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Steve Farrugia

@fasterandworse.com
1.7K followers 178 following 5.6K posts

Experienced user Australian in Amsterdam I talk about product design Words: fasterandworse.com Videos: youtube.com/@fasterandworse Audios: pnc.st/s/faster-and-worse

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Reposted by Steve Farrugia
Hypervisible @hypervisible.blacksky.app · 1h
“In a more than 3,000 word blog posted today, Amazon web services CEO Matt Garman pushed back on public concerns around the impact that data centers may have on jobs, power demands, and the environment, saying ‘our nation can’t afford to lose’ the race for AI dominance.”
theverge.com
Amazon writes scary blog warning communities not to block data centers
Nothing drums up support like fearmongering.
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Hypervisible @hypervisible.blacksky.app · 8h
“Users will soon be able to engage, for instance, with Count Dracula’s rat-eating manservant, Renfield, through a new interactive story.”
cnet.com
Audible Will Soon Let You Use AI to Talk to a Book Character - CNET
Amazon's audiobook service is rolling out new AI-powered features to make listening to stories more interactive.
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Steve Farrugia @fasterandworse.com · 8h
sometimes "users" is appropriate, but most of the time "people" is just the most normal noun to be using and it's so fucked that it's extremely uncommon in these contexts
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Vale @vale.rocks · 01/10/2026
Some flavourful goodness about some fresh new web things over on the @zeroheight.com blog. Certainly read up on the latest and greatest to grace the web platform! So much brilliant new stuff to help your design systems thrive. zeroheight.com/blog/new-htm... #DesignSystems #HTML #CSS
zeroheight.com
New HTML and CSS features you should be using in your design system - zeroheight
Declan Chidlow explores new HTML and CSS features that can make your design system more flexible, adaptable, and maintainable.
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Hypervisible @hypervisible.blacksky.app · 30/09/2026
Eugenics 🤝 ai www.nytimes.com/2026/09/29/h...
One of the things that is going to change is that we’re never ever again going to be able to be dominated by public officials who tell us, ‘Trust the experts,’” Mr. Kennedy said during the Tuesday session.

“If somebody tells you, ‘Masks work, trust the experts,’ A.I. may tell you otherwise,” he added. “If somebody tells you, ‘Social distancing works, trust the experts,’ A.I. may correct that. And if somebody tells you that a vaccine will prevent transmission and infection, or you need to take it to protect your grandmother, A.I. may say it actually doesn’t do that.”
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Hypervisible @hypervisible.blacksky.app · 30/09/2026
I really think a lot of people underestimate the damage done to society by the conviction that, no matter what product we want, it should be delivered to us in a matter of hours.
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Discontinued Foods! @discontinuedfoods.bsky.social · 30/09/2026
2026-2026
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Steve Farrugia @fasterandworse.com · 30/09/2026
🔗 bsky.app/profile/char...
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John “Danielle” Phipps @magitekdad.bsky.social · 30/09/2026
I have friends younger than 38 who look like this and they're wonderful people, and some of the worst people I know are conventionally attractive. Being hateful and misogynistic or kind and compassionate is who you are inside, not what you look like.
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Steve Farrugia @fasterandworse.com · 30/09/2026
Me: and they were roommates My 5yo: oh my god they were roommates
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Claire Zagorski, PhD, MSc, EMT-P @clairezagorski.bsky.social · 30/09/2026
AI keeps on winning, look at this excellent and very useful graphic about placing your disembodied foot on a lil pillow.
An AI generated image meant to explain RICE (rest ice compression elevation) for a sprained ankle. It’s very odd and confusing, and the elevation illustration is a floating foot sitting on a pillow.
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Hypervisible @hypervisible.blacksky.app · 30/09/2026
“The tool allows consumers to enter text commands like ‘order my usual protein bowl to the office’ without accessing the DoorDash app. It matches phone numbers with DoorDash user profiles, allowing it to take into account the texter’s order history and preferences, as well as facilitate checkout…”
bloomberg.com
DoorDash Debuts Text-to-Order AI Agent That Works in Apple Messages
DoorDash Inc. unveiled an artificial intelligence agent for ordering food that works inside Apple Inc.'s Messages app, stepping up efforts to integrate personal AI assistants ahead of its e-commerce r...
