roncinephile 16d ago
People say prostitute is the oldest profession, schoolteacher is as old by a day

deleted 17d ago

[deleted]

vouaobrasil 17d ago

In general, society is experience a decoupling of fun from work. I can't say I enjoy every aspect of my job, but it's nice to enjoy some of it, and lots of people do find a lot of their job at least somewhat rewarding. People who hate their job of course like to come out of the woodwork and say no one should enjoy it, but isn't it nice to have a society where at least some people can enjoy their work? I used to enjoy teaching but I'd never get a teaching job now because of how AI is being used in that sector. Technophiles will say that we should embrace the future because its inevitable but how many good people quitting does it take before they realize that a vibe-coded future of fun isn't all there is to life?

p-e-w 17d ago
> but isn't it nice to have a society where at least some people can enjoy their work? That’s an interesting question. I thought about it for a minute and was surprised that I came to the conclusion that the answer isn’t obviously “yes”. An analogous question is “isn't it nice to have a society where at least some people are rich?”, and I think that question should make it clearer to many people why that is so.
- latexr 17d ago
  > An analogous question is “isn't it nice to have a society where at least some people are rich?” There’s a crucial difference between the two questions. “Rich” is a relative term: If everyone had the same amount of money, no one would be rich, you need someone to be worse off (poor) to have someone better off (rich). But someone enjoying their work has no bearing on someone else’s enjoyment of theirs.
  - CamperBob2 17d ago
    you need someone to be worse off (poor) to have someone better off (rich). The fact that so many people believe this is what bums me out. You need to understand something: the people who want you to think this way do not have your best interests in mind, any more than the rabid right-wing Trumpers do.
    - latexr 17d ago
      You completely misunderstood the point. In no way do I mean that someone has to suffer for someone else to thrive. We could (and should) all thrive and have our needs met. I’m just saying the term is relative, like “tall” and “short”. If we were all the same height, no one would be tall or short, we’d just be. If we all had the same amount of money, no one would be rich or poor.
      - CamperBob2 17d ago
        An economy isn't a zero-sum game. Wealth doesn't just pop into existence when someone in the government clicks a button on a screen. Money is created that way, but wealth isn't. It has to be created by creating something that someone else values enough to pay for willingly. No one has to lose anything, in the sense that no one has to give up more than they think the product or service is worth to them. In your example, it's possible for everyone to grow taller.
        latexr 17d ago
        > No one has to lose anything Holy shit, for the third time that is not the argument. Read what I wrote and try to steal man a bit. Get your preconceived argument out of your head and understand we are in agreement. The difference between wealth and money isn’t in question, that is something you just added to the argument and decided with zero basis that I disagree. The fact that so many people jump to conclusions and immediately dunk on others who agree with them is what bums me out. What a waste of a conversation. Why are you spending time criticising those who support the same points?
vjvjvjvjghv 17d ago
Us techies have taken the fun out of a lot of professions with the tools we are developing and selling. I guess it was only a matter of time until we killed the fun in our profession.
carefree-bob 17d ago
You have to fight to keep work fun. It requires skill and some cunning. People are not going to hand you a "fun job", that part falls on you.
- vouaobrasil 16d ago
  True. I agree. But I think it's also not very nice of AI programmers to actively work to take that fun away. And part of the skill of keeping a job fun is working against those who do attempt to take the fun away.

tristor 17d ago

> Hobby groups projects like this are less fun for a lot of people who used to enjoy interacting with smart people. This is definitely the case for me. Before AI tools became mainstream, it was already a difficult proposition to find other smart people who you could get along with and talk to, do something interesting together. The Internet made all the difference in my life because I was able to get outside my geographic region to do big things through open source and hacker communities. Now, that very important filter mechanism no longer works. It's Eternal September all over again. In a way, it's very much a domination of "ends" over "means" in the wider community that is being forced upon those who long focused on "means". For a lot of intelligent people, understanding something is /valuable on its own/, but for the wider world there is no value in simply knowing things, but what you do with that knowledge (or now that lack of knowledge). I even experienced this recently at DEFCON 34 where I saw other participants in some of the CTFs with me using AI tools and not really understanding what the tools were doing or what was happening, but just kind of bruteforcing/tokenmaxxing their way through. This isn't to say that those AI tools are fundamentally a bad thing to use in building open source software, security research, or even as a tool in a CTF, but that the "understanding" step needs to still be present or it destroys the fun in everything. I'm certainly not having as much fun with computers these days, even as I've invested a lot of effort myself in local LLMs and trying to understand the tools and understand how to apply them reasonably, I've found I prefer much more analog entertainments. Thankfully there's always photography and lockpicking to entertain me at the moment and provide a pathway to meet other interesting fellows.

