undefined | Better HN

0 pointsDanHulton18h ago0 comments

I know it's "Evil AL", not "Evil AI", but there _is_ an "Evil AI" at work here - this is aislop, pure and simple. I wondered for a bit why the whole thing felt repetitive and boring, and then I hit this paragraph and it threw everything else into context:

> LAN-LOK is more than a forgotten DOS curiosity, it is a preserved moment in the daily life of Antarctic research stations during the earliest days of their local area networks. It captures the frustrations, humor, and personalities that shaped computing at Palmer Station as it transitioned from isolated standalone PCs to a shared (fragile) LAN.

It's frustrating, because this game absolutely has the vibes of a lot of old DOS/door games and I was kinda interested in learning about it, but this just sucks all the fun and interest out of it.

0 comments

crummy17h ago

That sentence does set off alarm bells, but in the context of the entire article I don't think it's AI written.

DanHultonOP15h ago

I dunno, the rest of the article feels very AI-written as well. Immediately after that, it goes into an overly in-depth bullet-pointed breakdown, it repeats information constantly...

It’s either written by an AI or I’m sorry, it’s just poorly written.

stuaxo9h ago

It has an LLM feel to me - the kind of verbosity that you get when a kid is padding out their homework to hit a word count.

l23k413h ago

Come on, try and imagine the human being who would write that sentence.

The article is obviously AI written in its entirety.

I mean look at this sentence which randomly contains the " - " pattern twice in a row, which is then not repeated once anywhere else in the article:

> Created after the installation of the station’s first peer-to-peer local area network (PalmerLAN), the game captures - through humor, satire, and surprisingly accurate mechanics - the daily realities of early LAN administration in one of the most isolated research communities on Earth.

Totally natural human writing!

timschmidt11h ago

Using dashes twice like that is valid. It's a bit like parentheses, to frame a tangential statement between them, but with emphasis instead of quietly. See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dash

I use that construction in my totally human writing often enough. Some of us missed a few English classes it seems.

ropable15h ago

I'm curious if you have any evidence stronger than your own vibes about this one sentence. I didn't get that sense from the article at all, and continue to assume that it's a genuine piece of history.

StilesCrisis15h ago

The section “The Origins and Descendants of the Break/Fix Game Mechanic” is where I clocked out. It’s pure 100% AI filler. No human being would think to include multiple paragraphs associating a 90s DOS game about PC sysadmins with the film Wreck-It Ralph. Downvoting the article.

j / k navigate · click thread line to collapse