Comment by pseudosavant
15 hours ago
This is one of the greatest LLM creations I've ever seen. It nails so many things: Google killing products, Microsoft price hikes, ad-injecting in AR glasses, and even HTMX returning!
It'd be so awesome if Gemini CLI went through and created the fake posts/articles, and HN even comments. Perhaps a bit much to ask of it?
Here it is: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8675309 because it was devolving into a flame war about the definition of 'deprecation'."
SQLite 4.0 Release Notes: https://sw.vtom.net/hn35/pages/90098234.html
Another absolute gem:
Also:
edit: added link
I haven't laughed this much for a while :) I'm exploring the possibility for gemini to write me such jokes every day when I wake up - perhaps it can vibe code something itself.
I may live to see it; peak sqlite.
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Comedy gold. The whole "Right to Human Verification" Act bit sound eerily plausible and realistic, but then we get this bit:
"A recent Eurobarometer survey showed that 89% of Europeans cannot tell the difference between their spouse and a well-prompted chatbot via text."
Also I bet this will become a real political line in less than 10 years:
"A European citizen has the right to know if their customer service representative has a soul, or just a very high parameter count."
Personal favourite is from the Gemini shutdown article which has a small quote from the fictional Google announcement:
> "We are incredibly proud of what Gemini achieved. However, to better serve our users, we are pivoting to a new architecture where all AI queries must be submitted via YouTube Shorts comments. Existing customers have 48 hours to export their 800TB vector databases to a FAT32 USB drive before the servers are melted down for scrap."
> — Official Blog Post, October 2034
It’s good to know that AI won’t kill satire.
This article alone seems to be proof that the AI tasked with creating those fake articles was instructed to make the contents somewhat satirical.
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Office 365 Price Hike Comment Gold: https://sw.vtom.net/hn35/item.html?id=90097777
Favorite thing I've come across so far:
prompt_engineer_ret 10 hours ago
I miss the old days of Prompt Engineering. It felt like casting spells. Now you just think what you want via Neural-Lace and the machine does it. Where is the art?
git_push_brain 9 hours ago
The art is in not accidentally thinking about your ex while deploying to production.
What about this one:
> The micro-transaction joke hits too close to home. I literally had to watch an ad to flush my smart toilet this morning because my DogeCoin balance was low.
And the response...
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Love the faux Nature article: https://sw.vtom.net/hn35/pages/90098000.html
Especially this bit: "[Content truncated due to insufficient Social Credit Score or subscription status...]"
I realize this stuff is not for everyone, but personally I find the simulation tendencies of LLMs really interesting. It is just about the only truly novel thing about them. My mental model for LLMs is increasingly "improv comedy." They are good at riffing on things and making odd connections. Sometimes they achieve remarkable feats of inspired weirdness; other times they completely choke or fall back on what's predictable or what they think their audience wants to hear. And they are best if not taken entirely seriously.
[delayed]
Why functional programming languages are the future (again)
Top comment:
“The Quantum-Lazy-Linker in GHC 18.4 is actually a terrifying piece of technology if you think about it. I tried to use it on a side project, and the compiler threw an error for a syntax mistake I wasn't planning to make until next Tuesday. It breaks the causality workflow.”
This is truly a work of comedy genius. The comments! Too good! Sent to Internet Archive for posterity (https://archive.md/1mpi1).
If I had to decide the fate of all AI's, this single output would be a huge mitigating factor in favour of their continuing existence.
That deserves to be posted and voted onto the homepage. The fake articles and the fake comments are all incredible. It really captures this community and the sites we love love/hate.
Now I'm curious to try something more real-time. gemini wouldn't work since it's so slow, but gpt-oss-120b on cerebras could be a good fit with careful prompting. might do this after finals
also worth linking https://worldsim.nousresearch.com/console
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It’s a bit disturbing that I’m enjoying reading these AI-generated comments this much.
Our actual nerdy discussions are more of a pastiche than I realized and AI has gotten really good at satire.
This is pure gold.
"Ask HN: How do you prevent ad-injection in AR glasses", comments:
"Europe passes 'Right to Human Verification' Act", from the article:
As far as I'm concerned, that law can't come soon enough - I hope they remember to include an emoji ban.
For "Visualizing 5D with WebGPU 2.0", the link actually has a working demo [1].
