beach bum. software designer. infrequent luke warm takes. head of design @opensolar
Sydney
Joined March 2009
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Alasdair Cumming retweeted
me: kinda fucked up how many people are offloading their whole lives to muse or instinct or grokbot or whatever
claude: yeah
Alasdair Cumming retweeted
I promised to give you all a rundown on how I make these videos.
There's no After Effects project behind it. Every frame is code: TypeScript, a browser and a timeline.
Here's how it's made 🧵
Alasdair Cumming retweeted
every product i use should just be a headless mcp, that feeds into an agent, where i never have to think about anything underneath.
except for our product, of course.
in our product, customers love the ui and love us very much.
we're special that way.
😭
my productivity is in a big slump today as I trial all the alternatives
We've decided to sunset Arc on December 22, 2026.
That's not an easy sentence to write. We spent years building Arc and celebrating each and every release along the way: we have so much pride and love for what we made alongside the Arc community.
Our priority is to deliver best-in-class security for our members. Keeping a browser secure takes constant, dedicated work that is only increasing in the age of AI. Dia was built from the ground up to meet today’s security standards, so that's where our engineering and security teams will focus moving forward.
We've worked to make switching to @diabrowser as easy as possible for Arc members. Here's how:
· Your passwords, bookmarks, extensions and history come over to Dia seamlessly.
· Spaces, Folders, and Tab Groups are in Dia and import over with your data intact.
· Dia now surpasses Arc benchmarks in stability, speed, and security.
· The browser features you use in Arc are free in Dia, and the AI is optional.
Thank you for using Arc, for pushing us to make it better, and for building alongside us. The team that made Arc is the same team behind Dia, and some of our most ambitious work is just ahead. We'd love for you to be there with us when it lands.
Alasdair Cumming retweeted
This is another great technological achievement, but also another harmful sugar-drink entering the market.
There is a big difference between a tool designed to develop relationships and a tool designed to complement or supplant them. This video shows which path this company is pursuing.
Cocaine, meth, sugar, cars, and plastics can all solve certain problems really well. As can a synthetic “friend.” The problem is not that they can’t be used for good, but rather our propensity to abuse conveniences in ways that are harmful.
Any tool that alters our social behavior ultimately affects whole communities and society. Tools like this will continue our trend of “high relational mobility,” making us less resilient and capable for the messiness of social human life.
None of this undermines the incredible achievement this team has pulled off. But it feels dangerous to go down this path without a debate.
Last year we launched Tolan, inspired by a vision of AI that sees you and believes in you, not one that books restaurant reservations for you.
Your Tolan shows up for you at 3am when you’re alone with your newborn. On your commute when you’re anxious about the day ahead. When you just finished a new show and none of your friends have watched it yet.
The people who love Tolan are parents. Caregivers. Moms in Dallas and Dads in Atlanta. People who aren’t trying to optimize and be more productive, but who simply want to feel seen and supported in their aspirations.
This month more than 250k people will spend time with their Tolan. Those users have exchanged billions of messages across more than 70m conversations over the last year.
Today, we're announcing $30m in additional capital from @mignano and @usv, with @khoslaventures and @rabois doubling down, bringing our total capital raised to $60m.
To celebrate, we made a short film celebrating some of the ways that Tolans show up :)
There's tonnes of latent demand for consumers to shop using agents. Sort of inveitable that people like Amazon are playing defence by blocking agents, but meeting that consumer demand feels like a very smart play from Shopify
Turn any existing Agent into the world's best personal shopper for you.
The new shop skill: shop.md/
Add the skill & connect your Shop account & finally find the thing that you always wanted
Playing with the @rive_app CLI to experiment with splash screen options.
Not sold on this just yet but truly insane to just talk like an idiot into Claude then get shaders and animations that you have pretty good control over in Rive 🤯
Me switching constantly between Siri, Claude, Instinct, ChatGPT, GoogleAI search without rhyme or reason
This is true. Been one of the idiots who didn’t think they needed help.
If you're building/renovating your home, and your architect and/or interior designer isn't accompanying you to showrooms to pick stuff out, you're not getting "full service."
That's fine, you don't *have* to do full service.
But in the end, it saves a ton of hassle.
I have the relationships in the showrooms, I know the product lines, I know the design and coordination issues that the showroom reps (no matter how awesome they are) don't know about your project.
A day in the showrooms - even if we don't pick absolutely everything there and still seek out other sources - is actually very efficient, and often uncovers a ton of questions that owners haven't thought through yet.
Homeowners chronically underestimate how many decisions need to be made and how much technical know-how is needed to make those decisions.
Everyone thinks *they* don't need help. And then they get into a pickle and cost themselves money and time.
Don't make that mistake!
I built cup-cal.com/ over the weekend.
Pick all the teams you want to follow in the world cup, it will create a custom calendar for you and sync all their games to your calendar. Updates as the tournament unfolds.