This is what the Tesla fans have been saying for years. "Oh, you're on the previous software version, bro. You gotta try the latest version, bro, trust me bro it's so much better. FSD on the current version is totally working for me, bro." "Oh, you're on today's software version? Don't worry, bro, the next one is going to be so much better, just wait for it bro, trust me bro we're going to have working FSD in the next version, bro."
This is just introducing a small business cost for AI/scrapers and a reason to bail out of the funnel for real users--so by charging, you'll have an even larger percentage of bots.
I downvote them because they are tangential to the content. They are like complaints about scroll bars and back button hijacking, or annoyances about the website's color scheme. Valid complaints, but contrary to the HN guideline:
Please don't complain about tangential annoyances—e.g. article or website formats, name collisions, or back-button breakage. They're too common to be interesting.
I don't like AI slop articles either, but I also don't like articles where the text is formatted in a tiny column in the middle of the browser. Neither are really useful to complain about here. By the end of 2026, 90% of the articles here are probably going to be AI slop, and it will be totally useless to complain about each and every one of them.
I want to respect the guidelines for the good of the community, but at this point it isn't serving the community well for there to not be backlash against the rising flood of AI-generated garbage.
It was really truly bad enough when it was ~half the articles either being about AI directly or indirectly. Now it's that, plus half of it is written by Claude too.
What meaningful community is going to be left for these guidelines to protect?
Moderation needs to put their foot down in some cases, as a matter of necessity. Sometimes users need to put their foot down, too.
I'm all for banning AI slop articles. The HN guidelines were recently updated to address slop comments[1], but they have not put their foot down yet about slop articles.
> I downvote them because they are tangential to the content. They are like complaints about scroll bars and back button hijacking, or annoyances about the website's color scheme
I don't agree with you. They are not at all like the examples you mentioned. Calling something "AI slop" signals that the writing either fails to raise any important point or, even when it raises a decent point, it is so repetitive it wastes time of readers. This is not only a style problem.
To put it in LLMish: It's not 'tangential to the content' – it's directly addressing (the lack of) the content.
If LLM worked perfectly we shouldn't have noticed the text was generated. I and others did. I feel it's important to point it out, if we don't want low-quality texts fully flooding us.
> By the end of 2026, 90% of the articles here are probably going to be AI slop, and it will be totally useless to complain about each and every one of them.
Using the policy you personally adopted it surely will be so. I don't think news aggregator comprised of junk information is something which should be embraced, so maybe reconsider your position?
The "GDPR is complicated" meme has been circulating among software developers since probably before it was even written. It's so wild that HN dunks on it so much: Here we have a societal problem in computing we've been complaining about for decades, someone offers an incremental but imperfect regulation to start taking steps to correct it, and everyone hates it!
> It's so wild that HN dunks on it so much: Here we have a societal problem in computing we've been complaining about for decades, someone offers an incremental but imperfect regulation to start taking steps to correct it, and everyone hates it!
YOUR collection of user's data is an overreach and breach of privacy. MY collection of data is absolutely necessary to grow my scrappy small business and provide value. I am a good person with good intentions, so its OK. You are a bad person doing bad things, so its not OK.
The GDPR is vague and unworkable as written. It fundamentally restricts all data processing with a few, vague exceptions.
What is data processing essential for the services being provided? Many publishers assumed that getting paid was an essential part of providing a service, and it was not until 3 months before the implementation deadline that the committee clarified that getting paid is not included when you are being paid by a third party.
How are you to know whether or not the user is an EU citizen (and thus subject to the GDPR)? Is making that determination a service essential for providing your service? The answers apparently were "You don't" and "No", which would effectively make companies assume that the GDPR applies to everyone on the planet.
The GDPR also is fundamentally opposed to how things currently work in the internet, making almost all advertising on the web illegal overnight. It was too big of a change to happen at once, so it effectively only loosely enforced in practice.
I like the idea of the GDPR, but the implementation sucks.
> The GDPR is vague and unworkable as written. It fundamentally restricts all data processing with a few, vague exceptions.
What utterutter FUD
You are free to collect as much personal data as you want, PROVIDING you have my explicit opt-in informed consent to do so.
What about this is difficult to understand?
> How are you to know whether or not the user is an EU citizen (and thus subject to the GDPR)?
The GDPR provides _basic_ data safety and consumer protection. If you aren't protecting users private data regardless of where they live in line with GDPR principles (such as collecting it fairly, and not selling it to randoms) then you are playing fast and loose with your users private, sensitive data. In which case you need to _seriously_ consider if what you are doing is ethical.
> The GDPR also is fundamentally opposed to how things currently work in the internet, making almost all advertising on the web illegal overnight.
Utter Bullshit!
You are free to advertise as much as you like! But if you want to track me with your advertising (hello scummy adtech industry) then you need my explicit informed consent to do so. And so you should!
Again, what about this is difficult to understand?
> If you aren't protecting users private data regardless of where they live in line with GDPR principles (such as collecting it fairly, and not selling it to randoms) then you are playing fast and loose with your users private, sensitive data.
