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There are multiple signs of LLM-speak:

> Over the past year, we’ve seen a shift in what Deno Deploy customers are building: platforms where users generate code with LLMs and that code runs immediately without review

This isn't a canonical use of a colon (and the dependent clause isn't even grammatical)!

> This isn’t the traditional “run untrusted plugins” problem. It’s deeper: LLM-generated code, calling external APIs with real credentials, without human review.

Another colon-offset dependent paired with the classic, "This isn't X. It's Y," that we've all grown to recognize.

> Sandboxing the compute isn’t enough. You need to control network egress and protect secrets from exfiltration.

More of the latter—this sort of thing was quite rare outside of a specific rhetorical goal of getting your reader excited about what's to come. LLMs (mis)use it everywhere.

> Deno Sandbox provides both. And when the code is ready, you can deploy it directly to Deno Deploy without rebuilding.

Good writers vary sentence length, but it's also a rhetorical strategy that LLMs use indiscriminately with no dramatic goal or tension to relieve.

'And' at the beginning of sentences is another LLM-tell.


Can it be that after reading so many LLM texts we will just subconciously follow the style, because that's what we are used to? No idea how this works for native English speakers, but I know that I lack my own writing style and it is just a pseudo-llm mix of Reddit/irc/technical documentation, as those were the places where I learned written English

Yes, I think you're right—I have a hard time imagining how we avoid such an outcome. If it matters to you, my suggestion is to read as widely as you're able to. That way you can at least recognize which constructions are more/less associated with an LLM.

When I was first working toward this, I found the LA Review of Books and the London Review of Books to be helpful examples of longform, erudite writing. (edit - also recommend the old standards of The New Yorker and The Atlantic; I just wanted to highlight options with free articles).

I also recommend reading George Orwell's essay Politics and the English Language.


> It’s deeper: LLM-generated code, calling external APIs with real credentials, without human review.

This also follows the rule of 3s, which LLMs love, there ya go.


Yeah, I feel like this is really the smoking gun. Because it's not actually deeper? An LLM running untrusted code is not some additional level of security violation above a plugin running untrusted code. I feel like the most annoying part of "It's not X, it's Y" is that agents often say "It's not X, it's (slightly rephrased X)", lol, but it takes like 30 seconds to work that out.

It's not just different way of saying something, it's a whole new way to express an idea.

It's unfortunate that, given the entire corpus of human writing, LLMs have seemingly been fine-tuned to reproduce terrible ad copy from old editions of National Geographic.

(Yes, I split the infinitive there, but I hate that rule.)


The web client works just fine!

"Hey, there is an amazing app for learning, but it costs 25$ for your iPhone, so just use web version instead".

Very appealing, makes people try app immediately. :)


I think you essentially have to use the desktop version no matter what—so the real dichotomy is whether you want to use a free program with free online hosting with the bundled (free) web application... or if you want to buy a $25 app.

It seems a lot like saying nobody should use GMail unless they agree to pay for premium Google Services.


I don't have this problem. I bought iOS Anki app for myself many years ago. What I found hard is to recommend it to others, who never heard about spaced repetition yet, especially to young students, who arguably is the main target audience for this kind of tools. They just not jumping into buying 25$ app to try it. As soon as you start mentioning switching to laptop, using web/desktop - they're not jumping into it either. I don't know maybe you all have different experience, but that's what I experienced over the years and it always felt sad, because this price is a prohibitively high for many people.

> More unnecessary meddling

This is a funny take, because we ostensibly assume 'perfect information' when we extol the virtues of capitalism. It would appear the government is supporting capitalism with this particular initiative...


We don't assume perfect information, or rather - it exists already in an unsanctioned form for those that seek it (usually those to whom price is sensitive).

Until this we assume marginality holds true and price dispersion has a benefit in society that we unwittingly enable.


> Cancer treatment goes back to particle physics

Are you speaking about proton therapy? I don’t think there’s any evidence that works better than alternatives


What matters is that exists, and is another possibility for treatments.

https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC4724719/


I disagree that any new possibility for treatments should be lauded. The theoretical side of things is fine, but many new treatments are far more expensive than existing options without offering improved outcomes.

This is orthogonal to your point about CERN being useful.


Some people also believe praying beats vaccination programs.

Unfortunately I have got to know people that are only still around me thanks to this technology that you find needless.


> Some people also believe praying beats vaccination programs.

