Man, brings back memories I didnt even think I still hadClippy was kinda ridiculous back then but Id 100% mess with this now tbh.
Show HN: Clippy – 90s UI for local LLMs
131–140 of 300 posts
Re: Show HN: Clippy – 90s UI for local LLMs
#132IIRC 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…
Microsoft infamously is adding AI to Windows to constantly watch your screen and people understandably are not super excited for it.
I personally can’t wait to ask to recall something I saw before but can’t quite remember where.
Pretty soon I won’t even need biological memory.
Re: Show HN: Clippy – 90s UI for local LLMs
#133Re: Show HN: Clippy – 90s UI for local LLMs
#134Amazing, we also have CowPilot now https://github.com/agentsea/cowpilot
Re: Show HN: Clippy – 90s UI for local LLMs
#135Great 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 le…
They did though, I swear it was in a presentation you could select clippy as an avatar. Edit: yes found it. [1] https://windowsreport.com/with-copilot-avatar-microsoft-will...
clicked this link on mobile and every page scroll caused another malicious ad redirect (??) there's also a huge bouncing "remove ads" button with an X that opens an advert in the background. can't tell if the ads are on purpose or if the owners have just ticked every ad network box
Re: Show HN: Clippy – 90s UI for local LLMs
#136I'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…
> 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 though…
I'm in the exact same boat as you describe, except it was some other precompiled local-only project instead of this one that I tried a few months ago. That's why I said I like projects like these, because it's a fully private hassle free way to try out LLMs. Haven't really figured out any good purposes for it in my life, but I like to see these tools being made available to people without the time/motivation/savvy to jump through a bunch of hoops.
The Clippy character specifically is the part I find off-putting, but perhaps that's just an excess of relevant experience. How many times I had to explain to confused people that it's not saying anything you have to care about, or disable it for them when they're cursing at their screen because the "hide" option doesn't actually disable it you have to go into the settings for that or it keeps popping up. Which made it just another config burden when I'd be installing office on many computers in a day.
Now, a strong argument could be made that those experiences have made me unreasonable and bigoted against animated paperclips, because this is not the original Clippy. I can live with that.
Re: Show HN: Clippy – 90s UI for local LLMs
#137Earlier quoted context omitted.
Customers I build AI chat features for also liken it to clippy. I think it’s a very common association.
I hope you accept that likening how it is intended, and I can't imagine that being a good thing. Clippy was universally panned. To me, I wouldn't be telling people that the thing I'm spending time working on was received as this generation's Clippy.
Clippy was panned because it was intrusive and offered very little real help, but the design and concept themselves were always popular.
Re: Show HN: Clippy – 90s UI for local LLMs
#138a very basic app getting a bunch of undue attention thanks to nostalgia for someone else's IP, classic
You almost sound bitter about it
and...? it does not change the fact that this "app" would get 0 attention if it wasn't using nostalgic IP that does not belong to the developer. their are undoubtedly better, more original apps being posted to HN right now that likely deserve the attention more, but they're not using stolen IP to get attention, so they don't.
Re: Show HN: Clippy – 90s UI for local LLMs
#139Earlier quoted context omitted.
They did though, I swear it was in a presentation you could select clippy as an avatar. Edit: yes found it. [1] https://windowsreport.com/with-copilot-avatar-microsoft-will...
clicked this link on mobile and every page scroll caused another malicious ad redirect (??) there's also a huge bouncing "remove ads" button with an X that opens an advert in the background. can't tell if the ads are on purpose or if the owners have just ticked every ad network box
Sorry didn't notice, it was the top google result. I have ublock origin and firefox so I tend not to see many ads.
Re: Show HN: Clippy – 90s UI for local LLMs
#140Earlier quoted context omitted.
They did though, I swear it was in a presentation you could select clippy as an avatar. Edit: yes found it. [1] https://windowsreport.com/with-copilot-avatar-microsoft-will...
clicked this link on mobile and every page scroll caused another malicious ad redirect (??) there's also a huge bouncing "remove ads" button with an X that opens an advert in the background. can't tell if the ads are on purpose or if the owners have just ticked every ad network box
You're not wrong, but both mullvad's free DNS base filter (here: https://github.com/mullvad/encrypted-dns-profiles ) and Wipr blocked it on my iphone. Android just use ublock origin with firefox or another variant.