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Seriously. I still find it ridiculous that even after they upped Opus' limit from 60% to 80% they don't show usage % below that. It's sapping my ability to use it quickly on the 5x plan.



Switching to Opus is an eye-opening experience. You hit limits often, and need to get creative to avoid burning through limits, but the difference is seriously impressive. You'll waste a lot less time with dead ends and bad code.


The issue (with Sonnet, I'm not using Opus), is not always that the code is bad per se, but merely that it doesn't solve the problem in the way I expected.

I have two problems with that. Firstly, I want my code to be written a particular way, so if it's doing something out of left field then I have to reject it on stylistic grounds. Secondly, if its solution is too far from my expectation, I have to put more work into review to check that its solution is actually correct.

So I give it a "where, what, how" prompt. For example, "In file X add feature Y by writing a function with signature f(x: t), and changing Z to do W..."

It's very good at following directions, if you give it the how hints to narrow the solution space.



It confuses me that Elon is far-right in public, but names his creations from left-libertarian science fiction books. Is it just an act?


maybe he is not far-right and the framing of how you get your info about Elon is skewing your perception? His politics have been fairly stable the last 20 years. The Overton window has not been.


This is incredible sarcasm. It seems like people who like this sort of control always find a narrative to sell it to the people. The US still has the Patriot act on the books, and that's been the norm for some people's entire lives.


I really like this idea as I find Claude's transparency frustrating. Claude code's killer features revolve around better tools to manage context and limits vs the desktop app (compact and the % remaining until auto compact), but it's not enough.

If I can offer any advice, it's that the high use of emojis in a project readme (at least for me) looks so unprofessional and makes me worry that a project was vibe -coded in the sense that the AI was possibly not babysat to the extent I think they should. That's just me, though


I got into software in a time where you would get sent to a mental institution when spotted using emojis in a code base. Times have changed.. I use emojis regularly because they help me organize context more visually. Code has now many emojis to keep me happy.


This code was written in pure vibe-coding style — mostly for fun. I've got about 10 years of experience in IT, and even I fully agree: a 1000-line main file like this one probably deserves to be locked away in a secure facility.

But hey — if it's stupid and it works, it ain't stupid.


The readme is the typical AI verbal diarrhoea of so many words saying so little it hurts. You should ask it to be a bit more concise.

As a separate comment, would it not be better to ask for your plan on first run and setup a config file to remember it? With a note how to change it. Rather than rely on cmd line variables?

Also, shouldn't it be able to pick up the timezone from the local computer? Why would it "default" to a fixed timezone of poland?


Always depends on the cost of failure I suppose.


It strikes me as very much a current aesthetic in younger companies or smaller startups, maybe highly influenced by Notion. No one makes a list or page or calendar invite in my current company without choosing an emoji for it.


It was cool until 2022. Then LLMs started injecting these emoji everywhere and it became the chief marker for code/doc smell.


It never caught on but I always liked setting the jumbo header images on Notion docs to creepy, unsettling pictures from Unsplash.

Need to write a document about converting a Rust project to Typescript? A picture of an abandoned warehouse full of expressionless baby doll heads fits perfectly.


> looks so unprofessional and makes me worry that a project was vibe -coded in the sense that the AI was possibly not babysat to the extent I think they should. That's just me, though

The irony of comments like this on software designed entirely for ai coding...


Looks so unprofessional, lol, says the guy wanting to use a free app, this isn't a microsoft made app lol it's a guy making a github app for free the audacity people have these days to shit on peoples project for 0 reason


AI coding where the human stays in control and reads and confirms code is totally different from vibe coding where you don't read code and just prompt until it sort of works.


I completely agree. Andrej's definition was pretty explicit and in my experience it is two separate worlds of AI use.


if you actually look at the code, it's a single 400 line python file that just wraps https://github.com/ryoppippi/ccusage, so it's possible


Yeah I noticed that too, it’s a bit crazy to me that stuff like this is getting upvotes and traction. It feels like it was vibe-coded in one-shot style without perhaps even reading any bit of the code. A bunch of hardcoded values, a `sleep(3)`, bunch of other antipatterns.

