Linked List: May 1, 2020

Friday, 1 May 2020

Seems Pretty Clear That if Anything Is ‘Too High’ It’s Elon Musk ★

Tim Higgins, reporting for The Wall Street Journal (+):

The latest episode on Twitter began Friday, at 8:10 a.m. California time where Tesla is based, Mr. Musk wrote on his verified Twitter account: “I am selling almost all physical possessions. Will own no house.” A minute later, he added: “Tesla stock price is too high imo” — an abbreviation for “in my opinion.”

Tesla shares, which had closed Thursday at $781.88, an 82% gain for the year, were down more than 9% in midday trading Friday after the Twitter messages. […]

Because of his history on Twitter, he is required by a court settlement to vet any message that might be material to Tesla, though the definition of what exactly must be reviewed has been a subject of dispute. Asked whether he was joking or if he’d had his tweet vetted before posting it, Mr. Musk told The Wall Street Journal in an email simply: “No.”

Pretty sure these should have been “reviewed”.

Steam Drops MacOS From VR Support ★

Steam:

SteamVR has ended OSX support so our team can focus on Windows and Linux.

You can see how relevant Steam has considered the Mac to VR gaming by the fact that they call it “OSX” — a name they misspelled and which Apple changed four years ago.

Update: The page now reads:

SteamVR has ended macOS support so our team can focus on Windows and Linux.

Nice to see that Steam cares.

Also, to be clear, I don’t blame Steam one bit. If anything, it’s surprising Steam “supported” the Mac for VR up until now. No Macs ship with a video card that supports VR gaming, and MacOS doesn’t support the Vulkan or OpenXR APIs that popular VR games are built on. It doesn’t help (to put it mildly) that Nvidia and Apple remain at odds. Apple is doing its own thing with Metal and ARKit — which are both excellent, but not part of the VR gaming world. Lots of good commentary here in this thread.

The Newman Design Process Squiggle ★

Damien Newman:

Years ago I dropped a simple illustration into a proposal to convey the design process to a client. It was meant to illustrate the characteristics of the process we were to embark on, making it clear to them that it might be uncertain in the beginning, but in the end we’d focus on a single point of clarity. It seemed to work. And from then on, I’ve used it since. Many many times.

My father told me that the design process started with the abstract, moved to the concept and then finally the design. So I used to use these three words, back in the day, to convey the process of design to my unsuspecting clients. It wasn’t as effective — even if I knew what it meant. So I found myself saying, “Here — it looks like this…” and drawing the squiggle.

I don’t know how I’ve gone so long without ever seeing this before, but it’s brilliant in its clarity and obvious truth. When I make something new, I don’t expect to jump right to the design, but I do feel like I should be able to start with the concept. I’m repulsed by the uncertainty and messiness of that first stage, but this diagram is a wonderful reminder that it is unavoidable. Might as well just dive in. Embrace the unavoidable.

I really could have used this a few weeks ago for a new thing I’m working on now.

Update: Newman has a dedicated website for the illustration, which he’s made available under a Creative Commons license.