15 comments

  • curuinor14 hours ago
    I sometimes say "in the style of Ciechanowski" to LLM presentations I make to myself to learn things, and it creates great JS visualizations. Is this plagiarism (... whatever it is) of the style of "in the style of ..." for art neural net models, do you all think? I don't share the things, I just use them for myself, but I sort of imagine sharing them and it may or may not be a great idea
    • shwaj11 hours ago
      It&#x27;s not plagarism, Ciechanowski didn&#x27;t invent this presentation form. His presentations are examples of &quot;active essays&quot;, a term coined by Alan Kay no later than 2006.<p>(I don&#x27;t know whether Alan invented the concept itself, I&#x27;m not aware of him claiming that)<p>See: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;ieeexplore.ieee.org&#x2F;abstract&#x2F;document&#x2F;5350160" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;ieeexplore.ieee.org&#x2F;abstract&#x2F;document&#x2F;5350160</a>
    • ShinyLeftPad10 hours ago
      If it bothers you, which is a good sign, consider identifying for yourself the key things that make his style and use those in your work.<p>As a bonus you can evolve some things and make it less derivative, this is how people create own style.
      • veunes7 hours ago
        This is probably the healthiest way to use stylistic imitation: treat it as scaffolding, then figure out why it works and throw the scaffolding away
    • arjie12 hours ago
      That&#x27;s pretty clever. They&#x27;re quite good on their own, but people do use this technique. Patrick McKenzie (patio11 here) says that people do use his voice to invoke assistance with corporations. Personally, I often ask for a UI to learn or (with ChatGPT) a &quot;zine&quot; or &quot;infographic&quot;, both of which deliver tremendous utility. They&#x27;ll have the classic errors of some things being dislocated from where they should be but it&#x27;s really still quite good.
    • 0ckpuppet11 hours ago
      No, plagiarism is presenting someone else&#x27;s work as your own. If they&#x27;re useful, share them.
    • micromacrofoot14 hours ago
      It&#x27;s not plagiarism at all to openly do something new in the style of someone else, though it would be polite to provide a little credit if you feel like someone could mistake yours for theirs.
      • _carbyau_12 hours ago
        The <i>actual</i> LLM benchmark - make a site as wonderful both in visual presentation and in code, while being as factually accurate as ciechanow.ski.<p>If the LLM can create something that could be mistaken for that work, that&#x27;s awesome.
    • satvikpendem6 hours ago
      Styles cannot be plagiarized.
    • Transformanshen13 hours ago
      Honestly, I wouldn&#x27;t call it plagiarism. You&#x27;re using the prompt for personal purposes, to better understand the material. If you were copying his text and passing it off as your own, then yeah, that would be not cool. But using his approach with interactive visualizations as a source of inspiration for your own learning materials is fine. If you ever decide to put it out in the open, just mention that you took inspiration from his style and include a link to his work.
  • qmr7 hours ago
    Moon (2009)<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.imdb.com&#x2F;title&#x2F;tt1182345&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.imdb.com&#x2F;title&#x2F;tt1182345&#x2F;</a>
    • rzzzt3 hours ago
      Links you can hear. <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;youtu.be&#x2F;WUraLNrTVeg" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;youtu.be&#x2F;WUraLNrTVeg</a>
    • 1970-01-017 hours ago
      I was just about to say that :)
    • mock-possum5 hours ago
      Moon: Remix RPG Adventure (1997)<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Moon:_Remix_RPG_Adventure" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Moon:_Remix_RPG_Adventure</a>
  • jjcm13 hours ago
    Bartosz Ciechanowski really gave us a look at what the future of the web would look like. It seems like these kinda pages are the norm now with AI assisted dev, which I absolutely love. Fully interactive pages are so much more intuitive than static ones of the past. He has my thanks for ushering this in as a standard.
    • veunes7 hours ago
      AI definitely lowers the cost of building these, but I think Ciechanowski&#x27;s real contribution is upstream of the code. Knowing what to visualize and how to make interaction teach something rather than just look impressive is the rare part
  • big_toast13 hours ago
    (2024)<p>They&#x27;re always so detailed I&#x27;ve wondered why he doesn&#x27;t put a Table of Contents, among other editorial decisions..
