4 ms·

According to the CEO of Medium, the reason is because their founder, Ev Williams, was a fan of typography and asked that their software automatically convert tw

by spuz 11mo ago

According to the CEO of Medium, the reason is because their founder, Ev Williams, was a fan of typography and asked that their software automatically convert two hyphens (--) into a single em-dash. Then since Medium was used as a source for high-quality writing, he believes AI picked up a preference for em-dashes based on this writing. https://youtu.be/1d4JOKOpzqU?si=xXDqGEXiawLtWo5e&t=569 https://youtu.be/1d4JOKOpzqU?si=xXDqGEXiawLtWo5e&t=569

bazoom42 11mo ago
Isn’t the two hyphens just a traditional way to emulate m-dash in ascii? I believe Word does the same.
- ifh-hn 11mo ago
  I thought 2 hyphens is en-dash and 3 was em-dash.
don_neufeld 11mo ago
[Founding CTO of Medium here] It wasn’t just Ev - I can confirm that many of us were typography nuts ;) Marcin for example - did some really crazy stuff. https://medium.design/crafting-link-underlines-on-medium-7c03a9274f9 https://medium.design/crafting-link-underlines-on-medium-7c0...
- trvz 11mo ago
  [flagged]
  - don_neufeld 11mo ago
    Oh we definitely were, I don’t know too many of the folks there these days, it’s been 12 years since I left. Hostile? That’s definitely a take. Curious what you’re thinking there.
    - aapoalas 11mo ago
      I guess one possible avenue of thought is that when I opened the linked article, I had a few seconds to start reading before I got one full screen modal dialog, followed by another 1/5th height popup dialog on top of that to click away. Not that most websites are any better. My favourites are basically the ones that just show a default "sorry but this content is blocked in your region" text.
    - Silhouette 11mo ago
      Probably the most annoying thing on the web lately is Cloudflare and all the "mysteriously verifying that you're a real human" junk. Probably the second most annoying thing on the web today is when you click a link that looks interesting but the page you land on almost immediately says you have to do or pay something to actually read the thing the referring page implied. I don't even start reading a Medium article now if I can see that pop-up below - it's just an instinctive reaction to close the tab. I wish people wouldn't link to articles in walled gardens and search engines would remove those articles from their index - or if that's not reliable then exclude entire sites. Those walls break the whole cross-linking model that made the web the success it is and they waste people's time on a global scale. I recognise that my position may be somewhat hypocritical because I'd rank AI slop as #3 and maybe #1 and #2 are making some kind of attempt to avoid supporting AI slop. But then I'd propose a more draconian solution to that problem as well - one involving punitive penalties for AI companies that scrape others' content without permission to train their models and possibly for anyone else using models that are tainted.
      - don_neufeld 11mo ago
        “Probably the second most annoying thing on the web today is when you click a link that looks interesting but the page you land on almost immediately says you have to do or pay something to actually read the thing the referring page implied.” If you feel you’re entitled to everyone else’s labor - I dunno what to tell you. On the other hand, if you value your own time so little that the only amount you're willing invest in the quality of what you read is $0 - I also don’t know what to tell you. Either way, I hope you figure it out. Medium (at least what it is today) tries to bring down the friction of making valuable content available at a reasonable price. The alternative solutions the web has been to come up with is to take the valuable content and lock it up in hundreds of silos (Substack, etc), leave residual low value content marketing available, and then cover most everything else with a browser melting level of “adtech”
  - dang 11mo ago
    Please don't be a jerk on HN. You can make your substantive points without that. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- nicwolff 11mo ago
  He fixed underlines on Medium 11 years ago – and someone un-fixed them since then?
hshdhdhehd 11mo ago
If medium was a source why doesnt AI models stop half way through their output and ask for subscription and/or payment?
- spuz 11mo ago
  The whole interview goes into that and talks about the benefits and costs of allowing search and AI crawlers access to Medium articles.
- scrollaway 11mo ago
  Give OpenAI a few more months :)
steve1977 11mo ago
> since Medium was used as a source for high-quality writing That explains a lot…
dagmx 11mo ago
That’s not just a Medium thing, lots of text systems do exactly that. Apple has done it across their systems for ages. Microsoft did it in Word for a long time too. It was more or less standard on any tool that was geared towards writers long before Medium was a thing.

