2016 tweets

Four years ago I was leaving their house into the snow and Gloria said "you need a hat" and gave me Marvin's hat.

Feb 01, 2016

"As we have never been cast down with scorn and ridicule we shall never be puffed up with praise and admiration" -ECS

Feb 02, 2016

I'm staying at the Athenaeum (caltech faculty club) and I'm kind. of. freaking. out.

Feb 02, 2016

Somehow, returning to caltech regresses me to an awestruck 18-year-old.

Feb 02, 2016

I opened that nightstand drawer where hotels usually put a bible, thought maybe I'd find the feynman lectures

woke up to scribbled note "selfie tree"
I think this is what I meant?

Mar 12, 2016

least concern

Mar 12, 2016

i feel pretty concerned tbh

Mar 13, 2016

potential sapiens

Mar 16, 2016

Bret's first ever laptop sticker, courtesy of @ludwigschubert

Mar 16, 2016

@Jonathan_Blow It is so real

Geometric Algebra Geometric Algebra Geometric Algebra

Oct 30, 2015

@michael_nielsen: The answer to this question ["Can computers be creative?"] seems so obv "yes" to me, I can't imagine otherwise. And yet others strongly disagree.

Mar 19, 2016

@michael_nielsen Isn't a better question "SHOULD computers be creative"? ie: Why are humans creative? Is outsourcing that good for humanity?

Mar 19, 2016

@michael_nielsen How do humans benefit from other humans being creative? Do we get that benefit from creative computers? Or miss the point?

Mar 19, 2016

@michael_nielsen There's an argument parallel to what @zephoria said about social media:

danah boyd: Facebook's “Privacy Trainwreck”: Exposure, Invasion, and Drama
i started wondering if social media is dangerous ... If gossip is too delicious to turn your back on and Flickr, Bloglines, Xanga, Facebook, etc. provide you with an infinite stream of gossip, you'll tune in. Yet, the reason that gossip is in your genes is because it's the human equivalent to grooming. By sharing and receiving gossip, you build a social bond between another human. Yet, what happens when the computer is providing you that gossip asynchronously? I doubt i'm building a meaningful relationship with you when i read your MySpace CuteKitten78. You don't
even know that i'm watching your life. Are you really going to be there when i need you?

Mar 24, 2016

Beautiful work from @unconed. Imagine these visuals not as "explainers" but just "the stuff you work with every day" acko.net/files/gltalks/…

Mar 25, 2016

i miss our conversations, my long-lost friend

finderSaysHello ($0100)
The Finder sends finderSaysHello late in its startup process, every time the Finder is launched.
finderSaysGoodbye ($0101)
The Finder sends finderSaysGoodbye early in its shutdown process to inform extensions that the Finder is going away (for whatever reason).
askFinderAreYouThere ($8001)
If the Finder is present, it always accepts this request and returns no error.

Mar 28, 2016

Life milestone achieved: trapping Scott McCloud's family and pets inside a dark locked freight elevator

Apr 10, 2016

I don't know.

Apr 11, 2016

UPDATE: I still don't know.

Apr 15, 2016

We shall not think of thinking, without imagining ourselves thinking *somewhere*. archive.org/details/timelessway…

And indeed, the world does have a structure, just because these patterns of events which repeat themselves are always anchored in the space.
I cannot imagine any pattern of events without imagining a place where it is happening. I cannot think of sleeping, without imagining myself sleeping somewhere. Of course, I can imagine myself sleeping in many different kinds of places-but these places all have at least certain physical geometrical characteristics in common. And I cannot think about the place without also knowing, or imagining, what happens there.

Apr 15, 2016

The thought and the space shall be indivisible. The thought is supported by the space. The space supports the thought.

The action and the space are indivisible. The action is supported by this kind of space. The space supports this kind of action. The two form a unit, a pattern of events in space.

May 01, 2016

smart posters, not smart toasters

May 13, 2016

Developers really need to make a medium that doesn't cripple people into being helplessly dependent on "developers".

Developers really need to make a period app suitable for pre-teens -my 11 year old should be able to opt out of knowing her 'fertile window'

May 13, 2016

Developers really need to make a medium that offers people at least as much power and freedom as a piece of paper and a Sharpie.

May 27, 2016

I wonder how much Strong AI research is ultimately driven by being lonely and wanting a friend to talk to

July 6, 2016

I'm pretty sure this is literally the definition of cancer.