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Steve Farrugia @fasterandworse.com · 30/09/2026
People who have a usual protein bowl deserve this
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bianca wylie @biancawylie.com · 30/09/2026
In order to refuse this sense of inevitability about computer use, which is a feeling, not a reality, it is necessary to use tactics that refuse the story. And there are few better tools at our disposal, conversationally and culturally, than the question. lesscomputer.ca/ask-questions/
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Steve Farrugia @fasterandworse.com · 30/09/2026
🔗 bsky.app/profile/hype...
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Steve Farrugia @fasterandworse.com · 30/09/2026
Congratulations
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Steve Farrugia @fasterandworse.com · 30/09/2026
I heard it comes with a free U2 album
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Jamie McKelvie @mckelvie.bsky.social · 30/09/2026
I don't think agents replying to your emails or booking a restaurant for you is worth this stuff, sorry
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Steve Farrugia @fasterandworse.com · 29/09/2026
These are not products of an effective design process. Instead of starting with a purpose and finding the best way to satisfy it they are starting with a behemoth existing material and desperately trying to find ways to make it useful. This is anti-design.
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Steve Farrugia @fasterandworse.com · 29/09/2026
These are not products of an effective design process. Instead of starting with a purpose and finding the best way to satisfy it they are starting with a behemoth existing material and desperately trying to find ways to make it useful. This is anti-design.
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Steve Farrugia @fasterandworse.com · 29/09/2026
My point: These are not products of an effective design process. Instead of starting with a purpose and finding the best way to satisfy it they are starting with a behemoth existing material and desperately trying to find ways to make it useful. The only way that works is by chance. Anti-design.
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Steve Farrugia @fasterandworse.com · 29/09/2026
hrmph. You got me ranting
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Steve Farrugia @fasterandworse.com · 29/09/2026
since that partnership was announced I've seen Jony Ive's work on a CAR design. An underlying product of undeniable purpose. Also a nautical lantern, over-designed in a way only Jony Ive is capable of. Jony Ive doesn't make the car drive nor the lantern light up.
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Steve Farrugia @fasterandworse.com · 29/09/2026
Dots is just another thing OpenAI have announced after the now-ancient Jony Ive collab announcement and before we've seen anything of substance regarding that partnership.
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Steve Farrugia @fasterandworse.com · 29/09/2026
Products that take up space can't be marketed like ethereal SaaS, especially enterprise SaaS. Notions of purpose, promises of potential, and encouragement to find your own purpose for something that's always there, taking up space, just won't work in the long term.
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Steve Farrugia @fasterandworse.com · 29/09/2026
to get our data they can't escape the need to take up space in our lives. Meta glasses, shitty pendants, any vehicle for cameras and microphones and sensors has to be physical, and browser-based SaaS doesn't get enough access to what's on our computers.
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Steve Farrugia @fasterandworse.com · 29/09/2026
it's so boring. But also interesting because a lot of my past work about products "taking up space" keeps coming up in the efforts to make physical products and these endless new products that need to be *installed*. We are more critical of any product's purpose when it takes up any kind of space
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Steve Farrugia @fasterandworse.com · 29/09/2026
> Dots can do nearly anything using their own cloud computer, their own browser, and the apps you've connected like, what the fuck are we even doing here? Isn't that the same thing all these companies have been saying all the last instances of these products did?
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Hypervisible @hypervisible.blacksky.app · 29/09/2026
“What if we released malware represented in the form of a cute avatar” is an actual business plan now.
engadget.com
Dots are OpenAI's new personal agents and soon you'll be able to control several of them - Engadget
Sure, seems safe.
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Steve Farrugia @fasterandworse.com · 29/09/2026
Sorry, not the most insightful response, but, besides them trying to find new, subversive, ways to access our personal data, these things just invite more people to discover that the underlying *machine* is a lying machine
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Steve Farrugia @fasterandworse.com · 29/09/2026
I've said before that most, if not all, of the AI product industry is similar to the Wordpress theme industry, in that it all hinges on the underlying *machine* being substantially capable.
