> which on most keyboard require a special key-combination that most people don’t know

I am sick of the em-dash slander as a prolific en- and em-dash user :(

Sure for the general population most people probably don't know, but this article is specifically about Hacker News and I would trust most of you all to be able to remember one of:

- Compose, hyphen, hyphen, hyphen

- Option + Shift + hyphen

(Windows Alt code not mentioned because WinCompose <https://github.com/ell1010/wincompose>)