Lots of comments about the general use of AI here, but in particular I think the AI renderings are counterproductive and especially misleading in this application.
The original drawings have ambiguities in them; they are well done but perspective and scale are off, and there are lots of questions about particular details of the drawings. The AI drawings simply take these particular questionable details and render them as "real."
There should be real life artifacts for many of these tools. LLMs can just as easily go search the web for images of those as create completely unreliable, fictional renderings of the same.
mcbishop
FYI: The one tool page I checked out included a real life artifact.
jacquesm
The ones I have looked at all have an AI generated 'real life artifact' which makes them non-real life. Which page where you looking at?
The LLM aftertaste is terrible but the idea is very nice.
If it's worth doing, why not do it well? This is a tiny book by book standards and writing this text would be a matter of a few weeks at most. And that way it would be much more valuable (and less off-putting)
scrollop
Perhaps he is busy, and this is a passion project.
As he says, he doesn't have much time to research the entire book.
You think he has "weeks" to write it up for others?
I imagine there are thousands of interesting projects people are doing solo and can't be bothered creating website to share with others for.
If AI can do this- fantastic! Let people moan if they can't see the positives of this. He's not trying to win an award or is paid to create a site for the public.
jacquesm
It's not a passion project if you make it with AI.
anonymous908213
How far our standards have fallen if spending 5 minutes typing into a chatbox is "a passion project".
kreyenborgi
Would be interesting, but the ai images and writing makes me trust it less.
WillAdams
An early project on my CNC machine was a basic set of inside/outside calipers:
It would be interesting to see what would be involved in making the digital files which would allow re-creating each of these objects.
jacquesm
Wow. Well done! How did you do the markings? Do I understand it right that you also made the fasteners?
Were the holes at the top routed or done by hand?
WillAdams
I drew up the markings in Macromedia Freehand MX, exported as an EPS, opened that in Fontforge, made it into a font, then used F-Engrave to V-carve them.
The fasteners were sourced from a local hardware store and modified w/ a hacksaw, a wire crimping tool which was just the right size to hold them, and a file.
The holes and outline were cut using a CNC following G-code output by MakerCAM (a fork of the Flash file PartKam).
That was a _long_ time ago, and the free software has gotten much better/easier, and these days I work for a company which makes integrated software for the CNC machines which we sell.
jacquesm
Beautiful work. I should do some blog posts on metalworking. It's so satisfying. I very much miss my Canadian workshop (2 lathes, big one and a small one for precision stuff), saw, mill (Bridgeport clone), shaper, 8x4' plasma cutter, welding tools) , what I have now is so limited in comparison. Otoh it's fine, all those tools require a lot of upkeep and if you use them infrequently then that's a lot of overhead.
I'd love to see more things you've made.
WillAdams
I'm a corporate shill these days, so it's mostly on our official file-sharing site:
Though I will note that I got into small-scale and inexpensive CNC because I couldn't figure out how to fit a Bridgeport that was being sold locally for less than scrap value in working condition into my basement.
I've been debating getting a lathe or making a Gingery Lathe or going the 3D print route:
I've found that everywhere I lived within a kilometer there also lives a guy who has a complete machine shop in their garage. The problem is to find that guy. But it is really more than a coincidence by now. And once you find that guy you usually also find a friend because machinists are almost without exception nice people.
WillAdams
Same, although these days, all-too-often one learns of this when one sees a garage sale notice that the shop is being sold (picked up some pretty nice tools thus).
Gabriel54
I am very happy to see people make use of AI to do previously impractical work, but the quality of writing on this page sounds like a poorly written middle school research paper.
> Not a diary, not a family chronicle - a tool book.
> As reliable as it says on each page - no more and no less.
> Pages without a special note have been editorially reviewed: carefully checked and corrected.
