Great idea! I've been humorously referring to chat agents as next gen Clippy because of their chipper, talky default personas which I find insufferably annoying.
I'm kind of shocked Microsoft didn't already do this as an alt version of their CoPilot UI. Really a huge miss on their part because I hate the overbearingly intrusive way they keep forcing it into their OS, apps and my fucking laptop keyboard. If they at least acknowledged their behavior and owned it (with a sly wink), I'd hate it a little less. I might even be up for a "Clippy is my CoPilot" sticker on my laptop (calling back to the old 80s "Jesus is my Copilot" bumper stickers).
> I'm kind of shocked Microsoft didn't already do this as an alt version of their CoPilot UI.
Seriously! This makes me think nobody at Microsoft with the authority to approve something like that has a sense of humor and/or good business sense. The nostalgia would be enormous. Hell I'm a linux person now and I'd install Clippy if it supported Fedora
>I'm kind of shocked Microsoft didn't already do this as an alt version of their CoPilot UI.
I attribute this to the fact that big corporations like Microsoft have so much bureaucracy and moving cogs that even something as simple as a request to reuse a UI element like Clippy would be stuck between the cogs forever.
In a few places, Microsoft sneaks in clever references to Clippy in the Azure LLM documentation[0]. Nice to see they're still letting a bit of humor shine through here and there.
I've enjoyed honing a GPT accent of sorts to make my friends laugh, one of my favorites is re-summarizing what someone says in a smarmy way and then adding "With your understanding in x you've been playing chess while others have been merely playing checkers."
Agreed! I use Gemini and have found that I've been able to successfully shape the tone of the outputs -specifically away from the overly cheerful default by using the "saved info" section where you can basically act like a director for it.
I really can’t stand their brain dead appropriation of AI - first Cortana, which they stole from Halo, now CoPilot, which they stole from GitHub (and should have been named Cod*e*Pilot anyway) -
One underused Clippy feature is the fact that Clippy and all the other Agents (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_Agent), like the dog that did search in Windows XP, came with an API developers could use to write their own assistants.
Thanks to the horrific beauty of ActiveX, this even allowed these Agents to be loaded into web pages.
The API was supported up till Windows 7 (though it was an optional component at the time) but still I would love for someone to dig up an old copy of the agent SDK (I couldn't find it myself) and hook up ChatGPT to the real, actual Clippy.
The actual character of Clippy was not included with the Agent SDK (unlike some other options available in Office, like the Wizard), so you’d have to dig it out of an actual copy of Office, or get it from someone who already did so:
I actually used one of these in a VB app back in the day as a joke.. it was the robot I used.. if you typed in something wrong in a a text box.. it would shake his arms and call you an idiot
Actually this is a good way to find product ideas. I placed a query in Grok to find posts about what people want, similar to this. Then it performs multiple searches on X including embedding search, and suggested people want stuff like tamagotchi, ICQ etc. back.
IIRC correctly, Clippy’s most famous feature was interrupting you to offer advice. The advice was usually basic/useless/annoying, hence Clippy’s reputation, but a powerful LLM could actually make the original concept work. It would not be simply a chatbot that responds to text, but rather would observe your screen, understand it through a vision model, and give appropriate advice. Things like “did you know there’s an easier way to do what you’re doing”. I don’t think the necessary trust exists yet to do this using public LLM APIs, nor does the hardware to do it locally, but crack either of those and I could see ClipGPT being genuinely useful.
The way I remember it a lot of software had "help" documentation with full text search in the late 1980s and early 1990s but the common denominator was that it didn't work in the sense that you got useful answers less than 10% of the time. Until Google came along, users got trained to avoid full text search facilities.
The full text facility attached to Clippy really was helpful, getting useful answers around 50% of the time. I thought the whole point of making him an engaging cartoon character was to overcome the prejudice mid-1990s users had towards full-text search in help.
We are probably getting closer to that with the newer multimodal LLMs, but you'd almost need to take a screenshot on intervals fed directly to the LLM to provide a sort of chronological context to help it understand what the user is trying to do and gauge the users intentions.
As you say though, I don't know how many people would be comfortable having screenshots of their computer sent arbitrarily to a non-local LLM.
> Things like “did you know there’s an easier way to do what you’re doing”
That could come off just as patronizing as the original Clippy. If it said things like "Would you like me to generate you a letter for X?" it would be miles ahead of the original.
I thought this immediately also. I already have ollama set up to run llm tasks locally. I don't want to duplicate that but it would be fun to try this front end.
