Nicholas Barone

I work with companies to build digital products at @helm_ux

[Kris Puckett @krispuckett]

I spent too much time on this:

CLARK: My contention is that with Claude’s new design tool, Figma has essentially been rendered obsolete, the canvas-based paradigm is most aptly characterized as a legacy artifact from the era before models could generate production-ready interfaces from inten—
WILL: [interrupting] Of course that’s your contention. You’ve never shipped anything and just watched the launch video twice. You just got finished reading some hot take, probably a Twitter thread or whoever’s got a Substack this week, and you’re gonna be convinced Figma’s dead until next month when you actually try to iterate on a flow and realize “regenerate” isn’t the same as “nudge this four pixels.” Then you’re gonna pivot to talking about how the canvas was always just a lossy interface for intent. That’s gonna last until next year when you’re in here regurgitating some take about how design tools are collapsing into a single agentic surface, you know, the post-craft utopia and the disintermediation of taste by foundation models.

CLARK: [taken aback] Well as a matter of fact I won’t, because generative design drastically reduces the need for a manual canvas in the first pla—

WILL: “Generative design drastically reduces the need for a manual canvas, especially as models get better at reasoning about layout and hierarchy…” You got that from that Figma-is-dead thread, right? The one that went viral last week. Yeah, I read it too. You gonna plagiarize the whole thing for us, or you have any thoughts — of your own — on this? Or is that your thing, you come into a bar, you skim some trending tweets over lunch and you pawn it off as your own idea to impress some founders, embarrass my friend?

[Clark is stunned]
WILL: See, the sad thing about a guy like you is in about fifty product cycles you’re gonna start doing some thinking on your own and you’re gonna come up with the fact that there are two certainties in building things. One: don’t pick a side in a tool war you’re not actually building in. And two: the people shipping right now are using Claude and Figma and Claude Code before you’ve finished writing your LinkedIn post about which one won.

CLARK: Yeah, well I’ll have Claude build my whole product stack, and you’ll still be pushing rectangles around in Figma.

WILL: [smiles] Yeah, maybe. But at least I’ll still know how to think when the model’s wrong.

[Nicholas Barone @nb3004]

Just me at my desk setting up OpenClaw...

[Nicholas Barone @nb3004]

Me using ⁦@Replit⁩

[Buffalo Business First @BfloBizFirst]

“What we saw 10 years ago and why we started Helm… that actually worked,” Helm co-founder Nicholas Barone said. “It’s amazing.” https://t.co/9NZOvvoW4Q

[Nicholas Barone @nb3004]

I'm pretty sure I could be friends with Linus. https://t.co/3hsH9cJi31

[Linus ✦ Ekenstam @LinusEkenstam]

The untold story about the Star Trek communicator

First envisioned in 1964, The Communicator is hot potato now more than ever... wink wink Humane AI Pin...

Here is why

🧵 A thread

[Nicholas Barone @nb3004]

@watch84 @rrhoover It’s almost like once in a while these devices actually delight us!

[Nicholas Barone @nb3004]

@natebenson @WGRZ Is there an Edward R Murrow award for tweets?

[Jonathan Gorczyca @watch84]

There’s something to say about products that make you smile. #VisionPro

[Nicholas Barone @nb3004]

@43North_ @anothercohen @Helm_UX @magnachef @ACVAuctions @circuitclinical @getsquire We need more successful exits for sure, and there are many different groups working toward this end.

In addition to @ACVAuctions, over the past 15 years, there have been exits by Synacor, Campus Labs and Liazon.

[Nicholas Barone @nb3004]

Anything seemed possible.

[Web Design Museum @WebDesignMuseum]

Popular Macromedia programs in the 1990s

– Flash 4 in 1999
– Dreamweaver 1.2 in 1997
– Fireworks 2 in 1999
– Director 5 in 1996

#WebDesignHistory

[Nicholas Barone @nb3004]

The venture studio model is the perfect match for cities like Buffalo that are full of potential startup founders but light on technical talent. Read more at the link below about how this model will continue the growth of WNY's innovation ecosystem. https://t.co/gw9ENMye7a

[Nicholas Barone @nb3004]

Technology used to be cool

[Adam Singer @AdamSinger]

Ballmer promoting Windows 1.0 is amazing. You could swap this in as Tim & Eric sketch as-is. 10/10, no notes

[Trung Phan @TrungTPhan]

Apple product hype cycle, explained

[Arvid Kahl @arvidkahl]

This is so well-worded.

And it also shows the major drawback of tools like ChatGPT: if you use their output verbatim and without judgment, you might get “expert copy”, but you will never learn to write copy like an expert.

Judgment and insight require doing the work.

[Nicholas Barone @nb3004]

@dangigante @popo @magnachef @CDMoyer @kevinpurdy @tzmartin And this character.

[Nicholas Barone @nb3004]

@dangigante @popo @magnachef @CDMoyer @kevinpurdy @tzmartin So much character.

[Nicholas Barone @nb3004]

@watch84 @Helm_UX 😍

[Nicholas Barone @nb3004]

@magnachef TBF Boo Berry is better than Grilled Chicken

[Nicholas Barone @nb3004]

User interface design is my passion.

[Stephen Beck @stephenbeck]

Had to decode this elevator. What exactly is going on here?!??