I was downvoted a few weeks ago for making this exact point. Humans can and do use em-dashes occasionally, but given that you have to go digging for the key combination, you're not using it every 3rd sentence like every AI model does.
> but given that you have to go digging for the key combination
Except you don’t. If you’re on an Apple OS, by default doing -- (two hyphens) auto-substitutes for an em-dash.
Also, the key combination isn’t even hard. Depending on the layout you’re using, it’s either ⌥- or ⌥⇧-. My fingers press that (and the appropriate combination for apostrophes too) without me having to think. Those ⌥ and ⇧ symbols (and many more) I have mapped to text snippets.
We’re using computers, these things are trivial to do and customise, you don’t have to “hunt” for anything.
The HN readership has changed massively in that timeframe, from the earlier Hackers and Painters / libertarian ideology to a much more socialist outlook. I could speculate about the reasons for this, but my theories would probably attract even more downvotes than just pointing out the obvious change in tone will.
One trend that's bigger than tech is that educated professional class has massively consolidated into the liberal column in the wake of Trump, it used to be more like 66/33 lean liberal.
So that's going to impact any professional class community, whether it's tech or not.
I was talking about the broader professional population, there's polling on this and they've (we've) really consolidated left as the right wing has become more and more about culture war.
The hacker crowd has always had a heavy socialist or even communist component - sharing and coöperative work is a big part of the FLOSS community, after all!
I'd say HN is slowly catching up with traditional SV startup culture dying, and seeing more non-VC-funded people flowing in as sites like Reddit enshittify. Those people identify more as tech workers than as early startup employees who aren't a billionaire yet.
Combine that with recent economic and political developments, and it isn't exactly surprising that a growing part of HN isn't a big fan of the über-wealthy tech elite trying to make their life worse.
"I've never worked at any company where there was any limit to the work to be done." Then you live in a bubble. Many organisations are restricted in available profitable work to be done, by many factors. Capital & cashflow, capacity & physical limits, demand, regulation & licensing, supply chains & inputs, management bandwidth, risk tolerance, access to credit, etc. etc.