Wow. The ease-of-use is insanely good. I haven't figured out yet how to move clippy to a different location on the screen (rather than centred), but it works well. I have multiple models downloaded and am chatting already!
Super cool. Serious 90s vibes. I also tried to make a super clippy here. https://chatbotkit.com/examples/super-clippy I think I match the color shema perfectly but does not have the same feeling as the original.
On a side note, I'm excited to see more an more ambitious side projects like these as LLMs empower hobbyists to do more in less time than was ever possible before.
Very cool project! It would be really nice to have support for the other assistants that Microsoft released to use in place of Clippy (I'm particularly fond of the dolphin that was used in the Japanese version of Windows) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Office_Assistant#Assistants
Funny. But you know, with multimodal models perhaps someone will finally crack when it is appropriate to interrupt someone with a relevant suggestion. I think I would like a personal assistant that would be able to say, "Hey, you have been debugging this one function for 5 hours and you still have 3 more to fix by EOB. Would it make sense to pause for a bit and see if other fixes could be done quickly?"
I love this, and will unironically use it as a little desktop LLM, but it seems to completely ignore the prompt that’s in the settings. No matter what model I install it’s just “being” the default model.
The general idea is awesome though, and a lot more fun than just having a quake-terminal to interface with local LLMs via ollama.
Since Clippy 2.0 is out in the real world now, you can pick another legend to revive. I went with AIM, replacing your AIM friends with AIs. You should do Stumbleupon with AI generated websites or bring back MSN :)
The idea is great but its personality needs some more sass. And maybe some contextual cues just so that it does the exact opposite of what would have been most helpful then :)
I feel like a text editor + clippy would be an even more potent combo! After all, that was clippy's original context.
Really cool! I think OS integration can be taken a lot further. Looking forward to seeing more of this esp. as models get better! First thing that comes to mind are generative GTK widgets; small purpose-built widgets for any task, styled to match your setup.
Fun fact: the newest generation (such as myself, a 23 year old programmer) were actually not even alive when Clippy existed. I only know of it from an Office reference. One day I will have something like that -- maybe MSN or internet explorer?
Looks like it's a special font provided by https://github.com/jdan/98.css (Which has come a long way in the past couple of years, despite still being 0.1.x)
I couldn't find how to get back to the normal chat screen from settings easily, and loading the same model file that works in LM studio crashed my computer.
Hahah I would
Love to see this thing back in windows. The only thing I use now is ms teams since they killed Skype and my foreign music teacher requires us to use it
Would love to have a mac shortcut to toggle clippy chat window, and also so that when the chat window gets opened, the chatbox gets focuses automatically
Really interesting project. I love the combination of LLM with a 90s aesthetic. Great that it works with a really simple configuration and runs offline
The real answer is that some of us (the Electron maintainers) have been playing with local LLMs in desktop apps and right now, node-llama-cpp is by far the easiest way to experiment - but it's also not meant for desktop apps and hence has _a lot_ of dependencies.
In general, pruning libraries in Electron isn't as easy as it should be - it's probably something for us to work on.
> A JavaScript implementation of the Jinja templating language
A guess without looking into the code: Jinja templating is used to define how to prompt the model (i.e. system first, then this specific character / token, then user, then if it's a tool prepend this and append that, etc.)
I think this is explained on the linked project page:
This project isn't trying to be your best chat bot. I'd like you to enjoy a weird mix of nostalgia for 1990s technology paired with one the most magical technologies we can run on our computers in 2025.
You might be looking for the more minimalist Grumpy which is hand-hewn from a pure silicon monocrystal.
Question for the devs in here...something I've been thinking about a lot recently. So I see that OP linked out to a public github repo...but when downloading the actual bundle, what's a quick way for me to determine that what I'm installing on my mac is actually the same as what's in the public repo? It's always seemed like a loophole to me ready for (potential) exploitation.
>> Ship project.
>> Link out Github repo on the static site somewhere
>> Gain trust instantly as users presume the public repo is what's used behind the scenes
Disclaimer: I'm a web dev and don't know a single thing about native MacOS software
I sign my binaries on macOS with Apple codesign and notarize - and with Microsoft's Azure trusted signing for Windows. Both operating systems will actually show you a lot of warning dialogs before running anything unsigned. It's far from perfect - but I do wish we'd get more into the habit of signing binaries, even if open source.
It was great / depressing to mention Clippy at a recent meetup and see the generational divide between those who groaned and everyone who looked confused.
