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Comment by kstrauser | Hacker News Reader

And in reality, someone making a personal project used a tool at their disposal to add pretty pictures to their website, said website not being a part of the project in any way.

If they vibe coded the app, sure, be skeptical. But there's no indication they did, just that they wanted images for their website, and they're a software engineer and not a graphics designer.

I put about as much weight in the origin of those graphics as which website editor they use. If they were advertising themselves as a web designer, sure, maybe that's relevant. That's not what they're doing here though.

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Not having any pictures at all is better than having AI pictures, in my opinion

Perhaps it’s a filter to intentionally scope audience.

And you’re not just having a kneejerk reaction?

Why is that different from disliking their font preference? It's an aesthetic choice, made by someone who's not advertising their web design expertise, that's purely subjective.

If this site were their product, maybe that'd matter. But why does that matter in this context?

Because it shows a lack of respect for and understanding of the work graphic artists actually do. Now if that's your brand, great. You are communicating it effectively. If it's not your brand, it's probably worth considering the subtext in your presentation.

> it shows a lack of respect for and understanding of the work graphic artists actually do

No more than wearing off-the-rack clothes shows a lack of respect for and understanding of the work tailors actually do.

No more than wearing factory-woven cloth shows a lack of respect for and understanding of the work weavers actually do.

No more than heating a can of soup shows a lack of respect for and understanding of the work chefs de cuisine actually do.

In my cases as well as yours, one certainly can choose to spend extra for the luxury of the best to meet the want, but it is also fine to spend less and meet the need. In my cases as well as yours, judging someone for the value he assigns to a luxury is gauche.

The cost of obtaining the alternative; Creative Commons use images or even just inserting emojis is already free. Your argument doesn’t hold up.

It's free software. Graphic artists don't work for free.

> Because it shows a lack of respect for and understanding of the work graphic artists actually do.

If I cannot afford a graphic designer, then my choices are:

  - AI slop
  - MS Paint graphics (or really poorly made stuff in Inkscape)
  - stealing someone else's icons and graphics off of Google Images (or trying to find stuff with an open license)
  - not including graphics

Obviously the first one is the easiest when you want something, but also quite controversial.

It shows a lack of attention to detail when the illustration for "Merkle Trees" is not a forest (it has cycles). And "A Simple Key Hierarchy" could use an illustration of a real example instead of nonsense.

It shows the author is willing to publish content that looks right at first glance but falls apart upon closer inspection, lacking rigor and consistency. That same description could also apply to your average amateur cryptosystem, which tends to be insecure as a result. If the author has low standards for images, might he also have low standards for his own code?

In this case, probably not! The text on the website and the author’s comments here and his background all suggest that he writes high-quality cryptosystems. But the AI art by itself is still evidence pointing to lower quality.

If someone used comic sans for their cryptographic software landing page, and someone else said: "this font makes me wonder if I can have any faith in this human being's aesthetic sense", I am willing to bet a nickel that you wouldn't be employing any of the same arguments that you're now employing to defend their choice of LLM images so devotedly.

Many people find using LLM images tacky and garish. It screams low-effort slop, to a significant number of people. When it's so easy to find great usable images on wikipedia, for example, it's hard to know why a sophisticated technical person would take the risk involved in this choice.

I'd a quick look there at the images on the wp page for chains, and the one for knots - some really excellent images. One doesn't need a PhD in web design to pull it off, either.

Hmm, maybe I need to reconsider having my choice of fonts enforced in my web browser settings (or have a whitelist of "comic sans", at least)

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