@masek Same! Though I was just out of school and working at Netscape and watching it implode. (I wound up leaving for grad school and watched the last days before the dot com bust from Boston.)
I'm nervous about the way that this moment feels like that, in a way almost multiplied by the financial crisis moment, simply for the outrageous amount of money involved. If you take away the Magnificent Seven companies, the stock market has a very different picture, and any sort of correction is going to be especially ugly.
Ben Fry
@benfry@information.garden
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Running https://fathom.info since 2010 / spent 22 years building https://processing.org and supporting its community / sometimes seen teaching at https://mit.edu
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Ben Fry
@benfry@information.garden
Running https://fathom.info since 2010 / spent 22 years building https://processing.org and supporting its community / sometimes seen teaching at https://mit.edu
information.garden
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Ben Fry
@benfry@information.garden
Running https://fathom.info since 2010 / spent 22 years building https://processing.org and supporting its community / sometimes seen teaching at https://mit.edu
information.garden
RE: https://infosec.exchange/@masek/116442253812152389
I don't know if it *started* during the financial crisis, but it certainly has been accelerating in that timeframe.
My best guess is that the problem coincides with massive availability of capital—interest rates went exceptionally low, and there's been a massive amount of “money just sloshing around the market” (as my brother who works in finance puts it).
This gave us a shift toward startups that were completely unmoored from delivering things for customers… there was plenty of funding and capital to burn through, so as long as you could play “thought leader” you could keep raising more money, regardless of actual success with paying users. Getting funded this way also reinforces the self-described “genius” status of these egomaniac founders. So they go on to do this for a few years, burn through the cash, and when it fails, start all over again.
(That also rhymes with the dot-com boom, but we didn't have social media to amplify the insanity and clout chasing in the same way.)
Meanwhile, all the huge companies that *are* profitable were built on (or moving to) extraction… Facebook since forever, or Apple in their transition to services (we can do this for all of the “Magnificent 7”), so smaller companies are watching the worst behavior be rewarded with revenue and start chasing the same behaviors.
The situation is pretty bleak, though I also find it heartening that people (outside the usual suspects) are actually starting to notice that there is a problem.
I don't know if it *started* during the financial crisis, but it certainly has been accelerating in that timeframe.
My best guess is that the problem coincides with massive availability of capital—interest rates went exceptionally low, and there's been a massive amount of “money just sloshing around the market” (as my brother who works in finance puts it).
This gave us a shift toward startups that were completely unmoored from delivering things for customers… there was plenty of funding and capital to burn through, so as long as you could play “thought leader” you could keep raising more money, regardless of actual success with paying users. Getting funded this way also reinforces the self-described “genius” status of these egomaniac founders. So they go on to do this for a few years, burn through the cash, and when it fails, start all over again.
(That also rhymes with the dot-com boom, but we didn't have social media to amplify the insanity and clout chasing in the same way.)
Meanwhile, all the huge companies that *are* profitable were built on (or moving to) extraction… Facebook since forever, or Apple in their transition to services (we can do this for all of the “Magnificent 7”), so smaller companies are watching the worst behavior be rewarded with revenue and start chasing the same behaviors.
The situation is pretty bleak, though I also find it heartening that people (outside the usual suspects) are actually starting to notice that there is a problem.
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Ben Fry
@benfry@information.garden
Running https://fathom.info since 2010 / spent 22 years building https://processing.org and supporting its community / sometimes seen teaching at https://mit.edu
information.garden
…please join me in celebrating my self-control (or self-loathing) for not purchasing an Apple //c in beautiful condition.
For now, let's instead just enjoy these lovely spreads from Hartmut Esslinger's book…
For now, let's instead just enjoy these lovely spreads from Hartmut Esslinger's book…
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Ben Fry
@benfry@information.garden
Running https://fathom.info since 2010 / spent 22 years building https://processing.org and supporting its community / sometimes seen teaching at https://mit.edu
information.garden
RE: https://mastodon.social/@jeffluszcz/116433719238905868
Attended Swapfest at MIT for the first time this weekend…
Attended Swapfest at MIT for the first time this weekend…
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Ben Fry
@benfry@information.garden
Running https://fathom.info since 2010 / spent 22 years building https://processing.org and supporting its community / sometimes seen teaching at https://mit.edu
information.garden
Did OpenAI talk to Rosalind Franklin’s family about co-opting her good name this way?