I'm late to this, but we can do without this kind of comment on Hacker News, as it falls under the guidelines about generic tangents and tangential annoyances. It led to a hostile exchange down-thread, which is exactly the kind of thing we're trying to avoid here, but is what happens when people take threads away from the main topic.
Given we're a technology-focused site, Hacker News readers can be reasonably assumed to be technically proficient, and aware of the importance of taking normal security measures.
You sure wouldn't want them spying on you, stealing your data, chewing up your resources for shady profit schemes, or making your machine unbootable. Better to leave that to the experts at Microsoft and FAANG since all those features come preinstalled nowadays.
Snark aside, given the context, this really seems like a baseless attack on independent open source developers, who represent a significant potion of this site's subject matter and target audience. Genuine question: why do you feel that this warning is appropriate here but not the dozens of other solo github projects that make it to the HN front page every week?
I'm all for these prepackaged local-only AI projects. Much more my speed than corporate cloud services. Real shame this one went down the path of choosing an embodiment that makes me want to shoot holes in my screen. It's even worse than those pixel art cats that chase my cursor on certain blogs. I miss plenty of things about the 90s, but I seriously doubt I'll live long enough to forget how much Clippy is not one of those things. Clippy would be more suitable for a horror game than an assistant. Going out of their way in the README to profusely thank Microsoft for summoning that hellspawn is just icing on the cake.
I hate to put down anyone's open source hobby project, and the guy looks so friendly and happy in his picture. But my honest reaction is fear of what further nightmares people are going to start animating with AI. I'd rather be hunted by a Boston Dynamics robot than have to face Clippy on my screen every day. Might as well add Rover from Microsoft Bob, some blink/marquee tags, a MIDI file playing in the background, and a minigame about diagnosing DMA conflicts in mixed plug and play and non-PnP systems. Some parts of the 90s should stay in the 90s.
> I'd rather be hunted by a Boston Dynamics robot than have to face Clippy on my screen every day.
This is the first AI thing I've actually bothered to install on my computer. Until today, despite being a technologist, I've only played with AIs via browser. I think AIs are interesting and can be useful but, having retired early, I'm not writing code or work emails so there hasn't been any compelling need.
I've thought about installing a local LLM to just play around with, but I have a long list of other things to play with (pinball machines, music making, photography, vintage video games) and AI just never got to the top of the list. I think I was also resistant because chat interfaces tend to be so annoying. I hate it when they LARP being a human. Giving a chat agent a retro 90s UX that's legendary for being annoying and clueless just seems so... on message, I thought "Yeah, I can probably not hate using this..."
i'm not sure if this post was written with humor as intent, but i found it hilarious. ive never heard someone talk about clippy with such disdain.
> I'd rather be hunted by a Boston Dynamics robot than have to face Clippy on my screen every day.
this is something else. i dealt with clippy when i was younger but i only have fond memories. it was useless, but it brought personality to an otherwise fairly mundane product.
You link your os to a local or cloud llm, and a local program asking the OS for a response and can’t even tell which one you’re using or whether it’s on the machine or not. It should all be abstracted away.
... but I think we may be heading for a new 'golden age' of web animation and gratuitous creativity. Personally, I'm happy to see more crazy animated stuff, it's the corporate dark patterns and bad UX that I hate.
mrandish|10 months ago
I'm kind of shocked Microsoft didn't already do this as an alt version of their CoPilot UI. Really a huge miss on their part because I hate the overbearingly intrusive way they keep forcing it into their OS, apps and my fucking laptop keyboard. If they at least acknowledged their behavior and owned it (with a sly wink), I'd hate it a little less. I might even be up for a "Clippy is my CoPilot" sticker on my laptop (calling back to the old 80s "Jesus is my Copilot" bumper stickers).
freedomben|10 months ago
Seriously! This makes me think nobody at Microsoft with the authority to approve something like that has a sense of humor and/or good business sense. The nostalgia would be enormous. Hell I'm a linux person now and I'd install Clippy if it supported Fedora
nightski|10 months ago
Edit: yes found it.
[1] https://windowsreport.com/with-copilot-avatar-microsoft-will...
Arisaka1|10 months ago
I attribute this to the fact that big corporations like Microsoft have so much bureaucracy and moving cogs that even something as simple as a request to reuse a UI element like Clippy would be stuck between the cogs forever.
pragma_x|10 months ago
indrora|10 months ago
basch|10 months ago
They can bring back clippy, Cortana, and all the other variants, in classic or modern mode. Hell why not a BonziBuddy knockoff.