Just keep creating things until something or somebody kills you. (Wise advice from ***) #offf16

@mayli: While @deray taken by cops as he is streaming / reporting protest, his Twitter stream has animated balloons

If a human newspaper editor juxtaposed this news with party balloons, the outrage would force them to resign.

But when an algorithm does something grossly inappropriate in a somber moment, we just accept it. "Poor algorithm doesn't know any better."

Designers, please think about this before adding that "fun" or "playful" feature or "attitude". Your app doesn't understand context.

@scottjenson: I appreciate your point but the only practical alternative is to never celebrate birthdays this way. Baby with the bath

Really? People have been celebrating birthdays for a long time without algorithms reminding them.

If it's the thought that counts, then a database query triggering a mindless animation is the opposite of a "celebration".

@scottjenson: So no website/app can ever say 'happy birthday' ever again? That's a bit strong isn't it?

The entire point of birthdays is human bonding. A robot saying "happy birthday" is entirely meaningless.

@mayli: also of note: automated regular flower delivery to a loved one is *not* romantic. And intention != effect

@nsfmc: weird concept tho—where do you draw the line if the observed effect is identical? 🤖💐? cal ⏰? string on ☝🏽? memory? moleskine?

Effect isn't identical. Flowers sent by human means "I'm thinking of you". Flowers sent by robot means "a robot is thinking of

@nsfmc: i was using effect as what recipient sees "flowers arrive". agree intent can vary wildly—decoding intent is complex

I think of the effects as "recipient (correctly) knows someone is thinking of them" or "recipient is deceived" respectively.

People aren't black boxes. :)

Jul 10, 2016

youtube.com/watch?v=J3kdDj…

"Amusing Ourselves to Death" is not an instruction manual.

Jul 16, 2016

Summary
Stand on the sholders of others
_ Sketchpad, Augment, SmallTalk, Star,-
Today's systems are too hard to use
Simplify: fewer concepts, more support
• Concise user model
• Built-in support for common needs
• Clear out the Ul cruft

Jul 16, 2016

Frank Ludolph: Demo at CHI '98 of Apple's Lisa Computer and Interface
Fred Brooks in his Mythical Man Month said, “Be prepared to throw one away.” Those of us who were working on the Lisa didn't realize we were working on the throwaway.
However, the Mac did pick up our interaction style and at least picked up the metaphor. But at each of these stages that you've heard about today - Augment, Star, and the Lisa - there were things that got dropped in the process of making the product something that could be afforded. I think it's worthwhile to occasionally go back and look at the systems. Normally what got carried forward was the visual stuff. What got dropped was the stuff that was hard to see.

Jul 16, 2016

youtube.com/watch?v=Pr1XXv…

Jul 17, 2016

"So can you talk to me about how MacPaint started? Was there a concept at design meetings?"
"Hahahaha no no no no."
youtube.com/watch?v=-syl7m…

Jun 18, 2016

In honor of the passing of Jerome Bruner, why don't you stop recapitulating behaviorism using neural networks.

Jul 19, 2016

dream (~): launchctl list | grep family
com.apple.familycontrols.useragent
com.apple.familynotificationd
com.apple.familycircled
com.apple.cloudfamilyrestrictionsd
dream (~):

Jul 19, 2016

symbolics probably failed because genera didn't have a "cloud family restrictions daemon"

Jul 19, 2016

cloud family restrictions daemon:

Jul 26, 2016

@DanielleFong: What if, at the "age of consent" they asked you, "do you consent to society?" What happens if you say no?

haven't played the song in years, but the hands don't forget

Jul 30, 2016

This entire file is full of magic.

A L T O C O N S T S 2 3 . M U
; Copyright Xerox Corporation 1979
; Symbol and constant definitons for the standard Alto microcode.
; These definitions are for:
; AltoCode23, AltoCode24, AltoIICode2, and AltoIICode3
; By convention, people writing microcode should 'include' this file
; in front of their microcode using the following MU construct:
; #AltoConsts23.mu;
; This entire file is full of magic. If you modify it in any way
; you run the risk of being incompatible with the Alto world,
; not to mention having your Alto stop working.

Jul 30, 2016

the entire world is full of magic

Aug 01, 2016

Seymour Papert has died.

For me, our ability to use computational metaphors in this way, as carriers for new psychological theories, has implications concerning where theories of knowledge are going and where we are going as producers and carriers of knowledge. These areas are not independent. In earlier chapters it was suggested that how we think about knowledge affects how we think about ourselves. In particular, our image of knowledge as divided up into different kinds leads us to a view of people as divided up according to what their aptitudes are. This in turn leads to a balkanization of our culture.