Is that a dumb question when their CEO uses an AI slop avatar of himself in the “style” of a Miyazaki character in spite of Miyazaki calling AI imagery “an insult to life itself”?
https://arstechnica.com/science/2026/04/openai-starts-offering-a-biology-tuned-llm/
Is that a dumb question when their CEO uses an AI slop avatar of himself in the “style” of a Miyazaki character in spite of Miyazaki calling AI imagery “an insult to life itself”?
https://arstechnica.com/science/2026/04/openai-starts-offering-a-biology-tuned-llm/
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Ben Fry
@benfry@information.garden
Running https://fathom.info since 2010 / spent 22 years building https://processing.org and supporting its community / sometimes seen teaching at https://mit.edu
information.garden
“I am, thank God, curiously detached from all this. Four and a half years ago I was minding my own business, cutting metal in my machine shop, when I received a text message from John Gaeta, a former colleague at Magic Leap, reading simply “Sorry for your loss.” At first I thought that he’d sent it to me mistakenly, but after a bit of Googling I became aware that Facebook had changed its name and announced that it was now going to build the Metaverse.”
“In retrospect, John’s message was prescient, since it marked the moment when the Metaverse really did break free and become my alienated, prodigal brainchild.”
https://nealstephenson.substack.com/p/my-prodigal-brainchild
“In retrospect, John’s message was prescient, since it marked the moment when the Metaverse really did break free and become my alienated, prodigal brainchild.”
https://nealstephenson.substack.com/p/my-prodigal-brainchild
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Ben Fry
@benfry@information.garden
Running https://fathom.info since 2010 / spent 22 years building https://processing.org and supporting its community / sometimes seen teaching at https://mit.edu
information.garden
@maxfrischknecht Thanks Max! Hope they find them useful.
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Ben Fry
@benfry@information.garden
Running https://fathom.info since 2010 / spent 22 years building https://processing.org and supporting its community / sometimes seen teaching at https://mit.edu
information.garden
Spoke at a panel at Northeastern last week about careers in information design & data visualization.
With 10 minutes allotted, it’s not a comprehensive guide to finding your path in life, but I wanted to pose a few questions that might help students focus their search:
https://www.fathom.info/notebook/260406/
With 10 minutes allotted, it’s not a comprehensive guide to finding your path in life, but I wanted to pose a few questions that might help students focus their search:
https://www.fathom.info/notebook/260406/
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Ben Fry
@benfry@information.garden
Running https://fathom.info since 2010 / spent 22 years building https://processing.org and supporting its community / sometimes seen teaching at https://mit.edu
information.garden
RE: https://typo.social/@justvanrossum/116408776027521514
Ah, the Alien film titles regex…
https://www.artofthetitle.com/title/alien
Ah, the Alien film titles regex…
https://www.artofthetitle.com/title/alien
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Ben Fry
@benfry@information.garden
Running https://fathom.info since 2010 / spent 22 years building https://processing.org and supporting its community / sometimes seen teaching at https://mit.edu
information.garden
RE: https://mstdn.social/@bit101/116386237944316247
Which is even worse, right? Acknowledging that there's a problem but missing the actual problem and instead doubling down on it?
LLMs are not a sampling technique, it's non-deterministic autocomplete. So the answer that comes back isn't within some understood range, you can ask the same question and be 5%, 50% or 100% incorrect each time it's asked.
(And yes, you can do lots of things to mitigate all these issues, but again, wtf are we even doing at that point? These are solved problems! We have well-defined and efficient methods, along with supercomputers for laptops and instead we're blowing all that power on petascale ELIZA.)
Which is even worse, right? Acknowledging that there's a problem but missing the actual problem and instead doubling down on it?
LLMs are not a sampling technique, it's non-deterministic autocomplete. So the answer that comes back isn't within some understood range, you can ask the same question and be 5%, 50% or 100% incorrect each time it's asked.
(And yes, you can do lots of things to mitigate all these issues, but again, wtf are we even doing at that point? These are solved problems! We have well-defined and efficient methods, along with supercomputers for laptops and instead we're blowing all that power on petascale ELIZA.)