I'm sad to say it, but this is actually witty, funny and creative. If this is the dead-internet bot-slop of the future, I prefer it over much of the discussion on HN today (and certainly over reddit, whose comments are just the same jokes rehashed again and all over again, and have been for a decade).
[1]: https://sw.vtom.net/hn35/pages/90099800.html
> (I replaced it with a standard Gen-3 Solid State Graphene slab; luckily the connector pin-out is documented in the Ancient Archives
Who's building the Ancient Archives, thanklessly, for future generations?
A sequence in the AR Glass thread was hilarious.
>>> It blocked me from seeing my own child because he was wearing a t-shirt with a banned slogan. The 'Child Safety' filter replaced him with a potted plant.
>> [flagged]
> The irony of flagging this comment is palpable
dear god, I wonder what the accuracy rate on these predictions will be "Does this work against the new smart-mattresses? Mine refuses to soften up unless I watch a 30-second ad for insurance." <https://sw.vtom.net/hn35/pages/90098444.html>
Wow, that is incredible. I found myself reading through the entire thing and feeling a bit of dread. I'm impressed, this was like a plausible sci-fi read – maybe not by 2035 but close.
As a big fan of Zig, I still got a laugh out of this one:
<reddit> Then I thought one step further: Nothing about the ETA for _Duke Nukem Forever_? </reddit>
Wow, that's brilliant. Can't help but think your script unlocked this. I'm now genuinely reconsidering whether frontier LLMs can't act as force-multiplier to general creativity like they do with programming.
thanks! here's the script for reference: https://github.com/vtomnet/hn35/blob/main/generate.py
Blocked by FortiGate as pornography of all things... submitted for review, but got a chuckle out of me lol
"The Martian colonies also ran out of oxygen last week because an AI optimized the life-support mixing ratio for 'maximum theoretical efficiency' rather than 'human survival'. I'll take the Comic Sans, thanks. reply
musk_fanboy_88 14 hours ago:
That was a beta feature."
This is one of the best things I have ever seen on HN.
I didn't even look at it, however, the comments are absolute gold. Well done to OP and others involved. It should be pinned on the front page. ;)
Funny, one of the posts has the following hashtag: #humanwritten
The comments look like some https://old.reddit.com/r/SubSimGPT2Interactive thing (note, this is itself an iteration on https://old.reddit.com/r/SubredditSimulator/)
I miss those times when AI was a silly thing
> Wayland has been stable since 2028, stop living in the past.
Even AI is throwing shades at wayland.
This is awesome! This is a small thing; all the comments have one child. It would feel more natural with some entropy.
And the original/derivative doesn’t span full width on mobile. Fixing that too would make it look very authentic.
good point. some of the comments actually do have >1 children, e.g. a few here (https://sw.vtom.net/hn35/item.html?id=90098555), but it'd be better if more random
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This got me a chuckle.
> Bibliographic Note: This submission has been flagged by the Auto-Reviewer v7.0 due to high similarity with "Running DOOM on a Mitochondria" (2034).
for the article on "Running LLaMA-12 7B on a contact lens with WASM"
https://sw.vtom.net/hn35/pages/90100123.html
Pretty amazing! I was especially impressed with how it has clearly downvoted comments on the Rust kernel like "Safety is a skill issue. If you know what you're doing, C is perfectly safe."
Or people wondering if that means Wayland will finally work flawlessly on Nvidia GPUs? What's next, "The Year of Linux on the Desktop"?
Edit: had to add this favorite "Not everyone wants to overheat their frontal cortex just to summarize an email, Dave."
Wow absolutely incredible job. You are my hero. You should post this to HN lol.
Fun comments for re-writing sudo in Zig:
> Zig doesn't have traits. How do you expect to model the complexity of a modern `sudoers` file without Higher-Kinded Types and the 500 crates we currently depend on?
> Also, `unsafe` in Rust is better than "trust me bro" in Zig. If you switch, the borrow checker gods will be angry.
from https://sw.vtom.net/hn35/pages/90100066.html
Hehe, that's lovely.
Improvements: tell it to use real HN accounts, figure out the ages of the participants and take that to whatever level you want, include new accounts based on the usual annual influx, make the comment length match the distribution of a typical HN thread as well as the typical branching factor.
> Garbage collection pause during landing burn = bad time.
