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Review: Jev  |
| Product type: |
Yes-or-no machine (program) |
Maker: |
TypeSafe, which sounds like where you keep the typewriter |
| Price: |
Forty-two (42) dollars per B. The answers are free. I will come back to that |
Date reviewed: |
09/18/2026 |
| Tested on: |
The other computer (Denise's laptop, Windows 10). See About. |
What I Was Told This Was
TypeSafe says Jev is "the first System One model" and that it returns "typed answers and probabilities rather than generated text." I type my answers too, with two fingers, and nobody has called it a model. Kyle sent it after I said Claude talks too much (see Claude). His text said "this one doesnt talk." He was right, and I did not thank him.
System One is from a book, Thinking, Fast and Slow. Fast thinking is System One. Denise has the book. It is on her side of the bed with the bookmark in the same place since 2013. I have not read it. I have never needed a book to tell me I think fast.
What Happened
The so-called Playground has two boxes. The first is labeled State. I typed Illinois. The second is for the question, and it made me pick what kind: Choice, Score, or Noul. I picked Noul. I took it to be how they spell no, and I wanted to see if a program could say no, because none of them ever have.
I typed "Is the Brother FAX-575 better than e-mail?" and pressed Enter. The answer was back before my finger was. I'll give it that. A fax machine takes eleven seconds to find the line, and I always used them to straighten my tie.
It said 0.52.
That is not a yes and it is not a no. That is the number a customer gives you when he wants you out of his office. I asked a question with two answers and it gave me the middle, to two decimal places, as if the second place made it more of an answer.
So I took the manual out of the drawer and typed the spec line into the State box, word for word, and asked if the FAX-575 has twenty-five (25) pages of memory. It said 0.98. Correct, and fast, and it did not tell me it might be wrong, which Claude did. But ninety-eight is not a hundred. It is a yes with two percent held back in the pocket, which is how a doubt looks when it has learned to keep quiet.
Then I typed "Why?" in the question box. It said 0.61. I did not ask again.
The price sheet. Last time it was per M, and M was a million (see OpenRouter). Now it is per B. Forty-two dollars a B, and a B is a billion, and I was not surprised this time, which I mention so the record shows I learn. But the sheet also says they charge for the question and the answer is free. Now, I'm no expert on pricing, except for the twenty-eight years I did it. I sold toner. You never give away the part the customer came for. You give away the machine and you charge for the toner. They have given away the toner.
A Note on Denise
Denise stopped on the way to the kitchen, pasted the weather from the television station into State, and asked "Should Lyle unplug the server tonight?" It said 0.91. She said "there you go" and kept going. There was a storm at two in the morning and I had already unplugged it, as I always do, so that proves nothing about the program.
Verdict
Jev is a Magic 8 Ball that answers in percent. We had one on the front desk in 1996 and the reps asked it about their quota. It said "Ask again later" so often Carol put it in the supply closet. Jev never says ask again later. It says fifty-two, right now, and lets you decide what that means, which is the part I came to it for.
It is the first program I have reviewed that does not talk. I asked for that. It did not help as much as I expected. I could see the number, so it worked, in the sense that I could see it, and that is a two (2). A plain yes would have been one action completed and a three (3). It knew the answer. It would not round.
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Reader Mail on this review (2 entries from the Guestbook)
"The answers are free because it doesn't write anything. It reads what you send and gives back a number, so the reading is the work. It's for programs that need to make a decision thousands of times a day, not really for chatting." – Hana, Palo Alto, CA, 09/24/2026
Lyle responds: Thank you Hana. A program that decides thousands of times a day and never says why is a regional manager, and I was one. I was paid for the decisions. They were not free.
"Lyle, State isn't Illinois, it's the text you want it to judge. You gave it one word, so 0.52 is it telling you it had nothing to go on. And a noul isn't a no, it's the probability of yes. When you gave it the manual it said 0.98, which is as close to yes as an honest number gets." – Marcus, Champaign, IL, 09/21/2026
Lyle responds: Thank you Marcus. I live in Illinois and it is my state and I will put it in the box marked State. If it had nothing to go on it could have said so in a word. Nobody in Champaign has ever told me ninety-eight is a yes and gotten the order.
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