{17} Biology, Quantum Computing & The Future

Featuring Đy Mokomi, Andrew Gazdecki, TIME, Dan, and Alicia Eggert

Design: Biology

Đy Mokomi

Đy Mokomi @dymokomi

biogenic landscape designs

Why are startups so fixated on looking at competition for inspiration? The internet has only been around for a few decades. Successful biological structures and systems are the winning designs after a competition lasting millions of years.

Ironically, Đy produced these images from a generative art tool.

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Development: Mobile Web

Andrew Gazdecki

Andrew Gazdecki @agazdecki

Probably an unpopular opinion but most startups don't need mobile apps so save the headaches and build a great mobile web experience instead.

I’ve always been in favor of building v1 of your app for the mobile web. Marketplaces make it hard to experiment quickly and validate ideas. Being forced to appease the marketplace overlords every time you want to make a change is a huge momentum killer.

I like to call this “the cost of change”. As you experiment looking for product/market fit, every iteration comes with a cost. Over-engineering in the early days increases the cost of change and reduces the number of iteration cycles afforded by your runway.

It’s tempting to want to do things “the right way”. In this case, you might consider building a native app to be superior to a mobile web app. Sometimes it is better to go native from day 1. But it is often far more pragmatic to start with a mobile web app.

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Emerging Tech: Quantum Computing

TIME

TIME @TIME

TIME's new cover: Quantum computers will transform our world—and create a 21st century "space race" ti.me/3j2McaL

Fascinating quote from the article:

In November, IBM unveiled its new 433-qubit Osprey chip—the world’s most powerful quantum processor, the speed of which, if represented in traditional bits, would far exceed the total number of atoms in the known universe.

As a society, why are we not making a bigger investment in quantum computing? I understand that it’s complex and expensive. There are probably a dozen other bullshit excuses we could come up with to justify investing in war rather than our future.

It’s sad to see how risk-averse and security-focused we are as a collective. That mindset isn’t entirely wrong. The human race would likely not exist if our risk tolerance were higher in the early days. But we’ve created enough security to make scary investments without compromising our safety.

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Unsolicited Feedback: Cron Expressions

Dan

Dan @d4m1n

That's it folks. It's here. It's launched. Ready to use 🙅 The missing cron schedule & cron expression editor, debugger and much more. 👉 tool.crontap.com Hit me with your developer feedback! Design feedback! Linux grandmaster feedback! I'm ready!

This is a beautiful tool to help with a traditionally painful problem. I don’t spend much time writing cron expressions to automatically run automation scripts. The syntax is a little confusing. It’s easy to set things up with the expectation that your script will run at specific times, only to be confused and frustrated when it doesn’t happen.

Directionally, I love what is going on here. You change the parameters of a cron expression and get a calendar view of when your code will be triggered. The only issue I have with the UX is that it’s hard to see the parameters and the calendar simultaneously. You have to make a change, then scroll to see the impact, then scroll back up to adjust.

To make this a little easier to use, I’d consider moving a condensed view of the calendar to the right column, currently occupied by examples and cheat sheets.

By default, I’d hide the cheat sheets and rely on the tooltip when hovering over each param to convey that info.

The examples could go below the parameters. It would be tempting not to show them to keep white space and a clean interface. But they are a valuable reference. Maybe they could be redesigned to be more minimal and lower on the visual hierarchy to focus on the more important expression + calendar elements.

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Wildcard: Future

Alicia Eggert

Alicia Eggert @AliciaEggert

This Present Moment at 11,000 feet. This drone shot is part of a longer video of the project I did with @longnow that is currently on view @FortMasoninSF.

It’s easy to look at the current state of the world and wonder why we aren’t better. My comment on TIME’s article is a great example. Why aren’t we collectively making better investments? Why are we squandering Earth’s natural resources? Why can’t we just get along and learn to value our differences?

It can be helpful to look at things on a larger time scale. Projects by The Long Now Foundation keep things in perspective. I particularly like this project by Alicia Eggert, quoting Stewart Brand.

This present moment used to be the unimaginable future.

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