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My photoshop skills are near zero, otherwise I'd have long gone and edited xkcd 2347 [1] to say next to the pillar "Something Fabrice Bellard probably implemented while half asleep just to prove he could do it".

There's a lot of FOSS projects that have something written by him in their dependency chain.

[1] https://xkcd.com/2347/




Why use an LLM to do something that would take exactly the same amount of time and a lot less energy to just do in something like MS paint?


> Why use an LLM to do something that would take exactly the same amount of time and a lot less energy to just do in something like MS paint?

Can you prove that it'll take same amount of time for someone with

> My photoshop skills are near zero

to replicate the same level of quality as the generated image? From the looks of it, LLM managed to generate pixel perfect (or at least similar) font and probably took a fraction of a minute for the author to generate.


1] delete the text

2] select any handwriting font

3] replace the text

no one will know the font was changed, no skills required.

AI is going to utterly cripple people intellectually and motivationally.

If you can't even do the above ten second process, you may want to make more of an effort before you find yourself utterly fucked and starving.


>no one will know the font was changed

You're underestimating the effect typography has.

>you may want to make more of an effort

You seriously saying someone should put effort in editing a comic they didn't even cared on editing until they saw someone's comment? And somehow you equate the not putting effort to editing such comic to being fucked and starving?

AI hate sometimes makes people really lose their mind. Doing pointless random shit like this is a legit AI good application. Something that needs no creativity nor intellect to do. Just time. (And, most certainly, more than 10s.)


Two parent comments suggested that a deep level of skill is required to:

1] drag a box around the text and press Delete 2] type some new text in there in a similar handwriting font

The implication is that we're all too stupid and everything is too hard to do even tasks so simple that they take double-digit seconds to accomplish for people with rudimentary computer skill.

We can do things. Saving 5 seconds is going to hurt worse than it helps in the long run... like asking GPT what 2+2 is because you can't figure it out.


> Saving 5 seconds is going to hurt worse than it helps in the long run... like asking GPT what 2+2 is because you can't figure it out.

Looks line it has already started. See a therapist, please, you have an obsession.


It's better to consider the consequences of possible futures than not to; considering the future makes us human.


“ AI is going to utterly cripple people intellectually and motivationally. If you can't even do the above ten second process, you may want to make more of an effort before you find yourself utterly fucked and starving.”

This does not sound like intellectual curiosity. Closer to polarized discourse that imho is making us less human.


When someone is not willing to even attempt to do a 30 second task, assumes they can't, asserts they can't, and people chime in to say AI is the only way they can achieve it, it seems worthwhile to point out the consequences.

Should we not be trying to do things?

Is it not in fact harmful to give up early on even such trivial tasks?

What happens when we actually need to do hard things?


Actually, a fair number of us will see the font change.

People are more aware of typography than you may realize.

...maybe you do!

In which case, this makes real sense: "[almost] nobody will care."

I wouldn't, but I sure would note the font change.


If you had them side by side, or vividly remember the typography of xkcd specifically, maybe.

But most people I think would not notice a comic's handwriting font had changed, as long as it were plausibly handwriting.

Perhaps we could test it? HN will probably lock the replies due to age before I have time to... I'll see.


I don't really know, but finding the right font family might take more time than the LLM


In the case of xkcd you can mimic it with this one:

xkcd-font

Fonts derived from the handwriting of Randall Munroe, the xkcd webcomic author.

https://github.com/ipython/xkcd-font


1. I heard about nano banana and wanted to try it 2. I’m on my phone so no photoshop or whatever


I'd like to see metrics on that. But intuitively I'd say AI is faster.

Basically it's opening the tab and typing your thought vs speed running paint.

@sandermvanvliet what was the process and how long do you estimate it took you?

Personally it would take me awhile to find the template, the exact font and get the positioning just right.

I could make a crude one fast, and I've seen many crude versions of this meme. But matching the font is a bit more work, maybe there's a generator for it, but that's not paint nor do I know where it exists.


“Speed running paint”? You mean opening the image and dragging a text box over the existing text, changing the font to comic sans, and typing the text?

There are complicated workflows in Paint, this is not one of them.


> comic sans

It's not comic sans though, you've already failed.


Why have you failed though? Is the point to try to deceive people to think that XKCD actually published something else? Why not modify the xkcd one without hinding the fact that you modified it?


that fact you think it looks so good that it deceives is a point for ai.

the point is to make a quality meme fast. the guy he replied to appreciated it.

any fan of xkcd knows the original.


Ok


Yeah, everyone knows xkcd uses its own font, Humor Sans.


Oh I did not know that.


Because Nano Banana is better than wasting time for someone who isn't a 10 year veteran of MS Paint arts.

I'm tired of this kind of argument from anti-AI folks.

"Why not pick up a pencil instead?"

What if illustration was never "art"? What if it was always just a rote mechanical skill and the art itself was what the person was trying to communicate?

Maybe the technical aspects don't matter. Maybe it's the message we're conveying, our taste, our curation, our unique lens?


Yes. The art is "take a comic I didn't draw and replace some text." The pro-ai crowd is certainly brimming with artistic ingenuity. So much insight! Thank God they're boiling the oceans for this.


Do it yourself on live video. Otherwise this is such a baseless and needlessly accusatory comment


thanks!


Looked him up, he quite literally pushed the first commits of QEMU ever. Edit: And was the sole developer until 2007!


Fabrice’s DNA is infused in the FOSS ecosystem. He’s an avid and prolific developer. FFMpeg, Qemu, libbf, softfp, BPG, jslinux, etc, etc, etc.


And ffmpeg. And TinyC. And a bunch of other things. The dude is a legend.




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