An opportunity for Carmen Sandiego as well.
joeyagreco|10 months ago
jhoh|10 months ago
[0]: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/ai-services/openai/h...
legohead|10 months ago
iwontberude|10 months ago
oogabooga13|10 months ago
teaearlgraycold|10 months ago
wombatpm|10 months ago
jahewson|10 months ago
mock-possum|10 months ago
I really can’t stand their brain dead appropriation of AI - first Cortana, which they stole from Halo, now CoPilot, which they stole from GitHub (and should have been named Cod*e*Pilot anyway) -
Clippy is right there!!
jeroenhd|10 months ago
Thanks to the horrific beauty of ActiveX, this even allowed these Agents to be loaded into web pages.
The API was supported up till Windows 7 (though it was an optional component at the time) but still I would love for someone to dig up an old copy of the agent SDK (I couldn't find it myself) and hook up ChatGPT to the real, actual Clippy.
mananaysiempre|10 months ago
https://archive.org/details/microsoftagentsoftwaredevelopmen...
> and hook up ChatGPT to the real, actual Clippy.
The actual character of Clippy was not included with the Agent SDK (unlike some other options available in Office, like the Wizard), so you’d have to dig it out of an actual copy of Office, or get it from someone who already did so:
https://archive.org/details/clippitMS
(Was the WinXP search dog also an Agent character? I never guessed that for some reason.)
hedora|10 months ago
That and an appropriate system prompt could get pretty close to vigor from User Friendly.
http://www.userfriendly.org/cartoons/archives/00jan/20000104...
(and, of course pico-chu for the noobs.)
nonethewiser|10 months ago
surfingdino|10 months ago
minkeymaniac|10 months ago
fun times
akx|10 months ago
tzury|10 months ago
After all it was requested almost daily over at x.com
https://x.com/search?q=ai%20bring%20clippy%20back&src=typed_...
xyc|10 months ago
ants_everywhere|10 months ago
I have often wondered what role their relationship played in keeping Clippy around. And now I wonder if Clippy makes Bill Gates sad since the divorce.
lawlessone|10 months ago
I doubt he thinks about clippy much at all.
dehrmann|10 months ago
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tu_Pzuwy-JY
jl6|10 months ago
PaulHoule|10 months ago
The full text facility attached to Clippy really was helpful, getting useful answers around 50% of the time. I thought the whole point of making him an engaging cartoon character was to overcome the prejudice mid-1990s users had towards full-text search in help.
freedomben|10 months ago
Would you like help?
* Get help with writing the letter
* Just type the letter without help
|_| Don't show me this tip again
vunderba|10 months ago
As you say though, I don't know how many people would be comfortable having screenshots of their computer sent arbitrarily to a non-local LLM.
rossant|10 months ago
Wait, are you really looking this up? You don't even know how to do this? Are you kidding me?
Gosh, it's been an hour and you still haven't fixed this bug? Are you retarded or something? You don't deserve this job.
GoblinSlayer|10 months ago
"It's time to work, Dave"
6510|10 months ago
It looks like you are writing a comment on Hacker News.
Would you like help with:
- Commas? There shouldn't be one behind "responds to text"
- Capitalization? You've missed a D in "did you know..."
- Punctuation? You've missed a question mark behind "what you’re doing". It goes inside the quotes, of course!
[] Don't ever suggest anything like this ever again.
unknown|10 months ago
[deleted]
hbn|10 months ago
trinix912|10 months ago
That could come off just as patronizing as the original Clippy. If it said things like "Would you like me to generate you a letter for X?" it would be miles ahead of the original.
unknown|10 months ago
[deleted]
alkh|10 months ago
totetsu|10 months ago
Jagerbizzle|10 months ago
Perz1val|10 months ago
mountainriver|10 months ago
surfingdino|10 months ago
_-_-__-_-_-|10 months ago
siryeetey|10 months ago
nonethewiser|10 months ago
I wish this sort of style had a more specific name and could be decoupled from the desktop a bit more.
Would love to see a native webpage inspired by windows 2000 or similar. I've struggled to find a name for it.
Tossrock|9 months ago
makapuf|10 months ago
basketbla|10 months ago
sigmaisaletter|10 months ago
ICYDN: The proper name of Clippy is actually "Clippit", as introduced in Office 97.
novaRom|10 months ago
Thank you Felix! This is extremely cool! Can you please make a short blog post explaining how is it technically implemented?
