— Brian X. Chen, New York Times:
For more than a decade, smartphone users everywhere have faced a major problem in how we communicate: the “green versus blue bubble” disparity.
No Brian, not everywhere. Green bubble shaming is an entirely American thing. I’ve never met anyone in Europe who takes issue with the background colour of the text messages they’re receiving.
BADBADNOTGOOD & Charlotte Day Wilson - Sleeper
— Braun: Designed to Keep. Design historian Klaus Kemp tells the story of Braun and its iconic product design. Of course Dieter Rams is a central figure in this book, but Kemp also gives deserved credit to many lesser known designers behind Braun’s most well-known products.
— Tumblr is betting big on going small. Whether intentional or just the result of market forces, it’s nice to see a social network nurturing its community instead of chasing growth to the exclusion of everything else.
— From Justin Hall’s links.net to blogs to Twitter, Megan Marz explores thirty years of creative writing on the internet. My lack of nuanced understanding of the English language makes it impossible for me to view dril’s gush of tweets as literature, but, yes, any from of writing is literature. And so we should treat some online writing—certainly not everything—in the same way we treat books: Review, criticise, understand the context and archive.
— The Lost Subways of North America explores the history of public-transport systems on North America through a series of maps. (via)
— I’ve been away from the computer for a couple of days, so I’m trying to catch up on the events around OpenAI, which Gruber sums up nicely:
- OpenAI named a new interim CEO, Twitch co-founder Emmett Shear. (Shear is an AI worrier, who has advocated drastically “slowing down”, writing “If we’re at a speed of 10 right now, a pause is reducing to 0. I think we should aim for a 1-2 instead.”) OpenAI CTO Mira Murati was CEO for about two days.
- Satya Nadella announced very late Sunday night, “And we’re extremely excited to share the news that Sam Altman and Greg Brockman, together with colleagues, will be joining Microsoft to lead a new advanced AI research team. We look forward to moving quickly to provide them with the resources needed for their success.”
- About 700 OpenAI employees, out of a total of 770, signed an open letter demanding the OpenAI board resign, and threatening to quit to join Altman at Microsoft if they don’t. Among the signees: Mira Murati (which might explain why she’s no longer interim CEO) and chief scientist and board member Ilya Sutskever.
- Sutskever posted on Twitter/X: “I deeply regret my participation in the board’s actions. I never intended to harm OpenAI. I love everything we’ve built together and I will do everything I can to reunite the company.”
- Alex Heath and Nilay Patel report for The Verge that Altman and Brockman might still return to OpenAI.
- Nadella appeared on CNBC and admitted that Altman and Brockman were not officially signed as Microsoft employees yet, and when asked who would be OpenAI’s CEO tomorrow, laughed, because he didn’t know.
Some random thoughts on all this:
Design icon Dieter Rams points at products he doesn’t like. (via)
— A eulogy on programming as a craft; in the light of Chatbots that aspire to solve every problem.
The Beatles’ Rubber Soul, but it’s just drums and bass; no guitars or singing. My untrained ear would never be able to identify McCartney’s intricate bass lines unless they are exposed like in this video.
— Monaspace, released by Github, is a family of five variable monospace fonts that can be mixed because they all adhere to the same grid.
— Humane have released their device, an AI-powered pin you can wear on your jacket. It’s voice activated, answers questions, makes phone calls, and plays music. It costs 699 US dollar and requires a $25 per month subscription.
Om Malik puts this devices in a long history of advancements in computing and hard-ware design, one where devices got small over the years and more powerful at the same time:
Computing as we know it has been ever-evolving—every decade and a half or so, computers get smaller, more powerful, and more personal. We have gone from mainframes to workstations, to desktops, to laptops, to smartphones. It has been a decade and a half since the iPhone launched a revolution.
Smartphones changed personal computing by making it “everywhere.” Personal computing, as we know it, is once again evolving, this time being reshaped by AI, which is making us rethink how we interact with information. There are many convergent trends — faster networks, more capable chips, and the proliferation of sensors, including cameras.
The computer I’m using to get work done, hasn’t significantly shrunk in over 25 years. Sure the Samsung laptop I bought in 2001 was heavier, noisier and a little more clunky than my current MacBook but I still need a backpack to carry it around. Smartphones are lifestyle devices. I can check my emails and respond on Slack while I’m on a train, but my productivity wouldn’t significantly suffer if I still used a feature phone. Neither will Humane’s AI pin increase my productivity.
But Om Malik is right. Eventually the devices we carry around when we’re out and about won’t have a screen, and they will use AI for many tasks that we have apps for today. I can already see us walking around, staring at our palms, gesturing into the void, randomly asking questions to our new imaginary friends.
I’m having a hard time taking this product seriously, given how the founders like to present themselves. Erin Griffith and Tripp Mickle, writing for the New York Times:
A Buddhist monk named Brother Spirit led them to Humane. Mr. Chaudhri and Ms. Bongiorno had developed concepts for two A.I. products: a women’s health device and the pin. Brother Spirit, whom they met through their acupuncturist, recommended that they share the ideas with his friend, Marc Benioff, the founder of Salesforce.
Sitting beneath a palm tree on a cliff above the ocean at Mr. Benioff’s Hawaiian home in 2018, they explained both devices. “This one,” Mr. Benioff said, pointing at the Ai Pin, as dolphins breached the surf below, “is huge.”
