Depending on who you speak to it can be anything from coding only by describing the general idea of what you want, to just being another term for LLM assisted programming.

An alternative framing I've been thinking about is, there's clearly something bad when you leave in the bits that obviously lower signal to noise ratio for all readers.

Then throw in the account being new, and, well, I hope it's not a harbinger.*

* It is and it's too late.

https://hbr.org/2025/08/research-the-hidden-penalty-of-using...

I'm not speculating - I have to work with these things so darn much that the tells are blindingly obvious - and the tells are well-known, ex. there's a gent who benchmarks "it's not just x - it's y" shibboleths for different models.

However, in a rigorous sense I am speculating: I cannot possibly know an LLM was used.

Thus, when an LLM is used, I am seeing an increasing fraction of conversation litigating whether is appropriate, whether it matters, if LLMs are good, and since anyone pointing it out could be speculating, now, the reaction hinges on how you initially frame this observation.

Ex. here, I went out of my way to make a neutral-ish comment given an experience I had last week (see other comment by me somewhere down stream)

Lets say I never say LLM, instead, frame it as "Doesn't that just mean it's a convention?" and "How are there so many game-changers?", which is obvious to audience is a consequence of using an LLM, and yet, also looks like you're picking on someone (are either of those bad writing? I only had one teacher who ever would take umbrage at somewhat subtle fluff like this)

Anyways this is all a bunch of belly-aching to an extent, you're right, and its the way to respond. There's a framing where the only real difficulty here is critiquing the writing without looking like you're picking on someone.

EDIT: Well, except for one more thing: what worries me the most when I see someone using the LLM and incapable of noticing tells and incapable of at least noticing the tells are weakening writing is...well, what else did they miss? What else did the LLM write that I have to evaluate for myself? So it's not so much as somewhat-bad writing, 90%+ still, that bothers me: its that idk what's real, and it feels like a waste of time even being offered it to read if I have to check everything.

Placing a value judgement on someone for how the art was produced is gatekeeping. What if the person is disabled and uses an LLM for accessibility reasons as one does with so many other tools? I dunno, that seems problematic to me but I understand the aversion to the output.

For example maybe it's like criticising Hawking for not changing his monotone voice vs using the talker all together. Perhaps not the best analogy.

The author can still use LLMs to adjust the style according to criticism of the output if they so choose.

Help yourself to learn about how individuals with disabilities use technology to communicate. Shaming someone for using a tool purely based on speculation is problematic for that reason alone

It does tell you that if even 95% of HN can't tell, then 99% of the public can't tell. Which is pretty incredible.

And it sounds like you have the same surreal experience as me...it's so blindingly. obvious. that the only odd thing is people not mentioning it.

And the tells are so tough, like, I wanted to a bang a drum over and over again 6 weeks ago about the "It's not X-it's Y" thing, I thought it was a GPT-4.1 tell.

Then I found this under-publicized gent doing God's work: ton of benchmarks, one of them being "Not X, but Y" slop and it turned out there was 40+ models ahead of it, including Gemini (expected, crap machine IMHO), and Claude, and I never would have guessed the Claudes. https://x.com/sam_paech/status/1950343925270794323

IME the only reliable way around it when using an LLM to create blog-like content is to have actual hard lists of slop to rewrite/avoid. This works pretty well if done if correctly. There's actually not that many patterns (not hundreds, more like dozens) so they're pretty enumerable. On the other hand, you and me would still be able to tell if only rewriting those things.

Overall the number one thing is that the writing is "overly slick". I've seen this expressed in tons of ways but I find slickness to be the most apt description. As if it's a pitch, or a TED presentation script, that has been pored over and perfected until every single word is optimized. Very salesy. In a similar vein, in LLM-written text, everything is given similar importance. Everything is crucial, one of the most powerful X, particularly elegant, and so on.

I find Opus to have the lowest slop ratio, which this benchmark kind of confirms [1], but of course its pricing is a barrier.

[1] https://eqbench.com/creative_writing_longform.html

The forest is darkening, and quickly.

Here, I'd hazard that 15% of front page posts in July couldn't pass a "avoids well-known LLM shibboleths" check.

Yesterday night, about 30% of my TikTok for you page was racist and/or homophobic videos generated by Veo 3.

Last year I thought it'd be beaten back by social convention. (i.e. if you could showed it was LLM output, it'd make people look stupid, so there was a disincentive to do this)

The latest round of releases was smart enough, and has diffused enough, that seemingly we have reached a moment where most people don't know the latest round of "tells" and it passes their Turing test., so there's not enough shame attached to prevent it from becoming a substantial portion of content.

I commented something similar re: slop last week, but made the mistake of including a side thing about Markdown-formatting. Got downvoted through the floor and a mod spanking, because people bumrushed to say that was mean, they're a new user so we should be nicer, also the Markdown syntax on HN is hard, also it seems like English is their second language.

