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by notpushkin4 hours ago |
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upvoteby rendleflag3 hours ago|
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Let me guess, you saw the `–` and thought "Clearly no human uses the em dash. It must all be AI".

I looked over the website and their github page and saw no indication of AI usage. I'm not saying it wasn't used, but unless you have actual evidence, then please point it out.

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upvoteby notpushkin3 hours ago|
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That’s an en-dash – and I use those myself. (I’ve experimented with em-dashes—brefly—but it doesn’t look good to my eye in English.)

It’s all by the vibes, I don’t have any concrete proof. FWIW, the comment seems at least hand-edited, so maybe it’s just this “the [A] is the [B]” trope that has triggered me. If the rest of it is readable, then I apologize, but still: that’s a bad title, please don’t use this – unless you’re writing a LinkedIn post.

---

Edit: here’s another LLMism example from another HN user: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49996255

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upvoteby foobar196213 minutes ago|
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> (I’ve experimented with em-dashes—brefly—but it doesn’t look good to my eye in English.)

I saw what you did there.

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upvoteby rendleflag3 hours ago|
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I always get en and em confused. They are all just dashes to me :-).

The "Nothing else: no lists, tables, links, quotes, images or rules" is from the docs indicating that these things are not supported.

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upvoteby xoxxala1 hours ago|
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I, too, was confused for the longest time, but the secret is in the names.

En dash is the width of an “n”. Em dash is the width of an “M”, so a little wider.

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upvoteby notpushkin3 hours ago|
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> I always get en and em confused

Yeah, it’s somewhat a typography-nerdy thing :–) (gosh that looks terrible probably; edit: actually it’s surprisingly fine)

> indicating that these things are not supported

Of course, but it does sound a bit unnatural IMO. Then again, I’m going by the vibes here.

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upvoteby GrinningFool2 hours ago|
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For me (not the OP) I see the patterns 'The X is the Y', 'Every X is a Y' (both of which are there) and llm-sense tingles. Add in Not A, B, C or Z and I'm increasingly convinced it's LLM generated text.
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upvoteby IncreasePosts3 hours ago|
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OP didn't quote the part with the em dash, they quoted the part with the "The X is the Y", which is a common LLMism.
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upvoteby 3 hours ago|
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upvoteby ajkjk2 hours ago|
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not that
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upvoteby dylanhouli4 hours ago|
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Wait how is "The URL is the app" LLM-speak? Genuine question, sounded fine to me when I read it, not sure what a better way to phrase it would be
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upvoteby rpdillon4 hours ago|
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It's LLM speak because it's wrong, but pithy. The app is the app, and it lives on the server. The URL just contains the content of the sign.
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upvoteby onion2k1 hours ago|
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It's LLM speak because it's wrong, but pithy.

That's all marketing.

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upvoteby bryanrasmussen3 hours ago|
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it's marketing speech, following the rules of how to make memorable slogans that have been around for decades and in many different formats. Elevator pitches, explain it to me like I'm five, keep it simple, stupid, and so forth. It sounds like an LLM because LLMs learned from the digested wisdom of a million marketers. It may be an LLM produced it or it may just as well be someone who has cracked a marketing textbook some time in their life or hell, has watched the full run of Mad Men and thought, now what is a pithy way to express the selling point of this thing?

on edit: That said, I would probably have said "Turn Any Screen Into A Sign with Just A URL!"

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upvoteby dec0dedab0de4 hours ago|
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I thought they meant the outputted javascript is embedded in the url, like a bookmarklet. But looking closer, it clearly isn't.
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upvoteby notpushkin3 hours ago|
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I’ve read it as “the URL is the UI”... sorry; I mean, you can change URL params (remotely) to control the app. It is a good idea perhaps (if you have the means to open a URL remotely), but evidently the title does not get the idea across. (Maybe I’m also wrong, I haven’t read the docs yet :)
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upvoteby notpushkin3 hours ago|
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“The [A] is the [B]” (and variations with “the” replaced with “your”) is screaming LLM to me. It’s been used by real people too, but it sounds very corporate, and is not something I’ve seen used to describe a personal project before LLMs.
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upvoteby rdiddly3 hours ago|
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It must have been used by humans before LLMs, because where do you think they learned it?
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upvoteby gwerbin42 minutes ago|
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It was always corny except in very specific cases.
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upvoteby notpushkin2 hours ago|
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It has been used before LLMs. I have no idea why LLMs prefer it, though.
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upvoteby seb12042 hours ago|
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All the marketing materials that got used for training. Marketing speak is not my cup of team.
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upvoteby 2III73 hours ago|
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LLM apophenia is so widespread in HN that it's becoming quite sickening.
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upvoteby okaleniuk3 hours ago|
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Donald Knuth once said "Jon Bentley probably hit the nail on the head when he once was asked why literate programming hasn’t taken the whole world by storm. He observed that a small percentage of the world’s population is good at programming, and a small percentage is good at writing; apparently I am asking everybody to be in both subsets."

Get off your high horse. Not everybody studied to write prose, not everybody was born American to begin with. If LLMs helps programmers get heard - good. That's probably the best usage for them anyway.

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upvoteby bmacho3 hours ago|
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> If LLMs helps programmers get heard - good

It does not, it does the opposite. It gets the programmer ignored.

Comments like "don't say this, this is LLM-ism" are the things that help the programmer get heard, whether she isn't good at English or she was just lazy and used LLM to generate text.

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upvoteby notpushkin3 hours ago|
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I haven’t studied to write prose either. I have studied English since when I was a kid, but I still make mistakes sometimes, and that’s okay.

LLMs turn your own voice into uniform corpo-speak. It is usually not an improvement, and it certainly doesn’t help you get heard – you’ll blend in with hundreds of other projects with the same-looking landing page, same tone of voice, same kilometres of docs that nobody read before putting up, and you’re basically playing a game of chance here. It’s like TikTok for programmers.

Ten times out of ten, I’ll prefer broken English over Claudish. Speak in your own voice. Don’t be afraid.

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upvoteby GrinningFool2 hours ago|
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Indeed. I would much prefer to read someone's poor English over their fluent LLM.
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upvoteby ShinyLeftPad41 minutes ago|
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it doesn't help programmers be heard, it helps LLMs be heard. Just publish the thing with your own words, what matters is if they are genuine, not that they sound exactly like everybody else.
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upvoteby rpdillon4 hours ago|
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Yeah, the issue here is that the URL is not the app.

This is basically a differently-shaped https://github.com/antonmedv/textarea

Cool idea, but agree that fixing actual mistakes in the title is a worthwhile use of time.

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