A Buddhist monk? A house in Hawaii? Dolphins? This reeks of Californian hippie pretentiousness. Is it too much to ask for a little journalistic distance so these scene-setting stories conceived by Humane’s communications people don’t find their way into The New York Times? Imran Chaudhri and Bethany Bongiorno aren’t hippies who want to better the world, they are products of their capitalist environment and will act accordingly going forward.
The lingo ties in nicely with the marketing speech that we’ve known for years from Californian soon-to-be-unicorns, which has been parodied ad nauseam, most prominently by the sitcom Silicon Valley. The founders want to make the world a better place, here by ridding us of our addiction to our smartphones. Erin Griffith and Tripp Mickle, again:
Humane’s goal was to replicate the usefulness of the iPhone without any of the components that make us all addicted — the dopamine hit of dragging to refresh a Facebook feed or swiping to see a new TikTok video.
That’s worthwhile goal. But it doesn’t need a new 700 dollar device. You can start by deleting social-media apps from your phone, and limit notifications.
Humane’s AI pin solves a problem I don’t have. Instead, I fear, it might amplify another problem I do have: Inconsiderate fellow humans playing their TikTok streams and music on loudspeaker wherever they sit down, or have video calls on speakerphone in the supermarket. The AI pin incentives more of that behaviour. You don’t even have to pull out the device from your pocket and hold it in your hands anymore while you annoy everyone around you. If Humane wanted to make a real impact on the world, my world anyway, then they’d train their AI to recognise when the user is in a public space and force them to use headphones.
— A movie, in which Coyote sues ACME because of a “broken” rocket sledge, apparently has been shelved. What a shame. I never understand the economics of this. You spend 70 million, then scrap the movie for a 30 million tax write-down. But you’re still 40 million out of pocket—how does this work?
— If Psycho was released today, it would be classified as a thriller not a horror. By today’s standards, there aren’t make-up and cuts that make you jump in your seat to justify the “horror” label. Yet, Hitchcock managed to create a scary atmosphere in the movie, mainly because of Anthony Perkins’ disturbing portrayal of Norman Bates, but more so because the events could unfold as depicted in Psycho, and it could happen to anyone. This is the main differentiator to more modern horror movies set in an unrealistic realm—you walk away thinking, “it’s just a movie.” That’s not the case with Psycho.
(1960) Director: Alfred Hitchcock. Screenplay: Joseph Stefano. Cast: Anthony Perkins, Vera Miles, John Gavin, Martin Balsam, Janet Leigh.
— Wilco Loft Sans. Type designer Dan Cederholm teamed up with alternative rock band Wilco to create a font based on signage from their studio.
— The 2023 Grammy nominees. I can count the artists I know from this list on one hand. Gosh, I’m out of touch with pop music.
Ah yes. Series 3 of Slow Horses premieres on 29 November on Apple TV+. I hope it’s as good as the first two series.
The one question you get when you either visit or live in Australia is whether you’ve spotted a Koala. The truth is, it’s not like they hang out with you in your backyard while you have a barbecue. I had not seen a Koala in several visits to Australia or after living here for 18 months. So this is it, without much fanfare, the picture of a Koala I saw at the Koala Conservation Reserve on Phillip Island.
— From Tim Carmody on Threads:
I think Threads is picking up steam not least because it’s a social network with so they say) a ton of numbers. I still don’t feel great about handing Meta the keys to my public life (I have private FB and Insta accounts for people close to me). And the communities on Bluesky and Mastodon feel (in very different ways) more like my people. But I’ll keep exploring it here, keep connecting, watch it change and grow.
This, as an addition to Can We Really Fix the Internet?, explains why I think not much will change going forward. Tim Carmody wants a different, more open Web centred around blogs. And yet Threads is a viable option because that’s where most people are. Like I said, it’s convenience that lures people in, not doing the right thing.
— Both sides didn’t have the best start to the season, losing their first two games. Somewhat surprising then, the quality of this match was much better than the previous ones I’ve attended on Australian soil. Both teams created plenty of chances, playing with pace and precision. Still, this isn’t the Premier League, but it’s a start.
It was Melbourne City who were in control most of the game, pushing Sydney into their own half and putting pressure on the goal. Sydney FC had chances to take the lead in the opening minutes, to get one back after going down 2:0 or even equalise late in the game. But their lack of composure and precision in front of the goal were astonishing. As these things go in football, City scored late in the first half and early in the second, and that was that.
The attendance was disappointing. Just over 5,000 people saw the game. I’ve been to Division 4 games in Germany that attracted a bigger audience.
A-League. AAMI Park, 04 November 2023 7:45. Attendance: 5,303. Goals: 1:0 Steven Ugarković (45’), 2:0 Jamie Maclaren (46’).
The Beatles have released one last song, with vocals salvaged from an old demo tape and isolated using AI technology. It’s a good song, but still it doesn’t feel real because you know they couldn’t be in the studio together to finish it. Shame that.
— Is this a comedy, a horror, a western? A bit of everything, and utterly rubbish. Seeing how trashy it is, Bone Tomahawk is probably a favourite amongst twenty-year-old, weed-smoking frat boys.
(2015) Director/Screenplay: S. Craig Zahler. Cast: Kurt Russell, Patrick Wilson, Matthew Fox, Lili Simmons.