I'm running a nixos linux machine with Hyperland as my window manager and a few month back (likely after an update) I noticed that firefox started showing a emoji picker when I pressed ctrl+.. This was a bit annoying since the firefox extension for my password manager is activated by that key shortcut. I figured this was some update for firefox, but now that I dug into it to fix it it turns out that it is a gtk thing that apparently each app has to opt out of! I could disable it by flipping widget.gtk.native-emoji-dialog in about:config, but this seems like a really bad choice by gtk. Two gripes with this:

1. Them adding a global keyboard shortcut for all gtk apps that is ON by default (for a kind of niche usecase).
2. Overriding shortcuts on a desktop wide basis with no meaningful (afaict) way to disable it.

Anyone knows if this is intentional? Maybe it's already been reverted upstream and I just need to update... anyway end rant!

My daughter (11) is doing a week long Python class, which is not using LLMs.

It got me thinking about how I learned to program in the pre-internet days (laboriously, from books), and then what a marvel it was when you could just search for information, especially for troubleshooting. But for her, the first answer in the Google search is going to be the AI summary, and most of her search tools are going to be AI tools.

I wonder if it would be possible to make an LLM that has a didactic/socratic mode. So if you said, "help me write a program to do madlibs" maybe it would give you a skeleton of a function, then prompt you to come to with a plan, then critique that plan. Or if you said, "I'm getting this error", it wouldn't just fix it, it would explain what the error means and nudge you towards the answer.

Thinking in a larger sense, it could have a rubric of important concepts, even tiers of understanding. It could be using the interactions to track the user's understanding, which could let it then tune how it answers future questions, or even be used to customize assignments.

I recognize that this is potentially replacing a teacher with a machine, which wouldn't be my goal. Good teachers are more holistic in their teaching than a machine is ever likely to be. But for people who don't have access to good teachers, or need more directed support than is available from a teacher, or just want to self study, it seems like it could be a valuable addition.

Until they solve the obsequiousness problem, it would be vulnerable to prompt hacking, so really more of a tool for someone who recognizes the value of learning over just being given the answer.

What do folks think about using such a tool? What would you want it to do, or not do?

Aside: I forgot until I reached the end of this post, but this is also (somewhat) the plot of The Diamond Age, or A Young Lady's Illustrates Primer by Neal Stephenson.

Now that we know everyone's favorites, I'd love to hear about games that are further down the list -- the ones that don't necessarily rise to the high heights of definitive favoritedom.

So, share your eleventh favorite game this time. You know, the one that doesn't quite make it into your top 10.

Feel free to share your top 10 if you like as well, but lead with your 11th, as those are the ones I'm interested in seeing highlighted.