#modern software testing

[atcuality1]

Revolutionize Your Receivables with Atcuality’s Collection Platform

Struggling with outdated manual collection processes? Atcuality’s comprehensive cash collection application provides everything your business needs to streamline payment collection and reconciliation. Our feature-rich platform supports real-time monitoring, customizable workflows, multi-currency support, and advanced security features. Designed to empower field agents and finance managers alike, our application reduces operational overhead while improving transparency and accountability. Seamless integration with ERP systems ensures smooth data flow across your organization. From retail networks to field services and utility providers, businesses trust Atcuality to simplify collections and boost cash flow. Partner with us to modernize your operations, improve customer satisfaction, and drive sustainable growth. Experience digital transformation with Atcuality.

[atcuality3]

Engineering Excellence into Every Digital Experience - Atcuality

Atcuality is at the forefront of software innovation, delivering customized solutions for businesses across industries. With a focus on functionality, security, and scalability, we design applications that adapt to your evolving business needs. Our projects span mobile apps, enterprise software, and integrated systems that bridge communication gaps and enhance productivity. A core part of our offerings includes our proprietary cash collection application, built to support field executives and finance teams in tracking, managing, and optimizing daily collections. It ensures data accuracy, enforces accountability, and provides real-time visibility into receivables. With features like GPS tracking, on-site digital receipts, and backend sync, it's a game-changer for businesses that deal with high-volume cash transactions. Partner with Atcuality to turn your digital vision into a robust, scalable reality.

[atcuality5]

Smart Financial Management with Atcuality’s Cash Collection Tools

Businesses need reliable tools to manage their financial operations efficiently. Atcuality offers advanced fintech solutions, including an AI-powered cash collection application that ensures smooth and timely payment collection. This innovative tool helps businesses automate billing, generate instant payment reports, and send notifications to clients, reducing payment delays. With a secure platform that supports multiple payment options, companies can offer a hassle-free experience to customers while maintaining steady cash flow. Whether you’re a startup or an established enterprise, Atcuality’s technology-driven solutions are designed to support your financial goals with ease and security.

[thepearl256]

Top Tools for Web Development in 2025

Web development is an ever-evolving field, requiring developers to stay updated with the latest tools, frameworks, and software. These tools not only enhance productivity but also simplify complex development processes. Whether you’re building a small business website or a complex web application, having the right tools in your toolkit can make all the difference. Here’s a rundown of the top…

[brillioitservices]

The Generative AI Revolution: Transforming Industries with Brillio

The realm of artificial intelligence is experiencing a paradigm shift with the emergence of generative AI. Unlike traditional AI models focused on analyzing existing data, generative AI takes a leap forward by creating entirely new content. The generative ai technology unlocks a future brimming with possibilities across diverse industries. Let's read about the transformative power of generative AI in various sectors: 

1. Healthcare Industry: 

AI for Network Optimization: Generative AI can optimize healthcare networks by predicting patient flow, resource allocation, etc. This translates to streamlined operations, improved efficiency, and potentially reduced wait times. 

Generative AI for Life Sciences & Pharma: Imagine accelerating drug discovery by generating new molecule structures with desired properties. Generative AI can analyze vast datasets to identify potential drug candidates, saving valuable time and resources in the pharmaceutical research and development process. 

Patient Experience Redefined: Generative AI can personalize patient communication and education. Imagine chatbots that provide tailored guidance based on a patient's medical history or generate realistic simulations for medical training. 

Future of AI in Healthcare: Generative AI has the potential to revolutionize disease diagnosis and treatment plans by creating synthetic patient data for anonymized medical research and personalized drug development based on individual genetic profiles. 

2. Retail Industry: 

Advanced Analytics with Generative AI: Retailers can leverage generative AI to analyze customer behavior and predict future trends. This allows for targeted marketing campaigns, optimized product placement based on customer preferences, and even the generation of personalized product recommendations. 

AI Retail Merchandising: Imagine creating a virtual storefront that dynamically adjusts based on customer demographics and real-time buying patterns. Generative AI can optimize product assortments, recommend complementary items, and predict optimal pricing strategies. 

Demystifying Customer Experience: Generative AI can analyze customer feedback and social media data to identify emerging trends and potential areas of improvement in the customer journey. This empowers retailers to take proactive steps to enhance customer satisfaction and loyalty. 

3. Finance Industry: 

Generative AI in Banking: Generative AI can streamline loan application processes by automatically generating personalized loan offers and risk assessments. This reduces processing time and improves customer service efficiency. 

