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#Magic update - for the 2nd time in a row, I went 2 for 2 (this time, in a pair of 3-player games).

For game 1, I ran a re-tweaked ā€œJace and the Echoverseā€ deck (a modified version of the recent Reality Fracture precon), dominating most of the game before pulling a 1-2 punch of making my creatures indestructible and then blowing up the board (so the other 2 players both quit, including an Ur-Sphinx deck). Then, for game 2, I ran my nearly-perfected Dune deck, which pulled out to a surprising early lead before finally winning with an unblockable commander (killing 1 opponent outright and making the other quit again).

I gotta say, I’m really digging both of these decks: not only do they win more often than not, but they’re both thematic as hell and fun to play. I plan to add them to my decklists page soon.

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#Magic Update: This week, our Magic time was up against the local team’s Sportsball game, so we only had 4 players to start. I decided to try out a brand new deck, a lightly modified version of the new Jace, Multiverse Architect preconstructed deck that I picked up from my FLGS a few days ago, and let me tell you, that deck dominated, with everyone else quitting around the 90 minute mark. I know much of it was luck (especially in the early game), but it was so much fun to play, I look forward to breaking it out again… in a few weeks. 😁

By the time the second game started, the local team had won their Sportsball game (yay, sports team!), so it was one of our usual 5-player affairs. This time, I played my old-school Defenders of the Mirth deck, and it held up long enough for all but one other player to quit, and then I killed on my next turn with a truckload of unblockable commander damage at about the 2 hour mark. That put me at a rare 2/2 overall for the day. Good times! 🤘

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My mate and I went on a hike on Saturday to Germany’s probably most famous tiniest hamlet. Well, not even hamlet, much smaller. It’s a farm (087) and a closed train station (088, 096-102). Okay, and four other houses. But that’s it. Durlesbach is known from the old folk song ā€žAuf de schwƤbsche Eisebahneā€œ, literally ā€œOn the Swabian Railwayā€. According to the German Wikipedia article the German Folk Song Archive counts about 100 variants on the lyrics with up to 27 verses. The song enumerates a few stations and the most common version is about a farmer who ties his goat to the back of a train in order to save the freight costs. Alternatively, he’s used to that from previous ox cart trips where the goat just follows along. Of course, the goat doesn’t make it and the angry farmer throws the disembodied goat head at the conductor.

The weather was perfect. Sunny and clouds alternating, lower twenty-something degrees Celcius. Very beautiful. We took the train to Aulendorf and started our hike.

The level railway crossing in 051-054 is always closed and only opened on demand. I didn’t even know that this kind existed. But it’s really quiet there. We pressed the lever to call the train dispatcher who then opened the barriers for us. A few seconds later we told him that we successfully reached the other side and he closed them again. We were confused at first because the sign said only for authorized personnel and we were just two random hikers. But we gave it a shot and the dispatcher was super nice, no worries at all.

The river is always the Schussen. 092-094 is the creek Durlesbach, entering the Schussen, though. The Durlesbach station is now privately owned, unfortunately. However, it’s nicely kept in shape and there’s a cool monument with a historic steam engine, two wagons and four bronze figures reenacting the scene where the farmer is about to tie his goat, being observed by his wife and the conductor.

You can get all sorts of drinks in exchange for a donation at the display. These proceeds are used for the upkeep. I had an ACE juice which was absolutely delicious. A few hundred meters after we continued, I thought that I really should have bought a second one. It was just too good.

In Mochenwagen, we took the train back to Aulendorf. The Mochenwangen replacement service (we luckily didn’t have to take it, in fact, no idea when it is really in place) is 800 meters away from the train station. That fucking nuts.

We then changed trains to Ulm, just because that one arrived two minutes after we reached Aulendorf. But we spontaneously exited early in Biberach because we had some time to kill for the actual train to Stuttgart. The train station underpass there has some really beautiful graffiti. Shortly after, my second camera battery was flattened, too.

