Reading List

The most recent articles from a list of feeds I subscribe to.

Unsealed docs from Elon Musk's OpenAI lawsuit, set for a jury trial on April 27: Sutskever's concerns about treating open-source AI as a "side show", and more (Alex Heath/Sources)

Alex Heath / Sources:
Unsealed docs from Elon Musk's OpenAI lawsuit, set for a jury trial on April 27: Sutskever's concerns about treating open-source AI as a “side show”, and more  —  This is an excerpt of Sources by Alex Heath, a newsletter about AI and the tech industry, syndicated just for The Verge subscribers once a week.

Lego's new Legend of Zelda set revealed, up for pre-order

Nintendo and Lego reveal The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time final battle set, with price and pre-order details.

Unsealed docs from Elon Musk's OpenAI lawsuit, set for a jury trial on April 27: Sutskever's concerns about treating open-source AI as a "side show", and more (Alex Heath/The Verge)

Alex Heath / The Verge:
Unsealed docs from Elon Musk's OpenAI lawsuit, set for a jury trial on April 27: Sutskever's concerns about treating open-source AI as a “side show”, and more  —  Highlights from Musk v. Altman. … Elon Musk first sued OpenAI in February 2024.

Emoji Design Convergence Review: 2018–2026

Keith Broni, writing at Emojipedia, has a good illustrated survey of how most emoji sets have converged in meaning — almost entirely toward Apple’s designs:

There are several structural reasons why Apple’s designs so often become the gravitational center of emoji convergence.

First, Apple is widely regarded as the “default” emoji design set in the West. This status dates back to 2008, when Apple introduced emoji support on the iPhone years before emoji were formally incorporated into Unicode.

It’s also the case that Apple’s emoji icons are the best, and they’re the most consistent. The only ones Apple has changed the meaning of are ones where the Unicode Consortium has changed or clarified the standard description. The pistol emoji is the exception that proves the rule. Apple, and Apple alone, changed its pistol emoji (🔫) from a realistic firearm to a green plastic squirt gun in 2016. By 2018, all the other major emoji sets had changed their pistols from firearms to plastic toys — almost all of them green squirt guns in particular. (Broni’s post documents this progression year by year.)

One thing that remains interesting to me is that Apple left its emoji style alone when they instituted the great flattening with iOS 7. Apple’s emoji icons are, loosely, in the style of Apple’s application and toolbar icon designs from the Aqua era. People love emoji, and at this point, changing their style to something that felt aligned with the icon designs for Apple’s version 26 OSes would generate outrage. But if Apple were to change its icon style back to this rich 3D textured style, the majority of users wouldn’t object — they’d think it was fun.

Basically, Apple’s emoji style is fun. Apple’s icon style is no-fun. People like having fun.

How to get darkwood in Hytale

Darkwood trees in Hytale will require you to seek out a specific type of tree in the Whisperfront Frontiers. Here's how to get darkwood in Hytale.