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Show HN: Hacker News em dash user leaderboard pre-ChatGPT

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358 points tkgally | 1 comments | 30 Aug 25 03:40 UTC | HN request time: 0.238s | source

The use of the em dash (—) now raises suspicions that a text might have been AI-generated. Inspired by a suggestion from dang [1], I created a leaderboard of HN users according to how many of their posts before November 30, 2022—that is, before the release of ChatGPT—contained em dashes. Dang himself comes in number 2—by a very slim margin.

Credit to Claude Code for showing me how to search the HN database through Google BigQuery and for writing the HTML for the leaderboard.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45053933

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ThatMedicIsASpy ◴[30 Aug 25 06:24 UTC] No.45072356[source]▶
I have started using triple dots as on Linux I can get them with Alt Gr + .

A lot of symbols can be accessed with Alt Gr compared to Windows

replies(2): >>45072500 #>>45072731 #
1. Symbiote ◴[30 Aug 25 07:47 UTC] No.45072731[source]▶
Enable the Compose key and you'll get even more easy symbols, and they're reasonably guessable.

  Compose ` e produces è
          " a produces ä
          v s produces š
          v S produces Š
          a e produces æ
          C = produces €
          l - produces £
          - > produces → 
        ( 1 ) produces ①
          ^ 1 produces ¹
          _ 1 produces ₁
          1 8 produces ⅛
        - - - produces —
        - - . produces –
          . . produces …
          . - produces ·
          | - produces †
          | = produces ‡
          " < produces “
          x x produces ×
          m u produces µ
          > = produces ≥
See /usr/share/X11/locale/en_US.UTF-8/Compose for the list and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compose_key

I have also configured Shift+Compose to send the code 'dead_greek' using ~/.Xmodmap:

  keycode 135 = Multi_key dead_greek Multi_key Multi_key
Then I can type α, β, γ, Δ, Ε, Ζ easily, although I hardly ever need this nowadays.