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My copilots invented their own sorting methods that didn't sort. Inputted non-existent function names. Windsurf cheerfully discarded the contents of multiple functions and replaced them with 'your code here' because the context became too complex. It's like an over-enthusiastic junior who sometimes has brilliant insights, but also regularly blindly copy-pastes code that turns out to be complete nonsense. Windsurf even managed to write Python code in a JavaScript file. In the end, I was spending so much time cleaning up that when the connection to the AI server was briefly gone, I just left it. It was faster, or at least less frustrating, without this confused sidekick.

Don’t you miss the days when you manually picked a cd or a vinyl album to play, or a mixtape you carefully put together, rather than having The Algorithm play a ‘mood’ for you? The physical act of putting a cartridge into a playback device, it had something magical. The simple push of a button. No fumbling for a password, no interruption from a Windows update, no keyboard, no loading times. But, unfortunately, all your music is in the cloud nowadays. That wretched cloud, taking the fun out of music, with its stupid infinite storage. Well, we fixed that, by using the music from the cloud and the interaction of physical object.

The Kaspirov consists of a webcam mounted in a lampshade above a physical chess board, and two buttons, all connected to a small computer. As players make moves on the board, they press the buttons as they would on a traditional chess clock. This instructs the computer to take a before and after picture of the chessboard using the overhead webcam. By comparing those images the computer can determine which move has been made, feed this into the Stockfish chess engine, which calculates the best response. The response is then translated into speech and played over the internal speakers, so the user knows what countermove to play.

So powerfully did the whole grim aspect of Ahab affect me, and the livid brand which streaked it, that for the first few moments I hardly noted that not a little of this overbearing grimness was owing to the barbaric white leg upon which he partly stood. It had previously come to me that this ivory leg had at sea been fashioned from the polished bone of the sperm whale’s jaw. “Aye, he was dismasted off Japan,” said the old Gay-Head Indian once; “but like his dismasted craft, he shipped another mast without coming home for it. He has a quiver of ’em.

[HONDENKOTS]