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Steve Farrugia @fasterandworse.com · 29/09/2026
I think we can go back to the chatGPT 4o announcement for an example of how this is UX disguised as some kind of new advancement in the quality, capability, reliability, or anything of substance in the underlying *machine*. It's also no different to the pursuit of a "device" product
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Steve Farrugia @fasterandworse.com · 27/09/2026
🔗 bsky.app/profile/fast...
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Steve Farrugia @fasterandworse.com · 27/09/2026
> But if the camera is contained in a charm you wear around your neck, it shifts the agency. Suddenly, you’re not recording people. It’s just a cute little animated avatar looking out on the world.” UX IS THE PRODUCT www.theguardian.com/fashion/2026...
theguardian.com
‘Charming and disarming’ … how Meta’s technology-packed Muse harnesses the power of cuteness
The tech giant has launched a cute ‘little guy’ that can answer emails, book travel or do your weekly food shop
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Olivia Guest · Ολίβια Γκεστ @olivia.science · 26/09/2026
A lot of people seem to think this is new, but it's not a contemporary AI thing at all: certain people have been saying humans are like machines and vice versa for 3 centuries.
en.wikipedia.org
Man a Machine - Wikipedia
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Nolen Gertz @ethicistforhire.bsky.social · 26/09/2026
Current mood:
Bride of Re-Animator (1990) 📽️
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But Andrew Hickey Died Ten Years Ago This Very Night @andrewhickey.500songs.com · 24/09/2026
DVDs aren't low-tech. They're just things you can actually own, that won't disappear overnight, that don't require a monthly subscription, that won't suddenly get reedited, that won't start putting adverts in the middle and that won't sell your data to the worst people in the world.
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Ketan Joshi @ketanjoshi.co · 24/09/2026
Indeed, the evidentiary skew Gillwald highlights there is very much the same RE what we found on 'AI is good for climate change' in our various analyses Yet still the need for "who could really know either way" type takes ketanjoshi.co/2026/02/17/b... ketanjoshi.co/2026/09/16/n...
ketanjoshi.co
NEW REPORT – The AI climate hoax
A new report on AI greenwashing, analysing the rhetoric and evidence behind the idea big tech will solve climate change
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Ketan Joshi @ketanjoshi.co · 24/09/2026
This piece touches on an extremely important and terrible trend: AI-false-balance among polite centre-left politicians. Every critique HAS to begin with something like "AI is here to stay. With the right rules, it can be a force for good. But........." www.techpolicy.press/the-life-and...
Information integrity is one of seven critical issues in the Preliminary Report of the UN’s Independent Scientific Panel on AI released in July at the Global Dialogue on Artificial Intelligence. It warns that AI can erode shared reality and civic participation through “epistemic erosion,” the gradual wearing away of society’s ability to distinguish truth from falsehood. Opening the Dialogue, the UN’s secretary-general, António Guterres, tied that erosion directly to the viral and exponential nature of advanced data driven technologies: “A machine-enabled lie can now persuade as effectively as the truth, and authentic evidence can be dismissed as fake.”“A society that cannot agree on what is real cannot defend itself,” Guterres said.

And yet he did not reference the threat of AI to amplify inequality, unless governed effectively. Instead, Guterres casts AI as “the great equaliser of the 21st century ” achievable by developing countries on the technology fast-track through safe systems that honor human rights, with real transparency about labor and planetary impacts. Getting this right, he said, is “at the heart of our common future.”

Yet the Panel’s Report, subtitled as an “evidence-based assessment of the opportunities, risks and impacts of AI” provides no evidence that AI will be a ‘great equaliser’. On the contrary, despite its curious ‘balancing’ of every claim with a counter claim, the heavily referenced report actually demonstrates far more evidence of the negative consequences of AI, while doing very little to support claims that AI will help in the achievement of the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals. Regardless, this did not stop the ‘great equaliser’ mantra from being repeated by numerous member states and heads of multilateral bodies who subsequently addressed the forum.

