Steve Hurst

Creative Director @found_brand, designer, photographer, girl dad.

[Nathan J Robinson @NathanJRobinson]

Instead of discussing how Elon Musk is now the world's first trillionaire, we should talk about how he killed hundreds of thousands of people through his dismantling of food and medical aid to poor countries
https://t.co/8kY171r5w1

[Steve Hurst @stevenhurst]

@TrungTPhan @anothercohen The Copilot license savings!

[Steve Hurst @stevenhurst]

@TrungTPhan @anothercohen AI should obsolete at least back to 2018 numbers.

[Steve Hurst @stevenhurst]

Save the Alamo. The rampant enshittification of the world is rapidly encroaching on the Drafthouse. https://t.co/dXsMerQOob

[Peter Girnus 🦅 @gothburz]

Last quarter I rolled out Microsoft Copilot to 4,000 employees.

$30 per seat per month.

$1.4 million annually.

I called it "digital transformation."

The board loved that phrase.

They approved it in eleven minutes.

No one asked what it would actually do.

Including me.

I told everyone it would "10x productivity."

That's not a real number.

But it sounds like one.

HR asked how we'd measure the 10x.

I said we'd "leverage analytics dashboards."

They stopped asking.

Three months later I checked the usage reports.

47 people had opened it.

12 had used it more than once.

One of them was me.

I used it to summarize an email I could have read in 30 seconds.

It took 45 seconds.

Plus the time it took to fix the hallucinations.

But I called it a "pilot success."

Success means the pilot didn't visibly fail.

The CFO asked about ROI.

I showed him a graph.

The graph went up and to the right.

It measured "AI enablement."

I made that metric up.

He nodded approvingly.

We're "AI-enabled" now.

I don't know what that means.

But it's in our investor deck.

A senior developer asked why we didn't use Claude or ChatGPT.

I said we needed "enterprise-grade security."

He asked what that meant.

I said "compliance."

He asked which compliance.

I said "all of them."

He looked skeptical.

I scheduled him for a "career development conversation."

He stopped asking questions.

Microsoft sent a case study team.

They wanted to feature us as a success story.

I told them we "saved 40,000 hours."

I calculated that number by multiplying employees by a number I made up.

They didn't verify it.

They never do.

Now we're on Microsoft's website.

"Global enterprise achieves 40,000 hours of productivity gains with Copilot."

The CEO shared it on LinkedIn.

He got 3,000 likes.

He's never used Copilot.

None of the executives have.

We have an exemption.

"Strategic focus requires minimal digital distraction."

I wrote that policy.

The licenses renew next month.

I'm requesting an expansion.

5,000 more seats.

We haven't used the first 4,000.

But this time we'll "drive adoption."

Adoption means mandatory training.

Training means a 45-minute webinar no one watches.

But completion will be tracked.

Completion is a metric.

Metrics go in dashboards.

Dashboards go in board presentations.

Board presentations get me promoted.

I'll be SVP by Q3.

I still don't know what Copilot does.

But I know what it's for.

It's for showing we're "investing in AI."

Investment means spending.

Spending means commitment.

Commitment means we're serious about the future.

The future is whatever I say it is.

As long as the graph goes up and to the right.

[Steve Hurst @stevenhurst]

Liquid Glass in Bulgaria 😏

[Steve Hurst @stevenhurst]

@Pinsky Cool. But then the photo looks fake. And shitty.

[Bernie Sanders @BernieSanders]

Today, @AOC and I had 34,000 people come out in Denver.

It is the largest rally that I have ever had.

And it tells me that the American people will not allow Trump to move us into oligarchy and authoritarianism.

We will fight back. We will win.

[Steve Hurst @stevenhurst]

No thank you, Maybe Nancy.

[Steve Hurst @stevenhurst]

This is all feeling like the most unhinged game of Secret Hitler, where your one drunk friend is just blatantly Hitler but your other drunk friends refuse to call him out because it’s funny or something.

[Steve Hurst @stevenhurst]

Favorite client status maintained.

[Dan Desko @DanDesko]

Military folks will see a familiar pattern in the early sketches of the @echelon_cyber logo.

But for anyone uninitiated, the V-shaped doodles represent the “echelon” formation.

In this formation, planes fly in a staggered pattern, but they still present a united front - allowing for a better overall field of view.

I picked the name “Echelon” for my company in part to invoke the attributes of this military formation: our approach to cybersecurity is visionary, protective, and cohesive.

Plus, it’s a word that implies high rank, which suits our commitment to top-quality service.

When teams get into the echelon formation, they’re ready to look at an issue holistically, from different vantage points. They can then use the disparate data they’ve gathered to build up a united front.

That’s how we think about cybersecurity at Echelon Risk + Cyber, and we’re proud of the way we rep our name every day.

Someday these sketches might be really valuable - any takers?!

[Steve Hurst @stevenhurst]

@DanDesko @echelon_cyber I’ll give you a 20% agent fee on the sell!

[zeldman @zeldman]

Typing https://t.co/R5w2bQZKWz in front of any URL saves that content in the Wayback Machine forever. Nasty tweet? Type https://t.co/R5w2bQZKWz in front of the URL, and archive it forever. Hat tip: @t.

[Steve Hurst @stevenhurst]

@bandholz Not bad. I have two “smart” light switches that I’ve never been able to use again after changing my network name.

[Steve Hurst @stevenhurst]

@marcmaron @tameimpala Lonerism looped a few times will lock it in. Trouble is you won’t want to listen elsewhere.

[Steve Hurst @stevenhurst]

This thread is proof that Midjourney is the most terrifying teenager-to-watch-closely of the three big visual AIs. It takes almost every prompt and makes it either low-key or all-out horrific.

[fabian @fabianstelzer]

DALL-E 2 vs Midjourney vs StableDiffusion mega thread: photography, illustration, painters, abstract

these image synths are like instruments - it's amazing we'll get so many of them, each with a unique "sound" 🤯

rules: same prompt, 1:1 aspect ratio, no living artists

[Steve Hurst @stevenhurst]

Exploring alien West Texas landscapes with Midjourney.

The amount of AI images being generated per second on the app is incredible and terrifying to see first-hand.

[Steve Hurst @stevenhurst]

This link is terrible clickbait, but holy shit—imagine watching The Boys thinking Homelander is the protagonist. https://t.co/IfHWlKWBDR

[Steve Hurst @stevenhurst]

Craft is always a dream, but this was my first dance with @tailwindcss and holy shit I'm converted. 1) faster to get to design vision and just more fun to use 2) code is way more manageable 3) our final minimized CSS file is impressively small

[Steve Hurst @stevenhurst]

Big launch day for our latest branding project @found_brand for @echelon_cyber. Lots to love about the client, the brand work, and the copywriting, but I'll be coming down from the highly pleasurable web work in @CraftCMS and @tailwindcss for awhile — https://t.co/batsgLFizg