Aug 11, 2016

Kind of refreshing to see marketing copy that emphasizes patience and learning curve instead of instant expertise.

bluespec
if your challenges are not big enough to learn something new, then bsv is not for you
...nothing worth doing comes free.
prototype, explore, verify, deliver & optimize radically faster

Aug 11, 2016

(Ironically, it seems like Bluespec is actually pretty easy to learn, and extends naturally from Verilog?) youtube.com/watch?v=YpiLEo…

Aug 11, 2016

ok good now just dial it back a bit

You are a builder. Maker. Innovator. Game Changer. Disruptor. Incinerator. Agitator. Firestarter. Carnivore. Matador. Juggernaut. Astronaut. Pressure Washer.
Applications for the 2017 Cohort are now open
Apply

Aug 16, 2016

Aug 21, 2016

Equations (7) and (8) show that, if the factor 4π is concealed in one formula by adjusting the numerical value of a parameter, it may crop up in another formula. In particular, if we adopt the form (6) for Coulomb's law, then the 4π shows up in Maxwell's equations, a fact that some people consider to be somewhat inconvenient.
In 1895 Oliver Heaviside “characterized the 4t eruption as absurd, arbitrary, injurious, irrational, mischievous, obtrusive, perverse, preposterous, ridiculous, stupid, unfortunate, unnecessary and unspeakable.” G. A. Campbell, Bull. Nat. Res. Council, Vol, 93, p. 74 (1933).

Aug 21, 2016

@michael_nielsen: An image that implements FizzBuzz, done in Piet, the image-based programming language

Aug 25, 2016

@michael_nielsen An image that implements an entire processor, done in the original image-based programming language

Aug 26, 2016

I've reached the point where I assume that any citation in any written work is, as likely as not, a misunderstanding.

Aug 26, 2016

(probably going to delete this tweet because I'm pretty sure it'll be misunderstood)

Aug 26, 2016

If you want a vision of the future, imagine a million tweets talking past one other, forever.

Sep 02, 2016

"Grandpa, why did Hazel-rah die?"
"Back then, everybody grew old and died, even the rich and powerful."
"Grandpa, it's hot and I'm hungry."

Sep 08, 2016

The typesetter wipes his brow with his sleeve, takes a swig of whisky, unlocks a box labeled THE BIG INTEGRAL.

Sep 11, 2016

Sep 19, 2016

Carver Mead has a new website, and it has everything. carvermead.caltech.edu

Sep 24, 2016

Really nice introduction to Modelica by @mtiller, including a demo of a literal "npm for scientific models."
youtube.com/watch?v=-mvEUu…

Sep 24, 2016

Modelica is such a fascinating in-practice example of truly declarative components that have no "inputs" or "outputs", just relationships.

Sep 26, 2016

REALTALK
Realtalk is an environment for authoring and working with dynamic media. Unlike most such systems, in which people engage with virtual objects rendered on a screen or headset, Realtalk objects are ordinary physical objects, interpreted and “given life” by technology built into the room.
One goal is to achieve the interpersonal dynamics of people present in the real world - people physically working together, learning from one another, thinking with their bodies and hands, seeing everything at once. Consider the vastly different dynamics of a communal woodshop or kitchen, versus a typical computing environment.
The other goal is to enable powerful new forms of seeing, discussing, and understanding - ”thinking the unthinkable” - by taking advantage of the myriad properties of the real world which aren't provided by renderings. Beyond a “Dynabook”, we seek a “Dyna-Exploratorium”.
REALTALK is production of the HARC DYNAMIC MEDIUM GROUP

Hi. Does this give you feelings?
complex.com/life/2016/09/e…
You know what you need to do.
worrydream.com/ClimateChange

Don't panic. Don't despair. Build.
If you call yourself an engineer, it's time to step up and start engineering.
worrydream.com/ClimateChange

Neither "Glass" nor "Spectacles" will enable people to see the way out of global crises. Stop bullshitting. Build what the world needs.

@paulg: Do you mean that only working directly on problem x will help solve problem x?

@paulg The second half of the essay is entirely about high-leverage projects that indirectly help solve problem X. worrydream.com/ClimateChange

@paulg High-leverage indirect is extremely important. But it's unlikely that addressing lifestyle inconveniences will turn out to be relevant.

