Hacker News
points by jacquesm 1 day ago | 0 comments
Nice sleuthing!

We do a similar thing to mark documents that are still under embargo and one day I forgot to remove the watermark. The customer complained they had not received the document (a day or two after I sent it), and much searching was done. Finally we found a line in an outlook log on their end that said that the watermark was the reason the file had been put in indefinite quarantine until someone would take a look at it.

That's when I realized my error, and of course it was soon fixed afterwards. It is the first proof that it worked though, so I'm kind of happy about that.

[–] uzerfcwn 14 hours ago
Did the embargo watermark really work if the document ended up quarantined on their end? Doesn't an embargo usually mean that the data shouldn't leave your own organization's systems?
[–] Aachen 12 hours ago
If nobody sees it, same thing in the end? Not that it can be relied on, you can nitpick the technicalities here about under whose control it is at that point, but that's not the point
[–] andai 1 day ago
> the file had been put in indefinite quarantine until someone would take a look at it.

Someone who's not the guy you sent it to?

[–] jacquesm 22 hours ago
Someone under the same NDA that I'm under.
[–] Geezus_42 20 hours ago
Typically the organizations email admin is responsible for monitoring the email quarantine.
[–] DANmode 3 hours ago
Unless it’s in the other party’s quarantine?
[–] DANmode 1 day ago
Inconvenient question.
[–] cubefox 1 day ago
Note also if you cite LLM output on Hacker News, your post will likely get flagged and shadowbanned ("dead"), even if the citation had nothing to do with spam. Apparently Hacker News is using Pangram now to check all comments for LLM content.
[–] blauditore 1 day ago
You hit the nail on its head! Hacker News has been shadowbanning AI-generated content.

This is not just a spam filter. It's an innovative way to value the human factor—the most precious value in online communities.

Do you want me to pull a poem out of my ass?

[–] CoastalCoder 18 hours ago
> Do you want me to pull a poem out of my ass?

My first thought was "Please leave such jokes for Reddit."

But now I'm curious in which subreddit(s) this belongs.

[–] red-iron-pine 15 hours ago
given the volume of bots there -- most of them
[–] goodmythical 1 day ago
Do you want me to

Pull a poem out of my ass

For you to peruse?

[–] gertrunde 17 hours ago
Can't be AI output, there are too many sylables in the second line...

But "Pull poems out of my ass" would work ;)

[–] goodmythical 7 hours ago
Glad to hear that an AI hallucinating an 8 syllable second line in a haiku would get it pass your detection, lol.

In all seriousness, poem is a single syllable for many.

[–] gavinray 17 hours ago
Second line is 7 syllables though?
[–] Rapzid 15 hours ago
Poem is two.
[–] gavinray 14 hours ago
In American English, poem is pronounced as rhyming with "tome"

I could imagine in British English it might be a two-syllable "poh-ehm" though

[–] goodmythical 15 hours ago
Poem is one or two. Artistic license is deployed to enforce use of the singular
[–] solyin 1 day ago
As long as it is

Not AI generated

Pangram will decide.

[–] Terr_ 1 day ago
Some may trust those tools

I feel they will fail someday

Might need social graphs

[–] Rapzid 15 hours ago
You hit the nail it's dead, Jim.
[–] coldtea 20 hours ago
This is not just (...) It's an...

Hmmm

[–] ga_to 20 hours ago
I swear, humor is dead. Or rather peoples ability to perceive it.
[–] coldtea 18 hours ago
More of "I see what you did there" champ
[–] johnisgood 19 hours ago
Got me at "You hit the nail on its head!", it is Gemini!
[–] Xirdus 1 day ago
Can confirm, got caught by it once. We were discussing if prompt engineering is still relevant, and I copied both the prompt I used and the output I've got. I realized I was shadowbanned because I'm not logged in on every device I use for browsing HN.
[–] jacquesm 22 hours ago
I'd consider that a bug.
[–] walrus01 1 day ago
I think we can do without people pasting llm generated output into the body of an LLM comment, if people need to provide it for some example, they can do it via a one of the services like https://pastes.io and an outbound link with appropriate description.
[–] cubefox 1 day ago
Yeah but the comment is shadowbanned (hidden except for the author), so people don't realize that they have done something wrong.
[–] MatthiasPortzel 1 day ago
Then someone with Show Dead turned on will vouch for them. When I see comments from shadow banned users, I’ll open their profile and 99% of the time it’s slurs.
[–] walrus01 1 day ago
yeah, it would be good if the commenter (if they've never before tripped the no LLM generated text guardrail) could get some kind of warning like "don't do that, and here's why..."
[–] weitendorf 1 day ago
note that this also applies to ironic LLM-assisted shitposts

I think there should maybe be a little more leeway/amnesty for accounts that aren’t new or don’t have a high rate of LLM tells. IMO if you could self-declare the AI usage and wrap them in <details> tags to handle the verbosity and attribution you could integrate it reaosnably

[–] eterm 1 day ago
"Ironic" bad behaviour is still just bad behaviour.
[–] weitendorf 1 day ago
You’re absolutely right
[–] Rapzid 15 hours ago
"Bad behavior" is doing a lot of heavy lifting.
[–] jacquesm 13 hours ago
Some would call that load bearing.
[–] newsy-combi 1 day ago
Ironic speech is the main way people make jokes. Sure, ironic violence or something like that isn't a thing outside of WWE, but you shouldn't equate all "bad" behaviors.