Going home worked out amazingly. When I switched again in Geislingen, my connecting train was already waiting on the other platform. 15 seconds before scheduled departure, the doors closed. One second to departure, we took off. That’s very rare nowadays and it was kind of magical to witness this first hand looking at the station clock.

Sorry for the many photos. I was busy sifting through them and only kept about 20%. Still too many, I know. Enjoy, nevertheless: https://lyse.isobeef.org/2026-10-03-wanderung-von-aulendorf-ueber-durlesbach-nach-mochenwangen/

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↳ In-reply-to » Tonight, my son and I attended a screening of the original Highlander (1986) at my local indie cinema, the Independent Picture House in North Charlotte (about 35 minutes away by car). Very cool place with a great atmosphere, and I thoroughly enjoyed seeing one of my favorite films in an actual cinema, even if it was 40 years after its release.

@david@daiwei.me Right? I loved seeing it on the big screen. It was even the Director’s / European cut, with the little Nazi-killing bit in the middle. ā€œIt’s a kind of magic!ā€ āš”ļø

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I’ve been meaning to post another #Magic update…

Two Sundays ago, I had plans in the evening, so I could only play a single game, which I (surprisingly) won with my new #Dune deck (it played much better this time, but still suffered for the lack of flying defense).

Then, this past Sunday, I won the first game with my tribal Mutant Ninja Turtles deck (which still needs some tweaking, but held its own throughout), only to lose the next two games, both with my Avengers deck (which had been doing very well until this weekend).

Still, a win is a win. Tweaks will be made, and with any luck, the next game(s) will be even better.

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Windows Backdoor ā€˜Sleepwalker’ Hides in Memory Until Activated by a ā€˜Magic Packet’
ā€œThe Register has a story about a Windows backdoor that waits silently in memory for a ā€˜magic packet’ before springing into action,ā€ writes Slashdot reader fred133. ā€œNo outgoing traffic, just waitingā€¦ā€ From the report: Like a sleeper cell awaiting activation, a never-before-seen Windows backdoor dubbed Sleepwalker w … ⌘ Read more

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In #Magic last night, I debuted my new #Dune deck with an underwhelming performance - perhaps unsurprisingly for a desert-focused deck, I faced a real drought, starting the game with only 1 land in hand (even after a mulligan) and not pulling another land until turn 4(!). Because of our house starting mana, I wasn’t totally sunk, but everything I got out was just luck. I did die last thanks to my big wurms (so I guess I was 2nd place?), but still… underwhelming.

For game 2, I wanted to bring the thunder (especially after my pitiful performance last week), so I dusted off my Night of 1000 Squirrels deck (headed by the infamous Chatterfang, Squirrel General). By turn 3, the #squirrel army was forming, and thanks to well-timed casts of Fog and Make a Stand, the squirrels managed to overrun everyone just a few turns later.

Another fun night overall. I won’t be able to play for the next few weeks, so I’m glad this one ended with a win. 😁 #mtg

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Just printed and sleeved some proxies for tomorrow night’s #Magic games, including this one from my Guardians of the Multiverse deck:

Image

He’s Spider-Man Supreme, from Clash of the Champions - a Spider-Man from a universe where Peter Parker is also the Sorcerer Supreme of his Earth. He’s one of my favorite characters in the game, and I thought he’d be an appropriate proxy for Cosmic Spider-Man (the best card from the Spider-Man set, but only really useful for a tribal Spiders deck).

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I’m still on a deckbuilding kick, so I was thrilled that we managed to get 3 games of Magic in last night.

In game 1, my Marvel Villains deck couldn’t stand up to Doctor Who’s Missy and her army of Cybermen (and Daleks). Since someone else was playing a dark lord Sauron deck, I guess that means she’s even more ā€œvillainousā€ that anything Marvel or Tolkien could offer.

