Dan Bricklin @danb@qoto.org

In these examples, the cost of the headset is not an issue because if the application is valuable enough to take the users' time, the hardware cost will be a small concern. Software development will be a concern, though, until the right tools are available, I guess.

New long press release from Apple about #VisionPro: https://www.apple.com/newsroom/2024/04/apple-vision-pro-brings-a-new-era-of-spatial-computing-to-business/ with several specific examples of real, serious, productive use of VisionOS. The Porsche engineers following a race in real-time video is an interesting example (https://www.apple.com/newsroom/videos/apple-vision-pro-porsche-race-engineer-app/large_2x.mp4).

Fits with @mimsical WSJ article from March 29th (https://www.wsj.com/tech/personal-tech/apples-new-face-computer-is-for-work-788e2750 - paywall) about how knowledge workers are a key audience. "I think I've described using the Vision Pro to other people as like, just having an infinite number of iPads to pull out for work," Steve Caruso is quoted in the article.

@lauren Should you explain it...? (What I get from doing NYTimes #Connections so regularly.)

@lauren (Nice pun.) However, in the olden days, to compute, we did have to rub two sticks together, just like making a fire...

@mikesax Yes! That’s one of the fun things about it. Imagining the author chuckling as they put them in.

I just love doing the NYTimes’ Connections game. When playing it I feel like I’m zigzagging around my brain, looking at so many angles and points of view and enjoying the matches (or potential matches). I feel so clear when it all fits into place. Such an inner- and cerebrally-focused thing in today’s externally messed up and stressful world. (I do “cheat” some at times, though, by looking up definitions…)

@lauren That's the type of more specific discussion I was looking for. It addresses the history of scraping. Of course, there's nuance in what the search engines do, too, as @not2b points out. Thanks!

@lauren Hmm. A thought: Compare and contrast crawling the web to fill AI's models vs in order to index the web for search (e.g., AltaVista in the 1990's, Google, Bing, et al, since then). I believe there is a difference, but it's worth exploring the intent, expectations (of authors), and how much value (and what type of value) goes to whom.

Joy of being a grandparent: One of my granddaughters showed me her newest prized possession: A Foxtrot comic by @billamend that he signed in front of her at PAX East. I had introduced her to Sunday comics, and especially Foxtrot, a few years before. She ended up buying lots of Foxtrot books. One reason Foxtrot is special to me is because years ago it had one of the earliest times I saw my creation (VisiCalc and its descendants) being referenced in mass media as something accepted. It was a strip where you needed to know at least something about a spreadsheet to appreciate the humor. (The first time I remember was a WSJ editorial.)

@michaelslade It may be what we have been trained on. Also, it's not just less-sharpness in vision, it's multiprocessing of cues from what we are seeing. In old graphical games terms, as I have found as we age, we can track fewer sprites simultaneously.

@michaelslade I wonder, Michael, if it's related to Edward Tufte's teachings about the disruption of context switching. You can switch quickly if it's a logical next step. If you are following a ball left to right and suddenly it's top to bottom without the right type of cues you have to stop and think and reorient. Slow zoom requires little extra thinking.