So how good are the latest coding agents? Like if I asked Gemini 3/Claude/ChatGPT 5.1 to convert it into something that could run from a Python interpreter, how far would they get? (I assume Zork Implementation Language is not well represented in the training corpus)
The easiest way to get it to run from a Python interpreter would be to compile the ZIL source to a Z-Machine binary, which you can do with ZILF [1], then use a Z Machine library in Python (such as a pure Python implementation of the Z-Machine [2]) to load/run it.
A coding agent may even be able to suggest that path, as knowledge of at least the existence of both ZILF and Python ZVM should be in training sets.
The more interesting questions would be how much a coding agent could help you write new Zork rooms or similar things in ZIL now that these ZIL source files are MIT licensed. I would also assume ZIL is not well represented, it's fork of the Lisp family tree (Lisp -> MDL -> ZIL) in generally probably not well represented in open source code bases up to this point. (Some of that may depend on if the agent was trained on some of these historicalsource repos ahead of this open source license change, too.)
A C-based alternative for compiling ZIL? I don't believe there's one that works. The two options for compiling ZIL code are to run ZILF on a modern system or to run ZILCH on a PDP-10 emulator.
The good news is you don't need to install any C# development tools if you use the prepackaged binaries, since they're standalone executables.
Easy to forget all the big moves that happened recently, especially since there haven't been (afaict) any major changes to service. I forgot the other day that Sony had bought Bungie, though it'd be pretty memorable if Sony announced Destiny 3 as a PS5 timed exclusive.
If the instructions were actually specific, e.g. Put a blackberry in its right eye socket, then yes, most humans would know what that meant. But the instructions were not that specific: in the right eye socket
A great listen and thought provoking all the way through, but the part most specifically relevant to HN:
> GONZALEZ: Preston Thorpe is the one making six figures, which, by the way, is double what the corrections officers who guard him make. And it's been a game changer for Preston. He said it's hard enough to get a job when you have a criminal record, let alone while you're still inside.
THORPE: And now, I feel like my life has a purpose. Like, there's no situation right now that would cause me to do something where I would risk losing, like, my job, my computer.
GONZALEZ: Preston is 33 years old. And he told Susan Sharon that he's always been a computer guy, a computer nerd, he said, since he was 13 years old. It's kind of what got him in trouble later in life.
SHARON: He talked to me about buying drugs on the dark web and selling them. And I think the second time, he was convicted because he had a powerful synthetic opioid, much more deadly than fentanyl, capable of killing lots of people.
GONZALEZ: Preston is about nine years into his 20-ish-year sentence. He used to be in a different prison, in a different state, and he says he got in a lot of trouble there, so much so that they transferred him to Maine. Like, we need this person out of our custody. And when he got to Maine, Preston started seeing possibilities-- school, picking up coding again. And he did super well, so well, no issues. And eventually, he got a remote job as a lead principal engineer for this nonprofit that pushes for education in prisons. And because Preston had a laptop, you know, in his cell all day and all night that he could use for certain approved things, Preston started contributing to this big open-source coding project.
Basically, this company was going to attempt to rewrite this database called SQLite in Preston's favorite programming language.
Given how lackluster most everything was (beyond the visual design of the city) — e.g. physics, crowd interaction, scripted events — maybe the engine was what held their creative vision back?
It took them nearly 2 years, but the game has advanced a lot since it's launch.
The Phantom Liberty DLC plus the 2.0 update/rebalancing made it more fun (even if it made it more 'console' and less PC)
The subpoena cites the following statute as authorization: "(1)(A) In any investigation of (i)(I) a Federal health care offense; or (II) a Federal offense involving the sexual exploitation or abuse of children, the Attorney General; or (ii) an offense under section 871 or 879, or a threat against a person protected by the United States Secret Service under paragraph Secret Service determines that the threat constituting the offense or the threat against the person protected is imminent"
One of the agents named in the subpoena appears to have previously worked on child exploitation cases years ago:
That seems like something that should be handled with a simple takedown request and those behind archive.is would almost certainly comply. 99.999% of people using archive.is are using it to bypass news article paywalls nothing more. Which, if we're honest, is the real reason why the FBI is going after them.
Personal anecdote but I almost never use these archive sites to bypass paywalls. I only use it when I want to see how establishment news sites somehow sometimes accidentally tell the truth, then, when they get the call, they try to purge their original reporting. Again, it might be my personal bias, but in my opinion, this is the main reason they are going after them. Because these websites let people prove the hypocrisy and the lies.
I remember that when[0] Reuters took down that one story about organized crime, and further DMCA'd the Internet Archive to take down their version, archive.ORG cheerfully did the memory-hole thing—while archive.IS stayed up.
If the (Western) internet were to turn into a monoculture of Western-domiciled big corporations, that kind of censorship would be *effective*. Our systems aren't robust against bad-faith actors attacking the free flow of information. (And the root cause of the planet-spanning censorship cascade in that example was, unambigiously, bad actors. A crime syndicate based in India).
The fact the internet is global and freely connects to legal jurisdictions and cultures very different from the West's, is to the West's benefit: it creates an escape-hatch for things that fall between the cracks of our nascent totalitarian technologies.
Is this legal? I see what you are saying from a practical standpoint, but in terms of procedure, there are federal agents who are empowered to spread such material for these purposes? It seems crazy.
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