Linked List: April 20, 2023

Thursday, 20 April 2023

Ben Smith, writing at Semafor:

My old boss and partner Jonah Peretti announced today that he’s shutting down BuzzFeed News, which we built together starting in 2012.

He wrote to staff that he’d been ”slow to accept that the big platforms wouldn’t provide the distribution or financial support required to support premium-free journalism purpose-built for social media.” And he wrote that he could have managed the many business challenges that BuzzFeed has faced better.

The news makes me heartsick.

Peretti hired me in 2012 to build a news organization for the exploding social web. For a few years, we felt the wind of Facebook, Twitter, and Pinterest at our backs, and we did journalism that treated those sites as the front page of the new internet. At first, we celebrated and immersed ourselves in an optimistic web culture that imagined a reader who cared about which Disney princess she was, and also the worst of how the American justice system treated abused women, who wanted to argue about the color of the dress and also understand the science behind it. That was back when all of it mixed up in your Facebook feed, and it felt novel.

BuzzFeed News did great work and employed some terrific reporters, but they never had a plan to turn a profit that made any more sense than that of the underwear-collecting gnomes on South Park.

Humane Previews AI-Powered Wearable at TED ★

Ina Fried, reporting for Axios:

Ex-Apple employee Imran Chaudhri gave TED attendees on Thursday an early glimpse of the AI-powered wearable that his startup, Humane, has been developing. [...]

The screenless device, which does not require a nearby cell phone to work, uses a combination of voice and gestures for input and can display information by projecting it onto nearby objects.

Details: In his TED talk, Chaudhri showed the wearable, which sat in his jacket pocket, translating his own voice into French.

He also answered a phone call from his wife with the call information appearing as a green image projected onto his hand.

“This is good AI in action,” he said, promising more details would be released in the coming months.

The device — which seemingly doesn’t yet have an announced name? — looks about 2 inches wide and 1 inch high, and is worn on your chest like a Star Trek communicator badge. Here’s an image of the phone call information projected onto Chaudhri’s hand. Hope the whole demo is released on video soon.

Update: Actually, now that I look at the video clips that are available, I think the device is quite a bit bigger, and Chaudhri has it peeking out of a pocket on his jacket? Unclear.

‘Arcade Game Typography’ by Toshi Omagari ★

Read-Only Memory, video game book publishers extraordinaire:

The first book of its kind — a definitive and beautifully designed survey of ’70s, ’80s and early ’90s arcade game pixel typography. Exhaustively researched by author Toshi Omagari (a celebrated typeface designer at Monotype UK) Arcade Game Typography gathers together 250 pixel typefaces, all carefully chosen, extracted, redrawn and categorised by style, and each with an accompanying commentary by Omagari. The title also features 4 illustrated essays on videogame typography theory and practice, documenting the unique advantages and challenges presented to designers of these bold, playful and often quirky alphabets.

I bought and devoured this book back in October 2019, but somehow never recommended it here on Daring Fireball. I should be arrested for dereliction of duty. But I was reminded of it today by this toot from Antony Johnston.

A book about classic arcade game fonts is so obviously up my alley that I’d probably enjoy a bad book about them. But Arcade Game Typography is an exquisitely good book: deeply researched, beautifully illustrated with copious screenshots and close-up pixel-by-pixel details, and engagingly written by Omagari. I’m linking here to the limited edition hardcover, which costs $46, but there’s also a high-quality paperback edition for $28. (Buy through that Amazon link and you’ll make me rich with a cut of the dough.) If you don’t want this book you’re either too young or you’re not hooked up right.

See also: Estelle Caswell interviewed Omagari in 2020 in a video for Vox, focusing specifically on the 8x8 pixel Quiz Show font, a.k.a. the arcade font.

The Oakland A’s Are Moving to Las Vegas ★

Mick Akers, reporting for The Las Vegas Review-Journal:

The Oakland Athletics have zeroed in on Southern Nevada, signing a binding purchase agreement for land just west of the Strip where a major-league ballpark could be constructed. The agreement is for 49 acres at Dean Martin Drive and Tropicana Avenue, owned by Red Rock Resorts, parent company of Station Casinos.

That’s close to T-Mobile Arena (home of the NHL Golden Knights), behind the New York New York casino complex.

“For a while we were on parallel paths (with Oakland), but we have turned our attention to Las Vegas to get a deal here for the A’s and find a long-term home,” A’s President Dave Kaval told the Review-Journal on Wednesday. “Oakland has been a great home for us for over 50 years, but we really need this 20-year saga completed and we feel there’s a path here in Southern Nevada to do that.”

With the announcement of the purchase agreement, MLB Commissioner Rob Manfred concurs with Kaval and hopes the A’s shifting their efforts solely to Southern Nevada will lead to the end of the team’s yearslong quest to leave crumbling Oakland Coliseum.

Recent embarrassments for the A’s in Oakland include a game against the Cleveland Guardians that drew just 3,000 fans, and a possum that lives within the walls of the visiting press boxes, which stunk them up so badly that the Mets’ broadcast team had to move to another box.