4. Technology Industry: 

Generative AI for Software Testing: Imagine automating the creation of large-scale test datasets for various software functionalities. Generative AI can expedite the testing process, identify potential vulnerabilities more effectively, and contribute to faster software releases. 

Generative AI for Hi-Tech: This technology can accelerate innovation in various high-tech fields by creating novel designs for microchips, materials, or even generating code snippets to enhance existing software functionalities. 

Generative AI for Telecom: Generative AI can optimize network performance by predicting potential obstruction and generating data patterns to simulate network traffic scenarios. This allows telecom companies to proactively maintain and improve network efficiency. 

5. Generative AI Beyond Industries: 

GenAI Powered Search Engine: Imagine a search engine that understands context and intent, generating relevant and personalized results tailored to your specific needs. This eliminates the need to sift through mountains of irrelevant information, enhancing the overall search experience. 

Product Engineering with Generative AI: Design teams can leverage generative AI to create new product prototypes, explore innovative design possibilities, and accelerate the product development cycle. 

Machine Learning with Generative AI: Generative AI can be used to create synthetic training data for machine learning models, leading to improved accuracy and enhanced efficiency. 

Global Data Studio with Generative AI: Imagine generating realistic and anonymized datasets for data analysis purposes. This empowers researchers, businesses, and organizations to unlock insights from data while preserving privacy. 

6. Learning & Development with Generative AI: 

L&D Shares with Generative AI: This technology can create realistic simulations and personalized training modules tailored to individual learning styles and skill gaps. Generative AI can personalize the learning experience, fostering deeper engagement and knowledge retention. 

HFS Generative AI: Generative AI can be used to personalize learning experiences for employees in the human resources and financial services sector. This technology can create tailored training programs for onboarding, compliance training, and skill development. 

7. Generative AI for AIOps: 

AIOps (Artificial Intelligence for IT Operations) utilizes AI to automate and optimize IT infrastructure management. Generative AI can further enhance this process by predicting potential IT issues before they occur, generating synthetic data for simulating scenarios, and optimizing remediation strategies. 

Conclusion: 

The potential of generative AI is vast, with its applications continuously expanding across industries. As research and development progress, we can expect even more groundbreaking advancements that will reshape the way we live, work, and interact with technology. 

Reference- https://articlescad.com/the-generative-ai-revolution-transforming-industries-with-brillio-231268.html 

[charseraph]

C&A is a neobotanics and nooscionics lab. In other words, they grow and train sophont AIs, “seedlets,” and design software and hardware to interface organic minds with digital systems.

It’s a small enough company to draw little suspicion, but credible enough to be contracted by big name operations (mainly military).

They accidentally trapped a person in a noospace, the “noosciocircus,” with Caine, a seedlet grown and owned by C&A. He’s a well meaning seedlet, tasked to keep the trapped person sane as C&A keeps their body alive as long as possible.

In an effort to recover the person from the inside, they sent in another only to trap them as well. Their cumulating mistake becomes harder to pull the plug on as it would kill both the trapped and Caine, an expensive investment who just also happens to be relaying immensely valuable nootic data from his ongoing simulation.

C&A continues to send agents to assist the trapped from within, each with relevant skills. They’re getting a bit desperate, since the pool of candidates is limited to those who work with C&A and would not draw too much attention if gone missing.

So, the noosciocircus becomes testing ground for lesser semiohazards.

Semiohazards are stimuli that trigger a destructive response in the minds of perceivers. Semiohazards can be encoded into any medium, but are generally easiest to encode into sights and air pressure sequences. The effect, “a mulekick,” can range in severity from temporarily disabled breathing, to seizure, to brain death.

Extreme amputations (“truncations”) occur when a trapped agent ingests a semiohazard that shuts off the brain’s recognition of some body part as its own. Sieving is a last resort to permanently mechanically support the life of the trapped. Thanks to modern advancements, this is cheap and sustainable. Those overexposed to the hazards become the abstracted and are considered lost. Their bodies are kept alive for archival.

Semiohazards being a current hotspot of discovery and design means C&A is sending in semiotic specialists alongside programmers. Ragatha was sent in to provide the trapped with nootic endurance training, but she underestimated the condition of the trapped. Gangle, too, was sent to help the trapped navigate their new nootic state, but her own dealt avatar clotheslined her progress. She wasn’t too stable entering to begin with, but C&A’s options are limited.

[techinsightweekly]

Zymr legacy modernization services enable IT systems to enhance their agility and innovation. 

