this post was submitted on 09 Aug 2026
14 points (93.8% liked)

TechTakes

2642 readers
55 users here now

Big brain tech dude got yet another clueless take over at HackerNews etc? Here's the place to vent. Orange site, VC foolishness, all welcome.

This is not debate club. Unless it’s amusing debate.

For actually-good tech, you want our NotAwfulTech community

founded 3 years ago
MODERATORS
 

Have a sneer percolating in your system but not enough time/energy to make a whole post about it? Go forth and be mid - welcome to the Stubsack, your first port of call for learning fresh Awful you’ll near-instantly regret.

Any awful.systems sub may be subsneered in this subthread, techtakes or no.

If your sneer seems higher quality than you thought, feel free to cut’n’paste it into its own post — there’s no quota for posting and the bar really isn’t that high.

The post Xitter web has spawned so many “esoteric” right wing freaks, but there’s no appropriate sneer-space for them. I’m talking redscare-ish, reality challenged “culture critics” who write about everything but understand nothing. I’m talking about reply-guys who make the same 6 tweets about the same 3 subjects. They’re inescapable at this point, yet I don’t see them mocked (as much as they should be)

Like, there was one dude a while back who insisted that women couldn’t be surgeons because they didn’t believe in the moon or in stars? I think each and every one of these guys is uniquely fucked up and if I can’t escape them, I would love to sneer at them.

(Credit and/or blame to David Gerard. Also just came back from Spider-Man: Brand New Day, movie was awesome)

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] nfultz@awful.systems 8 points 2 days ago (1 children)

Thank you for the technical explanation, that was absent from some mainstream coverage I'd seen.

Given that it works by controlling the PRNG, does that mean they could salt it by user id and track particular outputs back to specific accounts?

[–] lagrangeinterpolator@awful.systems 5 points 2 days ago (1 children)

From a technical perspective, I don't really know how to let it track specific users. The goal is that if some AI vendor provides their key, it is easy for them to prove that their AI produced the text. So I guess if a user wanted to show that they generated the text, they could prove it. But usually AI users don't want people knowing that they used the slop cannon. In any case, Anthropic's own announcement states that their watermark does not contain identifying information for users.

In any case, some proud AI users are now frightened that there might be a way for people to identify that they use such a wonderful tool. How will I ever deliver low quality slop for my contracts now?

He said he uses AI for code reviews and translations, and worried an AI label on code shipped to clients could raise questions about authorship or trigger contract penalties.

Having code attributed to Claude "definitely would be not desirable," he said, as he would not want professionally shipped code to carry an invisible marker that could raise questions about authorship, compliance, or client policies.

[–] flowerysong@awful.systems 9 points 2 days ago

he would not want professionally shipped code to carry an invisible marker that could raise questions about authorship, compliance, or client policies.

Gee, if only there were some way to create code that doesn't raise questions about authorship. Some sort of skill that people could learn that allowed them to deliver code to their clients that complied with their policies...