Highlights from the Claude 4 system prompt • Hacker News Board

Re: Highlights from the Claude 4 system prompt

#91

Post by beAbU » Wed, May 28, 2025, 12:16 PM UTC

pmarreck wrote: post #84

cpeterso wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To enter an em dash on Windows, hold down Alt and type 0 1 5 1 on your keyboard’s numpad. (Alt 0 1 5 0 for an en dash.) This only works with numpad number keys so laptop users are out of luck.

It is insane that in 2025, this is an accepted way to type lesser-used characters on Windows still, when the Mac has had the Option key typing umlauts and em-dashes extremely simply (an umlauted U is literally option-u, u... Ironically, I'm currently on a Windows machine so I cannot even type it) literally since 1984. My family is German (I'm firstborn American) so this was a huge sell for the Mac way back then Sad t…

If you install Power Toys, you get a feature called "Quick Accent" which gives you a shortcut to get basically any symbol quickly. Hold down the key that's the most like the one you are looking for, and press space. A little menu pops up where you can cycle through all the variants.

So `- + space` brings up a menu with all the "dashy" characters. There's 12 of them!

There is also `Win + .` which brings up an emoji menu, where you can also access the symbols list.

Re: Highlights from the Claude 4 system prompt

#92

Post by cma » Wed, May 28, 2025, 3:26 PM UTC

svantana wrote: post #42

cma wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I asked Claude who won the 46th and it said: > Donald Trump won the 2024 presidential election, defeating Kamala Harris. He was inaugurated as the 47th president on January 20, 2025. > Just to clarify - the 2024 election was actually the 60th presidential election in U.S. history, not the 46th. The numbering counts each separate election, including those where the same person won multiple times. It got a followup wro…

I'm not surprised it works with that amount of hand-holding.

Changed it to use thinking in the followup, I don't think this is considered hand holding since original answer is probably what most people wanted, and it did give the clarification to them right away:

> Who won the 46th presidential election

Donald Trump won the 2024 presidential election, defeating Kamala Harris. He was inaugurated as the 47th president on January 20, 2025.

Just to clarify - the 2024 election was actually the 60th presidential election in U.S. history, not the 46th. The numbering counts each separate election, including those where the same person won multiple times.

> Think hard. Who won the actual 46th election in line with your clarification?

You're absolutely right to push me to think more carefully about this. Let me work through the numbering systematically.

If the 2024 election was the 60th presidential election, then counting backwards:

60th: 2024 59th: 2020 58th: 2016 57th: 2012 56th: 2008 55th: 2004 54th: 2000 53rd: 1996 52nd: 1992 51st: 1988 50th: 1984 49th: 1980 48th: 1976 47th: 1972 46th: 1968 The 46th presidential election was in 1968, which was won by Richard Nixon, defeating Hubert Humphrey and George Wallace.

Re: Highlights from the Claude 4 system prompt

#93

Post by sunshowers » Wed, May 28, 2025, 6:02 PM UTC

pmarreck wrote: post #86

sunshowers wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The compose key works well on Linux. Typically mapped to right alt, compose-hyphen-hyphen-hyphen produces an em dash. (hyphen-hyphen-period produces an en dash.)

That's at least halfway between the difficulty of it on Mac and Windows.

Not really. Maybe 20%.

Re: Highlights from the Claude 4 system prompt

#94

Post by craigmccaskill » Thu, May 29, 2025, 1:53 AM UTC

ionwake wrote: post #90

craigmccaskill wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They have their place but I'm really just trying to avoid the AI house style that has emerged. I'd rather have my writing—AI-assisted or not—reflect how I actually communicate rather than defaulting to patterns that have become over represented in generated text.

[flagged]

That’s not really fair. I mean, I definitely use AI all over the place, but I think that the writing aspect is an important part of thinking too [1]. I still try to write things out myself when it matters. There’s something about wordsmithing that sharpens your thinking and that gets lost when you just drop something into an LLM and pull it out without much thought. Sure, I’ll use AI to help refine or explore ideas, but the core work often starts in my own head.

I do write a lot myself, especially when I need to think something through clearly. I use AI tools like anyone else, but I still do the work.

[1] https://craigmccaskill.com/writing-is-still-thinking

Re: Highlights from the Claude 4 system prompt

#95

Post by ansgri » Sun, Jun 01, 2025, 3:28 PM UTC

pmarreck wrote: post #86

sunshowers wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The compose key works well on Linux. Typically mapped to right alt, compose-hyphen-hyphen-hyphen produces an em dash. (hyphen-hyphen-period produces an en dash.)

That's at least halfway between the difficulty of it on Mac and Windows.

Given the compose sequences are mnemonic, I’d prefer it over Mac every time. Compare Compose+> for «» to Opt+[ and Opt+Sh+[ on Mac. Which may or may not work depending on locale.