drcxd 16d ago
It feels like understanding is no longer required to produce code, as long as the program can pass the tests. Also, most software rarely causes severe real world damage, so it simply requires less guarantee and quality than other engineering such as buildings, bridges, etc.. With LLMs, code is just like cars, it carries you to your destination, you do not have to understand how it works.

aeonflux 17d ago

> Hobby groups projects like this are less fun for a lot of people who used to enjoy interacting with smart people. Same thing did happen to many work places. People at all levels proxy questions through LLMs and don't even bother to read/trim/edit the response. Funny, how suddenly a tight, 1-2 sentence response on point is a sign of skill.

devin 17d ago
I think a lot of workplaces would do well to ban LLM-based replies in certain spaces.
- kjs3 17d ago
  While I don't disagree with you, they shouldn't have to. This should be one of those things like covering your mouth when you cough in a crowd and not playing loud music in your cube that people with basic social skills should know not to do. Unfortunately, like much basic courtesy, we apparently now have to make rules.
  - devin 17d ago
    I agree, but it seems that some people actually need to be told that copy/pasting a bunch of LLM slop into chat is like farting on an elevator. I wouldn't even say that it comes down to "social skills" in a lot of cases, it's just people who seem to be performatively using AI. I'd classify them as corporate climber "yes, boss" types more than lacking in social skills.
    - kjs3 17d ago
      Your analogy is better than mine. :-)
lultimouomo 17d ago
> Funny, how suddenly a tight, 1-2 sentence response on point is a sign of skill. Wasn't it always?

hypfer 17d ago

> Hobby groups projects like this are less fun for a lot of people who used to enjoy interacting with smart people It is insane just how miserable the experience of FOSS hardware hacking in public is. The expectation does not even the slightest match reality. You'd think "ah yes many eyes meaning all bugs get shallow", but instead you get worst of XDA-Developers and toxic wastelands where no sane person even answers anymore. But this predates LLMs and was as miserable as it is now before as well. In fact, I might even argue that LLMs made this _better_, because you can now avoid the "opening up in hopes of finding 1 helpful person below 99 annoying ones" through simple GPU compute. Previously, you had to hope that through this self-inflicted horror, you'd find an expert that can augment you. Now that expert rests on huggingface. It's still.. not perfect, of course. But it might be less miserable - provided that you adapt to the current state of things and stop with the "trawling for volunteers". __ Of course, this does not help you against "skids let claude find bugs that you'd need and burn it for no reason" as per the twitter thread, but I wouldn't rule out that they would not have done that, if less information was public. And.. that too was an issue before LLMs. Information wants to be free, but so does your cat, and your cat gets run over by some crackhead in a 30 year old rusty pickup if you just put it outside without thinking. So don't let it go out unattended. That said, this "pep talk" is more directed at myself than at poor Andy. This must all suck big time.

concinds 17d ago
It's the oldest unsolved problem of the internet: how to attract high-value people and keep out low-value contributors.
- ethbr1 17d ago
  Text only forums?
casey2 17d ago
Isn't the problem just that open source, by it's very nature, is low quality since it comes from the unix-like ecosystem where everything is built atop everything else. So inevitably when the skid comes to you with a bug you can say "ah that's a bug in a specific build of your shell with these environment variables, myyyy code is clean as a whistle, minimal, and follows best practices" (if we ignore that in practice it depends on a billion different programs versions all of which are incorrect) Complaining about the inevitable toxic noise when the same boneheaded development decisions are made over and over like everyone has gone insane. You don't have to build a death trap on the land your cat and children roam.

deleted 17d ago

[deleted]

deleted 17d ago

[deleted]

GuinansEyebrows 17d ago

completely different world, but i've seen this happen in music spaces as well. the idea of gatekeeping is often seen as elitist or exclusionary (fairly enough in many cases) but i think this can be an exaggerated description of a culture that necessarily requires a standard of... let's say, desire to engage with material on a sufficiently deep level. many things can be for anybody, but they are not for everybody. in the past i've seen the phenomenon of "opening up" subcultures or previously-niche intellectual/art fields described as democratization but i think that ignores a big part of what causes this, which can more accurately be described as commodification. access to difficult things was formerly measured by one's ability to expend effort in order to get there (ignoring, for now, the structural conditions that set one up for success in that effort). when these things are commodified, these efforts and identities become products to purchase, the right to which is nearly never limited; in fact, it's almost seen as evil to imply that they should not be available to any individual at any time that individual may desire access. i know we all have to start somewhere, but there has always been some historical filtration that leads people who are not truly engaged with a subject on a deep level to disengage at some point. that's changing at a novel rate and scale across so many subcultures. it seems like a lot of us are just surprised at how many people even want access to what were once our sanctuaries and we're not capable of grappling with what it takes to adapt to these changes. i don't think this will pass or that things will return to "the way they were" but there will always be pockets that resemble previous subcultural forms. we just have to re-learn how to identify them with a keener eye and how to better avoid or more-appropriately interact with those who have a more superficial interest in them.

