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points by amiga386 4 days ago | 0 comments

Denmark did this in 2014 and didn't need a pile of LLM puffery to do it:

https://geoboxers.com/denmark-in-minecraft/

> ‘Denmark in Minecraft’ was released in April 2014 by the Danish Geodata Agency. The project was conceived, developed and operated by Simon Lyngby Kokkendorff, Thorbjørn Kjærshøj Nielsen and Nynne Sole Dalå, the founders of GeoBoxers.

> The work was funded and carried out by the Danish Geodata Agency as an initiative following the 2013 “basic data programme”, where a significant amount of public Danish data were made available for free. The purpose was to make geographical and topographical data available through Minecraft, and help disseminate the free data to a broader audience and specifically reach children.

> Denmark in Minecraft was released with an invitation to teachers and schools to use the data in geography, math, science and history lessons, and within the first few months Minecraft-data were downloaded 300.000 times from the Geodata Agency, and around 37.000 unique users logged in to the agency’s Minecraft-servers.

> January 1st, 2016 the Danish Geodata Agency changed into the Agency for Data Supply and Efficiency, and links in English regarding “Denmark in Minecraft” were removed. Since 2020 Denmark in Minecraft can no longer be downloaded.

[–] INTPenis 4 days ago

I'm sure if they had a bunch of LLM puffery back in 2014 they would have used it.

Most giant Minecraft map projects are automated as much as possible. It would be a real labor of love on the spectrum otherwise, and who can maintain that?

[–] skrebbel 4 days ago

The puffery is the webpage copy, not the automation to produce the map.

[–] mbesto 3 days ago

If thats the case, the parent's critique was oddly stated and confusing. The phrase "to do it" implies the "LLM puffery" was required to accomplish the task, which clearly providing LLM generated praise isn't required in either setting to create a world in minecraft.

[–] amiga386 3 days ago

Denmark presented the world with their entire country as a Minecraft map, and they did it without inflicting an awful marketing website on us. This Swiss project couldn't resist the urge to produce such an eyesore of a website while providing the world with another 1:1 Minecraft map of a country.

[–] orangedog 3 days ago

I don't think there's anything wrong with this website, just some people hate slop.

[–] amiga386 3 days ago

Compare:

"All of Denmark in Minecraft. Recreated in a map with a scale of 1:1. Explore cities, landscapes and landmarks built of 4 trillion blocks."

"Switzerland. Block by block. At 1:1 scale. Every block is one metre. Terrain, glaciers, lakes, forests and dams come from swisstopo’s open geodata. The Matterhorn is exactly as tall and as steep as the real one."

The latter website's wording is unnecessarily staccato, self-congratulatory, and draws your attention to odd points, while missing out vital information like the word "Minecraft" (which appears elsewhere in 5 point font). It reads like a failed marketer camping out on LinkedIn wrote it.... and that's probably what the LLM was trained on. And the person using the LLM either didn't care what the website said, or reviewed it and thought it looked good and needed no changes. Either way, awful.

[–] everyone 3 days ago

Yeah, like a lot of AI stuff it gets worse the more you look at it.. eg. "Block by block" the 2nd sentence fragment in this very important intro paragragh.. and, it doesnt mean anything. In fact its misleading, if it meant anything I would take it to mean that this was made by a human without tools placing one block at a time, which is clearly not true.

Then the next two + the last one "At 1:1 scale.", "Every block is one metre", "The Matterhorn is exactly as tall and as steep as the real one" are all redundant, all conveying the same info in 3 different ways.

[–] XenophileJKO 3 days ago

Actually is wasn't useless, I don't know the scale Denmark or where the data came from. So the bottom example is slightly bigger but includes more relevant details.

[–] nidnogg 3 days ago

I am mind blown at how long it took me to read that this was Minecraft. I agree, the wording makes you mentally skip Minecraft somehow.

[–] orangedog 3 days ago

I don't feel there's that much of a difference. It certainly isn't "awful" to me.

[–] NBJack 3 days ago

I'm not a fan of AI generated prose myself, but this was at least informative to me.

[–] gambiting 3 days ago

There's literally nothing wrong with the website, what are you on about.

[–] Spooky23 3 days ago

Some people get a rise out of dissing LLM stuff.

[–] mahboi 3 days ago

Was thinking, the automation to produce the map was probably not an LLM

[–] pluc 4 days ago

That feels so weird. Isn't the whole premisce of these things "this is a game where each block must be placed with purpose", and so using anything automated literally takes out most of that sentence and it just becomes "this is a game". I don't get the appeal or the expectation of triumph.

[–] spicyusername 4 days ago

Don't overcomplicate it. There is no one true way, for Minecraft or for anything.

    I don't get it

Because it looks cool to see the real world in blocks. And if it looks cool, it is cool, as they say.

