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Discussion (59 Comments)Read Original on HackerNews
I consider myself kind of an AI detractor but even I'll admit that the tool allowed me to do something it would have taken weeks-to-months to learn to do the hard way.
Not a successful anecdote, but I have a Windows Hello compatible Kengsington fingerprint reader, and for some time I wanted to write drivers for Linux. Even without using C, it would have been a huge undertaking only to fail in the end; because Claude did much of the research and concluded that the device wouldn't work on Linux (can't remember why but it made sense). Then it suggested what could work.
In this case:
LLMs are also VERY good at transliteration, i.e., converting known-good Python to Rust.Basically, If you have a well-documented problem, the LLM is a shortcut to learning it yourself. LLMs fail when you have a novel or poorly documented problem. They also fail when you provide the LLM with terrible context or too much context.
After 5-6 consecutive approaches fail, I need a reason to think the next one might work out to stay motivated.
Claude will keep burning credits trying new approaches until something sticks. That's a huge advantage in a field where most of the things you try don't go anywhere.
It also has the benefit that it doesn't usually matter too much if it gets minor details wrong. It's definitely one of the areas - like hacking - where it's a) tedious and b) insensitive to mistakes where AI absolutely shines.
The odds of success go up a LOT when the stock firmware is easy to extract and reverse engineer.
The whole thing took about a day, spread out over a week or so. Without AI, I wouldn't have even started the project, because I couldn't spare the time it would have taken.
Or are we in a really cool time where we've solved everything so much so many times we can focus on other things?
Tertiary question: If answer two, what the fuck is that?
It also requires a root launcher that runs code from the user ~/.hp1008 dir, so security is weakened.
I am sooo tired of this AI generated slop.
There's even a zero-install method via https://printervention.app where it runs that Linux VM isolated inside a WebUSB-capable browser. That website itself was posted right here on HN not too long ago.
I get that the LLM code assistant software prefers writing stuff, but constantly re-writing the same solution seems a bit inefficient.
> Thanks for being such a game debugging partner through all the test pages. Enjoy printing, you and the family.
Maybe it's because my own LLM usage is very "Question > Answer" or "Do this > Agent does that" and I never say "Wow, that's crazy it works, thank you!" at the end or such, so I don't see that sort of things, but if I saw that regularly I'd turn me off so badly from using LLMs. I'm not exactly sure where this feeling is coming from though, it's relatively innocent but just feels so inauthentic, I'm guessing because it's simply a machine.
So I find it common (and fine, I suppose) for Claude to reply using that context. "Let me know what your wife thinks of the app" etc.
Seems an oddly specific thing to hone in on otherwise.
codeberg.org/mjmvisser/infoframe if anyone’s interested.
Same thing here brother: DCP-L2510D (laser printer + scanner).
Wife is on MacOS and cannot print/scan from there, so I'm the scanman.
But of course it's hard not to both marvel and lament (at) the fact that in the mid-1990s (so yup 30 years ago) I could:
And the native PostScript printer (also an HP laser btw: a LaserJet) would just start printing.I know, I know, about garbled print jobs, pages of codes being printed, etc.
But still: it's hard to not at least wonder if some things haven't been lost. For a start printers with their own IP addresses were sweet (instead of a USB cable and, now, people setting up, say, a Pi just to expose a LAN IP for/to their printer). Then of course another talk could be had about the "quality" of modern day HP laser printers compared to what you'd get int the nineties.