  • svobodamartin2 hours ago
    Wow, there is SO much to see and know about the Moon!<p>Cool, thanks!
  • dang13 hours ago
    Related:<p><i>Moon</i> - <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=42443229">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=42443229</a> - Dec 2024 (250 comments)
  • nnevatie8 hours ago
    &gt; we can freely pan the camera around to see the Moon<p>It looks like we can orbit or move around the Moon, instead. Panning usually refers rotating the camera from a fixed position.
    • mock-possum5 hours ago
      I thought panning was moving the camera along the 2D plane at a fixed distance from the subject. Pan left, pan right, etc
      • thombat4 hours ago
        That&#x27;s tracking or dollying, a term from the days when cameras were large and fragile so moving in a straight line meant rolling it on light rail tracks. OP is correct, a pan keeps the camera on top of its fixed tripod and rotates it to follow the action.
  • block_dagger13 hours ago
    That’s no…oh wait, yes it is.
    • actionfromafar2 hours ago
      Also I was surprised to learn that the mass of the Moon is only 1% of Earth mass. I knew surface gravity is one sixth so I guess I sort of assumed that mass would be one sixth.
      • DuncanCoffee2 hours ago
        It&#x27;s because you have the radius on the denominator (I think)<p><pre><code> def calc_gravity(mass_1: float, mass_2: float, radius: float) -&gt; float: G = 6.67408e-11 return G * mass_1 * mass_2 &#x2F; radius**2 earth_mass = 5.972e24 earth_radius = 6.371e6 earth_g = calc_gravity(1.0, earth_mass, earth_radius) print(f&quot;earth: {earth_g:.2f} m&#x2F;s^2&quot;) moon_mass = 7.34767309e22 moon_radius = 1737.4e3 moon_g = calc_gravity(1.0, moon_mass, moon_radius) print(f&quot;moon: {moon_g:.2f} m&#x2F;s^2&quot;) print(f&quot;earth&#x2F;moon proportion: {(earth_g &#x2F; moon_g):.2f}&quot;) </code></pre> prints<p><pre><code> earth: 9.82 m&#x2F;s^2 moon: 1.62 m&#x2F;s^2 earth&#x2F;moon proportion: 6.04</code></pre>
  • jamiek8811 hours ago
    Those different perspectives especially from the virtual planet really enlightened me!
  • xattt11 hours ago
    I’ll be that guy: at the top of the page, the full moon does not show the upcoming lunar eclipse.<p>Are we supposed to believe this is some sort of <i>magical</i> moon?
  • paulpauper13 hours ago
    damn what an impressive side biz..520 paying Patreons for a site that updates basically once a year . An average of $10 means $5k&#x2F;month. Even Gwern only has 1000 patrons, but they are not all paying and the subscription range is much smaller..
    • r053bud13 hours ago
      Almost 20 months since the last post
    • fragmede12 hours ago
      Friend of a friend&#x27;a got a Substack with 50k followers at $10&#x2F;month as a side gig and I&#x27;m like, wait what?
  • veunes7 hours ago
    [dead]
  • proteal13 hours ago
    One of my guilty pleasures in life is coming up with convincing conspiracy theories. A personal favorite of mine is flat moon theory - the idea that the moon is a thin disc, not a sphere. A surprising number of people struggle to provide convincing counter arguments. Next time I’ll link them this site!
    • nfg48 minutes ago
      Lunar libration is easily apparent and actively exploited by amateur astronomers to glimpse more than 50% of the surface.
    • tsukurimashou13 hours ago
      how do you explain moon phases with a disk? also how would a thin disk have enough mass to pull water from the earth?
      • DarknessFalls10 hours ago
        A flat Moon made almost entirely of iridium could have the Moon’s actual mass if it were about 350 km thick.
        • thombat4 hours ago
          But it would promptly deform into a sphere, since its yield strength isn&#x27;t remotely high enough to withstand the pressure of its own gravity
          • IAmBroom27 minutes ago
            These sorts of people do not math.
        • ghostDancer6 hours ago
          And could perfectly hide the secret nazi base on it&#x27;s back. ;-)
  • asdaqopqkq12 hours ago
    Moon autism, nice