[ecrivainsolitaire]

A summary of the Chinese AI situation, for the uninitiated.

These are scores on different tests that are designed to see how accurate a Large Language Model is in different areas of knowledge. As you know, OpenAI is partners with Microsoft, so these are the scores for ChatGPT and Copilot. DeepSeek is the Chinese model that got released a week ago. The rest are open source models, which means everyone is free to use them as they please, including the average Tumblr user. You can run them from the servers of the companies that made them for a subscription, or you can download them to install locally on your own computer. However, the computer requirements so far are so high that only a few people currently have the machines at home required to run it.

Yes, this is why AI uses so much electricity. As with any technology, the early models are highly inefficient. Think how a Ford T needed a long chimney to get rid of a ton of black smoke, which was unused petrol. Over the next hundred years combustion engines have become much more efficient, but they still waste a lot of energy, which is why we need to move towards renewable electricity and sustainable battery technology. But that's a topic for another day.

As you can see from the scores, are around the same accuracy. These tests are in constant evolution as well: as soon as they start becoming obsolete, new ones are released to adjust for a more complicated benchmark. The new models are trained using different machine learning techniques, and in theory, the goal is to make them faster and more efficient so they can operate with less power, much like modern cars use way less energy and produce far less pollution than the Ford T.

However, computing power requirements kept scaling up, so you're either tied to the subscription or forced to pay for a latest gen PC, which is why NVIDIA, AMD, Intel and all the other chip companies were investing hard on much more powerful GPUs and NPUs. For now all we need to know about those is that they're expensive, use a lot of electricity, and are required to operate the bots at superhuman speed (literally, all those clickbait posts about how AI was secretly 150 Indian men in a trenchcoat were nonsense).

Because the chip companies have been working hard on making big, bulky, powerful chips with massive fans that are up to the task, their stock value was skyrocketing, and because of that, everyone started to use AI as a marketing trend. See, marketing people are not smart, and they don't understand computers. Furthermore, marketing people think you're stupid, and because of their biased frame of reference, they think you're two snores short of brain-dead. The entire point of their existence is to turn tall tales into capital. So they don't know or care about what AI is or what it's useful for. They just saw Number Go Up for the AI companies and decided "AI is a magic cow we can milk forever". Sometimes it's not even AI, they just use old software and rebrand it, much like convection ovens became air fryers.

Well, now we're up to date. So what did DepSeek release that did a 9/11 on NVIDIA stock prices and popped the AI bubble?

Oh, I would not want to be an OpenAI investor right now either. A token is basically one Unicode character (it's more complicated than that but you can google that on your own time). That cost means you could input the entire works of Stephen King for under a dollar. Yes, including electricity costs. DeepSeek has jumped from a Ford T to a Subaru in terms of pollution and water use.

The issue here is not only input cost, though; all that data needs to be available live, in the RAM; this is why you need powerful, expensive chips in order to-

Holy shit.

I'm not going to detail all the numbers but I'm going to focus on the chip required: an RTX 3090. This is a gaming GPU that came out as the top of the line, the stuff South Korean LoL players buy…

Or they did, in September 2020. We're currently two generations ahead, on the RTX 5090.

What this is telling all those people who just sold their high-end gaming rig to be able to afford a machine that can run the latest ChatGPT locally, is that the person who bought it from them can run something basically just as powerful on their old one.

Which means that all those GPUs and NPUs that are being made, and all those deals Microsoft signed to have control of the AI market, have just lost a lot of their pulling power.

Well, I mean, the ChatGPT subscription is 20 bucks a month, surely the Chinese are charging a fortune for-

Oh. So it's free for everyone and you can use it or modify it however you want, no subscription, no unpayable electric bill, no handing Microsoft all of your private data, you can just run it on a relatively inexpensive PC. You could probably even run it on a phone in a couple years.

Oh, if only China had massive phone manufacturers that have a foot in the market everywhere except the US because the president had a tantrum eight years ago.

So… yeah, China just destabilised the global economy with a torrent file.

[mckitterick]

She Won. They Didn't Just Change the Machines. They Rewired the Election. How Leonard Leo's 2021 sale of an electronics firm enabled tech giants to subvert the 2024 election.

Everyone knows how the Republicans interfered in the 2024 US elections through voter interference and voter-roll manipulation, which in itself could have changed the outcomes of the elections. What's coming to light now reveals that indeed those occupying the White House, at least, are not those who won the election.

Here's how they did it.

