Just a test.

January 22, 2023

Design Is What It Does

It’s hard to take issue with the Jobsian position that design is how it works, detailed briefly in this post from design firm iA.

Quote Steve:

Most people make the mistake of thinking design is what it looks like. That’s not what we think design is. It’s not just what it looks like and feels like. Design is how it works.

There is truth in this, but how it works is itself dependent on more fundamental questions such as what it does and who it’s for. One may in response quibble that this is the role of the product manager, not the designer, but these domains share considerable (albeit partial) overlap. In my experience, good design requires solid, thoughtfully considered purpose for the thing being designed.

The Artist, Not The Tool

My introduction to RedVsBlue occurred over 10 years ago courtesy of enthusiastic coworkers. Only a season or two existed at the time. I did not continue to follow it afterwards, and largely lost track of it soon after. I came across it recently on Netflix, of all places.

One of the earliest successful instances of Machinima, RvB was for a time an interesting phenomenon. The creators used the first Halo game on the original Xbox to render a surprisingly entertaining story about two opposing groups of space marines. Despite the limitations of the game console and engine, and the consequently primitive visuals and animation, the series was well written and amusing, albeit very silly.

Biochemistry and Beer

Least year I had three of my four parathyroids removed. Along with roughly half of my father’s extended family, I have inherited a condition called MEN 1 which causes hyperparathyroidism. I’ve experienced some effects of this condition in recent years, including nausea and tiredness. By far the most irritating, however, has been persistent and recurring kidney stones, precipitated by excessive calcium absorption due to the overactive glands.

Surgery has largely eliminated these particular problems, improving overall mood and well-being as a consequence. Additionally, some unexpected effects have emerged. Firstly, my life-long impulse to consume copious volumes of sweets seems to have evaporated. I’ve long had an intense sweet tooth. I would frequently binge on candy, able to tolerate what turned out to be more than the normal limit. Now, trips to the local candy store with my coworkers, something I used to organize, no longer interest me much. When I do go, I tend to get much less than before.

Bad Fish

Various outlets reported today that Lenovo had been shipping questionable software with some of its consumer PCs. Apparently intended to make money by inserting ads in unsuspecting web browsers, Superfish” went a step further by performing a man-in-the-middle attack on HTTPS connections, thereby compromising all secure web connections made by the machine. Lenovo, hands caught in the proverbial cookie jar, has since stopped the practice, albeit it leaving thousands of insecure computers in its wake.

Much has been said about why this was dangerous, ill-concieved, and sloppily done, which I won’t rehash. Consider instead a slightly different angle. As Craig Hockenberry put it, “any software that gets between you and your chain of trust should be considered malware”. This statement is exactly right - Superfish is no mere adware, it is full-on malware.

The Mundane Future

A bit of news popped up today regarding a pair of paramedics in Ireland who delivered a baby before the mother could reach the hospital as planned. This is not in itself newsworthy, however the woman, a native swahili speaker, spoke only limited english. The solution was to use Google Translate to assist with communication in real-time as she delivered the baby.

What’s remarkable about this story is not so much that this technology was used in such a way, as it is that the story is not particularly remarkable, today. We have become so accustomed to such a constant, rapid pace of technological innovation that what would have been science fiction just a few decades ago is not only commonplace but mundane. This despite the enormous complexity of recognizing and translating spoken natural language, and the monstrous amount of research performed to get to this state. By any rights, Google Translate should be a huge story, but it has appeared and grown over the years with relatively little fanfare.