This sounds like an extremely interesting topic but the lack of care in the presentation is disappointing.
cwillu
“carefully checked and corrected” is also the sort of thing that llm's like to insert when you tell them to carefully check and correct in the prompt, and isn't otherwise really a natural thing to write.
jacquesm
LLMs love all kinds of idioms that indicate quality work (even when it isn't): 'checked', 'correct/corrected', 'witnessed', 'works/working', 'verified', 'validated'. They overuse these to the point that they become flags rather than reassurances.
shevy-java
> the quality of writing on this page sounds like a poorly written middle school research paper.
But that is typical AI quality. It is a fancified Babelfish 2.0 translator.
Some humans also use AI to "interact" with other humans. They don't seem to
understand that this is a problem for some humans. When a human AI slops me,
I stop all any every further interaction (assuming I can find out that this
human did so. It is not always possible to find that out).
Gabriel54
I don't like to frame it in terms of, "this person is using AI, so I am no longer interested in communicating", because it is not really the AI that is the problem. It is the lack of effort put into communication with another human. AI can be extremely helpful for some people (e.g., proofreading text if one's native language isn't English). But this use case is almost never a problem if done carefully because the original ideas were all there in the beginning.
I focus my frustration on writing that is circular, vague, unnecessarily explanatory, etc. In my experience this is a symptom of the fact that there were no original ideas to begin with.
amelung
Maybe this is because of the translation, I guess the author has written the non-English version first and then got it translated into English with AI, adding some additional explanations if necessary.
Gabriel54
That thought certainly crossed my mind, but having worked with people using LLMs for this purpose successfully, this instead comes across as taking a simple idea and asking {model} to expand this two or three sentence idea into a web page.
scrollop
It may be the translation, however, this project is a passion for him. I would guess the passion is the book itself, and though he wants to share his passion, I imagine creating the actual page for others is tedious compared to the work of discovering the book. I have had the same issue.
If an AI can save you time so you can continue with your passion, I say go for it. No one has paid you to create the page, he's not vying for an award. If people are interested they can read it.
taylorfinley
This [0] is my secret weapon against this kind of slop. Any time I see any of these markers I tell my agent to read this again. Works unreasonably well.
Can anyone tell me how they would have made the paper and the pigments used in the drawings (or would these be called paintings)? Is this water colour? Is it reasonable for me to make my own paper and paints following the same receipts that would have been used to make this book and its contents?
jacquesm
Pigments are a rabbithole that will suck you in and spit you out 10 years later with arcane knowledge about grinding up various gemstones, drying plants and all manner of minerals such as clays and so on. You will also be exceptionally well traveled.
If you're ever in the Netherlands I can recommend a visit to the Zaanse Schans where they have a mill[1] from the days when pigments were ground with windpower. You can see the colors and you'll have a better understanding of why Royal Blue[2] was Royal (because it was incredibly expensive to make a lasting blue pigment).
Thank you for the links, I really appreciate that. I have never been to the Netherlands, but it is someplace I would love to travel one day.
I imagine it would be a rabbit hole, but rabbit holes can be a lot of fun. I will have to work with the poor-man pigments though. No ultra expensive gemstone grinding for me :-).
jacquesm
Poor man pigments: vegetable matter. You can get surprisingly far on that alone. Side effect warning: people may think you need burning at a stake or weighing.
Good quality pestles can be found on flea markets, people hardly ever use them now so they don't appreciate what they've got.
tarheels100
I don't quite understand the degree of negativity given this is someone's personal project. They state that English is not their native language, so it's reasonable to me to leverage machine translation tools. For a work in progress, it seems good and I'm glad they are able to share it. You have to start somewhere, and getting it out there helps get more people involved.
stronglikedan
We're still in the AI-use-is-black-and-white phase. Most people still think it's more than just a tool still, cuz it still seems like magic to them. We'll get there, and then it will just be a tool like any other. Hopefully then we'll start holding the people behind it accountable when appropriate, instead of allowing it to be used as a scapegoat, as if it has agency.
BlackRabbit1
The entire website looks heavily LLM written/analyzed - and I'm not talking of the design which I'm fine with.
This devalues the scientific value a lot because every line must be checked for correctness and source.