(full story is replicated here below the read-more: X)

She Won

The missing votes uncovered in Smart Elections’ legal case in Rockland County, New York, are just the tip of the iceberg—an iceberg that extends across the swing states and into Texas.

On Monday, an investigator’s story finally hit the news cycle: Pro V&V, one of only two federally accredited testing labs, approved sweeping last-minute updates to ES&S voting machines in the months leading up to the 2024 election—without independent testing, public disclosure, or full certification review.

These changes were labeled “de minimis”—a term meant for trivial tweaks. But they touched ballot scanners, altered reporting software, and modified audit files—yet were all rubber-stamped with no oversight.

That revelation is a shock to the public.

But for those who’ve been digging into the bizarre election data since November, this isn’t the headline—it’s the final piece to the puzzle. While Pro V&V was quietly updating equipment in plain sight, a parallel operation was unfolding behind the curtain—between tech giants and Donald Trump.

And it started with a long forgotten sale.

A Power Cord Becomes a Backdoor

In March 2021, Leonard Leo—the judicial kingmaker behind the modern conservative legal machine—sold a quiet Chicago company by the name of Tripp Lite for $1.65 billion. The buyer: Eaton Corporation, a global power infrastructure conglomerate that just happened to have a partnership with Peter Thiel’s Palantir.

To most, Tripp Lite was just a hardware brand—battery backups, surge protectors, power strips. But in America’s elections, Tripp Lite devices were something else entirely.

They are physically connected to ES&S central tabulators and Electionware servers, and Dominion tabulators and central servers across the country. And they aren’t dumb devices. They are smart UPS units—programmable, updatable, and capable of communicating directly with the election system via USB, serial port, or Ethernet.

ES&S systems, including central tabulators and Electionware servers, rely on Tripp Lite UPS devices. ES&S’s Electionware suite runs on Windows OS, which automatically trusts connected UPS hardware.

If Eaton pushed an update to those UPS units, it could have gained root-level access to the host tabulation environment—without ever modifying certified election software.

In Dominion’s Democracy Suite 5.17, the drivers for these UPS units are listed as “optional”—meaning they can be updated remotely without triggering certification requirements or oversight. Optional means unregulated. Unregulated means invisible. And invisible means perfect for infiltration.

Enter the ballot scrubbing platform BallotProof. Co-created by Ethan Shaotran, a longtime employee of Elon Musk and current DOGE employee, BallotProof was pitched as a transparency solution—an app to “verify” scanned ballot images and support election integrity.

With Palantir's AI controlling the backend, and BallotProof cleaning the front, only one thing was missing: the signal to go live.

September 2024: Eaton and Musk Make It Official

Then came the final public breadcrumb:In September 2024, Eaton formally partnered with Elon Musk.

The stated purpose? A vague, forward-looking collaboration focused on “grid resilience” and “next-generation communications.”

But buried in the partnership documents was this line:

“Exploring integration with Starlink's emerging low-orbit DTC infrastructure for secure operational continuity.”

The Activation: Starlink Goes Direct-to-Cell

That signal came on October 30, 2024—just days before the election, Musk activated 265 brand new low Earth orbit (LEO) V2 Mini satellites, each equipped with Direct-to-Cell (DTC) technology capable of processing, routing, and manipulating real-time data, including voting data, through his satellite network.

DTC doesn’t require routers, towers, or a traditional SIM. It connects directly from satellite to any compatible device—including embedded modems in “air-gapped” voting systems, smart UPS units, or unsecured auxiliary hardware.

From that moment on:

Commands could be sent from orbit

Patch delivery became invisible to domestic monitors

Compromised devices could be triggered remotely

This groundbreaking project that should have taken two-plus years to build, was completed in just under ten months.

Elon Musk boasts endlessly about everything he’s launching, building, buying—or even just thinking about—whether it’s real or not. But he pulls off one of the largest and fastest technological feats in modern day history… and says nothing? One might think that was kind of… “weird.”

According to New York Times reporting, on October 5—just before Starlink’s DTC activation—Musk texted a confidant:

“I’m feeling more optimistic after tonight. Tomorrow we unleash the anomaly in the matrix.”

Then, an hour later:

“This isn’t something on the chessboard, so they’ll be quite surprised. ‘Lasers’ from space.”

It read like a riddle. In hindsight, it was a blueprint.

The Outcome

Data that makes no statistical sense. A clean sweep in all seven swing states.

The fall of the Blue Wall. Eighty-eight counties flipped red—not one flipped blue.

Every victory landed just under the threshold that would trigger an automatic recount. Donald Trump outperformed expectations in down-ballot races with margins never before seen—while Kamala Harris simultaneously underperformed in those exact same areas.

