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Comment by geir_isene | Hacker News Reader

I like the image. It was simple.

But doesn't that make it bad? It doesn't say anything new. Unlike the software in question, which is personalized, so it's not even symbolically reflecting the topic. It's a sheer waste of pixels and time spent looking at it or scrolling past the cognitive junk food.

Come on, bro. Why you gotta be like that?

I mean, I'm a gwern fan, but...can't you just let people enjoy things?

Consider the cost of generating the image.

I didn't enjoy it. It flunks my criteria for good AI images, because there is no there there: https://gwern.net/blog/2025/good-ai-samples It wasted my thoughts as I stared at it, trying to learn about the author and 'X uses this' and thinking about how moleskin notebooks related to personal computing etc... only to realize I had been lied to and my time wasted, as he took advantage of my good faith - the good faith I extend to a fellow hacker, that their images will be meaningful and worth reading.

Just as their words are presumed to be meaningful and worth reading... but slightly less so every day, I fear.

> I didn't enjoy it.

Then it wasn't for you. No big whoop.

> It wasted my thoughts as I stared at it,

I think we have arrived at the kernel of the problem. :-)

The rest of this comment is left as an exercise for the student.

> Then it wasn't for you. No big whoop.

Ah yes. I remember this in Penny Arcade: https://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2004/03/24/the-adventures...

> can't you just let people enjoy things?

Dumping slop into the public commons deserves criticism.

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