lesser daemon (Page 11)

24

Jan

On 100 Days of Making

I am now on day 10 of 100 days of writing, and it occurs to me that I haven't actually explained what this is or why I'm doing it. This is a practice I've done at least once a year since 2022, and has proven itself over and over to be one of the best things I can possibly do for myself, so not writing about it yet seems like a bit of an oversight.

100 Days Of Making is pretty much what it sounds like. You pick a thing (preferably a creative one) and produce a variation on that

6 min read

23

Jan

Letters of Recommendation: Signalis, Mushroom Coffee

Since I've spent most of today waiting for a delayed train or on said train, I decided to write about two of the things that got me through it.

1) Signalis

This 2022 game by Berlin studio Rose Engine has been sitting in my Steam library for a few months now, and I finally picked it up this week. I play a lot of artsy indie games, but I don't think I often see overlap between those and the survival horror genre. This threads the needle beautifully - hallucinatory dream sequences, beautiful pixel art, and compelling poetry, punctuated with some

3 min read

22

Jan

An Ode To Hopelessness: Squid Game 2 Recap

The last five years were hard on all of us.

I haven't watched a lot of television for the past year or so. I tend to go through periods where I'm only consuming one type of media, and in a nice surprise lately it's mostly been books - getting an e-reader, along with having a commute for the first time in four years, ended up getting me reading again in a way I haven't in a long time. Overall, this is probably a good thing, since I'm told that reading is "good for me". Still, I try not to be

11 min read

21

Jan

AR Is Definitely Happening This Time

I don't know what I expected from a VentureBeat opinion piece, but it looks like AR is five minutes away again:

I refer to this new technological discipline as augmented mentality and it will emerge from the convergence of AI, conversational computing and augmented reality. And, in 2025 it will kick off an arms race among the largest companies in the world to sell us superhuman abilities.

These new superpowers will be unleashed by context-aware AI agents that are loaded into body-worn devices (like AI glasses) that travel with us throughout our lives, seeing what we see, hearing what we hear, experiencing what we experience and providing us with enhanced abilities to perceive and interpret our world. In fact, by 2030, I predict that a majority of us will live our lives with the aid of context-aware AI agents that bring digital superpowers into our normal daily experiences.

People have been trying to sell me this bridge since I can remember, and beyond, like, a few games and Snapchat filters, AR never ends up being anything more than a novelty. I'm sure some wild AI stuff is going to happen in the next five years, but any wearable/embodied version of it that's likely to have a chance will probably be closer to an Apple watch or even the goofy Humane pin. People just don't like wearing computer screens over their eyes! I don't know if we'll ever get past that!

I think there's probably a place for AR as the technology continues to develop, but there are some intractable challenges in interface design and ease-of-use that I have yet to see a convincing solution for in the wearable space. Continued integration of low-key AR features into our phones and less-invasive peripherals like smartwatches seem much more likely to me than the idea everyone is going to have a HUD or their own personal Jarvis anytime soon. So far, smartphones remain the only place tech like this seems to get any traction.

Model-wise I'm more interested in the projector/room computer version of augmented reality that Bret Victor and my friends at Folk Computer are building - more holodeck than HoloLens. Guess I'll have to check back in five years and see how this turned out. In the meantime I will continue to die on the hill that physical inputs are still the best way of interfacing with technology.

20

Jan

Now Is Usually A Bad Time

For the 2,922nd day in a row, it's the stupidest day in American history. I am spending the day addressing save the dates for my wedding and slow-cooking some short rib. It feels strange to be going about my usual business during world-historical moments, but since "weeks where decades happen" have been happening with an alarming regularity for quite some time, it seems like the only thing to do.

In retrospect this was a pretty bad week to decide to give Bluesky a shot. I used Skybridge to import my old follows from Twitter (which was a pretty smooth

3 min read