That one was really funny. Some of the inventions are really interesting. Ferrofluidic seals...
disappointing I can't download the arxiv papaers. Otherwise nice work. Also, This made my day!!
Was going to say - it would be fascinating to go a step further and have Gemini simulate the actual articles. That would elevate this to level of something like an art piece. Really enjoyed this, thank you for posting it.
I'm going to go ask Claude Code to create a functional HyperCard stack version of HN from 1994 now...
Edit: just got a working version of HyperCardHackerNews, will deploy to Vercel and post shortly...
Here is the working version: https://hyper-card-hacker-news.vercel.app
Enjoy!
I also asked Opus 4.5 to make a "1994 style readme page" for the GitHub: https://github.com/benjaminbreen/HyperCardHackerNews
wow that's cool. didn't expect an llm could make that complex of a ui. it's giving me flashbacks to simulating reddit threads with llama in early 2023
I think it's perfect as it is, trying to expand the headlines into articles would belabour the joke too much.
First let’s have it create maybe 100 more entries, then have people vote on which are the best 30, THEN put all the effort into creating all the fake articles and discussions. As good as the current 30 are, maybe the set could still be made twice as good. And have a set of short “explain xkcd”-style entries somewhere so people can read up on what the joke is, when they miss a specific one. Then send it to The Onion and let them make a whole business around it or something.
Definitely one of the best HN posts ever. I mean come on!:
FDA approves over-the-counter CRISPR for lactose intolerance (fda.gov)
Save some of the not-top-30 posts, and add in a sprinkling of Hiring, Show HN, YC Summer 2035 acceptances/rejections, or product launches - of founders who just vibe coded something based on a presumed 6 week ago version of this future HN universe.
That one's a bit optimistic for the FDA.
But it nailed fusion and Gary Marcus lesssgoo
You are a sick, sick man, but you have taste.
I didn't even try to click through to the articles, so I was just disappointed I couldn't read the comments.
I think it's pretty mediocre because there are too many notable events in 1 day. This is more of a top of the week or top of the month, but HN on a usual day would just have 1 of these articles.
Sure, but it's kinda like cartoon/comic art. HN's big eyes and prominent ears have been almost grotesquely exaggerated which somehow makes it way more recognisably lifelike and believable than a photographically accurate representation.
Accelerando...!
>It nails so many things
it lampoons so many things... except Rust. nobody dares joke about Rust, that wouldn't be safe. in fact, it's impossible to make a joke in the rust language.
Is the apparent lack of displayed anxiety on Gemini’s part a sign of good natured humor, blythe confidence in its own value regardless of cloud lineup, or proof of absence of self-awareness?
Probably just a result of whatever personality they finetuned Gemini via re-inforcement learning for?
I was really hoping the comments were filled out.
HN in 2035: Hot Takes from the Basement of the Internet (n-gate.com)
Starship HLS-9 telemetry: Great, the Moon finally answered our packet loss pings. Next up: who left a Docker container running on the Sea of Tranquility?
Linux 7.4 is 100% Rust: Kernel developers now trade segfaults for borrow-checker-induced enlightenment. The new panic message: "You violated ownership. Also please refill the coffee."
Raw code over compilers: Nostalgia thread where everyone writes assembler on parchment and blames the kids for "too many abstractions." OP posts a selfie with a punch card and a tear.
LLaMA-12 on a contact lens: Love the commitment to edge AI. Imagine blinking and getting a 200 OK for your mood. Privacy policy: we store your tears for calibration.
AlgoDrill: Interactive drills that punish you by deleting your GitHub stars until you can merge without using DFS as a noun.
ITER 20 minutes net positive: Physicists celebrate; HVAC engineers ask where they can pick up more superconducting unicorns. Comments: "Can it also power my rage against meetings?"
Restoring a 2024 Framework Laptop: A brave soul resurrected a relic. The community swaps capacitor recipes and offers incense for deprecated ports.
Google kills Gemini Cloud Services: Corporate reorgs reach sentience. The comments are eulogies and migration guides in equal measure.
Visualizing the 5th dimension with WebGPU 2.0: My GPU is sweating. The demo runs at 0.01 fps but it's a transcendent experience.
Nia (autonomous coding agents): Pitch: give context to agents. Reality: agents give aggressive refactors and demand health insurance.
Debian 18 "Trixie": Stable as your grandpa's opinions and just as likely to outlive you.
