Or something. You're right.

They don't start with "how do users want this to operate?" They start with a weekend of coding, applying their preconceived notions, a library of fancy algorithms that are not directly motivated by an actual feature, and they go from there. This does not lead to a good product, as in something that could earn you money on an open market. It only prevails, in spite of nobody wanting to pay for it, because they give it away for free, and they sink their own "disposable time" (and maybe even income) into the project.

I am not sad to see it go. The only ones I know of who used to use EAGLE were those who got hooked on it when it was either free or the cheapest option for hobbyists and small businesses. It didn't win any UI/UX competitions, certainly not against the joy that is modern programs for solid CAD.

So then I looked for free student versions of commercial software. They had a clear UI and UX, clear tutorials. It was a joy to model the parts I needed.

If I needed 3D modeling for engineering in the future, I would absolutely pay for a commercial program. FreeCAD was simply no competition. I don't know if it is now. Nor do I have any motivation whatsoever to even bother to give it another look.

If I need a license for hobbyist purposes, I'm sure some of the commercial offerings are happy to give me one for free because that would translate into commerce for them if I ever needed it professionally.

If you want old dogs to learn new tricks, teach them. No company has the money to spend nor the inclination to even suggest education to their workers. Companies usually consider that a waste of time and money. I don't know why. Probably because "investing" in your work force is considered stupid because they'll fire you the moment a quarterly earnings call looks less than stellar.

Definitely no ALU design on the curriculum, no interfacing or busses, very little physics. They don't even put a multimeter in your hand.

Informatics is considered a branch of logic. If you want to know how to design a computer, you should have studied EE, is their thinking.

When I revealed this to be a meme doing the rounds on the internet, it admitted knowledge of this:

> The "Car Wash Test" has actually become a bit of a viral sensation in early 2026 for exactly the reasons you mentioned

So yes, either it's somehow getting finetuned frequently, or else Google engineers tweaked its response to this specific prompt/situation so it wouldn't fall into the trap.

50 meters is probably not even the distance I walk to the nearest bus stop that's right up the street... unless they have an issue again, prompting me to abandon all hope and just walk a few miles to wherever I need to get to.

If it's the reasoning kind, then it'll run through one iteration in the background before it composes its emissions for the meatbag.

I've been wondering for years how to make whatever LLM ask me stuff instead of just filling holes with assumptions and sprinting off.

User-configurable agent instructions haven't worked consistently. System prompts might actually contain instructions to not ask questions.

Sure there's a practical limit to how much clarification it ought to request, but not asking ever is just annoying.

I did not catch that in the first pass.

I read it as the casualties, who would be buried wherever the next of kin or the will says they should.