david

designer. artist. futurist. intergalactic surfer. ex @terrace_fi @deel @andela @fincrahq

[Jahir Sheikh @jahirsheikh8]

“CLAUDE I’VE EXPLAINED THIS BUG TO YOU 10 TIMES AND YOU STILL KEEP BREAKING IT, THINK LIKE A SOFTWARE ENGINEER WITH 15 YEARS OF EXPERIENCE AND FIX IT PROPERLY MAKE NO MISTAKES”

[Ryo Lu @ryolu_]

when software had a soul

there was a moment around 2005 when using a Mac felt like touching something alive.

the dock bounced. the genie effect swooped. exposé scattered your windows like cards on a table. none of it was strictly necessary. all of it felt like someone cared – not about metrics, but about the feeling of using a machine.

software back then had texture. it had a philosophy. you could feel the person behind it. someone made a decision to make that icon beautiful, to animate that transition just so, to write that error message with a little warmth. apps had personalities. some were weird. some were over-designed in ways that would make a modern PM flinch. but they were alive.

the web was the same. personal sites were genuinely personal. blogs felt like letters. forums had regulars. you knew who made what. the internet had neighborhoods, and each one felt different.

nothing was optimized for scale. things were made by people who loved what they were making.

somewhere along the way, we traded all of that for growth.

A/B tests flattened the edges. design systems standardized the personality out. everything got faster, smoother, more consistent – and somehow less interesting. the quirks were removed because they didn't test well. the warmth got cut because it wasn't measurable. we optimized our way into a world of things that work perfectly and feel like nothing.
now every app looks the same. every interface follows the same patterns. every product speaks in the same calm, frictionless voice, siloed in their own little islands. the humanity got rounded off.

and then came AI agents. and the speed got inhuman.

now you can generate an entire product in an afternoon. ship a feature before lunch. spin up ten variations before anyone's had their coffee. the gap from idea to code is basically zero.

which sounds incredible. and it is. but there's a catch.

when making things are too easy, the slop comes for free too. mediocre things don't look obviously bad – they look fine. they work. they ship. they pass review. and now there are infinite of them. the internet is filling up with software that functions but means nothing. interfaces that are correct but feel dead. products made by agents, reviewed by no one, shipped into the void.

this is the thing that keeps me up at night. not that AI will replace people who care. but that it will drown them out.

here's what I still believe: the best things are made by people who couldn't help themselves. someone who lost sleep over an icon. who rewrote the same line of copy twelve times. who added an animation nobody asked for because it made the thing feel right. that obsession – that's not inefficiency. that's the whole point.

AI doesn't make that irrelevant. it actually makes it rarer and more valuable. taste is not a markdown skill. caring is not a parameter. the weird, specific, "soul" thing you put into something – that can't be programmed into existence.

the path forward isn't to make more slop faster. it's to finally give people with real vision the tools to make the thing they always imagined but couldn't build alone. the designer who had the idea but couldn't code. the kid who saw something nobody else saw. the person who cared too much about something most people wouldn't notice.

if we get this right, we don't get a faster factory. we get a renaissance. more strange, personal, opinionated software made by teams of people who care and mean it.

that's still possible. but only if the people who care get the space and tools to actually express themselves – and don't just hand the wheel to the agent and walk away.

[Dwarkesh Patel @dwarkesh_sp]

The @ilyasut episode

0:00:00 – Explaining model jaggedness
0:09:39 - Emotions and value functions
0:18:49 – What are we scaling?
0:25:13 – Why humans generalize better than models
0:35:45 – Straight-shotting superintelligence
0:46:47 – SSI’s model will learn from deployment
0:55:07 – Alignment
1:18:13 – “We are squarely an age of research company”
1:29:23 – Self-play and multi-agent
1:32:42 – Research taste

Look up Dwarkesh Podcast on YouTube, Apple Podcasts, or Spotify. Enjoy!

[sesan. @hey_sesan]

Say hello to @hey_library
https://t.co/qWzXZL3V1V

[david @afrogodd]

@hey_sesan @hey_library Congrats, site looks lovely!

[david @afrogodd]

the kind of longtail tiredness that has taken on a repeated flair and feels like it’s never gonna leave has now become my obligatory staple. but even tweeting is breathing rn, & a smol attempt to break free. a win

[david @afrogodd]

i raise you ogudu gra. the real ones know

[Taha @TahaAdam_]

GRA Ikeja Lagos would forever remain the best place to live in Lagos! Forget about VI, Ikoyi and Lekki where flooding has become part of their lives!

[OpenAI @OpenAI]

Our open models are here.
Both of them.

https://t.co/9tFxefOXcg

[david @afrogodd]

Form closes today. Women are highly encouraged to apply! Pls retweett for a designer on your TL

[مريم حسنا @Maryamhasnaa]

You may think you’re exhausted because of all of these external reasons or because you’re too ‘busy’. when it actually comes down to not being fully connected to your own internal battery, the part of you that nourishes, replenishes, charges, heals and sustains you.

[Simon Willison @simonw]

Quitting programming as a career right now because of LLMs would be like quitting carpentry as a career thanks to the invention of the table saw.