_pdp_|10 months ago
stavros|10 months ago
SLWW|10 months ago
rileytg|10 months ago
https://github.com/pi0/clippyjs
hnlmorg|10 months ago
It used Merlin rather than Clippy and was extremely basic as AI. But it was a fun project.
codebolt|10 months ago
thunfischtoast|10 months ago
ale42|10 months ago
I hope that one day a non-Electron app (to minimize resource usage when idle) will also appear!
webprofusion|10 months ago
devilsbabe|10 months ago
Aardwolf|10 months ago
oneeyedpigeon|10 months ago
0points|10 months ago
dr_kiszonka|10 months ago
elzbardico|10 months ago
okokwhatever|9 months ago
sen|10 months ago
The general idea is awesome though, and a lot more fun than just having a quake-terminal to interface with local LLMs via ollama.
kuberwastaken|10 months ago
dbish|10 months ago
dopple|10 months ago
ChrisArchitect|10 months ago
https://fabulous.systems/posts/2024/06/if-i-ever-get-a-dog-i...
Tempest1981|10 months ago
https://youtube.com/watch?v=6umxhkdKzSY&t=79s
omneity|10 months ago
I feel like a text editor + clippy would be an even more potent combo! After all, that was clippy's original context.
tootyskooty|10 months ago
byearthithatius|10 months ago
lolinder|10 months ago
unknown|10 months ago
[deleted]
tasn|10 months ago
rhet0rica|10 months ago
Although there is a CSS rule for manipulating how fonts are anti-aliased, it was never standardized, and Firefox doesn't implement the vital no-smoothing option: https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/CSS/font-smooth
Maybe with enough retro revivals it will receive attention.
unethical_ban|10 months ago
I like the idea, though.
hosh|10 months ago
uptownfunk|10 months ago
quaintdev|10 months ago
rerdavies|10 months ago
tommica|10 months ago
aligundogdu|10 months ago
batch12|10 months ago
https://gwern.net/fiction/clippy
Telemakhos|10 months ago
> Error: Error invoking remote method 'ELECTRON_LLM_CREATE': Error: Error: NoBinaryFoundError
felixrieseberg|10 months ago
https://github.com/felixrieseberg/clippy/releases/tag/v0.4.1
elia_42|10 months ago
danielhanchen|10 months ago
insane_dreamer|10 months ago
Hadriel|10 months ago
mbowcut2|10 months ago
rockemsockem|10 months ago
DigiEggz|10 months ago
GuinansEyebrows|10 months ago
roskelld|10 months ago
https://somethingorotherwhatever.com/tiny-elvis/
AvAn12|10 months ago
daviding|10 months ago
unixhero|10 months ago
I have a 3090gtx, but never actually run/hosted any locally.
Cheers
willejs|10 months ago
GTP|10 months ago
TanYuho|10 months ago
ciaranmca|10 months ago
endlessvoid94|10 months ago
On macOS it always launches in the middle of the screen - is there a way to move it around?
cbhl|10 months ago
xbartu|9 months ago
rolph|10 months ago
https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/Badgey
ayaros|10 months ago
davidmurphy|10 months ago
andwrobs|10 months ago
dismalaf|10 months ago
ninetyninenine|10 months ago
breppp|10 months ago
rangerelf|10 months ago
givemeethekeys|10 months ago
artursapek|10 months ago
layer8|10 months ago
mig39|10 months ago
alanh|10 months ago
awesome_dude|10 months ago
aussieguy1234|10 months ago
patrick4urcloud|10 months ago
chenster|9 months ago
shmerl|10 months ago
dhruv3006|10 months ago
timvdalen|10 months ago
ummonk|10 months ago
amiantos|10 months ago
urbandw311er|10 months ago
tungolcild|10 months ago
King-Aaron|10 months ago
integricho|10 months ago
sachahjkl|10 months ago
cocodill|10 months ago
badmonster|9 months ago
talkinghead|10 months ago
quantum_state|10 months ago
margorczynski|10 months ago
rafram|10 months ago
- A JavaScript implementation of the Jinja templating language
- A full GitHub API client
- A library that takes a string and tells you if it's a valid npm package name
- A useless shim for the JavaScript Math module
And 119 other libraries? This thing would have taken up 10% of the maximum disk space available on a Windows 95 FAT16 volume.
felixrieseberg|10 months ago
In general, pruning libraries in Electron isn't as easy as it should be - it's probably something for us to work on.
anaisbetts|10 months ago
criddell|10 months ago
NitpickLawyer|10 months ago
A guess without looking into the code: Jinja templating is used to define how to prompt the model (i.e. system first, then this specific character / token, then user, then if it's a tool prepend this and append that, etc.)
pvg|10 months ago
This project isn't trying to be your best chat bot. I'd like you to enjoy a weird mix of nostalgia for 1990s technology paired with one the most magical technologies we can run on our computers in 2025.
