zlacker

  # curl -s https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/61/Sun.png | file -
  /dev/stdin: PNG image data, 256 x 256, 8-bit/color RGBA, non-interlaced

That's it, two utilities almost everybody has installed.

>>lpcvoi+(OP)
ChatGPT has 800 million monthly users. The fraction of those who are comfortable opening a terminal and running those commands is pretty tiny.

>>simonw+11
If 800m people think delegating thinking to a slop generator is fine, that's not my loss. It's bad for humanity, but who even cares anymore in 2026, right?

>>lpcvoi+E2
"Delegating thinking" and "figuring out how to determine an image format from the first few bytes of a file" are not the same thing.

>>simonw+h9
I disagree, in my opinion it's the exact same process, just on a much smaller scale. It's a problem, and we humans are good at solving problems. That is, until LLMs arrived, now we are supposed to become good at prompting, or something.

>>lpcvoi+1b
I used ffmpeg and yt-dlp to make an animated GIF of a kākāpō in her nest from a livestream on YouTube the other day. https://simonwillison.net/2026/Jan/25/kakapo-cam/

Much as I love kākāpō there is no way I was going to invest more than a few minutes in figuring out how to do that.

I love this new world where I can "delegate my thinking" to a computer and get a GIF of a dumpy New Zealand flightless parrot where I would otherwise be unable to do so because I didn't have the time to figure it out.

(I published it as a looping MP4 because that was smaller than the GIF, another thing I didn't have to figure out how to do myself.)

>>simonw+Xl
I agree that your project is cool, I just don't think the numerous downsides are worth the occasional cool thing like this.

>>lpcvoi+(OP)
Yes but now do the same for every bit of programming tooling, sysadmin configuration / debugging problem and concept out there. With just a few seconds to answer each reply.

>>donkey+n31
It's called learning, and it used to be the hacker mindset to continuously improve. But I guess that died with slop generators.