And the second half of the article was composed of entirely 4 item lists.

I'm also pretty shocked how HNers don't seem to notice or care, IMO it makes it unreadable.

I'd write an article about this but all it'd do is make people avoid just those tells and I'm not sure if that's an improvement.

Seems odd, but probably wouldn't be noticed by an automated validator anyway.

This is much harder to evade - if you own most of Mayfair, you can't just move your assets elsewhere - they are very clearly tied to the location.

Of course, this would mean taxing powerful aristocrats, including the royal family. With their large majority, the British government had the opportunity to do this, but decided to take an easier path. The reason why this path was easier is now becoming clear to them.

Then there are the semi-elective things like healthcare, education, home security. These kinda dont work for the whole society. The rich are thus paying for their own out of pocket. But they are also paying for the semi-working system for everyone else.

I think introducing a wealth tax just to balance the books without rethinking who and how accesses public funds, will just end with the rich leaving. Some may say good riddance, but the UK budget is now beyond creaking and heading for collapse.

Oh and when I say "the rich", that probably covers many people here. IIRC earning 90k per year puts you in the top 1%. A 10-15 year experience NHS doctor is in that bracket.

The very top sliver who own the majority of the land and assets and who never need to work a day in their life are who must be looked at; that hereditary wealth needs to begin to find itself flowing into public services more and more.

Perhaps you should check the facts before making statements like that!

According to the public data for 2023-2024, top 1% is around £180-200k, so you're off by quite a bit. £90k is around 5-6%. This is gross, not net.

In the U.S., the top 1% is around $570-600k according to 2024 census numbers.

In the mind of probably at least 75% electorate, the top 5% are filthy rich who should make up any tax shortfall. But also 90k puts you, I believe, out of reach of all the services I listed above.

I'm all for paying tax, and even more tax if need be, where I get equal access to services. But not when I'm literally excluded for paying more tax.

Interestingly, according to an FT article, high earners in the UK pay comparable amounts of tax as they would on the "high tax" continent. It is the low earners who oay substantially less, bringing down the effective average. But they in turn pay outsized housing rent, so arent better off either.

No point owning most of Mayfair if you don't feel safe enough to enjoy your lifestyle.

And it's not just funding the police and courts that leads to this - it's making sure there aren't too many desperate people with no hope. ie paying unemployment benefit so people can live while looking for work - is all part of that stable society from which everyone benefits - but particularly the rich as they have more to lose.

Often it's looted ( or comes from exploitation ) from unstable countries where the weak rule of law has allowed the looting ( corruption or whatever ), and then moved to London to ensure nobody can then steal it back directly or via political revolution.

Taxes are the price of civilisation - if you want the good life - you have to help support civilisation - not free load.

I earn over £90k in the UK. It is very much true, a lot of things are "means tested".

As much as one can complain about specific inefficiencies or not being able to send young Jasper and Tabitha to private school because of VAT and tapered tax relief, I do think we don't take it far enough.

The reason it not working is that we have stapled our personal wealth and economy to housing. 60 years of financiers pushing for higher lending limits with looser regulation resulted in more people able to "afford" a £1m house. That drags up all the prices.

There's no simple way to reverse it this distortion but it had a knock on effect: the generationally rich, the landed gentry through to farmers have become insanely rich, through no work but HODLling all the land until they got planning permission.

I agree, wealth tax is scary but not addressing how wealth works won't fix things either.

Earn £300k a year, you pay 65% on more than half of it, and obviously 45, 40, and so on of the first half of it)

Get £3 million from the stocks? You pay 20% (above £50k threshold)

People are obsessed with workers paying all their taxes and letting off the wealthy avoiding the most.

There was a bit of a scandal a few years back at just how much input the Queen got to those sort of laws, but it didn't really have legs as everyone thought she was brilliant.

But if the same thing comes out about King Charles you can bet it's going to be a bigger stink.

I assume a new government dept. has to be set up to oversee it. Or do the wealthy self assess? Are things like shares and investments valued once? Once per year? How is a company valued? How do you know if you qualify as wealthy? Do we value everyone’s wealth? Can’t the wealthy just relocate or move assets out of reach?

I don’t expect answers to this, I’m just thinking out loud as there seem to be a lot of challenges.

A few countries seem to have tried and continued to tax wealth but it seems far from proven and only seems to “work” in Switzerland, which is a bit of an outlier

Presumably they do have a department of people checking this to make sure people aren't lying, but also Switzerland is a relatively high trust society, and taxes are reasonable, so people probably don't mind paying too much.

In the UK in 2025 I'm not sure this would work, people would try and evade it and the UK government isn't competent enough to stop them

Britain could just as easily tax profits on the sale of shares in British companies, regardless of the country of domicile of the company or individual that sold the shares.