In fact the report highlights the lack of — and unevenness of — evidence, including on some of the big ticket items: productivity gains, labor market effects, value-chain impacts, and …
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Hypervisible @hypervisible.blacksky.app · 24/09/2026
“This is the logical extension of what they say is algorithms that know you better than you know yourself, but they call it A.I.”
nytimes.com
Complaints About Meta’s ‘Pervert Glasses’ Won’t Slow Tech’s Wearable Gadgets Drive
Meta’s smart glasses are the latest in a line of products to raise eyebrows over privacy. That’s not stopping other companies from creating similar devices.
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David Zipper @davidzipper.bsky.social · 23/09/2026
​Waymo is all over NYC Climate Week, sponsoring a slew of events. I just watched Adam Lenz, Waymo's sustainability head, field softball questions from Heatmap's CEO (nothing re: added VMT). Waymo clearly hopes to piggyback on YIMBYism. Lenz described Waymo as the "missing middle" of city mobility.
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David Gerard @davidgerard.circumstances.run.ap.brid.gy · 24/09/2026
phpBB is being hardened specifically against AI crawlers www.linkedin.com/posts/pietervanhou…
linkedin.com
#degenerativeai #phpbb #trainingisnotfairuse #copyright #genai #bigtech #opensource | Pieter Van Houte
phpBB (for those who don't know it: https://lnkd.in/eS6WkJEu) powers thousands upon thousands of forums large and small (including mine), which are some of the most loved data sources for AI scrapers, because they are curated, highly organized and structured sources of excellent information and committed user interaction. Essentially, they are very, very valuable indeed. Version 3.3.18 was released yesterday, deployed on my own board today, and look what I found in the release info: 𝘍𝘶𝘳𝘵𝘩𝘦𝘳𝘮𝘰𝘳𝘦, 𝘸𝘦 𝘩𝘢𝘷𝘦 𝘪𝘮𝘱𝘳𝘰𝘷𝘦𝘥 𝘨𝘶𝘦𝘴𝘵 𝘴𝘦𝘴𝘴𝘪𝘰𝘯 𝘩𝘢𝘯𝘥𝘭𝘪𝘯𝘨 𝘣𝘺 𝘢𝘥𝘥𝘪𝘯𝘨 𝘯𝘦𝘸 𝘧𝘶𝘯𝘤𝘵𝘪𝘰𝘯𝘢𝘭𝘪𝘵𝘺. 𝘛𝘩𝘪𝘴 𝘴𝘩𝘰𝘶𝘭𝘥 𝘩𝘦𝘭𝘱 𝘤𝘰𝘮𝘣𝘢𝘵 𝘱𝘰𝘵𝘦𝘯𝘵𝘪𝘢𝘭 𝘪𝘴𝘴𝘶𝘦𝘴 𝘸𝘩𝘦𝘯 𝘢 𝘭𝘢𝘳𝘨𝘦 𝘯𝘶𝘮𝘣𝘦𝘳 𝘰𝘧 𝘨𝘶𝘦𝘴𝘵 𝘴𝘦𝘴𝘴𝘪𝘰𝘯𝘴 𝘢𝘳𝘦 𝘤𝘳𝘦𝘢𝘵𝘦𝘥, 𝘦.𝘨. 𝘥𝘶𝘳𝘪𝘯𝘨 𝘦𝘹𝘤𝘦𝘴𝘴𝘪𝘷𝘦 𝘤𝘳𝘢𝘸𝘭𝘪𝘯𝘨 𝘣𝘺 𝘣𝘰𝘵𝘴. 𝘈𝘥𝘥𝘪𝘵𝘪𝘰𝘯𝘢𝘭𝘭𝘺, 𝘵𝘩𝘦𝘳𝘦 𝘪𝘴 𝘯𝘰𝘸 𝘢 𝘯𝘦𝘸 𝘈𝘐 𝘊𝘳𝘢𝘸𝘭𝘦𝘳𝘴 𝘨𝘳𝘰𝘶𝘱 𝘵𝘩𝘢𝘵 𝘴𝘩𝘰𝘶𝘭𝘥 𝘢𝘭𝘭𝘰𝘸 𝘴𝘱𝘦𝘤𝘪𝘧𝘪𝘤 𝘩𝘢𝘯𝘥𝘭𝘪𝘯𝘨 𝘰𝘧 𝘈𝘐 𝘊𝘳𝘢𝘸𝘭𝘦𝘳𝘴 𝘣𝘺 𝘣𝘰𝘢𝘳𝘥 𝘢𝘥𝘮𝘪𝘯𝘴. 𝘉𝘺 𝘥𝘦𝘧𝘢𝘶𝘭𝘵 𝘈𝘐 𝘊𝘳𝘢𝘸𝘭𝘦𝘳𝘴 𝘸𝘪𝘭𝘭 𝘯𝘰𝘵 𝘴𝘦𝘦 𝘢𝘯𝘺 𝘣𝘰𝘢𝘳𝘥 𝘤𝘰𝘯𝘵𝘦𝘯𝘵. 𝘛𝘩𝘪𝘴 𝘤𝘢𝘯 𝘣𝘦 𝘢𝘥𝘫𝘶𝘴𝘵𝘦𝘥 𝘣𝘺 𝘢𝘥𝘮𝘪𝘯𝘴 𝘶𝘴𝘪𝘯𝘨 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘱𝘩𝘱𝘉𝘉 𝘧𝘰𝘳𝘶𝘮 𝘱𝘦𝘳𝘮𝘪𝘴𝘴𝘪𝘰𝘯 𝘴𝘺𝘴𝘵𝘦𝘮. So rather than having to rely on third party integrations and custom tools or services like CloudFlare, core forum software (and soon hundreds of thousands of forums all over the world) is - being - hardened against AI scraping. This is terrific news. More will follow. Which means a number of things, but one in particular is that services like Claude, ChatGPT, Gemini,... will likely see ever diminishing returns in terms of relevance and quality over time. Good. People don't like their stuff being stolen eh? Odd that. #degenerativeai #phpbb #trainingisnotfairuse #copyright #genai #bigtech #opensource