For game 2, I ran my Guardians of the Multiverse deck (formerly known as The B-Vengers or Marvel Heroes 2: Electric Bugaloo). It was working well, and I had quite an army going, but I was still one turn from a win when an opponent’s tribal elf deck went off, killing everyone with 19 19/19 forest-walking elves. ĀÆ_(惄)_/ĀÆ

Then in game 3, I ran my Avengers deck, and finally got the win thanks to a Heroes’ Podium, a pair of Hawkeyes, and a flying, shield-wielding Captain America. Assemble, indeed.

Last night will likely be my final Marvel-only game night for a while. I still need to test the decks out some more, but they’re basically complete (I don’t currently plan on adding any more cards to them). Plus, while I’m on this kick, I’d like to finally finish my Sauron deck, and I’ve got some cards on order for both a Dune-themed deck and a couple of decks inspired by the old-school Beatdown Box.

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Although I was initially concerned that adding modern Marvel superheroes to the high-fantasy worlds of ā€œMagic: the Gatheringā€ā€ would be too aesthetically dissonant, instead it’s gotten me back into deck building in a big way.

Since the set was released last month, I’ve built: a 5-color Super Villains deck, two 5-color Superheroes decks, plus a 5-color tribal Mutant Ninja Turtles deck (built from the best cheap singles from the TMNT set from earlier this year, a set that was a bit more dissonant, but still weird enough to be fun).

And then there’s the proxies…

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↳ In-reply-to » Hmmm... Something ain't right. What did I break this time?

I don’t know why, but either Jenny’s behaving different after the last update, or I Fucked up something and I have no Idea how to fix it.

Symptoms:

  • I don’t have copies of my New Posts in my Maildir after posting them (as in I don’t see them in neomutt’s inbox).
  • Nor fetch or fetch context (if they get replied to) seem to fech them auto-magically.
  • I had to do a full whipe (~/Maildir/twtxt and ~/.cache/jenny) in order to get them fetched back.

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Perhaps unsurprisingly, last night’s Magic games were dominated by the new Marvel set.

In game 1, I was running my new (unlisted) 5-color tribal Super Heroes deck (led by Nick Fury, Agent of SHIELD) against a lightly-modified Avengers Assemble deck, a tribal Super Villains deck (fronted by Thanos, the Mad Titan), and 2 ā€œclassicā€ magic decks (Fractals and Artifacts). The heroes held their own quite well, but that game went way too long (thanks to Thanos snapping away half the board every other turn). It finally ended when everyone quit after yet another board wipe (giving the wiper her first win).

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What a week!

It looks like I mostly missed the #twtxthashgeddon (so happy belated twtxthashgeddon day, to those who celebrate), although I’m glad that twtxt-lib appears to have come through it more-or-less unscathed.

Also, today is (was) July 4th, so happy US Independence Day (to those that celebrate). I didn’t feel much like celebrating, myself, so instead I went and played Magic (results tomorrow).

Finally, today is (now) July 5th, so happy X-Day (to those that celebrate). I can’t help but feel like this would be a great time for the saucers to come…. Just sayin’. šŸ‘½

BTW - welcome to twtxt @GabesArcade@gabesarcade.com!

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↳ In-reply-to » I went to check on the fireflies this season. But I didn't see any. Instead lots of moths. At first, I thought it might have been still too light, but it was already dark enough for me to miss and destroy a snail shell. Bummer. Maybe it was too wet tonight. Although, it's probably just another or two weeks until my glowing friends will finally show up.

How truly wonderful! I went out tonight and the first thing I noticed was the temperature drop. It felt actually quite pleasing. What a welcome surprise, I didn’t expect that at all. It was warmer in the forst than between the fields. The tiniest breeze helped to cool off the surroundings I think. Right now, the temperature shows 23°C. It’s supposed to reach 18°C at 5 in the morning before it rapidly shoots through the sky again.

When I left the house I even saw the very end of a nice sunset. A bat was around, too. The several thousand fireflies delivered a fantastic show. It’s such a pity that I cannot show this to you. :-(

There were many frogs or toads around. Luckily, the light tan gravel road made for a good constrast to the darker hopping amphibians. So, I spotted them just in time. No animals were harmed.

