Beach daydreams, lost at sea (Interconnected)
Matt’s beach thoughts are like a satisfying susurrus in my RSS reader.
Link tags: wat
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AI wants to rule the World, but it can’t handle dairy.
AI has the same problem that I saw ten year ago at IBM. And remember that IBM has been at this AI game for a very long time. Much longer than OpenAI or any of the new kids on the block. All of the shit we’re seeing today? Anyone who worked on or near Watson saw or experienced the same problems long ago.
How Certain Algorithms to Improve the Human Condition Have Failed – The Markup
A terrific piece from Aaron Sankin that goes from Waldsterben to software development via firefighting and the RAND corporation.
Bureaucracies use measurements to optimize and rearrange the world around them. For those measurements to be effective, they have to be conducted in units as relevant as possible to the conditions on the ground.
Our Favourite Uses of Typography in Watches
The typography of horology.
Halt and Catch Fire Syllabus
The intent is for this website to be used by self-forming small groups that want to create a “watching club” (like a book club) and discuss aspects of technology history that are featured in this series.
I’m about ready to rewatch Halt And Catch Fire. Anybody want to form a watching club with me?
Lateral Thinking With Withered Technology · Matthias Ott – User Experience Designer
What web development can learn from the Nintendo Game and Watch.
The Web now consists of an ever-growing number of different frameworks, methodologies, screen sizes, devices, browsers, and connection speeds. “Lateral thinking with withered technology” – progressively enhanced – might actually be an ideal philosophy for building accessible, performant, resilient, and original experiences for a wide audience of users on the Web.
Coldwater.Science
The World Ocean is as close as you can get to outer space without leaving Earth. It’s an entirely different universe, nothing like the life we have on land.
CURRENT FUTURES: A Sci-Fi Ocean Anthology—XPRIZE
A collection of sci-fi short stories about oceans, featuring contributions from Madeline Ashby, Lauren Beukes, Elizabeth Bear, and more.
Responsive Images on the Apple Watch — ericportis.com
Some tips for getting responsive images to work well on the Apple Watch:
- test your layouts down to 136-
pxwide- include
300w-ish resources in your full-widthimg’ssrcsets- art direct to keep image subjects legible
- say the magic
metawords
Designing Web Content for watchOS - WWDC 2018 - Videos - Apple Developer
If you don’t fancy watching this video, Eric Runyon has written down the salient points about what it means for developers now that websites can be viewed on the Apple Watch. Basically, as long as you’re writing good, meaningful markup and you’ve got a sensible font stack, you’re all set.
Or, as Tim puts it:
When we build our sites in a way that allows people using less-capable devices, slower networks and other less than ideal circumstances, we end up better prepared for whatever crazy device or technology comes along next.
Acephalic Agile—worse than Waterfall? - Oliver Wyman Labs: Technical
Agile itself provides us with the ability and opportunity to correct course, it allows us to steer, but it does nothing as such to help us steer correctly.
This observation about (some) agile projects is worryingly familiar:
I was suddenly seized by a horrible thought: what if this new-found agility was used, not teleologically to approach the right outcome over the course of a project, but simply to enshrine the right of middle management to change their minds, to provide a methodological license for arbitrary management? At least under a Waterfall regime they had to apologise when they departed from the plan. With Agile they are allowed, in principle, to make as many changes of direction as they like. But what if Agile was used merely as a license to justify keeping the team in the office night after night in a never-ending saga of rapidly accumulating requirements and dizzying changes of direction? And what if the talk of developer ‘agility’ was just a way of softening up developers for a life of methodologically sanctioned pliability? In short, what if Agile turned out to be worse than Waterfall?
Android Wear and the Moto 360 Browser
Anna documents the most interesting bit (for me) of her new wearable/watch/wrist-device/whatever — the web browser.
Swatch you doing?
A cute and fun way to put together a colour palette.
Submarine Cable Map
This year’s TeleGeography map of the undersea network looks beautiful—inspired by old maps. I love the way that latency between countries is shown as inset constellations.
Client/Agency Engagement is F*cked, Waterfall UX Design is a Symptom | disambiguity
Leisa nails it. The real stumbling block with trying to change the waterfall-esque nature of agency work (of which Clearleft has certainly been guilty) can be summed up in two words: sign off.
And from a client’s perspective, this emphasis on sign-off is completely understandable.
It takes a special kind of client to take the risk and develop the level of trust and integration required to work the way that Mr Popoff-Walker any many, many other inhabitants of agency world would like to work.
Authentic Jobs ~ Ethiopia
Cameron’s travelling to Ethopia to help with Charity Water, thanks to the generosity of the users of Authentic Jobs.
Wat — Destroy All Software Talks
This cracked me up. There are two possibilities: either this is really is very funny or I am very nerdy.
Shinichi Maruyama
Black ink meets water.