[–] tantalor 3 days ago

People have been doing this for a LONG TIME

Here's a video of Yosemite Valley from 2014:

> I did not build this by hand. That would take decades! Instead, I wrote an MCEdit filter that took images and elevation data from Google Maps and turned them into blocks!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0jWAwWD47OE

[–] YeahThisIsMe 4 days ago

You're actually allowed to play video games the way you want to.

[–] INTPenis 4 days ago

"this is a game where each block must be placed with purpose"

You lack the hacker mindset if you think you "must" do anything the way it was designed.

[–] xylidszi 3 days ago

thank you for the wisdom INTPenis

[–] FrustratedMonky 3 days ago

Think you are missing a couple decades of Minecraft automation. Its been done since the beginning. This is just cool example of taking it to extreme.

[–] emdash 3 days ago

The game generates the worlds using automation even when playing normally. Have you even played Minecraft?

[–] mahboi 3 days ago

Yeah, but normally the world-gen is automated and then the rest isn't. I get the comment. Minecraft isn't fun when you automate everything. People have been hosting WorldEdit-spammed servers since the beginning that were always lame. The real-life to ingame map conversions were novel at first but are old news now. One famous example was the UC Berkeley replica, which was done in creative mode manually in 2020. Tons of people joined that server and explored the entire campus. Then Stanford auto-gen'd their campus ingame from real-life spatial data, and it was boring, and nobody cared.

These country / world maps autogenerated are still cool to look at a bit. Also some people can take these and then rebuild famous landmarks by hand.

[–] ecto 3 days ago

How would you feel if someone described your work as LLM puffery?

The world changing - no need to be rude about it.

[–] amiga386 3 days ago

If someone said that about a website I had an LLM shit out, that led with such inauthentic marketroid speak, I'd say "it's a fair cop, guv"

I might add "you've spent more effort reading it than I spent writing it"

[–] jagged-chisel 3 days ago

“Puffery” is about the article, not the work

[–] Applejinx 3 days ago

That would be weird and disheartening BECAUSE I'm not using LLMs to work instead of me and have ideas instead of me and implement them instead of me.

If I was, then 'puffery' seems about right, and my best angle might be to insist that I'm yeast, leavening, and the massive quantities of gas blowing something up into a puffy empty state are only happening because of me. It's even kind of true, LLMs just sit there until directed.

[–] rossy 3 days ago

I'll never have to worry about that.

[–] gambiting 3 days ago

Because you never produce anything? Just consume?

[–] syshyk 3 days ago

The suggestion is they'd never use an LLM to do the work.

[–] gambiting 3 days ago

No, the suggestion is that no one will accuse their work of being LLM puffery - which as I'm sure you can appreciate, can happen whether you've used an LLM or not.

[–] mpalmer 3 days ago

Me personally? I'd feel shame for not spending the half hour it would have taken to put even the flimsiest human stamp on the thing I asked an LLM to make for me.

[–] mahboi 3 days ago

LLM-written code is fine, but the slop docs are worthless. The world is changing. When LLMs went mainstream, managers were encouraging writing docs with those, but the novelty has worn off and people realize the output is bad. AI slop public websites are like docs, people get a whiff and bail out.

[–] _doctor_love 3 days ago

The Denmark reference made me think of a funny thing I heard about the Danish entrepreneur Simon Spies (quite a character).

He said he wanted a globe for the desk in his office, 'but to scale'.

[–] teddyh 3 days ago

Just turn the desk upside down. Now he has a 1:1 scale globe on top of his desk.

[–] _doctor_love 3 days ago

Holy shit that's genius!

(Edit: I mean it, that really made me laugh)

[–] osense 3 days ago

Denmark? Ah, so it's a 2D dataset only?

sorry, I'll show myself out...

[–] jbrnh 3 days ago

Denmark has a larger area then Switzerland, but Switzerland has a larger surface then Denmark.

[–] alasano 3 days ago

I'd like to subscribe to your Denmark vs Switzerland fun facts, cause I just had fun.

[–] xquce 3 days ago

How dare you! We have The Sky Mountain! …

Okay it’s not technically a mountain but a hill.. and yes it’s about as close to the clouds as my head is.. And yes we usually see people disspear from view because of the curvature of the Earth rather than terrain..

Okay it’s 2D…

[–] epihelix 4 days ago

To be fair, Denmark is very flat and could probably be represented by a single block :)

Anyway, if "LLM puffery" makes this easier, why is that bad? And given that your quote indicates that the Danish equivalent got pulled, maybe LLMs can easily bring it back. Wouldn't that be a good thing?

[–] stavros 4 days ago

It's interesting to me how people say "someone did this before it was cheap!" as if it's a slight. I mean, yes, it's much more impressive when it was expensive, but it's good that things are cheaper.

