"There were a tiny handful of incredible nerds who thought [Zork] was fun, mostly because 3D graphics and the physical touch of another human being hadn't been invented yet. But for the most part, people would tire of the novelty because trying to guess what to type to make something happen is a terrible and exhausting user interface. This was also why people hated operating systems like MS-DOS, and why even all the Linux users reading this right now are doing so in a graphical user interface." I get that Dash is exaggerating here for effect, but the comparison between command-line interfaces and LLM chatbot interfaces rings false to me. Command-line interfaces have steep learning curves, but they're deterministic and composable, which is why we still use them today. The reason that chatbot interfaces suck isn't that they're based on textual inputs, but that they're neither deterministic nor composable. (GUIs have different affordances than command-line interfaces which make sense for some use cases, but they also have their own learning curves and limitations. A hypothetical GUI-based LLM interface would have all the same problems as a text-based one.) Plus the Zork series sold like 700,000 copies
"In other words, some users get the full experience, the one with all the words, all the context, and all the options. But if Nielsen’s AI thinks you have a disability, you’ll get a different experience, a simpler experience that’s more appropriate for people like you. It’s an ugly kind of paternalism with a new AI twist."
"Face lets you edit both the text and the font it is rendered in. In text mode you can type and edit text normally. Press escape to enter font mode, where you can select a character to edit. Any changes to a character are visible immediately."