by spuz 11mo ago

bazoom42 11mo ago

Isn’t the two hyphens just a traditional way to emulate m-dash in ascii? I believe Word does the same.

ifh-hn 11mo ago
I thought 2 hyphens is en-dash and 3 was em-dash.

don_neufeld 11mo ago

[Founding CTO of Medium here] It wasn’t just Ev - I can confirm that many of us were typography nuts ;) Marcin for example - did some really crazy stuff. https://medium.design/crafting-link-underlines-on-medium-7c03a9274f9 https://medium.design/crafting-link-underlines-on-medium-7c0...

trvz 11mo ago
[flagged]
- don_neufeld 11mo ago
  Oh we definitely were, I don’t know too many of the folks there these days, it’s been 12 years since I left. Hostile? That’s definitely a take. Curious what you’re thinking there.
  - aapoalas 11mo ago
    I guess one possible avenue of thought is that when I opened the linked article, I had a few seconds to start reading before I got one full screen modal dialog, followed by another 1/5th height popup dialog on top of that to click away. Not that most websites are any better. My favourites are basically the ones that just show a default "sorry but this content is blocked in your region" text.
  - Silhouette 11mo ago
    Probably the most annoying thing on the web lately is Cloudflare and all the "mysteriously verifying that you're a real human" junk. Probably the second most annoying thing on the web today is when you click a link that looks interesting but the page you land on almost immediately says you have to do or pay something to actually read the thing the referring page implied. I don't even start reading a Medium article now if I can see that pop-up below - it's just an instinctive reaction to close the tab. I wish people wouldn't link to articles in walled gardens and search engines would remove those articles from their index - or if that's not reliable then exclude entire sites. Those walls break the whole cross-linking model that made the web the success it is and they waste people's time on a global scale. I recognise that my position may be somewhat hypocritical because I'd rank AI slop as #3 and maybe #1 and #2 are making some kind of attempt to avoid supporting AI slop. But then I'd propose a more draconian solution to that problem as well - one involving punitive penalties for AI companies that scrape others' content without permission to train their models and possibly for anyone else using models that are tainted.
    - don_neufeld 11mo ago
      “Probably the second most annoying thing on the web today is when you click a link that looks interesting but the page you land on almost immediately says you have to do or pay something to actually read the thing the referring page implied.” If you feel you’re entitled to everyone else’s labor - I dunno what to tell you. On the other hand, if you value your own time so little that the only amount you're willing invest in the quality of what you read is $0 - I also don’t know what to tell you. Either way, I hope you figure it out. Medium (at least what it is today) tries to bring down the friction of making valuable content available at a reasonable price. The alternative solutions the web has been to come up with is to take the valuable content and lock it up in hundreds of silos (Substack, etc), leave residual low value content marketing available, and then cover most everything else with a browser melting level of “adtech”
- dang 11mo ago
  Please don't be a jerk on HN. You can make your substantive points without that. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
nicwolff 11mo ago
He fixed underlines on Medium 11 years ago – and someone un-fixed them since then?

hshdhdhehd 11mo ago

If medium was a source why doesnt AI models stop half way through their output and ask for subscription and/or payment?

spuz 11mo ago
The whole interview goes into that and talks about the benefits and costs of allowing search and AI crawlers access to Medium articles.
scrollaway 11mo ago
Give OpenAI a few more months :)

steve1977 11mo ago

> since Medium was used as a source for high-quality writing That explains a lot…

dagmx 11mo ago

That’s not just a Medium thing, lots of text systems do exactly that. Apple has done it across their systems for ages. Microsoft did it in Word for a long time too. It was more or less standard on any tool that was geared towards writers long before Medium was a thing.