The idea is that it isn't just operating the vending machine itself, it's operating the entire vending machine business. It decides what to stock and what price to charge based on market trends and/or user feedback.

It's a stress test for LLM autonomy. Obviously a vending machine doesn't need this level of autonomy, you usually just stock it with the same thing every time. But a vending machine works as a very simple "business" that can be simulated without much stakes, and it shows how LLM agents behave when left to operate on their own like this, and can be used to test guardrails in the field.

If you want to share software like that, just use AppImage. It's perfect for sneakernet software sharing: no internet access required, and it requires less technical knowledge from end users than telling them to use a package manager. Just copy the file and run it.

Wine literally stands for "WINE Is Not an Emulator".

That said, Proton is pretty transparent, you can just install any game off Steam right now and it'll work 9 times out of 10 without you noticing that you're using wine. I often can't tell if I'm using proton or not and get surprised when I go into the game files for one reason or another expecting proton and am surprised to find a native Linux build. There has even been at least one time I've switched from a native Linux build to Proton because it ran better, and it was just one toggle.

Why the resistance to wine? Did you have an issue while using it, or is it the principle of using a compatibility layer?

Let's get MasterCard on the case

Even from a viewer perspective, this sounds depressing to watch. I don't really get what people get out of this.

Little known fact about D&D succubi: since 4e succubi can change sexes freely. Incubi and succubi are just different forms of the same monster.

As far as I'm aware, there's nothing preventing a PluralKit equivalent from being made for other platforms. In fact, a quick search turned up a WIP Matrix port on github.

So no, I don't think this is true. Lack of PluralKit isn't what's preventing people from switching en masse. It's the opposite—lack of people switching means there's a lack of demand for a PluralKit port in the first place, so even though there is a port people don't know it exists and thus it doesn't get as much dev attention.

It comes down to network effects, ultimately, and just plain inertia. If you're already on Discord, and all your friends are on Discord, it's hard to convince you to switch. And being more familiar with the Discord bot ecosystem (like PluralKit) is just one more thing that adds to the inertia.

So this is just a thing now? Removing media from the world?

They found out it works so now it's gonna become a trend.

Ending prices with 99 is manipulative. We accept it from businesses because we're conditioned to, they're businesses after all! Being manipulated by businesses is just how our current society operates, part of the environment we live in. But if an individual offers us something for a price ending in 99, we're much more likely to be suspicious of it.

The article actually explicitly mentions this, and suggests you list things for 25 under instead of 1 under, for example, as it won't immediately trigger recognition that you're doing this.

All the better to psychologically manipulate our fellow people in pursuit of profit, my dear.

It's kind of ironic taking a project that's already written in Rust and writing a replacement for it in Java.

Usually things get ported to Rust, not the other way around.

The annoying thing about that is that if you don't long rest enough in BG3, you miss a lot of story beats. Unlike tabletop, it wants you to long rest, and will punish you for not long resting rather than punishing you for long resting.

I'm doing a second playthrough and I'm realizing just how much I missed during my first playthrough where I used my tabletop mindset of "rest only when absolutely necessary". And even then sometimes watching other people's playthroughs I see scenes I never saw.

This is a weird one because despite being a "good" spell, it entails the mass murder of innocent neutrals. It really doesn't seem like a good action to me.

It seems like anyone who was okay with this would fall to neutral or evil simply by virtue of being okay with mass murder, and in turn fall victim to the Great Neutral Purge.