Oct 05, 2016

@DynamicWebPaige: "Gosh, I really wish I would have majored in mathematics and computer science." ←my brain, at least twice a week for the last four years

@DynamicWebPaige Never regret studying how the real physical world works, instead of some abstract self-referential fictional hocus-pocus.

@DynamicWebPaige: It'd be difficult to learn how the real physical world works, though, without having a set of observational/explorational tools

@DynamicWebPaige Of course, and studying physical science and engineering is all about learning and developing those mathematical tools.

@DynamicWebPaige But unlike CS, you can be sure those tools refer to something outside themselves. CS can be all maps, no territory.

@DynamicWebPaige I'm not saying CS techniques aren't useful. But if *all you know* is CS, all you know is fictional worlds,

@DynamicWebPaige and your tendency is to hide in them and drag others into them, instead of knowing how to deal with reality.

Oct 11, 2016

Re: When did you stop feeling hopeful about software? :(
Software and I are still cool. (Although I stopped feeling hopeful about computer screens and Uls a couple years ago. Trying a different approach now.)
I've never thought very highly of CS degrees, especially undergrads single-majoring in CS.
This is probably partly just irrational personal bias, and partly a sense that it's “majoring in hammers”, but also partly because literally every other form of engineering is deeply about understanding the possibilities and limitations of the physical world, careful observation and mathematical modeling of physical phenomena, moving around matter to improve the human environment -- whereas CS majors end up completely powerless in the real world, and thus learn to ignore the physical world and construct fantasy worlds that they completely control. All other engineering is humbling in many ways, you have to work within nature's rules, and you have to make things that fit into people's hands/houses/cities/bodies/etc. A software artifact establishes its own world, and people have to fit themselves into it. This is pathologically presumptuous and can be destructive for all sorts of reasons, but for someone who only knows CS, this is all they can doand the only way in which they know how to think. I may not be making much sense, but it's late.

Oct 10, 2016

Reading about the clumsy ad-hoc compression method used by HP's Smalltalk implementation when writing the object table to an image...

Oct 10, 2016

... I thought, "why didn't they just LZ77 it", and realized with a shock that this wasn't long after 1977, and LZ77 wasn't widely known.

Oct 10, 2016

... I can't even imagine what it would be like to not have LZ77. It's like imagining life before the discovery of fire.

well aren't you pleased as punch

Figure 16.4
Class, Class class, Metaclass, Metaclass class

Oct 13, 2016

@posco: It's a real loss that modern society is so age segregated. Children remind us to play and what joy is. And elders have much to teach.

Oct 16, 2016

@posco Patterns 40 and 57! archive.org/details/APatte…

40 OLD PEOPLE
EVERYWHERE
Old people need old people, but they also nced the young, and young people need contact with the old.
There is a natural tendency for old people to gather together in clusters or communities. But when these elderly communities are too isolated or too large, they damage young and old alike. The young in other parts of town, have no chance of the benefit of older company, and the old people themselves are far too isolated.
But the choice the old people have made by moving to these communities and the remarks above are a serious and painful refection of a very sad state of affairs in our culture. The fact is that contemporary society shunts away old people; and the more shunted away they are, the deeper the rift between the old and young. The old people have no choice but to segregate themselves—they, like anyone else, have pride; they would rather not be with younger people who do not appreciate them, and they feign satisfaction to justify their position.
57 CHILDREN IN THE CITY
If children are not able to explore the whole of the adult world round about them, they cannot become adults. But modern cities are so dangerous that children cannot be allowed to explore them freely.
The need for children to have access to the world of adults is so obvious that it goes without saying. The adults transmit their ethos and their way of life to children through their actions, not through statements. Children learn by doing and by copying. If the child's education is limited to school and home, and all the vast undertakings of a modern city are mysterious and inaccessible, it is impossible for the child to find out what it really means to be an adult and impossible, certainly, for him to copy it by doing.
This separation between the child's world and the adult world is unknown among animals and unknown in traditional societies. In simple villages, children spend their days side by side with farmers in the fields, side by side with people who are building houses, side by side, in fact, with all the daily actions of the men and women round about them: making pottery, counting money, curing the sick, praying to God, grinding corn, arguing about the future of the village.

Oct 20, 2016

Figure 9. The continuum between "things" and "stuff". (@dSeanMustard ) dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?i…

Display: Things vs. Stuff
classical TUIs, zooids swarm UIs
objects, particles, atoms
Figure 9. The continuum between “things” and “stuff”.