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Ben Fry
@benfry@information.garden
Running https://fathom.info since 2010 / spent 22 years building https://processing.org and supporting its community / sometimes seen teaching at https://mit.edu
information.garden
@juliehuz That's an interesting thought/helpful possible explanation to some of the usage I've seen for writing.
Even without the belt, just the feeling that people absorbed from grammar/language classes growing up that writing is (or should be) painful, and they're not “good” at it.
Even without the belt, just the feeling that people absorbed from grammar/language classes growing up that writing is (or should be) painful, and they're not “good” at it.
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Ben Fry
@benfry@information.garden
Running https://fathom.info since 2010 / spent 22 years building https://processing.org and supporting its community / sometimes seen teaching at https://mit.edu
information.garden
@lcwheeler Yes, have seen a lot of this too and find it really frightening, *especially* that last part.
“Yeah, nah, it's not great… I'm not happy about it either”
“Yeah, nah, it's not great… I'm not happy about it either”
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Ben Fry
@benfry@information.garden
Running https://fathom.info since 2010 / spent 22 years building https://processing.org and supporting its community / sometimes seen teaching at https://mit.edu
information.garden
@MartyFouts Yes, absolutely… The things I cite (the grift, the claims to inevitability, and rolling with literally incorrect answers) are all new to (or otherwise greatly exaggerated by) the LLM-inspired capture of “AI” as a term. I was just using it the same as the OP (and not expecting the post to go beyond my immediate followers).
I'm 29 years out from taking my first AI course in college, and there are plenty of traditional AI and ML methods that make sense (and we've used in our work), because the outputs are at least somewhat measurable or we better understand the ways they are and are not deterministic.
I'm 29 years out from taking my first AI course in college, and there are plenty of traditional AI and ML methods that make sense (and we've used in our work), because the outputs are at least somewhat measurable or we better understand the ways they are and are not deterministic.
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Ben Fry
@benfry@information.garden
Running https://fathom.info since 2010 / spent 22 years building https://processing.org and supporting its community / sometimes seen teaching at https://mit.edu
information.garden
RE: https://thepit.social/@peter/116376219055579156
I simply cannot get my head around why anyone would let AI anywhere near their data analysis work.
Why would you add something to your work that can drop its accuracy by half? by 10%? by 1%? What would be an acceptable amount? What is the possible upside that would make this worth it?
I'm floored by the number of people in this field who take themselves all too seriously but are out there starting their whatever *dot AI* companies to get in on the grift, or say things like “and of course, AI” like it's both obvious and inevitable. And how is this so shiny that even educators have taken leave of their senses?
What the f*k is the point of analyzing a dataset if you're ok with answers simply being incorrect? What are we even doing here?
I simply cannot get my head around why anyone would let AI anywhere near their data analysis work.
Why would you add something to your work that can drop its accuracy by half? by 10%? by 1%? What would be an acceptable amount? What is the possible upside that would make this worth it?
I'm floored by the number of people in this field who take themselves all too seriously but are out there starting their whatever *dot AI* companies to get in on the grift, or say things like “and of course, AI” like it's both obvious and inevitable. And how is this so shiny that even educators have taken leave of their senses?
What the f*k is the point of analyzing a dataset if you're ok with answers simply being incorrect? What are we even doing here?
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Ben Fry
@benfry@information.garden
Running https://fathom.info since 2010 / spent 22 years building https://processing.org and supporting its community / sometimes seen teaching at https://mit.edu
information.garden
“Porting Mac OS X to the Nintento Wii”
This made my day—first, that there are people out there who do things like this, but second (and more to the point), that he also took the time to document the process in detail.
So much to be learned here: https://bryankeller.github.io/2026/04/08/porting-mac-os-x-nintendo-wii.html
This made my day—first, that there are people out there who do things like this, but second (and more to the point), that he also took the time to document the process in detail.