The book itself is very beautiful and I'm thankful for the high quality pictures.
moffers
The author says in the introduction that a certain amount of the book is verified. Presence of LLM-use doesn’t inherently make something of less value.
wise_young_man
In ways it does though. There are telltale signs of AI writing that once you see it across sites repeatedly, it starts to be annoying to find.
Couple of immediate examples:
- The Codex has 154 pages. 127 of them have been reviewed, 27 not yet.
- Each of the 154 pages gets a page of its own.
If an author doesn’t have time to write. Why should I give up my time to read?
scrollop
Maybe he is translating to English. Maybe he is translating himself and this is an artifact of German.
"If an author doesn’t have time to write. Why should I give up my time to read?"
Perhaps he is taking the time to translate it for you, otherwise you'd have to do it yourself.
0c3ca83
> and this is an artifact of German
It isn't.
tropicalhunter
Can you point to any of those in the linked text?
boredatoms
Our job isnt to review the work of LLMs for free
albedoa
You could simply read the linked text yourself. This is worse than asking someone to google something for you.
iamacyborg
From the first tool page. Clearly LLM slop.
> Löffelholz does not open his book with a showpiece. He opens it with a practical tool you can adjust: choose a size, clamp it, work.
jacquesm
It's all over.
CamperBob2
If an author doesn’t have time to write. Why should I give up my time to read?
Because -- if the author is to be believed -- essentially no one bothered to look at this work at all before AI became available to help with it. I had certainly never heard of it before. Had you?
That's the choice being offered. Not between "LLM slop" or "painstaking human authorship", but between something being done or nothing at all being done.
lionkor
OBVIOUS presence of LLM-use devalues something to the point that you have to wonder why a human is in the loop at all
gradus_ad
The problem with AI generated content is, it tells me you didn't care enough about the work to do it yourself. To understand it fully, to the point where you don't need or even want to hand the work off to an LLM.
Interacting with AI content makes me feel like I'm consuming something that was created purely for engagement farming. Not that human created content wasn't for engagement farming, but noticing an AI tell breaks the suspension of disbelief in a way. It devalues the relationship between creator and consumer, so that genuine care is not being shared. It's like I'm a cow being milked on an industrial engagement farm.
davhern
I don't think is about caring or not caring, you can care about an idea but not have time or resources to work, or lack the technical knowledge. I have plenty of experience (10+ years) but my coding time is very limited, does that mean that I care less? No, just that I don't have time enough to code.
I'm not pro AI by any means and I don't like the way this tech is turning the world into, but I see this as a people's problem, AI is a tool, the problem is how is being shoved into everything. Is nothing else than abstraction on top of another level of abstraction.
Being an engineer is about finding the best way to solve the issue at hand. Your client won't care if you use to code AI, or if you use Javascript, or C#, Java,... your client will care that the issue at hand is fixed on the best possible way. Fix the issue fast and you'll have a happy client.
scrollop
*
1 point by scrollop 0 minutes ago | parent | next | edit | delete [–]
"The problem with AI generated content is, it tells me you didn't care enough about the work to do it yourself."
It may be the translation, however, this project is a passion for him. I would guess the passion is the book itself, and though he wants to share his passion, I imagine creating the actual page for others is tedious compared to the work of discovering the book. I have had the same issue.
If an AI can save you time so you can continue with your passion, I say go for it. No one has paid you to create the page, he's not vying for an award. If people are interested they can read it.
There are likely many people out there doing remarkable work but they can't be bothered creating a website to share with others.
If AI can do that, fantastic - even though some people will moan. There are always people who complain.
esseph
> It's like I'm a cow being milked on an industrial engagement farm.
Always were, just now this signal makes people aware of it and they don't like how it makes them feel.
doug_durham
Wow. This is the exact opposite of what that the site is. It is very clear that the author of the web site cares deeply about the material and has put a lot of effort into the work. You are letting your personal biases color your view. That is your right, but check to see if it is making you happy.
jacquesm
Note that (1) this is just your opinion and (2) that he has put a lot less effort into it than others have put into similar endeavors which as a result have a different level of authenticity.
