alt Hacker NewsA large percentage of my work is peripheral to info security (ISO 27001, CMMC, SOC 2), and I've been building internet companies and software since the 90's (so I have a technical background as well), which makes me think that I'm qualified to have an opinion here.
And I completely agree that LLMs (the way they have been rolled out for most companies, and how I've witnessed them being used) are an incredibly underestimated risk vector.
But on the other hand, I'm pragmatic (some might say cynical?), and I'm just left here thinking "what is Signal trying to sell us?"
Replies
Signal is conveying a message of wanting to be able to trust your technology/tools to work for you and work reliably. This is a completely reasonable message, and it's the best kind of healthy messaging: "apply this objectively good standard, and you will find that you want to use tools like ours".
coming from the fact that this was a talk held at #39c3, maybe, just maybe, this was not about selling anything at all?!
i feel like that might be hard to grasp for some HN users.
>what is Signal trying to sell us?
This: https://arstechnica.com/security/2026/01/signal-creator-moxi...
Great timing! :^)
I'd argue that Signal is trying to sell sanity at their own direct expense, during a time when sanity is in short supply. Just like "Proof of Work" wasn't going to be the BIG THING that made Crypto the new money, the new way to program, 'Agents' are another wet squib. I'm not claiming that they're useless, but they aren't worth the cost within orders of magnitude.
I'm really getting tired of people who insist on living in a future fantasy version of a technology at a time when there's no real significant evidence that their future is going to be realized. In essence this "I'll pay the costs now for the promise of a limitless future" is becoming a way to do terrible things without an awareness of the damage being done.
It's not hard, any "agent" that you need to double check constantly to keep it from doing something profoundly stupid that you would never do, isn't going to fulfill the dream/nightmare of automating your work. It will certainly not be worth the trillions already sunk into its development and the cost of running it.
> But on the other hand, I'm pragmatic (some might say cynical?), and I'm just left here thinking "what is Signal trying to sell us?"
A messaging app? I'm struggling to come up with a potential conflict of interest here unless they have a wild pivot coming up.