kanzure 17d ago
While you might have access to the subculture, there is no obligation for anyone else to respond, collaborate or engage with random you. This is a common mistaken understanding about open-source software projects where users often believe they have "rights" to compel or coerce volunteer developers to listen or reply to them. Developers collaborating together isn't a conspiracy, it's just preferences getting played out. No, I don't want to collaborate with someone that I don't like.... duh? It gets bad when the subculture inhabitants get confused and adopt the social norms of the passer bys instead of remembering the importance of well-kept gardens. And then they start to introduce "policy".. which is just a backdoor for attackers to destroy your well-kept garden by arguing policy (as if that was what the subculture was about!).

generalizations 17d ago

Projects like this probably need a dedicated noob-fork where 'anything goes', so the noobs feel like they're contributing but where their blast radius is contained. And once in a blue moon something good comes out of it back to the real project.

sc68cal 17d ago
With how verbose LLMs are and how much code churn they generate, it will be very difficult to extract anything and apply it back upstream
- IAmBroom 17d ago
  The fence around the sandbox is the important part. Cherrypicking the occasional winner is just a side benefit.

thesuitonym 17d ago

This space is where AI usage is most confounding to me. Regardless of your stance on AI, this work does not need to be done. So if you don't enjoy it enough to actually do it, why are you even here? If you do enjoy the work, why are you letting the AI do your hobby? Don't you miss it?

orangedog 17d ago
Some people get value out of finding results not the actual work. It is still work, just different kind of work.
suburban_strike 17d ago
Power. It's people jockeying for power over groups. It doesn't matter if you have no interest in <autistic specialty>, the point is that you can force a bunch of nerds to bend to your will.

grey-area 17d ago

It is not fine.

Aurornis 17d ago

In my hobby groups there has always been a second, smaller, more intimate invite-only space for people doing the deep work. It’s the only way to do the work in the age of 1000-member Discords where important conversations get lost in the scroll back instantly. The experience in these spaces is largely the same. LLMs can be used there, too, but when the experts are using them with experience to back it up the results are a lot better. The people who are really struggling in my few hobby groups (not PS5) are those who enjoyed some social status from their knowledge. They were heros and people sought them out and revered their work in 2023. LLMs came along and partially leveled the playing field. When a determined kid with a Deepseek subscription can produce a sloppy version of what took you years to find, that sense of being a heroic figure at the next level is gone. I think this reveals another wrinkle, which is that the status hierarchy wasn’t that solid or worthwhile anyway. Outside of a few vocal people trying to enforce the status hierarchy, most people don’t care who releases their jailbreak or PS5 exploit. They just want it. Whoever gets it to them first becomes the new king. This PS5 incident has some strange element where supposedly keeping the reveal secret for 2 more weeks would have changed something with the GTA6 release. There were also 3 people who found the same exploit independent and some large amount of money on the line for the first of them to report it. The person who reported it signed off to spend time with his dying mother, so can’t really fault them for doing the thing they earned according to the rules of the program.

hypfer 17d ago
> Outside of a few vocal people trying to enforce the status hierarchy, most people don’t care who releases their jailbreak or PS5 exploit. They just want it. Whoever gets it to them first becomes the new king. "Commodification" might be a relevant word here. You can fight that by "building a personal brand", but then you're suddenly brand building instead of hacking, and hacking was what you actually wanted to do. I guess it works best if you're not in it for clout but because you want something to exist. But even then it is difficult. > There were also 3 people who found the same exploit independent and some large amount of money on the line for the first of them to report it. Ah yes, game theory. Oof.
BrtByte 17d ago
The status thing is probably part of it, but I'm not sure "a kid with Deepseek can make a sloppy version" actually shows that the old hierarchy was meaningless.

BrtByte 17d ago

For a hobby community, getting to the answer isn't necessarily the main value

roncinephile 16d ago

People say prostitute is the oldest profession, schoolteacher is as old by a day