Scored 100% on a Pangram of the first few paragraphs.

Things that alerted me. (Note that any one of these things could be fine and explainable, but so many in short order makes it obvious).

> And it rang. We both did our jobs.

What is the human's job here? Waking up?

> the whole morning minute by minute, as if someone had laid it out on a table and labeled every piece.

Labored metaphor that doesn't add anything. Laid out a minute? On a table? Even if we accept the non physical metaphor for style, how does that add anything on top of "minute by minute".

> I made two pieces of toast. The left one burned. The left one in my toaster always burns; my toaster has a favorite side.

This sort of short staccato phrasing is an LLM smell. It's hard to describe why precisely and how it varies from natural human text, but LLMs like to do this when writing fiction, especially when told to "write with a good style, don't write like an LLM."

Living in a totally conceptual space all day has major downsides on your ability to enjoy your meat suit. Meat suit firmware can only apply updates when you are offline. A lot of us are walking around with severe security vulnerabilities and runtime bugs.

> Will it rain over forty percent of the city? Will it rain for forty percent of the day? Or does the speaker just not know and is too shy to say so?

Unrelated, but to answer his question, it's the probability that a random spot in the covered area will get at least a smidge of rain at some point in the covered time period. A 10% chance of rain can mean either that the forecaster is 100% sure that exactly 10% of the area will get rain, or it can mean that the forecaster sees a large rainstorm nearby which would cover the whole area if it arrived, but which only has a 10% chance of arriving. Or anything in between. If there's a rain cloud meandering over the city, covering 1% of the city at a time, and over the whole day it randomly walks over 10% of the city, that's also a 10% chance.

Reading this story after staring at Claude-prose for weeks is a breath of fresh air, honestly.

Thank you for sharing.

> About the author...Once, at the Nürburgring, he nearly collided with Kimi Räikkönen.

Anyone else here interested in road course tracking (HPDE) or racing? If so, where do you go?

I'm in the US Midwest and have been to Putnam Park, NCM, mid-Ohio, Pitt Race (private now...sad), and Ozark's.

That was very good, thank you!

Why does this seem to fill me with existential dread?

> Will it rain over forty percent of the city?

Yes! x forecaster confidence

I liked it, felt the translation "ate" something."For now" is more organic in the original language.

The dialog with the cheese-maker would convey the mood better (consider that so far = so long in the original): - Why cheese? - So far no one is doing this for me. - So far? - So long.

What year is this set in? 2027? 2028? A lot of it feels like present day.

About the future: I don't believe it's really necessary to mix traffic and pedestrians on the same road. Certainly not 3000 pound vehicles and pedestrians. I think at some point we will start new cities with completely different assumptions from what we have now.

I am very amused that the agent speaks exactly like an agent in this world too

Very well written, bravo

I think this is a story about the author getting hit by a delivery robot? Or a car? I honestly am not sure what this is supposed to be about.

This is like a checklist of bad writing cliches

While defending my reception of this writing is the last place I would have expected to start, the comments here were so dissatisfying that I feel both defensive and dissapointed.

I had excitedly clicked to see what 72 people thought about the perspective of the story. I was looking forward to learning other’s ideas on how mechanical boundaries contrast physical or human boundaries of life (as time reveals.)

Instead I opened to dozens of accusatory declarations of the story being LLM produced (or not).

Ok, but what a bummer.

I appreciate this story’s focus on time’s relationship to culture. I found the language reminiscent of other translations. That quality of translation drew my attention to turns-of-phrase that don’t mean the same thing in English, while wielding meaning anyway - perhaps by being fulcrums in the story that they are contextualized around. I appreciate how it makes language feel new.

The question of time made me think of the film Unrest, and it feels pertinent that we can accept each others idiosyncratic time, (people who run late or early), but experience mechanical time that is unforgiving and ruthlessly precise, regardless of the outcome- or anti-vital consequence (flower disappearing/ forgetting) potential, one to which we increasingly we design the world as beholden to.

