Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Anonymous GitHub account mass-dropping undisclosed 0-days

github.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

161–170 of 407 posts

Re: Anonymous GitHub account mass-dropping undisclosed 0-days

#161

Post by theK »

rogerrogerr wrote: post #86
tyre wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, big pet peeve of the new world. Every em dash is apparently an AI trigger. Back in my day, they were a sign of great respect within my people.

I used to be an em-dash user, but now my opinion is that I’d rather be perceived as someone who does not want to be confused with an LLM. So I’ve changed my writing style.

What is the typical motivation to start using em-dashes?

Why go the extra way to have a slightly elongated dash when a normal one would just as well do the job?

I might be conpletely off here but I've never seen a situation where using a normal dash where a long one should be causes any sort of syntactic trouble.

Re: Anonymous GitHub account mass-dropping undisclosed 0-days

#162

Post by falcor84 »

brookst wrote: post #135
rogerrogerr wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I used to be an em-dash user, but now my opinion is that I’d rather be perceived as someone who does not want to be confused with an LLM. So I’ve changed my writing style.

It’s fine to use em-dashes — just be srre to add typos.

You can also have the em-dash itself be a typo, e.g. using the figure dash ‒ (U+2012) instead.

Re: Anonymous GitHub account mass-dropping undisclosed 0-days

#164

Post by TheTon »

jeffbee wrote: post #152
dvt wrote: post #117

Went over a few of these with a pretty keen eye, and they aren't that particularly interesting. The Docker one is just a weird bug, it's not a vulnerability, and certainly not a "0-day" (which is a pretty loaded term and people expect bad stuff to happen). The nghttp2 nghttpx one is more interesting, and could potentially be used for phishing, but it's very hard to line up properly because the request queue is non-de…

I mean, that's how people get hacked. If vlc crashed on my computer, and every day I should raise thanks to my gods that I do not use vlc, I would immediately unplug it and thoughtfully consider the circumstances under which it would be safe to turn it back on.

Right, this is why video parse / decode ought to be sandboxed. Writing secure code for these formats, especially in C, is really hard. I just sort of glanced at the bug in the repo, but it sounds plausible. It certainly wouldn’t be the first of its kind.

Re: Anonymous GitHub account mass-dropping undisclosed 0-days

#165

Post by Macha »

theK wrote: post #161
rogerrogerr wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I used to be an em-dash user, but now my opinion is that I’d rather be perceived as someone who does not want to be confused with an LLM. So I’ve changed my writing style.

What is the typical motivation to start using em-dashes? Why go the extra way to have a slightly elongated dash when a normal one would just as well do the job? I might be conpletely off here but I've never seen a situation where using a normal dash where a long one should be causes any sort of syntactic trouble.

It looks aesthetically nicer. It was also a bit of a signal that someone took pride in their work and so helped that way. It's a bit like whether your tradesperson cleans up after themselves. Technically sweeping up the dust after installing a kitchen cabinet doesn't actually mean anything for the quality of the kitchen cabinet installation, but in practice putting the effort into the presentation correlates with putting the effort into the actual work.

Re: Anonymous GitHub account mass-dropping undisclosed 0-days

#166

Post by alexfringes »

topgrain2 wrote: post #141
Syntonicles wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I for one am striving for clarity and couldn't care less about being confused with AI. However I've only ever used regular dashes. How do you type an em-dash? Is it OS specific? I've taken to using Emacs insert-char with a list of frequently used ones in my scratch buffer. My memory for Unicode is unreliable.

Keyboard layout specific. Macs with their default English layout use “option-shift-dash” which is really easy to remember (and relatively discoverable, as such things go) which is why using proper m-dashes (not just double-dashes) used to be a strong indicator a poster was using a Mac, before LLMs took the character over. On iOS you type it by pressing dash and holding until alternative options come up, same way you…

You can also just type two "-" minuses on iOS. So "--" will auto-convert to "—".

Re: Anonymous GitHub account mass-dropping undisclosed 0-days

#167

Post by Macha »

rplnt wrote: post #138
jackp96 wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They're just so handy! I do think LLMs tend to use them in a specific way, though. So maybe tweaking your usage (ex. no spaces around them) or using a technically incorrect en-dash might offer the desired effect while subtly signaling that your message isn't AI-generated. I still use them — mostly for pauses — but I'd like to think my voice sounds distinct enough from an AI that people can tell.

I've only ever been using "regular" dash, a minus, for that. How do you even type yours? If I ever needed differently-sized dashes (and I don't know the difference between them) I always used wiki to copy them. (disclaimer: I feel like this obsession with dashes is special to native English speakers, which I'm obviously not)

Depends on your OS. Mac is the easiest, it's just ---, Linux depends on your distro, if it uses KDE, it's --- —. Windows is a little awkward, I think you need +the code point.

Re: Anonymous GitHub account mass-dropping undisclosed 0-days

#168

Post by derwiki »

theK wrote: post #161
rogerrogerr wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I used to be an em-dash user, but now my opinion is that I’d rather be perceived as someone who does not want to be confused with an LLM. So I’ve changed my writing style.

What is the typical motivation to start using em-dashes? Why go the extra way to have a slightly elongated dash when a normal one would just as well do the job? I might be conpletely off here but I've never seen a situation where using a normal dash where a long one should be causes any sort of syntactic trouble.

An emdash means something different than shorter dashes

https://www.merriam-webster.com/grammar/em-dash-en-dash-how-...

Re: Anonymous GitHub account mass-dropping undisclosed 0-days

#169

Post by audreyfei »

998244353 wrote: post #131
rogerrogerr wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I used to be an em-dash user, but now my opinion is that I’d rather be perceived as someone who does not want to be confused with an LLM. So I’ve changed my writing style.

I now use "ASCII em-dashes" by using two hyphens -- like this. Or--if you prefer no spaces--like this.

same, or I use a semicolon

Re: Anonymous GitHub account mass-dropping undisclosed 0-days

#170

Post by fragmede »

theK wrote: post #161
rogerrogerr wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I used to be an em-dash user, but now my opinion is that I’d rather be perceived as someone who does not want to be confused with an LLM. So I’ve changed my writing style.

What is the typical motivation to start using em-dashes? Why go the extra way to have a slightly elongated dash when a normal one would just as well do the job? I might be conpletely off here but I've never seen a situation where using a normal dash where a long one should be causes any sort of syntactic trouble.

i mean why use punctuation or any capitals at all, why not just blast words out in a stream of consciousness so readers know how yr thinking why even bother with speeling things write

Just because you don't care to use the proper dash doesn't mean everyone else doesn't. People have different levels of caring about different details. For the sticklers, there's even a special code point for ellipsis, … rather than .... (Four being correct, as one is to end the sentence.) Personally I'll just skip — entirely unless I'm in a trolling mood, though “sometimes” the right quotes are worth using. Special characters are easy to type on a phone soft keyboard, taking a long press on the relevant key, or if you're using any other advanced input system, so they shouldn't really be considered to be the mark of LLM input.

The real trouble is that people doing engage with the substance of the post anymore, and just shallowly dismiss a post as being vibe written, as if that makes any points raised invalid. Anti-intellectualism's always been cool among a certain crowd. Shame to see it spread but ah well, the propaganda's working.

Post reply on HN