3 ms·
"substrate" - I don't know what training they did with Opus 4.7 --> Fable/Mythos 5, but dang does it like the word substrate. Drives me insane. I had never he
by kperry 3mo ago
"substrate" - I don't know what training they did with Opus 4.7 --> Fable/Mythos 5, but dang does it like the word substrate. Drives me insane. I had never heard anyone use this word prior in real technical writing or speaking.
- timcobb 3mo agoThe first week I encountered this "substrate" I asked it to justify the usage and IIRC it claimed the word is used in some infra/systems lexicons... I wonder...
- deleted 3mo ago[deleted]
- carljungslabtek 3mo agoIt’s incredibly popular in the mushroom growing community. Maybe they’ve trained it on the shroomery.org? It could also explain the alleged leaked full reasoning logs that are totally bonkers incoherent digital glossolalia…
- netniuq 3mo ago"ledger" for me – used extremely rarely pre-LLM and Claude just loves it
- Octoth0rpe 3mo agoIt's a pretty common word if you've worked in anything that vaguely resembles an accountancy system. Also, anything crypto related will often use that word (the distributed ledger, etc)
- thewebguyd 3mo agoThat's the case for most of these LLM tropes or word choices. They are all common lexicon in their respective fields, but the LLM doesn't make that distinction and uses them everywhere making them standout. No one would bat an eye about "ledger" appearing at a high frequency in content about accounting, but it starts to look odd if "ledger" is showing up in other contexts. "Load bearing" is from engineering; "Substrate" is primarily from biology & biochem, etc. I don't know if this is true, but part of me suspects the labs want to make the models appear smarter so they reinforce this word choice in the weights, assigning some words a higher intelligence weight or something. "I will show you a list of options" vs. "I will surface a ledger of your options" and it prefers the later to sound smart to the human reader.
- pixl97 3mo agoIt sounds like you're saying labs intentionally doing it, but it's far more likely the labs or post trainers are unintentionally doing it by upvoting answers that seem smarter than those with more common language. Of course this presents another conundrum, people that are smart typically have a vastly larger lexicon then those that are not. Humans typically have a lot more social clues on when to use those words and when not to, but it doesn't always work. I loved reading science/biology books as a kid far beyond my ages reading level. Actually using those words around other kids got me called a nerd.
- Octoth0rpe 3mo ago> No one would bat an eye about "ledger" appearing at a high frequency in content about accounting, but it starts to look odd if "ledger" is showing up in other contexts. The reason why I chose that specific term to push on is that practically every SaaS has a ledger _somewhere_ in its stack to keep track of customer payments. I'll give you load bearing and substrate, but ledger IMO should be quite common. Certainly a career devoted to say compiler internals or some specific scientific product could avoid it, but I'd imagine a sizable majority of HN users have worked on some system that accepts online payments for services, necessitating some contact with something likely referred to as a ledger.
- jondwillis 3mo agoA coworker started spamming this word in ~April while working on system design/architecture.
- petilon 3mo agoClearly you don't work for Microsoft: https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/discussions/microsoft-365/exploring-the-office-365-substrate/1044294 https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/discussions/microsoft-36...
- jihadjihad 3mo agoAnother one is "surface", like in "across all product surfaces". I've been in the field for 15 years and have never heard that particular usage before.
- alex_suzuki 3mo agoI’ve heard (and used) the term “API surface” a lot…
- psygn89 3mo agoI do UI design/dev and say "surface up" a lot. Although I don't use the term, in this area people call different container depths as surfaces (base, card, overlay as surface).
- noduerme 3mo agoAttack surface is another one I use.
- nobleach 3mo agoYes, I've always heard it used in this context. I really believe the other use is because someone misheard "service", and it stuck.
- noduerme 3mo agoThat's rather funny! Probably true. "API surface" sounds exactly like a CEO trying to say "API service" without understanding what an API is. lol.
- Telemakhos 3mo agoIt's pretty common to read "attack surface" in security.
- devin 3mo agoYeah, I imagine this is a big part of it.
- perching_aix 3mo agoI actually found it somewhat useful conceptually, but yes, it definitely does overuse it lol
- xvilka 3mo ago"reconciling" is the most annoying one, in my opinion.
- deaton 3mo agoThe one I've noticed a ton recently with Sonnet 5 is that it loves the phrase "different not in degree, but in kind." It drags that one out constantly now, at least once a day. Gemini and GPT don't at all.
- wcookeverton 3mo agoseriously... i literally tell claude every prompt to not use the word substrate. i have never seen an agent use a single word so much. how did that happen? it is so interesting
- aakresearch 3mo agoDoes it obey?