It seems many of us, in this political and cultural moment, are facing (watching, seeing, witnessing) the untimely demises of vital things we know and love, and consider core to living - our careers, our hopes, our jobs, our climate, our people - the cause of this loss is almost always attributable to that compelling mechanical potential being wielded carelessly, it mechanic zeal what we are also so coerced to pay attention. This experience of negotiating our attention and technical relentlessness -is the relationship that increasingly determine the flavor of our time in the material worlds.

And yet, even in the HN comments, the debate about the artificiality or potential use of LLM dominates - only highlighting the very wound being written about.

Even if the story was written by a human, the fact that we feel we have to ask about the use of LLMs already illustrates a distance that has been placed, a widening gap between ourselves and creative expression.

We question everything, lest we be fooled - or be seen being fooled.

I find the felt necessity of the inquiry itself the most devastating aspect of generative LLMs. We deserve to experience creative expression and then deconstruct it - but the use of LLMs has increasingly constrained us to deconstruct all creative expression - towards ensuring we can allow ourselves to experience it.

We have been robbed of culture twice, once by the training of LLMs, and now again in our attempt to shield ourselves from their presence.

It’s all so exhausting, and I’m angry we can’t just enjoy critiquing interesting and unforgivably clichéd writing, without first modeling an LLMs version in our heads to compare it to before assigning it value.

AI has some value as a tool, but the outright robbery of creative culture by current tech giants is an unforgivable and cruel theft that is plowing down huge swaths of what gives vital meaning to our lives - for so many of us.

I'm an extremely amateur coder, but a prolific fiction writer. I wasn't expecting this much “Is it real or is it m-AI-beline?” in the comments. (There's a tell for you, no AI would make that joke.) (For now.) What’s interesting is my thought process is probably one you can apply to someone who is a good coder looking at a post to some code.

My thought process:

Hmm, what's this post, a bit cryptic on info, not many comments but not none. Scroll.

[Come back in about an hour.]

Double the comments, probably not pure slop-or-shill. (Or even worse, slop-and-shill.) Click.

Works without javascript… Has the look of an old usenet post, slightly reformated. Ah, fiction/narrative tells… Perhaps one of those “tales from IT” things on reddit, those were decent in the Before Times.

Hmm, has some interesting one-liners. Like someone who writes enough to know you want to give a morsel of style, a clever aside here or there. The flourish an ice skater does with their hands after a triple axle. Probably why it's gaining in comments.

Hmm, seems like the person might be on the spectrum slightly. Not sure if I would think that if it weren't for the tech references. Or the fact that some of it resonates with my most analytical observations of life and human behavior.

[Now I'm not sure if I thought this, but I think I did on some level:]

So that could be a person who's “analytical” or it could be an AI. But it’s actually something I might think, so I’m going to assume human. Else, I’m going to have some uncomfortable thoughts. I don’t want to think that, and it’s pretty enjoyable.

[Back to thoughts.]

Ah, that’s the second Slavic and/or Europeanish name I’ve seen. Okay, likely a second language person. Probably not learned English as a second language late in life. Probably earlier. Maybe dual language even. The dual/second language explains the slight, unnatural feelings I'm getting.

Oh, now here's a metaphor/stylism that just doesn't work. They write: “For now” could mean “so far” or “goodbye.” As in “goodbye for now”. That does not work. I think they are going for something I’ve noticed though, expressions can be fluid to accommodate however the receiver wants. For decades I’ve liked, and told people I like, the expression “Alright” as a response to “How are you doing?” Because it is entirely up to the speaker how they want to interpret it.

[Not thought at the time:] Ascending in pitch: Doing well. Descending in pitch: Getting by, but could be better. If pitch is needed to be truthful, then woe to the tonedeaf. And if the receiver wants a different pitch bad enough, they will assume I am simply a poor vocalist, which I’d rather, than have them deal with uncomfortable truth. 99% of the time when I’m asked this, it is by the cashier / retail worker for whom, like this writer, all I may remember from my last encounter is their name tag. Though, actually, not really. If I remember their name, I likely also remember if they are pleasant/chatty. And I likely remember that more than names. For Europeans, this can be different, as they say my locale is more pleasant/chatty with strangers, so that might be why this writer only remembers names.