> You are letting your personal biases color your view. That is your right, but check to see if it is making you happy.
Why the free psycho analysis? GP just made a statement.
boyohboy2026
[flagged]
dang
We've banned this account for repeatedly breaking the site guidelines.
Please don't create accounts to break HN's rules with.
This work lacks merit. The descriptions of things from the book are not adequately descriptive, because the LLM that wrote the descriptions doesn't understand the drawings. It's mostly prose and little substance.
cwnyth
Oh, look, another drive-by throwaway profile that doesn't add anything meaningful to the conversation and just pisses on those who call out sloppy AI writing.
iamacyborg
> Judge the work on its merit.
We are, it reads like shit. Calling it slop is being polite.
yababa_y
[flagged]
dang
Please don't cross into personal attack, regardless of how wrong someone is or you feel they are.
I suppose the implication is that you cannot presume human care with evidence of LLM use, it's considerably more likely that it's an indicator of lack of care, unfortunately.
It's like saying "but a lot of human care goes into factory made X" when comparing it to handmade X. It starts on a lesser footing unless evidence suggests otherwise
criddell
If you are deciding to delegate parts to AI, that’s probably a signal that it should just be edited out. If it isn’t worth your time to create, it probably isn’t worth my time to read.
boredatoms
Any amount of slop makes the whole thing feel fake
QuantumNomad_
There’s nothing delusional about what he said.
AI is being used for the most part to shit out as much “content” as possible in order to show ads, sell courses and other products (bonus points if what is sold is itself also pure AI slop), or to finish tasks at work with as little effort as can be done, so that boss man is impressed by the velocity. “Who cares about quality? This is 2026, bro.”
The actual thoughtful use of AI is the minority case. Not the default. We humans are lazy, and when we can get away with less effort we put as little effort as we can into things.
Gabriel54
Using AI to go through an old manuscript has nothing to do with writing up those same results with AI. These are completely separate concerns.
lelandfe
Is the author qualified to verify this book?
katzenq
I at least appreciate the warning on unreviewed generated pages and excluding them from SEO until reviewed, but it's still all untrustworthy spam by default.
There was one the other day. Seemed really compelling. History thing where they walked through a statistical life of a regular person at some point in history. Really enjoyed it until I realized the whole thing was basically ai slop. Totally devalued real work for some slop BS. So frustrating.
vehemenz
There are, in fact, countless late medieval manuscripts just like this one. LLMs have been trained on many of them.
What scientific value are you looking for?
YrRight2PushBac
As interesting as this appears, I've developed such a strong allergy to LLM writing that I simply cannot consume any of this content
fakefish
Glad I'm not the only one...
jimmySixDOF
for back in the day this knight had pretty decent 3D perspective rendering skills I mean you can knock the chair but there are a lot worse illustrations and devotional art from the time.
kreyenborgi
He was probably active on devotionalart badamtish
starkeeper
One thing that is mildly interesting about AI writing style is that all the major models use the exact same style. It is pretty foul smelling.
shevy-java
The knights did not have to deal with AI back then. It must have been a simpler life.
jacquesm
Definitely, but also shorter and a lot more violent. And then there were the diseases...
intended
I wouldn’t know if the whole thing was AI or not at a glance.
giantfrog
Imagine going to a history museum and there’s a sign outside that says “Some of the information here is totally made up”
pronghorn
You'd have to first get past the crowds of people outside talking about how bad the picture frames are.
starkeeper
Such AI Prose Wow.
It's Not A fucking horrible writing it's an abhorrent word spasm.
suboto
TAG: VIBECODED
ithkai92
The author is transparent about the use of AI, but so many negative connotations in the site!!
>I still have not found a place where truly every page of the Codex is described and interpreted in detail. I want to change that. But as a single person, I can only take on a project this big with AI as a tool.
jacquesm
> But as a single person, I can only take on a project this big with AI as a tool.
That's so not true though. One of my uncles did work like this and it usually took a year or two to fully research a project and write a book but it is definitely doable to do this sort of thing - and much better, frankly - as a single individual. AI makes it a matter of days, but it also makes it next to worthless.