If one were to accept these results at face value—Donald Trump, a 34-count convicted felon, supposedly outperformed Ronald Reagan. According to the co-founder of the Election Truth Alliance:

“These anomalies didn’t happen nationwide. They didn’t even happen across all voting methods—this just doesn’t reflect human voting behavior.”

They were concentrated.

Targeted.

Specific to swing states and Texas—and specific to Election Day voting.

And the supposed explanation? “Her policies were unpopular.” Let’s think this through logically. We’re supposed to believe that in all the battleground states, Democratic voters were so disillusioned by Vice President Harris’s platform that they voted blue down ballot—but flipped to Trump at the top of the ticket?

Not in early voting.

Not by mail.

With exception to Nevada, only on Election Day.

And only after a certain threshold of ballots had been cast—where VP Harris’s numbers begin to diverge from her own party, and Trump’s suddenly begin to surge. As President Biden would say, “C’mon, man.”

In the world of election data analysis, there’s a term for that: vote-flipping algorithm.

And of course, Donald Trump himself:

He spent a year telling his followers he didn’t need their votes—at one point stating,

“…in four years, you don't have to vote again. We'll have it fixed so good, you're not gonna have to vote.”

____

They almost got away with the coup. The fact that they still occupy the White House and control most of the US government will make removing them and replacing them with the rightful President Harris a very difficult task.

But for this nation to survive, and for the world to not fall further into chaos due to this "administration," we must rid ourselves of the pretender and his minions and controllers once and for all.

[simspaghetti]

I was so so so excited about the release of Blackout UI by @simstate recently! I've been wanting a dark-mode modern UI in my game for the longest time and they finally came thru with their mod tysm angel <3<3

With this exciting new release, I needed to rework a few of my Gameplay PSDs to fit in better with this mod - and I've made them available for download here if anyone else would like to switch!

What's In The Folder:

💫 Wish Template: → 3 frame colour options: Black, Green & Grey

🥶 Moodlet Template: → 4 frame / mood effect colour options: Neutral, Positive, Negative & Plain Grey

💼 Career Template: → 3 frame colour options: Black, Blue, Green & Grey → Career icons from BG to All EPs included → Extra mood icons for the 'Performance' section included

Extra: Transparent background alternative included for all templates!

Terms of Use: Please don’t claim as your own or reupload without my permission, I’d love to see you use them in your game if you do choose to tag me - but that’s totally optional I'm just nosey haha :P Feel free to alter and customize the templates literally however you want, but pls link back to my blog if you’re gonna reupload a downloadable variation :)

Download Here (Simfileshare, .psd files)

The font used in all templates is DM Sans, it can be found in all variations here - I only used ‘bold’ & 'bold italic’

Instructions:

These are supposed to be opened in a photo editing software like Adobe Photoshop, I personally recommend Photopea / Gimp as free alternatives - you can probs use any other editing software as long as it can handle .psd files - lmk if you have any problems in other programs, I have only tested these in Photopea!

I also intended for these to be used alongside game icon collections, here are some suggestions for those: TS2 Icons / TS3 Icons + Extras / TS4 Icons

Just edit the text, hide & unhide the layers / folders and place the icons to get your desired outcome, then save as a .png and plop the final image over your gameplay screenshots :)

For any PSDs I create in the future I hope to create both light-mode & dark-mode versions so you can take your pick - I’m also open to requests so if you have anything you’d like to see as a psd lmk 😊💞

Finally, thanks again to SimState for their wonderful mod - the UI is absolutely gorgeous and I will be exclusively using it from now on! Pls go show them some love if you haven't already 🫶

[mundaneandmagicalcreature]

For reasons explained elsewhere, I created a "software" (big quotation mark here) to make grids and color them. I made it for knitting, but I think it could be useful for other things (like crochet, cross stitching, tile work, etc). It is very rudimentary, but it fulfills its purpose (on PCs, on mobiles you can't save what you create).

You can play with it here.

You can see the charts I made while testing it below the cut. It's a long post and very image-heavy. You've been warned.

(Also, if you use any of them, or even the tool , will you tag me and show me?)

The designs I created while testing this thing

Lettering (cuz it's useful)

2. Kitty & Puppy

3. Anatomical hearts

4. hehehehe

5. A modern version of the sweater from the shining

6. the thing that started it all

[toskarin]

going on the twine rant again, lads. fair warning.