In the past we could have said that we shouldn't expect an internet forum filter made of regex patterns to detect irony, but with LLM's as viable modding tools, I'm not sure that we shouldn't raise our standards...

[–] Geezus_42 20 hours ago
What value does an LLM shitposting on your behalf bring to any discussion?
[–] duskdozer 15 hours ago
I always assumed people were writing in LLMese themselves to mock it, not generating it.
[–] newsy-combi 19 hours ago
To equate irony with whatever is being satirized is blatant BS. If you think coming up with a single example proves a rule, you got it backwards.
[–] Geezus_42 19 hours ago
Doesn't seem like you are responding to my question.
[–] Exoristos 1 day ago
Remember that you can vouch for a flagged post.
[–] dooglius 1 day ago
It won't un-shadowban an account
[–] cubefox 1 day ago
I always do this when it is flagged incorrectly, but it doesn't usually help much because multiple people have to vouch.
[–] cubefox 1 day ago
Why is this downvoted???
[–] saidnooneever 1 day ago
pretty crafty i must say hats off. i will steal this idea if you dont mind!
[–] jacquesm 1 day ago
Feel free! The easiest way to do this is white text on a white background on the last page of the document. If you want to do it on every page do it in the header or the footer. Font size '1' for bonus points ;)
[–] apublicfrog 1 day ago
Amusingly Nathan For You did this in a humourous way back in 2014 (S02E06 - "Party Planner").
[–] thedrexster 13 hours ago
I'm watching this now and _dying_, thank you!
[–] jacquesm 12 hours ago
That's evil.
[–] nxobject 1 day ago
Now I'm curious: what was in the watermark that would trigger Outlook? (I'm having some fun speculating. My guess right now is a ye olde "bu¥ vi@gr@ ch33p!!!!" spam trigger.)
[–] jacquesm 1 day ago
No, it was a bit more subtle than that but I'm definitely not going to post the secret sauce in an open forum. The trick is to trigger the filters in a way that they'll block the mail completely, not just spam trap it.
[–] nojs 1 day ago
Aren’t you running a high risk of your own email or other cloud accounts getting flagged doing this? What if your email provider (‘s AI agent) had permanently banned your account?
[–] notatoad 1 day ago
i think the point is that you're not sending these docs over email, and they never actually trigger the filter they might trigger. if you're emailing docs containing the "don't email me" trap often enough that you get your account flagged, you've got bigger problems.
[–] jacquesm 1 day ago
That's a risk, but not as big a risk as a report escaping quarantine.
[–] Geezus_42 20 hours ago
Zix/Appriver outbound quarantine was built for exactly that purpose.
[–] Geezus_42 20 hours ago
It usually takes more than one email unless its flagged as having malicious contents.
[–] rzzzt 1 day ago
Joining in on the speculation game: the EICAR string maybe?
[–] LelouBil 1 day ago
Oh I didn't know about this thing, thanks for the discovery.
[–] hosteur 23 hours ago
EICAR?
[–] b3lvedere 22 hours ago
[–] hosteur 22 hours ago
Indeed. My comment was meant as a guess on what they put in their watermark.
[–] b3lvedere 20 hours ago
Ah, i see. Apologies.
[–] miki123211 1 day ago
remember about aria-hidden or equivalent, otherwise you are making the text visible to screen reader users.

I have read many snide comments and personal ID numbers that way, mostly in public and public-ish documents.

[–] jacquesm 1 day ago
Oh, that's funny. I don't mind people with screen readers reading it. The Venn diagram with 'people with screen readers' on one side and 'people that are about to break an embargo' must be an interesting subset.
[–] sroussey 1 day ago
AI often goes the screen reader route though..
[–] jacquesm 1 day ago
Yes, I'm counting on that specifically.
[–] Xirdus 1 day ago
Probably getting larger and larger with all the agentic workflows popping up as of late.
[–] trinari 1 day ago
What's the benefit? It appears that the outlook rejection was unintended. So against llm processing?
[–] strbean 1 day ago
The embargo was enforced. This slightly mitigates scenarios where someone accidentally sends a document via email while it is under embargo.