So much to be learned here: https://bryankeller.github.io/2026/04/08/porting-mac-os-x-nintendo-wii.html
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Ben Fry
@benfry@information.garden
Running https://fathom.info since 2010 / spent 22 years building https://processing.org and supporting its community / sometimes seen teaching at https://mit.edu
information.garden
RE: https://information.garden/@benfry/116332315564992715
Just finished; wow, this was *fantastic*
(for someone who is very curious about China, tech history, business, supply chain, how things are made, materials and manufacturing, design process and scale, the intersection of politics/policy/business/history, etc etc…)
Just finished; wow, this was *fantastic*
(for someone who is very curious about China, tech history, business, supply chain, how things are made, materials and manufacturing, design process and scale, the intersection of politics/policy/business/history, etc etc…)
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Ben Fry
@benfry@information.garden
Running https://fathom.info since 2010 / spent 22 years building https://processing.org and supporting its community / sometimes seen teaching at https://mit.edu
information.garden
Fall is the best, but spring in Boston is a close second. Animals re-emerging, plants are blooming, and massive flakes of heavy, wet snow are falling on this fine morn, the seventh of April.
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Ben Fry
@benfry@information.garden
Running https://fathom.info since 2010 / spent 22 years building https://processing.org and supporting its community / sometimes seen teaching at https://mit.edu
information.garden
Unintentionally celebrating Apple's 50th anniversary today having just started “Apple in China” which so far is the best retelling of their history I've read in years.
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Ben Fry
@benfry@information.garden
Running https://fathom.info since 2010 / spent 22 years building https://processing.org and supporting its community / sometimes seen teaching at https://mit.edu
information.garden
RE: https://neuromatch.social/@jonny/116324988415693534
Incredible thread about the source for Claude Code’s CLI being leaked due to a misconfiguration.
Includes analysis of the many ways that the code is a mess, and how the mess is so extreme that it's practically its own coding pattern.
Much hilarity, starting on April Fools' Eve:
Incredible thread about the source for Claude Code’s CLI being leaked due to a misconfiguration.
Includes analysis of the many ways that the code is a mess, and how the mess is so extreme that it's practically its own coding pattern.
Much hilarity, starting on April Fools' Eve:
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Ben Fry
@benfry@information.garden
Running https://fathom.info since 2010 / spent 22 years building https://processing.org and supporting its community / sometimes seen teaching at https://mit.edu
information.garden
RE: https://mastodon.social/@danluu/116317069604398190
Was finishing Andy Grove's “Only the Paranoid Survive” while on my walk to work this morning, and was about to post about how older tech business books are often better as unintentionally hilarious history, with pronouncements like:
“But as my knowledge deepens, my conviction is growing that the triad of software coming from personal sources, from telephone and network sources and from the Internet will together be what will drive our industry in the years ahead.”
And the next sentence that follows?
“My conviction is also growing that the media and the advertising industries represent a growing opportunity for us.”
…and I arrive to work to find this on my timeline:
Was finishing Andy Grove's “Only the Paranoid Survive” while on my walk to work this morning, and was about to post about how older tech business books are often better as unintentionally hilarious history, with pronouncements like:
“But as my knowledge deepens, my conviction is growing that the triad of software coming from personal sources, from telephone and network sources and from the Internet will together be what will drive our industry in the years ahead.”
And the next sentence that follows?
“My conviction is also growing that the media and the advertising industries represent a growing opportunity for us.”
…and I arrive to work to find this on my timeline:
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Ben Fry
@benfry@information.garden
Running https://fathom.info since 2010 / spent 22 years building https://processing.org and supporting its community / sometimes seen teaching at https://mit.edu
information.garden
Still working to get the right marketing message for Rowboat, but in the meantime, lots of updates this month: improved cell editing, map improvements, plus a fresh desktop release: https://rowboat.net
And for the superfans, all the gory details on the release page: https://docs.rowboat.net/releases/ 💪
And for the superfans, all the gory details on the release page: https://docs.rowboat.net/releases/ 💪
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Ben Fry
@benfry@information.garden
Running https://fathom.info since 2010 / spent 22 years building https://processing.org and supporting its community / sometimes seen teaching at https://mit.edu
information.garden
Nearly every 7 digit number can be found in the first 100 million digits of pi.
Search for your favorites, or simply bask in the wonders of math and probability: https://www.benfry.com/pi/
Happy π day!
Search for your favorites, or simply bask in the wonders of math and probability: https://www.benfry.com/pi/
Happy π day!
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