[Yves ౨ৎ @yvessirae]

i feel so bad when i overtake an old person on the sidewalk like man i really didn't mean to flex on you with my youthful stride

[Andrej Karpathy @karpathy]

Cool demo of a GUI for LLMs! Obviously it has a bit silly feel of a “horseless carriage” in that it exactly replicates conventional UI in the new paradigm, but the high level idea is to generate a completely ephemeral UI on demand depending on the specific task at hand.

[david @afrogodd]

@iam_alake ykb boo

[david @afrogodd]

someone needs to bring thakzin back to naij

[david @afrogodd]

@Bolaji___ lool this is crazy. wondering what about the system prompt could possibly make the generated title to be conflated with your name

[DANN© @DannPetty]

Everyone thinks they're a good designer. So if everyone is good, then you need to be great to stand out. Being great is more than just able to create visuals and solutions. That's only half of it.

You need so many more things here are just a few.

You need: Knowledge, wisdom, trust, speed, work ethic, attitude, will, determination, taste, eye, creativeness, reputation, respect, character, gratitude…plus understands graphic design, spacing, typography and yes, know how to actually do the job you're trying to get.

Notice didn’t say follower count or engagement stats. Stop wasting your time with those vanity metrics. If everyone has 10K followers, who actually has 10K followers? I'd rather have clients paying 10K.

Now you might be thinking? Hey I have all those things and should be getting work. Most saying that don't. You still only have decent work, not good yet. And you still need to pass through the good phase to become great where you're endless booked. This isn't a bad thing stop thinking it is. You don't magically become great after a handful of years of creating basic designs.

And just to be clear, even the greatest designers aren't always booked. We all have our cycles. I often went 2-3 months every year without work. Those were the best times because I knew they were coming and I used those times to do fun things wether time off or building new ideas. It's how Epicurrence was born.

The great designers don't complain about the lulls, they embrace them. They take the time to go after their dream clients or projects, not just the ones that reach out.

You also need to know when to pivot. 2-3 times out of my 20 year freelance career, I knew the patterns of when lulls happened and a few times I just went full-time for companies for a bit. Still freelanced on the side because that was always the goal. When my job was done full-time, I'd go back to freelance.

You're going to have long careers. I'm 20+ years in and have seen this industry change drastically constantly. You're chasing engagement now, but that's temporary. I don't think most of you want to go down that rabbit hole. When does it end? 10K followers? 20K? 50k? 100K? 500K? When will you be happy? If you need followers to get work and are more focused on that, your work may not be good enough, yet. Work will come when you focus on getting work and put in the time.

There's a fine balance. Promote yourself everyday and if you do it right, followers will naturally come. But you don't want followers, you want clients. Followers can = clients but doesn't matter if you're not good enough yet. That only comes from great work and having all the right skills to get their attention and close the sell.

If you want to be an influencer, focus on engagement. You can make good money if you have the right brand (most don't). But influencer type money is a time suck. You have to want to do that or it's something you do on the side out of love for your industry and others (like me) so it doesn't matter if you get paid or not.

I showed up here for everyday since 2009. You've got to put in the time to earn it. Occasionally super stars are created and can punch through. I was not a super star. I just worked harder than everyone around me, took more risks than most, and knew I didn't need to be the best I just needed to show up and be reliable.

You think you've done everything, but did you move to the heart of it all? I moved to San Francisco during the design bull run. Are you during the AI start up run? Not saying you have to move, you don't these days, but when I say I went the extra miles, I went the extra miles. There were 4-5 of us that got ALL the freelance work for like 4-5 years in SF. We owned the market. I was the least smartest one but got just as much if not more of the work.

I also see designers these days saying people don't want to pay premiums for good work. They just don't want to pay premium for decent work. I hope that stung. It should. Some need a reality check.

I did free work, discounted work, and so much flexibility it's what help make my career. And that's when there wasn't as many designers. Now there everywhere and so many are over charging. So many are under charging. Don't feed into the you should raise your rates posts. The only thing you should do is what you want and what gets you paid! If you're not making money, lower. If you are, raise. It's pretty simple.

I never once thought I was great, which always made me work harder than most. I always knew there was someone better than me, which always made me try harder to catch up. Every job I ever had I was always terrified of getting fired, so I worked harder than most.

All it takes is one client to start the referral cycle. But it's up to you to have the right attitude and work ethic to take it to the next level. GO GET IT.

[The Republic @republicjournal]

Four Things You Need to Know about the Crisis in Benue State #RPUBLCNews📡🧵

[Mayowa A. Balogun @Sweeegu]

Good that these 200 deaths are getting attention but Benue alone has lost 6,000 people at least since this regime came into power. According to Amnesty international, over 10,000 deaths related to herdsmen attacks in that span.

This does not include terrorist attacks, other insurgencies, mistake bombings or other avoidable casualties.

THESE ARE WAR TIME NUMBERS, AND NOT A NORMAL WAR, A BRUTAL WAR

[david @afrogodd]

‘the way to work without regrets is to pursue projects that'll have been worth your time even if they don't pan out. projects that'll tickle your curiosity, flex your competency, and teach you something new regardless of where they ultimately end up. projects that leave you better off, as a person, despite not being a commercial or critical success. If you work on projects like this, it's impossible to waste your time.’