Up until recently I tended to “trust” github repos a bit more, now I feel like I need to have my guard up so I don’t fall into a trap of using something like this. Funnily enough a good first metric for me now is # of emojis in the readme - the more emojis the more likely you should stay away from it


This code was written in pure vibe-coding style — mostly for fun. I've got about 10 years of experience in IT, and even I fully agree: a 1000-line main file like this one probably deserves to be locked away in a secure facility. But hey — if it's stupid and it works, it ain't stupid.


My goto for AI generated PR descriptions and README is this addition to the prompt: tight, no purple prose, no emojis.

That turns thrse meandering emoji fests into suitable documentation. YMMV


Out of curiosity, who in a significant position within the trump administration has antisemitic views, in your opinion?


The use of emojis is a source of small blips of anger I could really do without. I'm not sure why this sort of thing isn't a toggle.


You can just add it to your master prompt. I have this added to mine, YMMV:

Tone & Communication Style

* Keep it clear, structured, and concise.

* Maintain a professional tone but make it feel natural and human; avoid robotic or overly formal language.

* Use a more conversational tone in casual, mentoring, or internal team contexts.

* Do not use em-dashes or emoji unless specifically requested.


What do you have against em-dashes!?


He wants to avoid people noticing he is copy pasting from the llm


They're not just from AI-generated text. Some of us humans use en dashes and em dashes in the right context, since they're easy to type on macOS: alt+hyphen and alt+shift+hyphen respectively.

On both iOS and modern Android I believe you can access them with a long press on hyphen.


i think you replied to the wrong comment


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


The world now believes that em-dashes are a sign of AI, I guess because it's seen as slightly archaic due to over use of the comma.


As a frequent user of em-dashes, it's quite frustrating, as I'm now self conscious about using them.


Awww no! Keep using them proudly! Don't let AI ruin the awesomeness that is the em-dash :)


Given frequency of their usage, its a fair assumption. Emphasis using bold is also an easy tell.


> slightly archaic

How are em-dashes "slightly" archaic in this context? Can you point me to a single example of internet discourse from the last 30 years where a human used an em-dash unironically?

Academic papers doesn't count, literature doesn't count. I'm looking for an example of human created discourse online. The crux of the allegation is that normal meatbag humans don't use an em-dash when conversing with one another online, or when writing informal texts, purely because there is no key for the em-dash on the keyboard (that I know of).

I posit that the use of an em-dash in online discourse is so archaic that it's a 100% surefire giveaway of AI.


>Can you point me to a single example of internet discourse from the last 30 years where a human used an em-dash unironically?

Thousands upon thousands.

>I'm looking for an example of human created discourse online. The crux of the allegation is that normal meatbag humans don't use an em-dash when conversing with one another online

Meatbag humans whose education failed them don't. Other humans did and still do, from Usenet to Substack, and from Slashdot to Hacker News.

Here's a random PG essay sprinkled with 23 em-dashes:

https://paulgraham.com/greatwork.html

Here's a post from idlewords, 13 of them:

https://idlewords.com/2025/02/the_shape_of_a_mars_mission.ht...

Here's the current top HN post, 13 of them:

https://aaronson.org/blog/square-theory

57 in this antipope post - many by Charlie, equally many in the comments:

https://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/2024/12/storm-c...

And those are genuine em-dashes, the character.

Way more people, in posts, comments, etc. use en-dashes and hyphens as em-dashes (just because they don't know how to quickly insert proper ones, or aren't aware there's a typographic distinction, but do now the use of dashes for parenthetical statements and asides.


I use em dashes a bunch in both informal communication and more formal writing. Mobile keyboards have em dashes, and I also have the compose key turned on on Linux.

Recent examples on HN, all 100% human-written:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43923622

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43863882

For an example of more formal writing, this blog post of mine has 8 em-dashes across 6000 or so words: https://sunshowers.io/posts/monads-through-pbt/

I did ask Claude to review this post for clarity and flow, but not to generate any text.


I learned how to type em-dashes on Mac (option-shift-hyphen) 10+ years ago and have been using them with some frequency since then. Picking 2023, here are some comments with emdashes that I personally typed:

  https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38796943
  https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36916740
  https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36125055
  https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34487782


I have a Mac (and am very familiar with all its nifty shortcuts) but also a Windows and Linux machine, how would one type it on those?


