I really hate to be that guy, but man, as someone who was and is a big Christopher Domas fan (and is way dumber than him, I mean, this stuff is seriously over my head)... it's been really disappointing to see him LLM'ing all the READMEs recently. They used to be a joy to read through, but now the Claudeisms made it such a slog I could barely get through a few paragraphs. I'm glad he's using the new tools to get even more cool stuff done, but I wish he'd have gone for a human writeup at the end.

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BugsJustFindMe 38 minutes ago | parent [-]

I find vague gestures like this almost more annoying than the idea of someone using AI to write.

> the Claudeisms

This is hand-waving. Please be more specific.

> made it such a slog

On the flip-side, I didn't find it a slog at all. What if you're wrong?

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austinthetaco 32 minutes ago | parent | next [-]

I'm not the person you are replying to, but the readme is very clearly written by an AI, and it sounds nothing like his older work. Sometimes it's just super clear to people something is written with AI without you getting some sort of singular "gotcha" word or indicator. It's just writing patterns that would be hard to clearly establish rules for here in an HN comment, but it's incredibly obvious when you learn to spot it.

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gnyman 10 minutes ago | parent | next [-]

I recently vibed a little linked-in AI detector which looks for AI things like rule of three and scores it. It scored it 97% AI polished.

My gut feeling agrees. The rule of three is one of the stronger signals, can't stamp that out of the AI even if you wanted :-)

I'll push it to GH later, it's nothing fancy but it has been quite good in my experience. Here is highlights which it used

``` tricolon coordinated VERB run: “…break / on them collapse / unlock everything .” (3 members) tricolon coordinated VERB run: “…guard physical addresses / not DRAM coordinates / you rearrange the” (3 members) tricolon coordinated NOUN run: “…handful of data / it to z3 / the translation matrix” (3 members) tricolon coordinated NOUN run: “…view / the elaborate fences / locks / security checks the” (4 members) tricolon coordinated VERB run: “…Read it / the alias map / pipe” (3 members) ```

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boxed 20 minutes ago | parent | prev [-]

I mean, it's super clear to a lot of people that it's written by LLMs EVEN WHEN IT'S NOT. You can't vibe that shit too.

	▲	rustyminnow 9 minutes ago \| parent \| next [-]
		How do you know when it's not written by LLM except to take someone's word? If I got caught slopping I'd be too embarassed to admit it. "I wrote it all myself! I actually majored in slick writing and minored in tenuous metaphor."
	▲	shermantanktop 16 minutes ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		I just told my boss to remove a line in a doc because it sounded too AI-y. He then said that he had written it himself.

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jchw 8 minutes ago | parent | prev | next [-]

"What if you're wrong?"

I'd just like to address this real quick because some people seem to think this is just a "hunch" that has some probability of being false; there is absolutely nothing more certain on planet Earth than the LLM involvement in this writing. It is difficult to come up with things that are certain enough to compare this to to convey the lack of doubt that exists.

I am not going to make fun of you for not being able to tell, although I do find it surprising that people seem to struggle in both directions with telling AI and human writing apart (are our brains really that different?) - I just want it to be clear that some of us can pick up Claudisms within just a couple of sentences with no effort. A Claude-generated sentence, in isolation, may not ring any alarm bells. A few of them in a row, however, that's a load-bearing smoking gun right there.

We can certainly argue to what extent undisclosed LLM involvement is an issue or not, though frankly I don't like reading LLM writeups so I would greatly prefer if people would stop using LLMs for public facing documents. But, it is at least worth making this much clear: we can tell.

	▲	jonathrg 3 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		The only other reasonable explanation would be that he has consumed so much LLM content that the machine has erased his voice and replaced it with its own.

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ipdashc 14 minutes ago | parent | prev | next [-]

> Please be more specific.

The em dashes are the most obvious stereotypical tell, but that doesn't really matter that much (I actually like them and occasionally used them pre-AI). It's hard to put a finger on, but the most annoying LLMism to me is the overdramatic, staccato, almost "epic" way they talk. It feels like a 2009 lens flare effect over everything, it sounds like a stereotypical hacker in a CSI show.

> the last generation whose datasheets document the DRAM controller's translation registers — and show that they can't be locked

> When your code dereferences *p, it appears to access the DRAM at p. It does not — p is a virtual address

> Physical addresses are really more of a suggestion.

> That's the exploit. All of it.

The worst part is that this stuff is genuinely cool and deserves to be dramatic. And I like stereotypical, campy hacker speak! But LLMs are, IDK... bad at it? Or maybe it just becomes a bore to read the same. Exact. Dramatic. Voice. From literally everyone. After you've heard it enough times.

None of this is against Mr. Domas. He seems like a cool person, with a cool voice, and I want to read his voice, not Claude's.

> What if you're wrong?

I definitely could be! Apologies if I am. But with all the em dashes and such, and having read his previous work, I felt confident enough to mention it. And as the sibling comment says, it really is something you just learn to spot over time.

	▲	cgyvbunji 5 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		It's the ASCII diagrams for me. Although I hesitate to point it out because they are usually helpful unlike the em dashes. Before LLMs, ASCII diagrams in readmes were a half baked mess, if one were present at all. Now every project has at least one perfectly made ASCII diagram - instant LLM tell.

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pwf 11 minutes ago | parent | prev [-]

[dead]