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
micromacrofoot•Aug 24, 2026
It'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_•Aug 25, 2026
The actual LLM benchmark - make a site as wonderful both in visual presentation and in code, while being as factually accurate as ciechanow.ski.
If the LLM can create something that could be mistaken for that work, that's awesome.
arjie•Aug 25, 2026
That's pretty clever. They'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 "zine" or "infographic", both of which deliver tremendous utility. They'll have the classic errors of some things being dislocated from where they should be but it's really still quite good.
shwaj•Aug 25, 2026
It's not plagarism, Ciechanowski didn't invent this presentation form. His presentations are examples of "active essays", a term coined by Alan Kay no later than 2006.
(I don't know whether Alan invented the concept itself, I'm not aware of him claiming that)
No, plagiarism is presenting someone else's work as your own. If they're useful, share them.
ShinyLeftPad•Aug 25, 2026
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.
As a bonus you can evolve some things and make it less derivative, this is how people create own style.
paulpauper•Aug 24, 2026
damn what an impressive side biz..520 paying Patreons for a site that updates basically once a year . An average of $10 means $5k/month. Even Gwern only has 1000 patrons, but they are not all paying and the subscription range is much smaller..
r053bud•Aug 24, 2026
Almost 20 months since the last post
fragmede•Aug 25, 2026
Friend of a friend'a got a Substack with 50k followers at $10/month as a side gig and I'm like, wait what?
big_toast•Aug 24, 2026
(2024)
They're always so detailed I've wondered why he doesn't put a Table of Contents, among other editorial decisions..
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!
tsukurimashou•Aug 24, 2026
how do you explain moon phases with a disk? also how would a thin disk have enough mass to pull water from the earth?
DarknessFalls•Aug 25, 2026
A flat Moon made almost entirely of iridium could have the Moon’s actual mass if it were about 350 km thick.
jjcm•Aug 24, 2026
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.
asdaqopqkq•Aug 25, 2026
Moon autism, nice
xattt•Aug 25, 2026
I’ll be that guy: at the top of the page, the full moon does not show the upcoming lunar eclipse.
Are we supposed to believe this is some sort of magical moon?
jamiek88•Aug 25, 2026
Those different perspectives especially from the virtual planet really enlightened me!
10 Comments
If the LLM can create something that could be mistaken for that work, that's awesome.
(I don't know whether Alan invented the concept itself, I'm not aware of him claiming that)
See: https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/abstract/document/5350160
As a bonus you can evolve some things and make it less derivative, this is how people create own style.
They're always so detailed I've wondered why he doesn't put a Table of Contents, among other editorial decisions..
Moon - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42443229 - Dec 2024 (250 comments)
Are we supposed to believe this is some sort of magical moon?