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emdashes everywhere in this article

did we just do full-circle back to an AI writing about AI writing about AI writing ..?


emdashes are probably the least useful method of recognising AI work nowadays.

I'm pretty sure they've actually popularised their usage by everyday people who're now more aware of their existence and usage.


Which people actively refuse to use because of the association with AI work.

Which is more likely, let's Occam's Razor this. That the AI agents are teaching every individual to "write better" or that the AI agents are crapping out the articles with the emdashes.


Some of us resent the assumption that we're AI because we know how to use the language, and use them more often.

What if, in a terrifying scenario, someone adds "don't use emdashes" to their prompt...

Your cast iron detection mechanism will be gone!


An em dash surrounded by spaces on either side tells you it was AI.

AI: This is how we think about these things — because they're important to think about — when we want to accomplish a task.

More likely human: This is how we think about these things—because they're important to think about—when we want to accomplish a task.

Not bulletproof for obvious reasons but it's easy to spot who was at least lazy with AI using this heuristic.


No, this is American style (long dash without spaces—like this) vs. European style (middle dash with spaces – like this).

I don't think it is useful to detect AI writing. I told my AI not to use em dashes.


I mean, no. When I em-dash -- or double-hyphen -- I always surround it with spaces; seems wrong not to.

Spaces around em-dashes are a convention which changes depending on the style guide.

They are but combined with other AI tropes (It's not this. It's that.), it may as well be a fingerprint.

The most telling sign is when they don’t make sense — for example right here.

A human puts em dashes to emphasize the break in thought or rhythm. Where there is already a break in thought or rhythm a human would just write a comma or nothing.

Another tell is what is inside the em dash. It often doesn’t logically follow – like an ad on a radio show.


highly doubt Jason or 404 is out here just telling AI to write a story.

Their style/level of journalism is pretty much the case study with what’s wrong with the internet. It just happens to align with some cohort of HN types. So not sure why 404 would be above using AI. Not saying they are but don’t think it’s a valid defense

> Their style/level of journalism is pretty much the case study with what’s wrong with the internet.

What makes you say that, specifically?


Tried to think of a less harsh way to say this but they are basically a Fox News/Buzz Feed but for anything anti-tech or AI. Cannot say I have read through all of their articles but the ones I have had are light on the data but have a click baity title.

They appear to stand for nothing nor care for anything but the idea that everything to do with technology is terrible—with exception for pop science discovery.

I think you don't know 404 Media very well, or writing styles for that matter.

or it's a journalist's writing in a somewhat-formal publication?

now go make "Bowser: Kidnap the Princess"

Thanks!


Is this somehow related to the other post about another service shutting down its encrypted DNS?

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49568579

Weird timing?


These are completely different types of services. One is a DoH recursive DNS resolver for use by clients. The other is a DNSSEC enabled DNS hosting provider for domain owners. The encryption in use is completely different with different goals.

Jesus what are you doing that requires Sol usage so often?

Terra not enough? I know Luna isn't reliable, so that's fair.

Genuinely curious though, because I use Cursor daily and almost everything I do, highly complex or high volume, can be handled with Auto mode or Composer 2.5 (or Grok 4.6 High). So I have to assume you're doing something far more complex than what I am


Terra is not enough for many tasks - even Sol is not enough. That's why I'm eager for Astra.

I'm doing a lot of rearchitecting/refactoring and hardening in a large handwritten codebase; iterative performance and storage optimization (some areas I've been iterating on since January, with tremendous new progress unlocked by each new model release); offline-friendly, multi-device realtime sync with complicated requirements; and various natural language processing and other such problems that are essentially unsolvable but can become more accurate and better tested for accuracy through iterative work. Off the top of my head.

Some of these tasks involve a lot of code reading or other inputs, or reevaluating work. Token efficiency is no help there, if the input can't simply be skipped. Cheaper models are sometimes bad at summarizing or highlighting the right parts, depending on the task.

I also don't use subagents except for Luna. I'm mindful of cached sessions and start new ones often to avoid loading in full contexts (often with some kind of handoff doc or skill).


Would you mind posting that code to github? I'm curious about the complexity you're describing.

If not, no worries!


Sure, why not: https://github.com/sergiocorreia/overengineered-rand-mcnally

The original script was mostly very simple python:

1. Download some public PDFs. 2. Have a double for-loop (over PDFs and pages within PDF), 3. Use a library to call gemini-3.7-flash and ask it to run some OCR 4. Save JSON outputs, save a csv with results, validate with some Stata code

New code folder was 189 files. Just the PDF download folder is now 7 files involving an adapter, a source manager, an acquisition manager, etc.

Every instance of saving a file involves saving a temporary copy and then moving it, so e.g. I lose power, we minimize the risk of corrupted files.

And so on!



Thanks!

Dude, this is one of the craziest things I think I've read on HN

First, that a legit dealer could/did(does?) sell third-level domains at all (Verisign, no less) Second, that the top-level is staying available, allowing for second-levels to be bought/sniped like you mention.

If you do lawyer up and need help with legal fees, I think this would be a worthy cause.


Patent Pending?

Any patent attorneys here know what exactly about this is "patent-able"?


My understanding of the legal field is it's less about the actual law and more about how much you're willing to spend.


Maybe nothing here is patentable. We don't know yet.

All we know is that they've applied for a patent. If the patent they seek is granted, then it will be published and there will be no mystery about what it covers. :)


Not saying this is AI-gen but it's very dense and doesn't read like something I could glean info from easily


I think this article posted to HN last week did a better job explaining things IMO https://earendil.com/posts/what-is-a-harness/


> Not saying this is AI-gen

The prose is definitely written by a Claude-like


ai-literacy-superpowers is a set of plugins for agents, this text is not even meant for human consumption.


It is pretty obvious that Claude wrote it. No human writes README that long, and it's one of the contributors: https://github.com/Habitat-Thinking/ai-literacy-superpowers


This looks good - is there a version of it for CODEX? If not i guess it could easily be transformed for it.


Looks like typical material coming out of consulting companies like ThoughtWorks, designed to obfuscate rather than educate.


Link is paywalled

Is this a different case from the $1.5 trillion suit against them?


Oh, for sure. I have to actively prevent myself from opening one cuz once I pop I really just can't stop.


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