You might be looking for the more minimalist Grumpy which is hand-hewn from a pure silicon monocrystal.
unknown|10 months ago
[deleted]
nullchan|10 months ago
maxwell|10 months ago
https://tsdr.uspto.gov/#caseNumber=90782096&caseSearchType=U...
muwtyhg|10 months ago
pier25|10 months ago
SoftTalker|10 months ago
unknown|10 months ago
[deleted]
amelius|10 months ago
unknown|10 months ago
[deleted]
mkgeorge7|10 months ago
>> Ship project. >> Link out Github repo on the static site somewhere >> Gain trust instantly as users presume the public repo is what's used behind the scenes
Disclaimer: I'm a web dev and don't know a single thing about native MacOS software
felixrieseberg|10 months ago
I sign my binaries on macOS with Apple codesign and notarize - and with Microsoft's Azure trusted signing for Windows. Both operating systems will actually show you a lot of warning dialogs before running anything unsigned. It's far from perfect - but I do wish we'd get more into the habit of signing binaries, even if open source.
dec0dedab0de|10 months ago
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reproducible_builds
unknown|10 months ago
[deleted]
rukuu001|10 months ago
unknown|10 months ago
[deleted]
gitroom|10 months ago
arjav0703|10 months ago
[deleted]
UncleNoob|10 months ago
unknown|10 months ago
[deleted]
dragonsweeper|9 months ago
[deleted]
aaroninsf|10 months ago
unknown|10 months ago
[deleted]
animanoir|10 months ago
[deleted]
opeyeni|10 months ago
[deleted]
rvz|10 months ago
[deleted]
unknown|10 months ago
[deleted]
concerndc1tizen|10 months ago
tomhow|9 months ago
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
Given we're a technology-focused site, Hacker News readers can be reasonably assumed to be technically proficient, and aware of the importance of taking normal security measures.
raydiak|10 months ago
Snark aside, given the context, this really seems like a baseless attack on independent open source developers, who represent a significant potion of this site's subject matter and target audience. Genuine question: why do you feel that this warning is appropriate here but not the dozens of other solo github projects that make it to the HN front page every week?
gwbas1c|10 months ago
unknown|10 months ago
[deleted]
bigbuppo|10 months ago
unknown|10 months ago
[deleted]
0points|10 months ago
[deleted]
Lammy|10 months ago
[deleted]
raydiak|10 months ago
I hate to put down anyone's open source hobby project, and the guy looks so friendly and happy in his picture. But my honest reaction is fear of what further nightmares people are going to start animating with AI. I'd rather be hunted by a Boston Dynamics robot than have to face Clippy on my screen every day. Might as well add Rover from Microsoft Bob, some blink/marquee tags, a MIDI file playing in the background, and a minigame about diagnosing DMA conflicts in mixed plug and play and non-PnP systems. Some parts of the 90s should stay in the 90s.
mrandish|10 months ago
This is the first AI thing I've actually bothered to install on my computer. Until today, despite being a technologist, I've only played with AIs via browser. I think AIs are interesting and can be useful but, having retired early, I'm not writing code or work emails so there hasn't been any compelling need.
I've thought about installing a local LLM to just play around with, but I have a long list of other things to play with (pinball machines, music making, photography, vintage video games) and AI just never got to the top of the list. I think I was also resistant because chat interfaces tend to be so annoying. I hate it when they LARP being a human. Giving a chat agent a retro 90s UX that's legendary for being annoying and clueless just seems so... on message, I thought "Yeah, I can probably not hate using this..."
volkk|10 months ago
> I'd rather be hunted by a Boston Dynamics robot than have to face Clippy on my screen every day.
this is something else. i dealt with clippy when i was younger but i only have fond memories. it was useless, but it brought personality to an otherwise fairly mundane product.
ants_everywhere|10 months ago
basch|10 months ago
You link your os to a local or cloud llm, and a local program asking the OS for a response and can’t even tell which one you’re using or whether it’s on the machine or not. It should all be abstracted away.
fallinditch|10 months ago
... but I think we may be heading for a new 'golden age' of web animation and gratuitous creativity. Personally, I'm happy to see more crazy animated stuff, it's the corporate dark patterns and bad UX that I hate.
unknown|10 months ago
[deleted]