The moon was out and lit up the scenery. I was perfectly chasing my own shadow for several hundred meters on a forest road. I had the moon right in my back. That moon light shadow felt magical. <3

It must have set a new record on picking up spider webs along the way. The threads around arms and legs always feel quite yucky. People were blasting music somewhere in town. You could here that noise in the entire forest. I found that rather annoying. All street lamps are operational again, so I got already blinded right at the entrance to the town. But other than that, this was a very nice evening stroll. Totally recommended. Already looking forward to tomorrow. :-)

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In Magic today, the Phyrexian Invasion failed in the first game, but the second game was EPIC!

I played my (unlisted) Dragons 2: Draconic Boogaloo deck, and…

Turn 1: Nothing special
Turn 2: Miirym (when a dragon enters, copy it)
Turn 3: Tiamat (choose 5 dragons from deck, put in hand)
Turn 4: Klauth (when dragons attack, create mana equal to their total power)
I attacked with all 5 dragons, which made 28 mana x2 = 56(!) mana.
Then (still turn 4) I played Scourge of Valkas (when a dragon enters, deal damage to target equal to number of dragons) + 5 other dragons, dealing 6 + 2 x (7+8+9+10+11+12+13+14+15+16+17) = 270(!) direct damage (more than double enough to kill the other 3 players).

Damn fine win, if I do say so myself.

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↳ In-reply-to » Every now and then, I think that I have carefully proof-read my message enough times and hit the "Add message" button in tt. But then, in the message tree, I spot another missed typo. My process is then to go to my twtxt.txt and fix it by hand. However, I still have to clean up tt's cache. This is rather tidious:

@lyse@lyse.isobeef.org

Now I’m curious how movwin deals with that. ;-)

Focus handling? I hardly remember, lol. šŸ˜… Did that 6 months ago and haven’t touched it since. Let’s see.

The core main loop gets keyboard/mouse events from curses. At this level, the main loop only knows about exactly one widget, so it passes the event to that widget (whatever that is, doesn’t matter – they all inherit from the Widget base class, it could be a Window, a WindowManager, or an Edit box directly).

The outermost widget is usually a WindowManager. It implements a few hotkeys of its own, like switching to another window. If none of those hotkeys match, it passes the event to the currently focused window.

Same story here: Window implements some hotkeys (like opening the menu bar). If none of those match, then … the magic happens.

Each Window acts as a focus manager. It can descend into its child widget hierarchy and collect all child widgets in a depth-first search. They are collected into a flat list. Each Window then has an attribute _focus_position, which is an index into that list. Pressing Tab or Shift+Tab increases or decreases that index and that allows you to select the next/previous focusable widget in the current window.

Eventually, Window passes the input event to the currently focused widget.

Usually on initialization, the application can ask a Window object to focus a certain widget. The file selection dialog does that, for example, because the ā€œnaturalā€ focus order would be to focus the Edit box at the top of the window first – but that’s not what the user wants, the Table showing the list of files should be focused.

If no widget ever feels responsible for handling a certain input event, then there’s a global unhandled_input callback that the application can provide (same as in urwid).

I think that’s it.

Hm, that’s more complicated than I remembered, but apparently it works fine, because I completely forgot about this. šŸ˜… All I did in the last few months was make new classes that inherit from Widget, like the new Table class or Edit or HexEdit or whatever, and if they want to get input events, then they must implement the methods input_key() or input_mouse().