We don't need wealth taxes, we just need parity between tax on earned and unearned income.

You don’t need new govt. dept. tax authority is enough. You do your yearly tax statement.

In NL they have access to your bank accounts or more like banks and brokers are obliged to provide state of accounts as per 1st of January.

Downside is you pay wealth tax on „possible gains” not actual gains on wealth above 40k€. If you have mortgage it of course is deducted from value of your house or any debts that you have documented.

In case you think collecting watches can make you hide the wealth, there are of course tax authority checks most likely if your wealth suddenly changes.

I think the simpler solution if simply passing along the original cost basis to heirs (and without documentation it’s assumed to be zero). That way people or even families can defer taxes on income, but eventually they get paid.

However, the tax burden in Texas is not significantly lower than a state like California.

It's a loophole the mega-rich are using to avoid tax.

The other thing that's happened is that a lot of the mega-rich have lobbied to gradually chip away at inheritance taxes. So again they just pass the asset, paying a fraction of the taxes they'd have paid had they been a "normal" tax payer.

And one of the big things they've got? No capital gains on those stocks when passed to children.

So yeah, we need to tax assets as well as income. Because anything that's not taxed the rich just funnel money into it to avoid paying tax.

> There's been a big shift of rich people avoiding taking pay or dividends. Instead they get paid in stock, and then get interest free loans secured on that stock to actually spend money.

They have a stockholding in a firm, and the firm pays CIT on income earned. That sounds fair.

> The other thing that's happened is that a lot of the mega-rich have lobbied to gradually chip away at inheritance taxes. So again they just pass the asset, paying a fraction of the taxes they'd have paid had they been a "normal" tax payer.

Why should my kids be liable to pay a tax when they inherit my house? That house was bought by my income on which PIT was duty fully paid. Again sounds very fair to me.

> And one of the big things they've got? No capital gains on those stocks when passed to children.

Again sounds fair to me.

If you just think it's the government stealing your stuff, then it seems very unfair to have your stuff taxed after you die.

But what tax is, under another lens, is a way to divert the capacity of a state to social ends. Everything from the military to the police to prisons and the justice system is what enables you to live in peace and accumulate stuff in the first place. Those are social goods.

So how do you fund this spending? How do you incentivize other people to protect your house? Well, the solution of tax is they take a little bit of your stuff over time, in a predictable way, according to rules that are pre-agreed and can be changed with consensus.

Or go to fund programs that only your political opponents benefit from.

Also, anyone living in the bay area can attest how terrible the roads are for how much tax money clearly gets spent on them.

This isn't to say taxing wealth is actually the solution, but it's the catch all that people like to scream about.

30% of pensioners are millionaires in the UK, and they recieve a state pension. Fixing that would probably immediately turn a massive budget surplus ( albeit a nasty suprise for financial planning ).

However, suddenly if you find pensioners releasing funds from their property, you affect what's going to be inherited and that's a no go area. There's no real concept of fairness in the debate, just the politics of it all.

I think “30% of pensioners are millionaires” is also a bit moot given the majority of those are living in properties that they didn’t buy for millions and have lived in while house prices have gone up. My parents for example are probably close to your millionaire threshold and it seems unfair that they’d have to sell their home they’ve lived in for decades and want to continue living in just because the housing market has pushed its value past the point where it seems like it should be taxed. They’d have to sell it just to pay that tax and move somewhere smaller, which seems unfair to force on people approaching 80yo.

Like you're talking about fairness, but you're also arguing that other people should pay taxes to give your parents money, in order for them to keep their property, whilst many of those paying their taxes, will never get on the ladder, and if they do, will never afford such a lovely house.

Where's the fairness in that?

Further, most folks are aware of equity release and your parents could borrow against the house and not move. The main outcome is you wouldn't get it. Now I've bought such a house but I didn't get it from my parents, I got it by earning the money which I've paid income tax on, so it's literally required 2-3x in earnings to get there.

What's fair in that?

For the record, I have a kid in private school and will try my best to pass on as much as possible, so I totally get both your parents and your own position. I'm just poking fun on "fairness" because fairness in politics never seems to consider the person the money comes from and when you consider all angles, it's rarely fair.

Simple, and more effective!

Hell even Switzerland taxes global assets. You just declare your stocks, property, etc at some instantaneous value and that’s that. Capital gains aren’t taxed.

The system is easy to cheat and until recently it was possible for HNW people to get a bespoke deal when moving there. But the tax rate is low enough and the risk is high enough that it’s more beneficial to just pay.

As an example, Wouldn't that mean that if my startup raises a round of 1m for 10%, my NW would go to 0 to 9m. 6% of that would be around 0.5m, and 30% tax would mean I would have to pay 162,000 EUR in taxes.