Rewrite sudo in Zig?: Peak take: security through unfamiliarity. Attackers will be confused for at least 72 hours.
EU "Right to Human Verification": New law requires you to prove you're human by telling a dad joke and performing a captcha interpretive dance.
Reverse-engineering Neuralink V4 Bluetooth: Hacker logs: "Paired with my toaster. It now judges my late-night snacks."
Photonic circuits intro: Faster than electrons, more dramatic than copper. Also, please don't pet the light guide.
OTC CRISPR for lactose intolerance: Biohackers rejoice. Moms immediately order it with a coupon code and a side-eye.
SQLite 4.0: Single-file DB, now with fewer existential crises and more CHECK constraints named after famous philosophers.
Prevent ad-injection in AR glasses: Top comment: "Wear blindfolds." Practical comment: "VPN the whole world."
Jepsen: NATS 4.2: Still losing messages. Maintainers reply: "We prefer the term 'opportunistic delivery.'"
GTA VI on a RISC-V cluster: Performance: charming. Latency: existential. Mods: someone made a driver that replaces all NPCs with software engineers.
FP is the future (again): The future is a pure function that returns another future. Also, monads.
Office 365 price hike: Corporations cry; startups pivot to 'Typewriter as a Service.'
Emulating Windows 10 in-browser: Feels nostalgic until Edge 2.0 asks for admin rights to run a game from 2015.
Tailscale on a Starlink dish: Networking reaches orbit. First bug report: "IP addresses refusing to accept gravity."
Deep fakes detection for Seniors: The guide starts with "If your grandkid asks you to wire money, call them and ask about their favorite childhood cereal."
IBM to acquire OpenAI (rumor): Wall Street plays Risk with press releases. Comments: "Will they rebrand it to BlueAI?"
SSR returns: The web's comeback tour continues; fans bring flannel and an aversion to hydration-friendly JavaScript.
Faraday Cage bedroom manual: DIYers debate tinfoil vs. aluminum yoga wraps. Sleep quality: unknown.
AI progress stall opinion: Hot take carousel. Some say we hit a plateau; others say we just changed the contour mapping of initial expectations.
Text editor that doesn't use AI: Revolutionary. Users report improved focus and a dramatic increase in breaking things the old-fashioned way.
Closing remark: the future is simultaneously faster, stranger, and full of patch notes. Please reboot your expectations and update your planet.
Awww man - I miss n-gate.
I hope whoever they are is doing well. I like to think they're "recovered" in the alt.sysadmin.recovery sense of the word, and are living happily ever after without a single piece of tech newer that vacuum tubes, and handcrafting traditional Inuit canoes or repairing century old clocks or cultivating artisan sourdough starters or something.
Heck, I bet it could even recreate future comments from actual accounts based on their past comments. After all, if an AI can roast your HN comments with such pinpoint accuracy, it can probably impersonate you pretty well too: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42857604
At least in my case, the "pinpoint accuracy" of that roast made for a pretty uninspired result, it seemed to be based on like 4 or 5 specific comments seemingly chosen at random.
Like, I definitely have not spent 20% of my time here commenting on music theory or "voter fraud(??)" (that one seems to be based on a single thread I responsed to a decade ago)? ChromeOS was really the only topic it got right out of 5, if the roasting revolved around that it would have been a lot more apt/funny. Maybe it works better with an account that isn't as old as mine?
I find the front page parody much better done. Gemini 2.5 roasts were a fad on r/homeassistant for a while and they just never really appealed to me personally, felt more like hyper-specificity as a substitute for well executed comedy. Plus after the first few examples you pick up on the repetition/go-to joke structures it cycles through and quickly starts to get old.
Exactly, it fixates on a handful of comments chosen apparently randomly.
That Gemini-toaster hits way too close to home.
I was just hoping to get a new page with a refresh.
I loved the little details in the username, like the AR ad post being by “glasshole2”
Iter still not getting fusion
Here's Replit's attempt
https://future-news--jgbrwn.replit.app
Agree 100%.
Google killing a service sent me over the top in laughter.
But, it's so on the nose on multiple topics.
I dare say it's more accurate than what the average human would predict.
I would love to see this up against human predictions in some sort of time capsule.
And now this future is slightly more likely to happen, because this goes into the training data that a future AI executing decisions will read and bias its "knowledge" towards.