Does this answer your question? šŸ˜… (I admit that I didn’t exactly understand your scenario, so I just went ahead and rambled about my implementation. šŸ˜…)

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Toot-toot: All aboard the Socceroos bandwagon, diehards and all
Among the ā€œAustralian valuesā€ on our citizenship test is that 25-plus million of us become Socceroos tragics for a couple of weeks every fourth year, and then magically transform back to normal indifference as the bandwagon empties. ⌘ Read more

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Adventure Time: Side Quests Trailer Previews Disney+ Prequel TV Show
Upcoming Disney+ prequel TV show Adventure Time: Side Quests has revealed its trailer. The show has been described as the companion to the original Adventure Time series. The official synopsis for the Adventure Time: Side Quests reads, ā€œAdventure awaits a young hero Finn and his magical dog best friend Jake as they quest to party […]

The post [Adventure Time: Side Quests Trailer Previ … ⌘ Read more

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How fans travelled to Brisbane’s latest mega event – and our lessons for 2032
Exclusive analysis of Magic Round mobile phone data shows we’ve got a long way to go to reach our Olympic targets for public and active transport. ⌘ Read more

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↳ In-reply-to » Okay. I have lost the ā€œbattleā€ against ā€œAIā€ at work and I will no longer try to ā€œfightā€ any of it.

@movq@www.uninformativ.de Related reading (if you’re interested): Let’s Talk about LLMs by James Bennett

First, it quotes the DORA report on the ā€œState of AI-assisted Software Developmentā€:

The research reveals a critical truth: AI’s primary role in software development is that of an amplifier. It magnifies the strengths of high-performing organizations and the dysfunctions of struggling ones.

At the end, it quotes the late Fred Books:

The first step toward the management of disease was replacement of demon theories and humours theories by the germ theory. That very step, the beginning of hope, in itself dashed all hopes of magical solutions. It told workers that progress would be made stepwise, at great effort, and that a persistent, unremitting care would have to be paid to a discipline of cleanliness. So it is with software engineering today.

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↳ In-reply-to » @movq I'm very curious...

@prologic@twtxt.net Yeah, it’s hard to get my point across here. I tried to address that a few paragraphs down.

Yes, I can tinker with AI techniques on a general level. That’s cool but not really my area of interest.

What I certainly can’t do is learn how specific AI products work. I can’t possibly find out why Claude Code produced that particular line of code. Claude is just a magic box that does something and I have to trust it.

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I went 1-for-2 again at Magic today, winning the first game with my (mostly standard) Fallout ā€œHail, Caesarā€ deck by creating a swarm of soldiers and slapping people across the face with them (LOL!), before quitting the 2nd game for lack of time after my board got wiped (I mean, I might have lucked into something eventually, but it was getting late, so I dropped out).

I hope to play more regularly going into the summer, but who knows.

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More Videogames Developers Consider Unionization - Some Spurred By Changes to Remote Work Policies
Developers for several top videogames have joined unions under the Communication Workers of America — including Call of Duty, Fallout, Overwatch, Diablo and World of Warcraft. Last month workers on the online game Magic: The Gathering Arena team announced their own CWA union.

T … ⌘ Read more

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QuiznessDesk, Wednesday, May 20
The Bahamas lie off the coast of which US state?
How is ascorbic acid more commonly known?
Which of the following was not one of the famous Brontƫ sisters? Anne, Jane or Emily?
In what decade did the building of the Berlin Wall begin?
Which cartoon character’s name is Italian for ā€œpine eyeā€?
A Kind Of Magic and Hammer To FallĀ by Queen are songs on the soundtrack to which 1986 film?
Kelly Rowland, Michelle Williams and Beyonce Knowles made up which band?
What is t … ⌘ Read more

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↳ In-reply-to » My first game of Magic ended with a truly EPIC TURN yesterday...

@bender@twtxt.net Apologies, I’m still working through some layout issues with TwtStrm and frequently miss mentions…

Magic: the Gathering does not use a Game Master (although professional referees are often used in sanctioned events). While the game has alot of thematic crossover with with D&D (or fantasy games in general), the system is much more of an abstract, card-dueling system involving things like ā€œthe stackā€ and insanely specific rules on card timing and interactions.

