382 karma · joined May 23, 2016
An example that comes to mind is the Apollo program: JFK announced a national goal to land a man on the moon in 1961 and this was finally achieved in 1969 - two presidencies (Johnson, Nixon) and one change of party (Dem->Rep) later - with NASA being that independent responsible entity.
Spoiler alert - you can't always do it sitting at home in your office chair.
It might be just my age, but these days I'm more excited about sporadic releases for long dead platforms than the absolute tsunami of copycat "AAA" content released on modern consoles/PCs.
Back in the day, we called this annual leave and we read about it in our employment contract
Also, according to Claude[1] a 50ppm difference is equivalent to around 25 years current atmospheric carbon increase.
* Pre-industrial (1700s): ~280 ppm
* 1958 (when systematic measurements began): ~315 ppm
* 2000: ~370 ppm
* 2015: ~400 ppm (milestone crossed)
* Current: ~420-425 ppm
[1] "What is the normal range for background CO2 concentrations in the air?"
I look forward to seeing the changes ipadOS 26 (with the possible exception of liquid glass)
I'm working on a construction project right now (not as an architect/engineer) and I can tell you right now that live collaboration is THE killer feature (your slick UI not withstanding).
If this job is anything to go by, the current state-of-the-art appears to be a single Revit model file released once a month, 10,000 excel spreadsheets and 3,000 PDFs of various versions and quality spread between Sharepoint and a Document management server.
I'm sure you've got an amazing roadmap, but it would be great to see you apply a modern take on:
- how to handle version control in a multi-user environment (endless designing is fun, but at some point you need to draw a line in the sand so that people can start work, then changes need to be highlighted for the guy on the ground swinging a hammer)
- collaboration with 3rd-parties that may have a subset of design responsibilities (e.g. HVAC, electrical - they can place things in a room, but can't adjust the dimensions of a room)
- design reviews - current state-of-the-art seems to be marking up PDFs of DWGs with comments (which the supplier completely ignores on their next revision)
I look forward to watching this product evolve!
Small typo on your Love Letter to Designers post:
"A promise we will make at Arcol is tolisten first"
I think it's fair to say that most companies building products priced for Mr/Mrs Everybody don't spend a dime on design where there is already a market leader to copy inspiration, or outright steal from (see almost every phone made since 2007).
The Gold Watch was probably an opportunity to work on an interesting project with a new material.
...then the AppleTV was released, with a remote that made the Harmony look like the console of a nuclear power plant by comparison, and I never went back
Also, when the panels are at full extent first thing in the morning (e.g. almost vertical facing east), it's very easy for animals to come in contact with the panels themselves.
The corollary to this (at least in Australia) is that most solar farms are being installed on (now) vacant grazing land where 150+ years of cultivation has meant that the grasses that grow on them are very fast growing and hardy.
Mowing the fields beneath the panels is a full time job just to reduce the fire hazard.
I had high hopes that Andrew Forrest might be the one to pull this off after watching him deliver this [1] Boyer lecture 4 years ago, but as far as I'm aware this none of this has materialised.
It feels like user interface innovations all stopped/stagnated in the early 2000s and we've just spent the last 20 years adjusting the previous 20 years of desktop UI paradigms to the mobile and tablet space.
It's great to see people still working on interesting problems like this
I used to think it was just an experience/wisdom thing - e.g.: when you're younger, you tend to be biased to action, builder/doer mindset, "what and how", "fact-based". Then as you become more experienced, you tend to plan more, focus on the bigger picture eg: "why and when", "story-based"
But the longer I've been around, I now see that people are just all wired differently.
The Myers Briggs test[1] is an interesting exercise to identify these traits (and a lot more).
I've done it multiple times over the years and while I'm certain I didn't use the exact same answers each time, the results always converge on the same personality type.
I didn't get my first win until I chose Turtle AI with 40% handicap. After many months of "honing" my skills, I am now about 50/50 against Rush AI on equal standings, but I still have to play larger maps so that there is some lag before they can reach my base.
Why are we trying to build a single unified platform for everything?
Maybe the friction of having different networks/applications based on the specific subculture/group you wish to associate with keeps them all a little less mainstream? Maybe this is a good thing?
Trump will come and go (for good after his second term) - these guys are all just there to ensure it's business-as-usual for the next 4 years.
I remember reading this in my mid-teens and it really speaking to me.
Sometimes we tend to forget: nobody is forcing us to use the crap that "the Internet" has become home to.
The Internet isn't the content, it's the network - the map is not the territory and the underlying architecture hasn't changed all that much.
There will always be room to carve out your space and find your people.
The only switching/routing vendor with an API worth a damn was Juniper - in fact they were the only vendor who was applying CLI changes to the box via their own API, the Way It Should Be Done™.
These days you are spoilt for choice (and price point) with the likes of Arista, HPe (AOS-CX), Cisco (NX-OS, IOS-XR) and plenty of others entering the space.
Vote with your wallet!
The reality is, you end up with a complex stack with no or homegrown documentation that requires experienced engineers to operate and maintain.
In some environments, that's a perfectly fair trade-off. In most, it isn't.