-

the twine editor is theoretically great software

which is to say, twine editor is far and away the best execution of "a text game maker for people who mostly make text and not games" that presently exists. it's notable for making wholly self-contained (read: does not require interpreter software) text games with functioning mechanics at about the level of code literacy you could feasibly ask from people who brushed off of other more complicated software

this is in large part because the text adventure and IF ecosystem has the same problem as the (similarly insular and incestuous) scorewriting ecosystem: all of the software is made to be used by a group of like 50 people who don't use anything else, so they just settle for whatever exists

twine solves a lot of these problems by simply existing as an html game maker that can automate all of the functions of a gamebook out of the box. the editor has features which (to me) seem to be inspired by scrivener, which is my favourite WYSIWYG writing software for longform fiction on the market (I prefer writing in LaTeX but I can acknowledge that's a habit I picked up and not an endorsement of LaTeX)

that being said, even though there's an obvious utility to being able to prototype out rpgs and such in twine incredibly quickly, I can't really recommend people... use twine for that. because of the problems.

the twine editor is also kind of beautiful for all the ways in which it issoftware designed to torture the user

twine exists with one foot in "games" and one foot in "writing" and this overlap is the totality of its intended use. this space of compromise is still the best that's been made for this specific scene, but it means that edge cases are (at absolute best) operating twine in much the way that someone being hanging onto the edge of a shattered cockpit is operating an airliner

I could go on and on about the specific elements of twine's design that drive me insane, and in how it punishes you both for making too much of a book and for making too much of a game, but there's one problem that kind of sticks out as a simulacrum of this whole issue

by design, twine organises its projects as a story map. this is kind of like the middle point between scrivener's storyboard and a whiteboard, but specialised for use in making text games. this means that each node on it is one screen, called a card, that you can open and edit

doing this opens a window for text input, and the exact contents of this window kind of depend on which format you're writing your story in, but as a rule, you write everything into these sub-windows and that's the game

because twine runs in one window, these cards open more like menus than true windows. you can have one open at a time, and when you need to test something, you close the window and press the button to test the game. simple as

now, for making software, it's helpful to have a versioning function of some sort in case, among other reasons, you fuck something up in a way you don't immediately notice

for writing, you usually want some sort of undo function, in case you accidentally delete something or edit over it

at the intersection of these two, twine does have an undo function. which works differently depending on which version of the editor you're using. in the web version, you get multiple layers of undo. that makes sense.

in the downloaded version, which is the version you have to use if you don't want to use your browser's local storage (?? you shouldn't be doing this) you get

one layer of undo.

in a modern text editor.

that you are expected to write in.

this is on top of the browser-hosted version of twine editor being significantly more stable than the desktop version, so that's obviously the version you're meant to use, which runs in stark contrast to like... how that should work. this should already be raising your blood pressure a little bit if you remember that the browser version of twine saves your project files to your browser's local storage

now, common to both versions is another important feature which seemingly exists to prevent data loss: twine automatically saves your changes when you exit out of a card

this means that, the moment you close a card to go test the changes you just made to your game, they are saved over the previous version of the game with no way to undo them

but there IS a way to get around this without having to write in an entirely separate word processor! several ways even. you can even use the downloaded version if you do this

duplicate the full project every single time you make changes that could necessitate an undo function

make a copy of every card you edit in case you need to revert to it after testing, then remember to delete it afterwards

if you're editing the cards themselves, see option 1, because there is no way to undo deletion of cards in the story map

and like... that's not good. it's kind of the hell machine for killing all human beings, actually

it's also not a problem remotely unique to twine, because this is the kind of thing you see in most niche-specialised software where there isn't really a distinction made between "this is an expected frustration of working on any artistic project" and "this is something completely insane that absolutely should not be the case and isn't tolerated in immediately adjacent comparable creative fields"

twine can be used to make longer projects, but at the point where you're recommending two layers of supporting software that overlap so hard with the editor that they should be redundancies, it becomes clear that the only thing it's really fit-for-purpose to do is non-linear fiction consisting of two or three paragraphs per card

and that's generally not what it's used for! because that sort of thing is almost universally understood as a stepping stone towards using twine for making either longform non-linear fiction or full-featured rpgs

twine could be really useful software, and in fairness it's generally better than the alternatives it supplanted in its niche (people making little interactive poems probably shouldn't be trying to use Inform or TADS), but it really seems like it was designed with as a cursed amulet meant to cause as much grief as possible while being difficult to justify throwing away

[atcuality3]

Digital Innovation That Delivers Results - Atcuality

Atcuality helps forward-thinking companies innovate with precision and purpose. We combine technical expertise with business insight to craft tools that drive measurable impact. Our suite of services includes cloud platforms, mobile solutions, and a special focus on Telegram Bot Creation. This service enables companies to develop smart, responsive bots tailored for customer service, marketing automation, or internal operations. Whether you're launching a community-based app, need an e-commerce support assistant, or want to build a chatbot for crypto trading signals, we provide secure, scalable, and compliant bot solutions. Our process ensures every bot is tested for real-world usage, enhanced with analytics, and built to scale. With Atcuality, you don’t just adopt technology—you unlock its full potential to fuel your growth.