[–] stymaar 4 days ago

Interestingly enough the “before it was cheap” version was distributed for free when this one is for sale for half the price of the game this is supposed to run on.

[–] well_ackshually 4 days ago

Denmark did it 10 years ago with existing open source tools and open data.

This reuses the same open source tools, the same open data, and has the gall to put up a slop website and ask for 15CHF (or worse, 48) to pay for a Claude subscription that's doing it all behind.

[–] cadamsdotcom 3 days ago

Doing something and charging money for it is how a lot of things that cost money got started.

[–] stavros 4 days ago

Yeah but that's different from "LLM puffery".

[–] hypfer 4 days ago

I think the point that might've been lost here is that Art (and this is Art) is not supposed to be about the destination but about the journey.

The whole magic of someone doing this is someone doing this.

No one did this.

And there is no utility in it either. No one needs a 1:1 scale Minecraft map of Switzerland for anything.

So the whole thing is just an empty husk of an idea implemented in a way that shows lack of understanding why this niche of content existed in the first place.

[–] jnovek 3 days ago

“No one did this … the whole thing is just an empty husk of an idea“

If you think it’s easy enough that “no one” made it, why not voxel-ize a location yourself to test your hypothesis? I imagine it wouldn’t take but moments of your day to fire off the prompt “Build New Jersey out of voxels”.

Based on your comment, it sounds like you believe that’s the sum total of work the author put into it.

[–] well_ackshually 3 days ago

Deal! Let's go!

Here's Chicago (assuming their preview is always the same): https://map2minecraft.com/for/developers#world-demo. It took zero effort.

Picking Providence, New York on a map took two minutes to render, and I was walking around it. Paying 20 bucks gets me the whole 88km². Is it steep? Yeah, a bit. At least they get to have the excuse that it takes some actual CPU time to render because it's all on demand, but they don't have the gall to pretend that they "need it to improve the peaks".

But if you don't want to pay a single cent, feel free to download https://arnismc.com/, it'll fetch the data from OSM, terrain elevation from Tilezen, and you can get absolutely any area in the world you want. It'll cost you... The electricity and the time.

You don't even need to prompt it. cargo run --release --no-default-features -- --output-dir="C:/YOUR_PATH/.minecraft/saves" --bbox="min_lat,min_lng,max_lat,max_lng" is right there. It's a single command.

>it sounds like you believe that’s the sum total of work the author put into it.

It _is_ the sum total of work the author put into it. Prism Launcher (https://prismlauncher.org/) handles the modding part of it. OptiFine makes it playable. Cubic Chunks removes the height limit. Can't be arsed to download 1GB of test data, but arnis or equivalent open source software is used to voxelize it. Leeching off of free work, through and through.

Also the "author" is trying to pass this off as a small, funny little independent artist stuff, when the company behind it quite literally sells 3D prints of the same areas of Switzerland. The entire goal is to be a profiteer, a leech. Literally a dropshipper.

[–] jnovek 3 days ago

I’m not from the Minecraft realm, I had no idea the tools were this sophisticated. That’s pretty rad.

[–] pixl97 3 days ago

>It'll cost you... The electricity and the time.

Remember when a huge portion of the internet was pirating music because it was expensive and difficult to buy. Then do you remember when a few streaming services came along offering most music and most people stopped pirating it? Because I do.

Saving people a little bit of time and making it easy is how you become a billionaire.

[–] hypfer 3 days ago

I'm not interested in engaging with bad faith gotcha-style communication like this.

Beside that, you do realize that this is merely an ad for that GIS provider consultancy thingy that can sell you actual swiss maps, right?

I mean judging by your career in adtech. Uh Yeah anyway.

[–] jnovek 3 days ago

“I'm not interested in engaging with bad faith gotcha-style communication like this.”

It’s not that, it’s an effort to get you to drop into system 2 and think about all the steps it probably took to put this together.

“Beside that, you do realize that this is merely an ad for that GIS provider consultancy thingy that can sell you actual swiss maps, right?”

Yes, I do. I’m not buying their product, selling it or in any way interested in it. I’m just pointing out that your dismissive comment about someone else’s work sucks.

“I mean judging by your career in adtech. Uh Yeah anyway.”

Case-in-point. Stay classy!

Edit: as I’m reading other replies in this thread, I’m finding that I had no idea how sophisticated tools for Minecraft are.

This could’ve been an opportunity to teach someone something cool like your sibling post did, but you opted to be a jerk instead.

Maybe take a sec to examine that.

[–] aacid 3 days ago

Art is subjective, you not liking it doesn't mean it is bad. You just do not like it and that is ok.

[–] hypfer 3 days ago

I did not say that I wouldn't like it.

[–] convict 4 days ago

The LLM puffery referring to the website and the texts on it, i guess