alt Hacker NewsHuh! I had not noticed that trend at all.
Here's the Google Maps article: https://laurenleek.substack.com/p/how-google-maps-quietly-al... - note that the Hacker News title left that word out: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46203343
It's possible I was subconsciously influenced by that article (I saw it linked from a few places yesterday I think), but in this case I really did want to emphasize that OpenAI have started doing this without making any announcements about it at all, which I think is noteworthy in its own right.
(I'm also quite enjoying that this may be the second time I've leaked the existence of skills from a major provider - I wrote about Anthropic's skills implementation a week before they formally announced it: https://simonwillison.net/2025/Oct/10/claude-skills/)
It’s definitely a useful word! Modern tech rollouts often do happen without fanfare. And the word alerts readers to a kind of story shape. So I can see why people use it! Its usage reminds me of when competitive video games develop a new meta, a new powerful technique. There follows a short period where everyone spams the technique over and over. Eventually people figure out a counter and the meta quietly disappears. (Couldn’t help myself!)