As a cash poor founder how do you suggest I pay that.

That's why taxing income and not wealth has been the norm.

Another point: have you considered that the authorities and people of the Netherlands, a very rich country with several valuable companies, may have possibly thought of this absolutely trivial argument when designing their tax code? Do you really think nobody thought of it?

Jesus

---

To your point: stakes in your _own_ company are not taxed as assets, but as income, precisely to avoid the ridiculous situation you point out.

Simply put: your retirement savings, your brokerage account = assets, your startup, your company, your farm = income.

Enlightening, so you mean this policy isn't for the so called "1%"? Only for middle class folks and their stock portfolios? That's not what the GP was proposing.

> Another point: have you considered that the authorities and people of the Netherlands, a very rich country with several valuable companies, may have possibly thought of this absolutely trivial argument when designing their tax code? Do you really think nobody thought of it?

Yes, because I can point to an even richer country, with even more valuable companies where the left proposed same destructive policy only a few months ago and almost came close to winning.

Lastly, you did make me look it up and it seems Netherlands and other European countries really didn't think it through.

https://www.leideninternationalcentre.nl/get-advice/blogs/su...

https://www.linkedin.com/posts/jasoncalacanis_norways-wealth...

What do you mean? This is a proportional tax (slightly progressive actually due to the 0% rate on the first bracket). It's for everyone with such assets.

> where the left proposed same destructive policy only a few months ago and almost came close to winning.

If you think either of the major parties in the USA can be in any way described as "left" then this is not a serious conversation.

It's these that need to be tackled - not just because of tax evasion, but because they are also a large part of the workings of organised crime.

The UK needs to radically reduce its social safety net and simultaneously cut taxes, at least for new companies and small businesses. The only way out is real, sustained, long term growth and innovation. Stealing ever more of a shrinking pie is already running out of steam.

Not the solution is fair taxation every trade made in the country, if you make business in a country you need pay taxes there for the transactiona made there.

Otherwise you just extract value out of the country, without giving back.

To me there is no worse thievery than tax evasion, it's literally robing a nation.

This takes a long time to get - you have to sacrifice now to get the future growth

With the exception of certain pension benefits there isn't much money flowing into these programs to begin with.

There are loads of people not participating in the economy because they do t have money, just give them money to spend.

The multiplier effect means it pays for itself.

Doesn't apply to the super rich where the money is just hoarded.

The people who don't (currently) need them see them as a waste.

I was under the impression they had done that already.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Kingdom_government_aust...

Though one can't help but think it wont be radical enough for conservatives until we simply dispose of those unable to work through some dystopic mechanism or other.

> Coalition and Conservative governments in office from 2010 to 2019 used the term, and it was applied again by many observers to describe Conservative Party policies from 2021 to 2024, during the cost of living crisis.

2024, last year, is "a long time ago"?

I live there and this is just wrong.

In reality, as always, I suspect the truth will be somewhere in between. SaaS products that succeed will be those that have a good UI _and_ and good API that LLMs can use.

An LLM is not always the best interface, particularly for data access. For most people, clicking a few times in the right places is preferable to having to type out (or even speak aloud) "Show me all the calls I did today", waiting for the result, having to follow up with "include the time per call and the expected deal value", etc etc.

There is undoubtedly an opportunity for disruption here, but I think an LLM only SaaS platform is going to be a very tough sell for at least the next decade.

I agree that the amount of bespoke UI that needs to exist probably won't stagnate. Humans need about the same amount of visual information to verify a task was done correctly as they need to do the task.

LLM generated UI is an interesting field. Sure, you can get ChatGPT to generate schema to lay out some buttons. But it seems harder to identify the context and relevant information that must be displayed for the human to be a valuable/necessary asset in the process.

As an industry, we have been through a textual user interface already: terminals, and we moved away from that.

And voice UIs are not new either: we have had voice assistant for quite some time now, and they didn't see the success Apple, Google or Amazon were expecting (recently it came out that most of echo use cases were about setting timers).

How do LLM SaaS replacements solve that?

> The underlying SaaS platform is reduced to a “database” or “utility” that an agent can switch out if needed.

I agree that UI isn’t going away completely. Language is a slow and imprecise tool. A well developed UI can be much more efficient. I think it will be much more like the Star Trek universe, where we use a blend of the two.

In any case, if the AI agent can generate UI on the fly, it seems their point still stands?

If you stole my wallet because someone else stole your wallet it DOSE NOT MAKE IT OK.

Stealing is stealing. Stop excusing it.

The correct analogy would be, someone took the wallet you stole and gave it back to the person.

I don't think that 'crushing tickets' is a good metric of developer competency, but it's a very visible metric regardless and is therefore probably a good way to progress in many organisations.