[Back to thoughts.]

But this doesn't work. “Goodbye for now” is not the same as “goodbye goodbye.” If anything, it’s the same thing as “goodbye so far.” Meaning only one meaning for “for now.” “For now” does not work on its own as a salutation. “Well, thanks for checking me out, cashier.” “You’re welcome.” “Have a good day.” “For now.” That would be a very interesting response from the cashier, but it would not mean “goodbye.”

So, what's happening? Why this assumed double meaning that I am not getting? Hmm, perhaps this is a story originally written in another language and was translated to English. They had an idiom that works in, say, a Slavic language but there's no English analog.

[Not thought at the time:]

What the writer should have said is “for now” has multiple meanings: “at this moment, then not, and then again in another moment,” or “at this moment, then not, and never again,” or “at this moment and forever.” Thus, “I am here, for now” only states that I am at this location at this moment. Whether I will leave, whether I will come back, is unknown. But it at least says what is likely important, that I am here now.

[Back to thoughts.]

If so, clearly we are tool assisted. What of those previous clever phrases? Well, they weren't exactly “fun with English” clever. They were things that could have been written first in a Slavic language and still translate into something clever.

[Not thought then:]

In fact it's more like something in Guy De Maupasant's (however it's spelled) The Necklace. Lots of clever lines that presumably came from the original French and translated fine. I was directed to The Necklace from a news.ycombinator.com comment actually. Hmm, a prompt of “write me in the style of Guy De Maupasant”...

[Back to thoughts]

Well, I'm pretty deep, might as well finish it.

[Not 100% sure I thought this. Oh, and SPOILER ALERT:]

Uh oh, cross walk. Possibility of being hit by a car.

[Back to thoughts.]

Hit by a car. Yep. Not my favorite story development. Distracted from his phone, got it. And shows the futility of his tech work. Ug, can relate. Probably written by someone who'd much rather write for a living.

Still, I probably would have preferred something “larger” for a climax that makes me think in a unique way. E.g. Instead, the robot delivery bot gets raptured, and some clever thing about just-in-time programming is revealed that I wouldn't get immediately as an amateur, but I can at least appreciate, if it's explained well.

Honestly, though, getting hit by a car works if it is done slightly differently. It was a bit on the nose, still, not a huge detractor. Again, the other “hand flourishes” make up for it.

Bio. Written by some CTO of some typical-startup sounding company. Impressive or at least unique for a large-company CTO. For a five person startup, though, hell, even I could be a CTO. And this is a bit like something I’d write.

What’s this thing also in the bio… Wikipedia says its some Greek philosopher who was a prolific writer. Indeed, some good parts in here suggest a prolific author wrote it. Other parts suggest tool assist, if nothing else, to translate or help with something they want to say that works primarily in another language. And then the “casual” mention of the company name. Slight slop / slight shill if anything.

Will I come back and read another? On my own? Probably not. I'm not going to bookmark it. Let’s check the comments.

[not thought:]

If a new one by this poster was posted on news.ycombinator.com . Maybe… But only with enough comments. Assuming comment number/rate on news.ycombinator.com stays a useful metric of being worth my time.

[Back to thoughts.]

Oh, man, so many “is it AI” comments…

Interestingly, I bet if I posted some code here, someone who writes code much better than I would say similar things.

Oh, this bit is kind of clever, but that could be because they had a clever idea, but it seems tool assisted. I do like the flourish, but it’s not the flourish of a master of this (programming) language. Some good stuff, but probably not going to bookmark this site. I prefer programming from people who are as native in the language(s) as me. Still has moments. Ultimately, looks like the work of someone who'd rather be coding their own projects rather than doing their current job.

Not gonna get into the "is this LLM speak or not" debate, but this nevertheless reads like someone who read a modern fiction book once, and is (badly) trying to impersonate it.