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 to see that Windows is still stuck in the PS/2 days here


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.


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+<< and >> for «» to Opt+[ and Opt+Sh+[ on Mac. Which may or may not work depending on locale.


Not really. Maybe 20%.


Word and Outlook auto-replace double hyphens "--" with em-dashes "—", which is probably the most commonly used way on Windows.


Yeah, but that's not global. Mac has global keyboard entries for these things, and they are incredibly easy.


MS Office will insert em-dashes automatically in most documents, so in fact there are a lot of Word docs and Outlook emails that contain them.

I sometimes specifically try and trigger them: if you have a piece of text and go back to insert a hyphen, it won't em-dash until you've followed it with a space, another word and then another space. I now sort of end up doing '- x ' and then backspacing so that the word following the x now follows an em-dash.

They exist to provide clarity. The are not hyphens, or en-dashes, they're em-dashes. The fact that some people have forgotten how to use them (or perhaps not been taught), does not make them "archaic", it makes those people who find them as such to be ignorant of basic sentence structure and punctuation.

I think if you're under the age of 30 and you suddenly start using them, you're showing your GenAI a little too much, but the answer is not to get your AI to stop using them, but for us to teach people why they exist and to use them more often when and where they are appropriate.


I use and have used em-dashes my entire life, including online e.g. on Reddit, Slack, and here.

My wife and numerous friends our age do the same.

Among those who studied English at e.g. a college level it's a natural and not uncommon part of professional writing... even online.

At least for those of us old enough to still punctuate and capitalize our texts.


I’ve used em-dashes in all sorts of online forums for decades. It’s on the Mac keyboard, and there are also tons of tools that automatically convert double or triple dashes to a single long dash. They were never uncommon.


Surely this is an absurd exaggeration. I've been using em dashes everywhere (online comments, email, chat) for ~25 years now. I'm not unusual in this regard; everyone who cares about punctuation probably uses them liberally. They're not hard to type; on macOS you can hold down Alt and Shift while hitting the `-`, and on Android you can long press on the `-`. Maybe they're used less by Windows users?

Even just looking at my HN comments, 381 of my ~1200 HN comments so far (so >30%) have em dashes. This includes my very first comment on HN from 2009 (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=602094) and several that have multiple em dashes in them:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15169281 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15899499 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16596894 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17291032 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17464621 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18201613 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18331591 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18387981 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18843521

(and so on; all these are from 2019 or earlier, preceding GPT-3.)


I use them all the time -- indeed I just did. I love em-dashes.


That's not an em dash—or is it?


That’s a pair of hyphens.


I guess you got me as either an easily nerd-sniped plebe or an Old — I use it in all my discourse when I'd normally take a speaking pause.


Same type of "modern" behavioral adaption asll the perceived risk/reward of accepting voice calls anymore from unrecognized tel numbers


Everything!


Having fun vibe coding my first personal website with astro and three.js - I'd say it's working pretty well so far. I need to tone down the amount of animation and glows this, it's a little too much.

https://www.Loufe.ca


I let Jules write a PR in my codebase with very specific scaffolding, and it absolutely blew it. It took me more time to understand the ways it failed to grasp the codebase and wrote code for a fundamentally different (incorrectly understood) project. I love Gemini 2.5, but I absolutely agree with the gp (pauldix) on their quality / scope point.


Couldn't agree more. I wish all major model makers would build tools into their proprietary UIs to "summarize contents and start a new conversation with that base". My biggest slowdown with working with LLMs while coding is moving my conversation to a new thread because context limit is hit (Claude) or the coherent-thought threshold is exceeded (Gemini).


I never use any web interfaces, just hooked up gptel (an Emacs package) to Claude's API and a few others I regularly use, and I just have a buffer with the entire conversation. I can modify it as needed, spawn a fresh one quickly etc. There's also features to add files and individual snippets, but I usually manage it all in a single buffer. It's a powerful text editor, so efficient text editing is a given.

I bet there are better / less arcane tools, but I think powerful and fast mechanisms for managing context are key and for me, that's really just powerful text editing features.


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