A MICROSOFT RESEARCHER BUILT A WORKING LLM INSIDE AGE OF EMPIRES 2 USING GOATS, JUST TO PROVE AI ISNT SENTIENT

he was tired of people talking to an llm, seeing it reply in a human tone, and deciding its alive

so heres what he did. computers are built out of tiny yes/no switches called logic gates. he used the age of empires 2 map editor to make goats act as those switches, a goat moving means yes, staying put means no

stack enough of those goat switches together and you get a working computer. he wired up enough to actually run a tiny language model. inside the game. out of goats

his argument:
> if you can build the exact same thing out of goats, or lego, or people passing notes, then the intelligence was never the magic part
> the human feel of an llm isnt the actual system, its just the layer sitting on top
> you can measure how persuasive or consistent it sounds, but none of that proves anything real is happening underneath
> take away the chat window and the friendly voice, and you're just watching goats shuffle around a map

what he found: the goat version still produced the same kind of consistent, convincing output that makes people think a real llm is alive

but obviously nobody thinks a field of goats is alive. so if goats can fake those exact traits, those traits were never proof of a mind in the first place

his actual paper is titled "if llms have human-like attributes, then so does age of empires 2"

we spent two years arguing about whether ai is alive, and this guy answered it with goats

source: xda-developers.com/a-microsoft-re…

HERES HOW YOU CAN ACTUALLY BUILD A PROFITABLE MOBILE APP BY SCRAPING THE NEGATIVE REVIEWS OFF YOUR COMPETITION

everyone right now is vibe coding random slop and praying users show up

heres the actual playbook you should be using:

> pick any niche
> scrape every 1 and 2 star review from the top apps in it
> run them through ai to pull out every feature people are begging for
> one shot the whole app with claude code, fixing what everyone hates
> ship it straight to the people who left those reviews

the 1 and 2 star reviews are where all the real pain lives. thats your list of features to build

sort every complaint into buckets, missing features, ui and ux issues, broken stuff, monetization gaps

the things people ask for over and over are the ones they'll actually pay for. you can also see what people love about the paid competitors, so you know what to keep

then claude code builds the fixed version. add the requested features, kill the ads, put the paywall on what people actually value

just did this with medication reminder apps:

> scraped the top apps in the niche
> got back the exact pattern, the same missing features over and over
> fed the whole analysis into claude code
> had a working app in 2 hours, with features the top competitors STILL dont have

you skip the guessing entirely. the market already told you what to build, you just had to read it

the catch is that actually scraping these reviews is brutal, especially off the app stores

so i built a tool that does it for you.

it scrapes every review from any niche, runs an advanced filter to surface the ones with the real issues people face, and lets you export it all as json to feed straight into claude code, in under 5 minutes

documented the entire journey so you can do exactly this in under 10 minutes:

SOMEONE VIBE CODED AN APP THAT TURNS YOUR IPHONE INTO A FULL DUMBPHONE, THEN BUILT A 3D PRINTED CASE THAT MAKES IT AN ACTUAL CLICK WHEEL IPOD

your iphone slides into a 3d printed shell that covers most of the screen and adds a real click wheel, so you scroll and press menu like an old ipod instead of touching the screen at all

inside is a whole simplified phone system he built from scratch

> 15 mini apps, music, books, camera, notes, voice memos, fitness, all of it
> classic cover flow for apple music plus your own local files
> a retro camera with film style luts, so you snap a photo without instantly editing and posting it
> swappable themes, basic, y2k, toy, skeuo, flat, so it matches your style
> the case physically blocks the rest of your screen, sealing off social apps and notifications

he thinks focus is the most valuable thing we have left, so he built a way to make the most distracting device you own impossible to doom-scroll on

SOMEONE BURNED THROUGH SO MANY CLAUDE TOKENS THAT ANTHROPIC MAILED THEM MERCH

we're talking around 2500 a month in api usage, building internal tools, automating procedures and writing technical docs for their company

enough spend that anthropic shipped them a claude plushie with a little hat sewn on

"thanks for the massive bill, heres a plushie that cost $10"

its exactly like a casino comping a free room to someone whos already gambled away a fortune

their heaviest spenders end up advertising for them, for the price of a plushie

technically you didnt get rewarded for loyalty, you got turned into an ad, and it worked

cheapest marketing on earth is making your biggest customers feel like vips, then watching them tell everyone