Reading List
The most recent articles from a list of feeds I subscribe to.
The Steve Jobs Archive: ‘Letters to a Young Creator’
Laurene Powell Jobs, in her introduction to the newest publication from the Steve Jobs Archive:
Among the books that mattered to Steve was Rilke’s Letters to a Young Poet. I’m struck by this line from its pages: “Live the questions for now. Perhaps then you will gradually, without noticing it, live your way into the answer, one distant day in the future.”
This is a time to live your questions. The beauty of answers, when they do come, is that they allow us to ask new and better questions. Life is learning how much we have yet to learn. In this volume, we have asked distinguished creators of diverse fields to share some of their answers to questions you asked at the beginning of your fellowship year. You’ll find candid stories of struggle and success, mistakes, and milestones. The wisdom they share in their reflections was forged by asking the kinds of questions you’re asking now.
Elden Ring-inspired Beyond the Woods expands from D&D 5e to Legend in the Mist
Acme Weather
Adam Grossman:
Fifteen years ago, we started work on the Dark Sky weather app.
Over the years it went through numerous iterations — including more than one major redesign — as we worked our way through the process of learning what makes a great weather app. Eventually, in time, it was acquired by Apple, where the forecast and some core features were incorporated into Apple Weather.
We enjoyed our time at Apple. So why did we leave to start another weather company?
It’s simple: when looking at the landscape of the countless weather apps out there, many of them lovely, we found ourselves feeling unsatisfied. The more we spoke to friends and family, the more we heard that many of them did too. And, of course, we missed those days as a small scrappy shop.
So let’s try this again…
Acme Weather is a solid 1.0. Its main innovation is a timeline graph of alternative forecasts:
First, the spread of the lines offers a sort of intuition as to how reliable the forecast is. Take the two forecasts below. In the first, the alternate predictions are tightly focused and the forecast can be considered robust and reliable. In the second, there is a significant spread, which is an indication that something is up and the forecast may be subject to change. It’s a call to action to check other conditions or maps, or come back to the app more frequently.
Sources: DoD told Anthropic it will invoke the Defense Production Act or label Anthropic a "supply chain risk", if not given unfettered Claude access by Friday (Axios)
Axios:
Sources: DoD told Anthropic it will invoke the Defense Production Act or label Anthropic a “supply chain risk”, if not given unfettered Claude access by Friday — Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth gave Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei until Friday evening to give the military unfettered access …