Birbla

Join the discussion

Write your take first — we'll ask for email only when you're ready to publish.

Sign in
  • Hacker News
  • Does anyone know why ASD-STE100 is having a moment right now? Viral tweet?

    I heard about it from a friend, and posted its "spec" here a few days ago:

    https://asd-web-be-prod.azurewebsites.net/media/wunhmi5y/asd...

    Ironically?, you're not allowed to copy from the pdf (yes, trivially defeatable - but why).

    I guess we'd need a linter (ruff, but for English) that gates whether you're using any non-ASD-STE100 word? Otherwise, yeah, any agent will almost certainly forget this (one line) instruction.

    by gregsadetsky
  • Gotta love how the very first example in Issue 9 of the standard is already self-defeating:

    > "Test" is an approved noun, but not an approved verb.

    > STE: Test B is an alternative to test A.

    So much for clear - unless you know the STE specific rule, the sentence is unambiguously ambiguous.

    Direct access btw since the official site gates downloads with a Google form: https://www.asd-ste100.org/assets/files/ASD-STE100_ISSUE9.pd...

    by summarity
  • It’s ironic that the README has all the tells of being LLM-written: > 53 numbered rules, 9 sections, written in 1983 by people whose readers die when a sentence is ambiguous. The ones doing the heavy lifting: …

    Not really a promising tell for a writing skill, IMO.

    by bayesnet
  • Seems to be doing too much, a 1 line in the system prompt is all you need. And it works well enough.

    “Output tokens are precious, be succinct in your responses. Use ASD-STE100 simplified technical english”

    by hsaliak
  • I like the idea, but not sold on the skill.

    But did lead to me finding https://vale.sh and its various available linters. Might give that a try.

    by jpease
  • STE Misapplication issues and limited adoption

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simplified_Technical_English#M...

    by abeyer
  • On a related note I wrote a skill to apply the economist style guide to LLM generated writing https://github.com/TAJD/economist-style-guide-plugin

    Tends to produce relatively well structured prose that’s easy to edit.

    by tajd
  • I took one of the examples ("Leveraging sqlpipe's robust...") and just prefixed it with this:

    > Rewrite this using ASD-STE100 simplified technical English:

    And you get a good-enough result, it seems? Maybe add another sentence or two for guidance, but what's with needing these giant skills, when ASD-STE100 was surely in the training material?

    by dan_sbl

Explore Birbla archives