[atcuality5]

Innovative Solutions for Seamless Digital Transformation - Atcuality

Atcuality crafts tailor-made digital solutions that help businesses stay ahead in a competitive marketplace. With a team of experienced developers, designers, and digital marketers, we specialize in creating functional websites, high-performing mobile apps, AI-driven platforms, and immersive AR/VR experiences. Our solutions are built with precision and creativity to meet the unique needs of each client. One of our core services is Telegram Bot Creation, designed to automate customer engagement, streamline communication, and deliver instant support through highly interactive bots. These bots not only handle user queries but also execute complex tasks like sending alerts, integrating APIs, and providing real-time updates, making them invaluable for businesses seeking efficiency. Additionally, Atcuality offers digital marketing strategies, SEO optimization, and blockchain development services to ensure holistic digital growth. Choose Atcuality to empower your business with innovative technologies and expert-driven strategies.

[softmagenta]

android models #4

Having achieved the basic result, androids began to think about becoming more unusual, more stylish. Real people, indeed - they're just like us. There are too many non-standard models, especially their hybrids and their altered versions. (Clipping from a fashion magazine; article on unique “fashionable” android models that have a narrower focus) ────────────────────────────────

Molis Lux

One of the most unusual models - I can admit it! The gel used mainly to fill the joints has become this model's “skin”. Although the gel here is just an outer shell, it covers the entire body so abundantly that the internal skeleton and mechanisms are not visible from the outside at all.

Readers ask, “Why don't they have mouths?”. This is a very interesting story! A great many custom models were put into production during the “teenage android fashion rebellion” (ha-ha, I like that unofficial name so much). Unconventionality, flamboyance, brashness and unbelievable solutions! The release of many non-standard models was accompanied by some sort of pathos slogan that carried a certain rebellious meaning. The slogan of this model is “I don't need a mouth to tell about myself”. Translated into calm language, it means something like “I don't even need to talk about myself so you could all know what I'm like.” It's ridiculous, considering they can speak anyway, but the symbolism is really interesting.

The gel color usually matches the iris color of the eyes, and the face and hair are usually a different color because they are not created from the gel. These models are basically a custom created body, not something from mass produced androids, so it's up to the customer to choose the color palette. But at the very beginning of this model's release, a few test androids were created (a few hundred, I think. As with all other models), and in that case the colors were randomized by the software.

Under certain conditions, the gel can go into a soft state where the android themselves (while wearing special gloves!) or someone else can mold the body into whatever they want. Many ML models create clothes for themselves in this way by simply molding them out of their body, and the lack of clothes (molded or real) would not mean that the android is naked. Very handy! The model itself is really one of the most comfortable, I think. (And the mouth can always be made at official accessories and details ComCenter showrooms, don't worry!!!) The part below the ankle and the foot is made of a harder gel, which is a substitute for shoes. It's a bit inconvenient because although such an android can walk around outside without real shoes, it still has to wash their feet every time after going indoors, so many people just wear real shoes or special “socks”. (Editor's note: so that's how they do it… by molding the certain parts? HAHA it's very cool) (Writer's note: I hate you) ────────────────────────────────

Mea Elections

One of the most modern custom models out there! ME (very symbolic name in abbreviation, by the way) is mostly used by cosplayers either social workers who work with children, or just those who see themselves in this style.

Mobility is not affected at all, despite the unusual limbs and body proportions. The main problem with this model is that all clothes have to be sewn to order or bought in specialized stores for ME models, but there are so many variations of ME that even there you can't always find something for yourself. ────────────────────────────────

Spatium Fuga

One of the oldest representatives of non-standard models! This is the very case when the representatives of the crowd, who were striving for humanoidness, decided to return to their roots and radically strengthen their “roboticism” in a more fantastic style!

This model is also mostly used by cosplayers, but less often, because the model has quite specific details. But among fashion figures, there are a lot of SF representatives! This unusual and mesmerizing look attracts the eye.