> Unfortunately I have got to know people that are only still around me thanks to this technology that you find needless.

There is no way to know whether these people would have been served better by receiving radiation therapy. Your statement is tantamount to believing in prayer.


I know they are better than not having received anything at all.

What do you mean by 'any evidence that works better Than alternatives'?

It can deliver radiations to the brain that will peak at the exact position of the cancer, and reduce irradiation in sane tissues. The 'better' is 'less irradiation to sane tissues' that in turn reduces the risk for new cancers.

Note: I'm not expert on the matter, but I had technical visits to IBA and know several PhDs that work there


> What do you mean by 'any evidence that works better Than alternatives'?

I mean exactly that, clinical trials demonstrating that proton therapy is superior to radiation therapy. This is not a question about the physics but about how patients respond (and whether the expense of delivering proton therapy outweighs the expected marginal benefits).


As a non expert, I can't pronounce myself on the subject, I found this recent study:

https://www.mdanderson.org/newsroom/research-newsroom/proton...

But on the subject of discoveries and practical uses, the IBA cyclotrons are also used for other purposes than proton therapy: cleaning exotic fruits from dangerous substances and personalized medicine.


This may be one of the good cases, then. I'm not an expert in cancer but I am a biologist and physician. The head and neck cancer (here) and various pediatric indications get the most attention but it has felt that proton therapy has been seeking an indication for almost 40 years now.

https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6...

The study was designed to show non-inferiority, which doesn't preclude their ability to show an improvement. It would be helpful to see other studies before determining that proton therapy is better (or even non-inferior) to radiation therapy. It's certainly much more expensive, which shows up in the study as many subjects being denied insurance coverage.

Edit: This is now in the weeds, but the per-protocol participants didn't fare better than the intention-to-treat participants, which one might expect since insurance approval lead to dozens of subjects changing treatment arms.


In Europe at least, many insurances cover it if you have the right criterias.

From my visits, they mostly focus on children that have some very nasty cancers, the IBA hospitals are all designed with children in mind (to avoid stressing them), and from my memory, a unique hospital is often enough to treat a whole country for the kind of cancer they target.

Now, if it is on par with classical radiotherapy BUT it gives less subsequent problems, it might be worth the cost as subsequent problems can be as expensive or even more than the original treatment. It becomes an actuarial issue to know where is the tradeoff.


Yes, all of your points are presented as arguments to pay for this (children, comorbodities, specialization, specific cancers)

I think we agree in general, I don't disagree that maybe Proton therapy is not better than radiotherapy, it might but we lack some evidence.

I only argue that if they are equal in quality of treatment and the 'total cost' is the evaluation parameter, it is way more complex than the treatment itself, and it could be justified to use proton therapy, even if more expensive.

Nice talk anyways :)


I guess I wouldn’t send my agents that are doing Actual Work (TM) to exfiltrate my information on the internet.

I’m also unsure, but I haven’t understood HIPAA to constrain governmental actions. It’s a short law so I will review it (not a lawyer all the same).

There are very clear differences, so I find your argument disingenuous at best. While the legality can be doubted for the examples you gave, those administrations released their legal rationale.

The TikTok rationale essentially came to ‘we want genz voters’


The example proposed in "and speeding up experimental iteration in molecular biology" has been done since at least the mid-2000s.

It's concerning that this wasn't identified and augur poorly for their search capabilities.


> But if asian researchers (yes, no offense), were already spamming half the world papers with cheated slop (non reproducible experiments) in the desperate bid of publishing before, I can't imagine now.

Hmm, I follow the argument, but it's inconsistent with your assertion that there is going to be incentive for 'proper work' over time. Anecdotally, I think the median quality of papers from middle- and top-tier Chinese universities is improving (your comment about 'asian researchers' ignores that Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan have established research programs at least in biology).


Japan is notoriously an exception in the region.

South Korea and China produce huge amounts non reproducible experiments.


> Citing a paper to defend your position is just an appeal to authority

Hmm, I guess I read this as a requirement to find enough supportive evidence to establish your argument as novel (or at least supported in 'established' logic).

An appeal to authority explicitly has no reasoning associated with it; is your argument that one should be able to quote a blog as well as a journal article?


It’s also a way of getting people to read things about the subject that they otherwise wouldn’t. I read a lot of philosophy because it was relevant to a paper I was writing, but wasn’t assigned to the entire class.

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