Sep 22, 2016

it's so far away
with every step it feels further away

Amazon is great, you can buy things without having to talk to anyone!
Google Maps is great, you can get directions when lost without having to talk to anyone!
Grubhub is great, you can get food delivered without having to talk to anyone!
IMDb is great, you can remember who was in that one movie without having to talk to anyone!
Shazam is great, you can find out what song is playing without having to talk to anyone!
Slack is great, you can keep up with your coworkers without having to talk to anyone!
Facebook is great, you can keep up with your friends without having to talk to anyone!
Twitter is great, you can harass and be harassed without having to talk to anyone!
Self-driving cars will be great, you'll get driven around without having to talk to anyone!
Texting is great, you can talk to anyone without having to talk to anyone!

hm, I think "join a mob" would have been better for the twitter line, oh well

software is eating our words

almost exactly eight years from concept to production twitter.com/worrydream/sta…

tbh, makes me feel better that I'm not planning to show you what I'm currently working on for eight years!

Oct 30, 2016

Nov 05, 2016

ok thank you, youtube free-association algorithm

Alan Kay, 2013: Interview
Kenneth Friedman
408 views
Make Body Language Your Superpower
Stanford Graduate School of Business
1,553,170 views

Nov 06, 2016

[1] [2]

a blue plane in pink clothing

Nov 17, 2016

"What must we do to make 'possibly' into 'probably' in two years?" (from amazon.com/dp/0143122797)

But there were also profound challenges of science. “The crux of the problem,” Jewett wrote in describing his conversations with Carty, “was a satisfactory telephone repeater or amplifier”:
Did we know how to develop such a repeater? No. Why not? Science hadn't yet shown us the way. Did we have any reason to think that she would? Yes. In time? Possibly. What must we do to make “possibly” into “probably” in two years?

Nov 20, 2016

(via @patrickc) continuing to work on long-term research is a kind of Pascal's Wager

Dec 01, 2016

[1] [2]

@patrickc Even three decades later, Apple stays on-message.

AirPods.
A bicycle for the ears.
Learn more about AirPods.

@ncasenmare: For others reading this: w/ Score Voting, it's possible for someone who has a majority to NOT win ncase.me/ballot/sandbox...

My favorite part of Nicky's latest is this twitter reply which links a custom interactive simulation to illustrate the point.

Nicky's article is excellent (as always!), but to me, the deepest use of "explorable explanations" is not as standalone "explainers",

but as *conversational* tools, so everyone involved in a discussion can see, explore, and challenge what's being discussed.

The explainer can be thought of as introducing/teaching a language/toolset/interface/representation that can then be used in discussion.

Dec 17, 2016

What's your "fundamental theorem"?

Dec 17, 2016

@mayli: what's yours?

Dec 17, 2016

@mayli I thought it was this, but everyone else's answers are so different than mine!

100% agree with @MaxCRoser about limitations of stories. But stats are very limiting too (e.g. Seeing Like A State) ourworldindata.org/a-history-of-g…

The difficulty for telling the history of how everyone's lives changed over the last 200 years is that you cannot pick single stories. Stories about individual people are much more engaging - our minds like these stories - but they cannot be representative for how the world has changed. To achieve a representation of how the world has changed at large you have to tell many, many stories all at once; and that is statistics.

Dec 23, 2016

Stories & stats are two extremes, both myopic: one too specific, one too general. Neither can represent the truth of a complex situation.

Dec 23, 2016

But stories & stats are relics of the paper medium. The dynamic medium allows a "ladder of abstraction" between them. worrydream.com/LadderOfAbstra…

Dec 23, 2016

I believe that the deepest understandings will come from a new form of "reading" which is actively moving up and down such a ladder.

@wynlim: yet how do we nurture more people capable of creating such content/formats?

100 years of inventors messing around; followed by a @EdwardTufte/Euclid-like consolidator/teacher; then curriculum + community of practice.

Step 1 requires a *medium* that makes it possible for many people to mess around and learn from each other. For infographics, that was print.

montereybayaquarium.org >> "Conservation & Science" >> "Publications" >> "Sea Otter Publications" >> [list of 140 papers on sea otters]

Seymour Papert, Jerome Bruner, Marvin Minsky, and Jay Forrester died this year.

Seymour Papert (skip to 10:20): c-span.org/video/?67583-1…

Jerome Bruner: youtube.com/watch?v=xxn6Ip…

Marvin Minsky: youtube.com/watch?v=EI0NXT…