The SF line and its hybrids are so diverse that you are unlikely to meet two identical androids of this model. The design is very futuristic and everything is limited only by your imagination! However, remember that it is very expensive, and the unusual limb connectors may tear your clothes. Just a friendly reminder.

[dreaminginthedeepsouth]

Women pulling Lever on a Drilling Machine, 1978 Lee, Howl & Company Ltd., Tipton, Staffordshire, England photograph by Nick Hedges image credit: Nick Hedges Photography

* * * *

Tim Boudreau 

About the whole DOGE-will-rewrite Social Security's COBOL code in some new language thing, since this is a subject I have a whole lot of expertise in, a few anecdotes and thoughts.

Some time in the early 2000s I was doing some work with the real-time Java team at Sun, and there was a huge defense contractor with a peculiar query: Could we document how much memory an instance of every object type in the JDK uses? And could we guarantee that that number would never change, and definitely never grow, in any future Java version?

I remember discussing this with a few colleagues in a pub after work, and talking it through, and we all arrived at the conclusion that the only appropriate answer to this question as "Hell no." and that it was actually kind of idiotic.

Say you've written the code, in Java 5 or whatever, that launches nuclear missiles. You've tested it thoroughly, it's been reviewed six ways to Sunday because you do that with code like this (or you really, really, really should). It launches missiles and it works.

A new version of Java comes out. Do you upgrade? No, of course you don't upgrade. It works. Upgrading buys you nothing but risk. Why on earth would you? Because you could blow up the world 10 milliseconds sooner after someone pushes the button?

It launches fucking missiles. Of COURSE you don't do that.

There is zero reason to ever do that, and to anyone managing such a project who's a grownup, that's obvious. You don't fuck with things that work just to be one of the cool kids. Especially not when the thing that works is life-or-death (well, in this case, just death).

Another case: In the mid 2000s I trained some developers at Boeing. They had all this Fortran materials analysis code from the 70s - really fussy stuff, so you could do calculations like, if you have a sheet of composite material that is 2mm of this grade of aluminum bonded to that variety of fiberglass with this type of resin, and you drill a 1/2" hole in it, what is the effect on the strength of that airplane wing part when this amount of torque is applied at this angle. Really fussy, hard-to-do but when-it's-right-it's-right-forever stuff.

They were taking a very sane, smart approach to it: Leave the Fortran code as-is - it works, don't fuck with it - just build a nice, friendly graphical UI in Java on top of it that *calls* the code as-is.

We are used to broken software. The public has been trained to expect low quality as a fact of life - and the industry is rife with "agile" methodologies *designed* to churn out crappy software, because crappy guarantees a permanent ongoing revenue stream. It's an article of faith that everything is buggy (and if it isn't, we've got a process or two to sell you that will make it that way).

It's ironic. Every other form of engineering involves moving parts and things that wear and decay and break. Software has no moving parts. Done well, it should need *vastly* less maintenance than your car or the bridges it drives on. Software can actually be *finished* - it is heresy to say it, but given a well-defined problem, it is possible to actually *solve* it and move on, and not need to babysit or revisit it. In fact, most of our modern technological world is possible because of such solved problems. But we're trained to ignore that.

Yeah, COBOL is really long-in-the-tooth, and few people on earth want to code in it. But they have a working system with decades invested in addressing bugs and corner-cases.

Rewriting stuff - especially things that are life-and-death - in a fit of pique, or because of an emotional reaction to the technology used, or because you want to use the toys all the cool kids use - is idiotic. It's immaturity on display to the world.

Doing it with AI that's going to read COBOL code and churn something out in another language - so now you have code no human has read, written and understands - is simply insane. And the best software translators plus AI out there, is going to get things wrong - grievously wrong. And the odds of anyone figuring out what or where before it leads to disaster are low, never mind tracing that back to the original code and figuring out what that was supposed to do.

They probably should find their way off COBOL simply because people who know it and want to endure using it are hard to find and expensive. But you do that gradually, walling off parts of the system that work already and calling them from your language-du-jour, not building any new parts of the system in COBOL, and when you do need to make a change in one of those walled off sections, you migrate just that part.

We're basically talking about something like replacing the engine of a plane while it's flying. Now, do you do that a part-at-a-time with the ability to put back any piece where the new version fails? Or does it sound like a fine idea to vaporize the existing engine and beam in an object which a next-word-prediction software *says* is a contraption that does all the things the old engine did, and hope you don't crash?

The people involved in this have ZERO technical judgement.