The biggest contribution here is to make an otherwise lesser known book more known.
Now that AI exists, doing things properly has become impossible for humans.
jacquesm
Well you'll get exactly what happened here: you put in the word, do the research and make the content, then some AI jockey will come along and make a mashup and pass it off as their own.
lelandfe
Or enlist others or do a little bit at a time or…
Planktonne
The knight who wrote it took on a larger project without AI or a computer at all.
The original drawings have ambiguities in them; they are well done but perspective and scale are off, and there are lots of questions about particular details of the drawings. The AI drawings simply take these particular questionable details and render them as "real."
There should be real life artifacts for many of these tools. LLMs can just as easily go search the web for images of those as create completely unreliable, fictional renderings of the same.
(Edited wording to correct for jacquesm's point)
The owner of the site is an SEO consultant in Munich:
https://loeffelholz-codex.org/en/project/dirk-schornstein.ht...
And this person is Austrian.
https://www.youtube.com/@medievalcrossbows7621
Reading this in between studying information theory makes a good laugh. This is the most inefficient code I've ever heard of. It's basically unary.
(For background, the first popular optical telegraph wasn't created until ~300 years later, and used 98 visually-distinct coding symbols).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chappe_telegraph#Coding_and_de...
If it's worth doing, why not do it well? This is a tiny book by book standards and writing this text would be a matter of a few weeks at most. And that way it would be much more valuable (and less off-putting)
As he says, he doesn't have much time to research the entire book.
You think he has "weeks" to write it up for others?
I imagine there are thousands of interesting projects people are doing solo and can't be bothered creating website to share with others for.
If AI can do this- fantastic! Let people moan if they can't see the positives of this. He's not trying to win an award or is paid to create a site for the public.
https://community.carbide3d.com/t/locking-register-calipers-...
It would be interesting to see what would be involved in making the digital files which would allow re-creating each of these objects.
Were the holes at the top routed or done by hand?
The fasteners were sourced from a local hardware store and modified w/ a hacksaw, a wire crimping tool which was just the right size to hold them, and a file.
The holes and outline were cut using a CNC following G-code output by MakerCAM (a fork of the Flash file PartKam).
That was a _long_ time ago, and the free software has gotten much better/easier, and these days I work for a company which makes integrated software for the CNC machines which we sell.
I'd love to see more things you've made.
https://cutrocket.com/u/WillAdams
(and mostly wood/bamboo)
A bit stalled because I've been working on:
https://github.com/WillAdams/gcodepreview
Though I will note that I got into small-scale and inexpensive CNC because I couldn't figure out how to fit a Bridgeport that was being sold locally for less than scrap value in working condition into my basement.
I've been debating getting a lathe or making a Gingery Lathe or going the 3D print route:
https://www.printables.com/model/1048400-open-lathe-v1
> Not a diary, not a family chronicle - a tool book.
> As reliable as it says on each page - no more and no less.
> Pages without a special note have been editorially reviewed: carefully checked and corrected.
This sounds like an extremely interesting topic but the lack of care in the presentation is disappointing.
But that is typical AI quality. It is a fancified Babelfish 2.0 translator.
Some humans also use AI to "interact" with other humans. They don't seem to understand that this is a problem for some humans. When a human AI slops me, I stop all any every further interaction (assuming I can find out that this human did so. It is not always possible to find that out).
I focus my frustration on writing that is circular, vague, unnecessarily explanatory, etc. In my experience this is a symptom of the fact that there were no original ideas to begin with.
If an AI can save you time so you can continue with your passion, I say go for it. No one has paid you to create the page, he's not vying for an award. If people are interested they can read it.
[0] https://gist.githubusercontent.com/birep/bb865b2799d3f86d55f...
If you're ever in the Netherlands I can recommend a visit to the Zaanse Schans where they have a mill[1] from the days when pigments were ground with windpower. You can see the colors and you'll have a better understanding of why Royal Blue[2] was Royal (because it was incredibly expensive to make a lasting blue pigment).