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[object Object] @zzt.mas.to.ap.brid.gy · 23/09/2026
don’t let this fool you into thinking the commercial ones are good though comma doesn’t have the budget to cover this shit up. the commercial ones all do
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[object Object] @zzt.mas.to.ap.brid.gy · 23/09/2026
arstechnica.com/cars/2026/09/afterm… ahahahaha after that ass-clenching video where that one guy installed comma in his rivian and thought it was amazing because it hesitated less than the rivian self-driving and it was open […]
mas.to
Original post on mas.to
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Steve Farrugia @fasterandworse.com · 22/09/2026
The best that a general purpose product can be is handy and handy is relative to the cost of accessing it
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Steve Farrugia @fasterandworse.com · 22/09/2026
The whole point of general purpose products is that they are not good at any particular sub-category of thing. They *can be by accident*, but as soon as the maker asserts that property, the product has to satisfy that purpose. Modern tech products avoid this at all costs.
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Steve Farrugia @fasterandworse.com · 23/09/2026
I’m gonna save this link in Notion
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Steve Farrugia @fasterandworse.com · 22/09/2026
every SaaS product, no matter how specific its founding purpose might be, gravitates towards general purpose. It can't do this without diluting any feature too specific down to a shadow of what it originally was.
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Steve Farrugia @fasterandworse.com · 22/09/2026
microsoft EULA literally saying it universeodon.com/@eggmont/117...
universeodon.com
Eggmont 🐘 (@eggmont@universeodon.com)
@fasterandworse@hci.social Say it ain't so. "b. Disclaimer. Neither Microsoft, nor the device manufacturer or installer, gives any other express warranties, guarantees, or conditions. Microsoft and...
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Hypervisible @hypervisible.blacksky.app · 22/09/2026
Send this season back for rewrites. It’s become far too obvious and literal when “Mr. Beast” is asking people to wear his tracking device.
businessinsider.com
MrBeast just filed trademark papers for wearables like fitness trackers and smartwatch bands
MrBeast filed a trademark application for "Beast Band," paving the way to branch out into wearables, like fitness trackers.
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