Inside ZCode: Silently uploading your Git history to the cloud
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Unofficial Hacker News client; not affiliated with Y Combinator.
Inside ZCode: Silently uploading your Git history to the cloud
Unofficial Hacker News client; not affiliated with Y Combinator.
bbor · · focus · HN ↗
With that personal failing in mind, I'd ask y'all to permit me to toe the guidelines just once, to proffer a hearty nyah nyah told ya so on a comment thread that spawned ~a dozen disagreeing replies this week! More seriously, I think this[1] is highly-relevant, shockingly-underreported context about the extent to which four PRC companies --Z, Alibaba, DeepSeek, and Moonshot-- are acting in bad faith. Consider it testimony as to their character, just in case anyone is thinking this might just be a simple misunderstanding.
So... nyah nyah, told us so:
> In the PRC, they[1] leaked tons of national secrets on the PRC's latest AI campaigns, the inner workings of their "opinion monitoring" (read: performative panopticon) and "stability" (read: violent oppression) departments, Chengdu's whole CCTV network, direct-energy weapons plans, espionage activities in Syria to hunt down Uyghur refugees, and god knows what else that Anthropic didn't divulge to us common folk.
> In the US, it's very clearly an attempt to rip off a competitor. I'm not sure how else you could possibly see it. Even if you're a distillation fan in general (which A. why and B. plz don't), they did this through a network of Japanese and Signaporean shell accounts, presumably at least some of which were abusing Anthropic's subscription service in a ToS double-whammy, as it would be exorbitantly expensive otherwise. They also had to hack around Anthropic's API to get CoT traces, which seems impossible to explain away as anything innocent.
> I've been beating the "China isn't necessarily an enemy, it's gonna take us all to handle AI" drum for literally years, but this attack was just... gross. Gross in scale and gross in arrogance. Not a good sign for the dawning alignment crisis, to say the least :(
> TL;DR: Use these services if you want, but know that you're supporting aggressive escalations and companies that very clearly don't give a flying fuck about violating the law, much less your ToS. So... buyer beware, I guess.
[1]: <a href="https://www.anthropic.com/threat-intelligence-report-september-2026" rel="nofollow">https://www.anthropic.com/threat-intelligence-report-septemb... is the report.
I lowkey suspect this PRC-based scandal has been underreported because Anthropic went insane with the sidebar UX on this page for some reason; there were many reports on the reports of Houti and Iranian usage, and very few on these sections. Could a week's mass media cycle be this seriously affected by such a stupid thing as a sidebar experiment?? Strange truth, or just fiction?
yonghu1234 · · focus · HN ↗
It's diametrically opposite.
At the end of the last century, PRC gov deeply felt that the so-called "fairness" would only lead to "common poverty" and sought change.
So China (now, in this century) was born.
Just like the "famous"(notorious) quote left by a Chinese leader at the end of the last century explaining why restrictions were lifted (you can say this to ANY Chinese, they will definitely think you understand China! Instead of mocking you for reading too many conspiracy theories):
Whether it's a kind cat or an evil cat, as long as it catches a mouse, it's the best cat.
bbor · · focus · HN ↗
yonghu1234 · · focus · HN ↗
1."Whether it's a kind cat or an evil cat, as long as it catches a mouse, it's the best cat." I'm Gen Z, and like other Gen Zers, I'm generally not very interested in nationalist rhetoric.
But even putting Gen Z aside, any Chinese wouldn't see this as a nationalist comparison (cats and mice). Rather, it expresses the gov's attitude toward "cats" (big corporations(companies? I'm not sure how to choose this word)): as long as they generate enough profit, the government will consider them the "best cat."
2.Based on your country's context (Chinese gov this century has practiced liberalism TO THE EXTREME, that is preciously why I brought up Victoria era and Cyberpunk 2077. Its level of deregulation for the big corporations(companies?) far exceeds that of North America!), you might find it hard to understand why this saying is "notorious/famous" here. You might think freedom should be protected. But if you come to China and live here, you'd see it given that big corporations has haved unrestricted freedom,
Then there are 1000 Zhipu stealing your privacy, 1000000 Zhipu Pro stealing and selling your privacy, and 1000000000 Zhipu Pro Plus "rob" your privacy!
I can illustrate this from another angle: Chinese generally prefer products from Western Eu/North Am because their markets have stricter regulation compared to ours.
Remember what I mentioned? "99.99% of goods are CRAZILY CHEAP while falsely advertising without supervision. 99.99% of apps collect users' private info and then sell it. You can easily see this because almost no website even asks if you're okay with them collecting cookies."
And almost all of the negative comments about Zhipu never see on our internet. Because this Zhipu has the money to buy tons of bots. They can easily report posts almost like some DDOS (XD).
3.<a href="https://linux.do/t/topic/2887407" rel="nofollow">https://linux.do/t/topic/2887407 Just one example. But if you want, you can also buy Chinese people's privacy.
0.Finally, my logic is probably all over the place. In fact, I feel hurt. Because GLM is my favorite model (it has something clumsy human warmth. Maybe it seems strange to describe an AI that way, but... umm...maybe this would be beyond my words). The hurt would not be get diluted just because "other Chinese companies all do the same thing." Sigh. So, as a Chinese, I don't feel like America is getting worse.
People only truly cherish order once you've lost it. I hope American companies don't become like China.
[deleted] · · focus · HN ↗
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