Fascinating stuff.
[1] https://www.verfmolendekat.com/nl/
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ultramarine
I imagine it would be a rabbit hole, but rabbit holes can be a lot of fun. I will have to work with the poor-man pigments though. No ultra expensive gemstone grinding for me :-).
Good quality pestles can be found on flea markets, people hardly ever use them now so they don't appreciate what they've got.
This devalues the scientific value a lot because every line must be checked for correctness and source.
The book itself is very beautiful and I'm thankful for the high quality pictures.
Couple of immediate examples:
- The Codex has 154 pages. 127 of them have been reviewed, 27 not yet. - Each of the 154 pages gets a page of its own.
If an author doesn’t have time to write. Why should I give up my time to read?
"If an author doesn’t have time to write. Why should I give up my time to read?"
Perhaps he is taking the time to translate it for you, otherwise you'd have to do it yourself.
It isn't.
> Löffelholz does not open his book with a showpiece. He opens it with a practical tool you can adjust: choose a size, clamp it, work.
Because -- if the author is to be believed -- essentially no one bothered to look at this work at all before AI became available to help with it. I had certainly never heard of it before. Had you?
That's the choice being offered. Not between "LLM slop" or "painstaking human authorship", but between something being done or nothing at all being done.
Interacting with AI content makes me feel like I'm consuming something that was created purely for engagement farming. Not that human created content wasn't for engagement farming, but noticing an AI tell breaks the suspension of disbelief in a way. It devalues the relationship between creator and consumer, so that genuine care is not being shared. It's like I'm a cow being milked on an industrial engagement farm.
I'm not pro AI by any means and I don't like the way this tech is turning the world into, but I see this as a people's problem, AI is a tool, the problem is how is being shoved into everything. Is nothing else than abstraction on top of another level of abstraction.
Being an engineer is about finding the best way to solve the issue at hand. Your client won't care if you use to code AI, or if you use Javascript, or C#, Java,... your client will care that the issue at hand is fixed on the best possible way. Fix the issue fast and you'll have a happy client.
1 point by scrollop 0 minutes ago | parent | next | edit | delete [–]
"The problem with AI generated content is, it tells me you didn't care enough about the work to do it yourself."
It may be the translation, however, this project is a passion for him. I would guess the passion is the book itself, and though he wants to share his passion, I imagine creating the actual page for others is tedious compared to the work of discovering the book. I have had the same issue.
If an AI can save you time so you can continue with your passion, I say go for it. No one has paid you to create the page, he's not vying for an award. If people are interested they can read it.
There are likely many people out there doing remarkable work but they can't be bothered creating a website to share with others.
If AI can do that, fantastic - even though some people will moan. There are always people who complain.
Always were, just now this signal makes people aware of it and they don't like how it makes them feel.
> You are letting your personal biases color your view. That is your right, but check to see if it is making you happy.
Why the free psycho analysis? GP just made a statement.
Please don't create accounts to break HN's rules with.
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
We are, it reads like shit. Calling it slop is being polite.
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
It's like saying "but a lot of human care goes into factory made X" when comparing it to handmade X. It starts on a lesser footing unless evidence suggests otherwise
AI is being used for the most part to shit out as much “content” as possible in order to show ads, sell courses and other products (bonus points if what is sold is itself also pure AI slop), or to finish tasks at work with as little effort as can be done, so that boss man is impressed by the velocity. “Who cares about quality? This is 2026, bro.”
The actual thoughtful use of AI is the minority case. Not the default. We humans are lazy, and when we can get away with less effort we put as little effort as we can into things.
What scientific value are you looking for?
That's so not true though. One of my uncles did work like this and it usually took a year or two to fully research a project and write a book but it is definitely doable to do this sort of thing - and much better, frankly - as a single individual. AI makes it a matter of days, but it also makes it next to worthless.
The biggest contribution here is to make an otherwise lesser known book more known.
https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/L%C3%B6ffelholz-Codex
(Couldn't find an English wikipedia page on it)