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Comment by hovering_nox | Hacker News Reader

Why can the author only write in all lowercase?

At least they use punctuation. We've recently had a project on HN where the author used only lower cases and no punctuation because they equated it to being chained by the system.

rip cormac mccarthy

It's your problem only.

The fight against capitalism spares no letter.

Seeing Anya (the girl pointing at pictures), I'd guess the author is partial to Japanese culture. As their writing system does not have a concept of upper/lower case, he might just have determined that they are superfluous. Or he is simply an eccentric. Though I guess this is one of the things that some folks will not care and others getting hung up mightily.

I personally don't really mind that bit of capitalization that English does. German is much worse.

>I personally don't really mind that bit of capitalization that English does. German is much worse.

You misspelled 'better'.

Their twitter indicate Amsterdam, I just think they are an anime fan.

And they are not alone.

https://twitter.com/karpathy/status/1792261360430293176

d u xpct hbrw spkr twrt nnglsh lk ths?

I think you mispelled that slightly:

> d' 'ou 'xp'ct h'br'w sp''k'rs t' wr't' 'n 'ngl'sh l'k' th's?

Not quite the same. Capitalization doesn't add much to languages written with the Latin alphabet. THE ROMANS ONLY VVROTE VVITH CAPITAL LETTERS.

But the Greeks added vowels to the alphabet because Indo-European languages rely a lot on vowels (as opposed to Semitic languages which are easy to understand without vowels).

It's to drive engagement by getting people to comment on it.

I remember back in the IRC days many people wrote all lowercase. Seems like smartphone keyboards, which autocapitalize, have changed that trend.

Because Sam Altman does it and he is rich, so...

Where? His blog looks normal

Just look at his Twitter: https://x.com/sama

And no, Twitter is no excuse to type like an illiterate teenager.

And I will bet you someone edits his blogs to not look like that.

"illiterate"

Do you think using capitals at the beginning of a sentence aids comprehension?

I view punctuation and spelling rules as a way to maximize comprehension (akin to having a linting standard). In non formal writing, I don't see any harm in avoiding capitalization (at least it doesn't seem to me to help understanding / reading speed, etc at all).

It's like people typing "K" instead of "OK". It's disrespectful to the reader, suggesting that the reader is not important enough to warrant typing an extra letter.

One would expect Altman to know how to use the SHIFT key when running a massive business, but, hey - once you achieve escape velocity from society, you don't have to live by its norms or grammar rules.

I can assure you that it would cost most people people here a promotion or a raise if they did this at work.

By the way, I went through his Twitter - Altman was writing normally in 2022: https://x.com/sama/status/1505264452857331714

Then, I guess, he decided, he was too important to follow grammar rules.

Creative writing + Hyperfocused autistic obsession = The Anime Guide to Neural Networks and Large Language Models.

Too poor to fix their shift key

this is the answer lol

You got two of them

Author is probably young, that's how gen-z are these days, if they dont have autocorrect on, the whole text will be in lowercase.

Also it looks more casual and authentic, less LLM generated

It's the cool thing to do now...

The treatment of the English language on TikTok is giving the late Yahoo Answers a run for its money.

That makes me laugh. I remember when it was the cool thing to do on Usenet.

2024 is the year that most of us are collectively growing out of the early social media era all-lowercase thing, but everyone hasn't gotten the memo yet.

so more people comment on the hn post and it will rank higher in the algo

such as your comment and my comment!

This comment is unsubstantial and provides no value. Why do you care about this?

And why can't the author pass its text into a LLM and simply ask: "plz fix frist word of each paragraf by using an uppercase letter k txh bye".

A just question.

do you wanna be cool or not?

He probably thinks it's cool. Common on Twitter these days.

Sam Altman does it too

this comment made me go back to the project page. i haven't even noticed that fact while reading it for the first time. strange.

shift key busted

because it annoys HN commenters

the nitpicking in this thread is incredible lmao

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