It's interesting and revealing when someone responds to a law that says "You're not allowed to abuse users in countries X, Y, and Z" with "How can I figure out who's in the other countries, so I can abuse them?" instead of "I'll just stop abusing everyone, and then I don't even need to worry about where anyone is."
Whenever you find yourself asking "how do I toe as close to the 'illegal' line as I can without technically going over it?" I think it's time to ask yourself some pretty hard questions.
The problem with the age input box is that we don't have the GDPR. We're mandating that people give accurate age information to advertisers, and it's legal for advertisers to sell detailed dossiers on people including their age and target advertising using the age. This is why Meta wrote the age input box legislation, they want to make everyone legally required to provide Meta with their age.
There is no such things as "clearly agreed to by all parties" when it comes to end users. Companies provide a one-sided, "take it or leave it" EULA, and if you don't agree to everything in it, you don't use the product. There is no meeting of the minds, there is no negotiation, and there is no actual agreement. It's a rule book dictated by one side.
You can't just bury literally anything in an EULA. There's a fair amount of case law establishing that EULAs clauses that are surprising or illegal aren't enforceable.
That fact does not change the point of the individual to which you replied. Regardless of whether the clauses in the EULA are 100% legal, some mixture or 100% illegal, the entire EULA is a "one sided rule-book dictated completely by one side". You, the person held to the EULA's rules, do not get to negotiate on the individual points. You simply have a "take it or go away" set of options.
You're talking about contracts of adhesion and they are overwhelmingly common for B2C agreements. Most red-lining of contracts only happens in high-value B2B transactions where the sums of money involved are enough that it makes sense to bring lawyers into the loop.
If the product has any serious audience / traction, it becomes profitable to scan its EULA for illegal clauses, and sue the company for damages (and maybe extra punishment for breaking the law).
The fact that 100% of its users, except the litigant, skimmed through the EULA and did not notice anything does not relieve the company from the responsibility.
when you already pay for the device and a contract, then surprise now that you have skin and flesh in the game, you HAVE TO agree to this EULA or your property is a brick and we keep your money.
that is defined as extortion, but labled as onboarding.
Wow, some real terrible One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest stuff in the article. I didn't know people were still getting involuntarily committed to asylums and forced to take medication based on some doctor's vibes. Thought that ended decades ago!
And, of course, the hospital is successfully hiding behind a coerced "agreement" and court procedure technicalities. So there will be no justice because a State Court did this and a District judge said that, and a Federal Court moved this way and an Appellate Court moved that way. Typical Court-Chess without regard to the actual injured person.
One of the more amusing conceits is that of “voluntary treatment”, as there is in fact no such thing. If you insist on leaving, asserting that you're there “voluntarily”, you will simply become an involuntary patient.
This is HIGHLY state dependent. I'm not sure about Maryland, but in NY and PA getting an involuntary hold in the first place is VERY difficult, and they are limited to 2-3 months before another judge has to approve an extension.
These people migrate like geese through the exact same stuff. I knew a couple of people way early on into affiliate marketing, then they all migrated to LeadGen, then to Drop Shipping, then online poker, then crypto, then NFTs, and now of course, they're all doing AI gigs. It's the exact same group of people migrating like birds from scheme to scheme.
Yes, it was the exact same scheme. Rich Dad Poor Dad was basically "Buy lots of cheap, crappy houses and become a slum lord" expanded into thousands of pages of books, seminars, and self help guides.
There really should be a special category for business books written by people who’ve gone bankrupt. I know at least two well known examples, but there’s got to be a whole lot more.
> Cars are not popular becuase people pushed them. Cars are popular because the utility is undeniable.
I think this is somewhat of a chicken and egg problem. Cars' utility is undeniable partially because society has twisted itself thoroughly around The Car being an assumed part of it. This societal change was both pulled (by car customers) and pushed (by car manufacturers).
Yes absolutely—I think cars have obvious utility as machines, but there has now been 100 years of building everything around them and changing laws in such a way that encourages their use: through direct and indirect subsidy, land use rules that largely outlaw building cities in any way other than sprawl that itself increases the importance and utility of cars, and various other preferential regulations that often tolerate the harms in a way that is not applied elsewhere (c.f. panic over e-bike safety vs American highway safety overall).
Cars won because they were (and are) better than the alternatives. The need for powerful individual transportation with utility has always existed, and was originally met with horses. Bicycles meet the transportation need, but not the need for utility. Cars do both, and they do it better than anything else. Even before fueling infrastructure was rolled out, you could still run a car on petroleum you bought from the chemist, which is still infinitely better than the acres of pasture you need for horses. If you had an early diesel, it would run on oil, which is even easier.
The idea that cars needed all this infrastructure that other alternatives didn't just doesn't match the reality of the history of the automobile. And yes, we've leaned on those advantages in the century since, which has also created vast areas where a car is necessary to participate in society, but we only did so because the advantages and utility were so undeniable.
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