Like, we joke about ā€œI’m sending my army of (goblins / elves / angels / whatever) at you,ā€ but that’s about as far into the ā€œrole-playingā€ element most magic games get in my experience (and most of the ā€œofficialā€ competitive games I’ve played at my FLGS were even more abstract and less thematic, although it’s been years since I played in one of those).

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Googlebook Is Google’s New AI-Powered Laptop Platform Built on Android
They won’t replace Chromebooks, but Googlebooks have an Android-centered operating system, AI-first features like the Magic Pointer, and a promise of desktop-grade apps. ⌘ Read more

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What Happens When You Try to Treat OCD With Psilocybin
Colloquially, OCD is known as the doubting disorder. In his new book How to Not Know, Simone Stolzoff explores whether treating that uncertainty with magic mushrooms can help people through it. ⌘ Read more

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Single Dose of Magic Mushroom Psychedelic Can Cause Anatomical Brain Changes
A small study found that a single 25mg dose of psilocybin produced measurable brain changes that were still visible a month later, along with reported improvements in psychological insight, wellbeing, and mental flexibility. The Guardian reports: Evidence for the changes came from specialized scans that measured the dif … ⌘ Read more

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My first game of Magic ended with a truly EPIC TURN yesterday…

It was a 5-player game, and I was running my (unpublished) Superfriends deck (mostly Planeswalkers and counter manipulators). After some ups and downs, I was able to pop the ultimate abilities on a handful of PWs all on a single turn, pumping my Bioessence Hydra to 110/110 (!) before tapping it twice to kill 2 opponents, and then following that by destroying all of the lands of a 3rd opponent and stealing all of the creatures from the 4th, at which point the survivors decided to quit. As I said, EPIC TURN!

Game 2 ran long, so I dropped out. But that first game…

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I won our only game of Magic for this week with my (yet-to-be published) ā€œBolas Triumphantā€ deck: 5 players over 3 hours, including 4 board wipes (one of which came from my Nicol Bolas, God-Pharaoh), and I even got to cast Omniscience via a Fae of Wishes. I can’t speak for everyone, but I know I had a good time. 😁

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Another AI rant:

One of the ā€œkey featuresā€ of LLMs is that you can use ā€œnatural languageā€, because that is supposed to be easier than having to learn a programming language. So, when someone says to me, ā€œI automated this process using AI!ā€, what they mean is: They have written a very, very large Markdown document. In this document, they list what the AI is supposed to do.

In prose.

This is a complete disaster.

Programming and programming languages have one crucial property: They follow a well-defined structure and every word has a well-defined meaning. That is absolutely brilliant, because I can read this and I can follow the program in my head. I can build a mental model. I can debug this, down to the precise instructions that the CPU executes. This all follows well-defined patterns that you can reason about.

But with these Markdown files, I am completely lost. We lose all these important properties! No debugging, no reasoning about program flow, nothing. It’s all gone. It’s a magic black box now, literally randomized, that may or may not do what you wanted, in some order.

People now throw these Markdown files at me … and … am I supposed to read this? Why? It’s completely random and fuzzy.

Sadly, these AI tools are good enough to be able to mostly grasp the authors intentions. Hence people don’t see the harm they cause, because ā€œit worksā€.

We already have a ton of automations like this at work: Tickets get piped through an LLM and these Markdown files / prompts determine what will happen with the ticket, and maybe they trigger additional actions as well, like account creation or granting permissions. All based on fuzzy natural language – that no two humans will ever properly agree on.

Jesus Christ, we’re now INTENTIONALLY bringing the ambiguity of legal texts and lawyers into programming.

Using natural language is NOT easier than using a programming language. It is HARDER. Have you people never read a legal contract? And that stuff can STILL be debated in a court room.

I can’t begin to comprehend why we, tech folks, push this so hard. What is wrong with you? Or me?

(And, once again, we’re ignoring other factors here. LLMs use a ton of energy and ressources, that we don’t have to spare. It’s expensive as fuck. It doesn’t even run locally on our servers, meaning we give all these credentials and permissions to some US company. It’s insane.)

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