If anyone’s wondering why this replier is so angry, it’s because they spent a lot of time arguing with people further down the comment section over whether this article is too heavily written by AI. (I'd say it is.)
It probably irked them to find the top comment had no mention of AI, but is still getting at the same root problem… the article is 2-3x longer than it could be, with lots of rambling and repetition, so it makes for a frustrating read.
This is such a weird counter-argument, that only serves to prove OP’s point.
“It’s not that it’s not documentable. It’s just that it would take tens of thousands of pages and no one would be able to write that or read that to effectively take over the project.”
Okay, so surely this is what OP had in mind when they said documentation doesn’t work… Is it no longer safe to assume reasonable expectations when making an argument? Why the need to “well actually” them with this response?
This website lists no sources, no author, and all of the content is littered with traces of being AI-generated (both in the table and in the descriptions). It seems hard to trust any piece of it that you don't already know in advance to be true, which feels pretty useless.
That's fair. I'm also heavily opposed to VC-funded, market-distorting behaviors and the later extraction-oriented outcomes they produce. In this case I was framing it in terms that might be more widely received by folks who aren't, and pointing out that, even if that was their mindset and goal, they were still making a mistake strategically.
But I appreciate the reminder to not cede ground in wording, thanks.
Under that logic is a free trial a bait and switch? How about a 1-month free deal? How about what Adobe (and many others) do where they license to the school and students get it free until they graduate?
It seems like a really weird point to make, when you could just as easily argue that Figma giving their services for free to students is a gift that levels the playing field, by allowing students without means to gain experience with industry standard tools they might not have been exposed to otherwise.
The article makes a good point about how Figma's non-open data model is limiting their utility as the source of truth.
But I think it's part of a larger mistake Figma is making: they seem to have shifted to an extraction mindset too early, assuming they'd captured the market, right when the ground beneath them is starting to shift.
It's most visible in their pricing model evolution, which is now explicitly anti-collaboration. Figma used to be the obvious default because you could quickly share files with non-designers, so they could view and make small edits without fuss. Now that requires a paid "seat", along with a confusing mess of permission flows.
It's platform wide too. I taught a college design class recently, and had students sign up for Figma because it seemed archaic not to teach them to use it. Instead of just giving any ".edu" address a free account (like they used to) students are forced through a 3rd-party process of uploading transcripts to prove education status. A few of my students got rejected or ran into confusing errors, and never got access… Now I have to re-evaluate whether its worth using when teaching the class again. (And this is for a population with near-zero short-term purchasing power, but huge potential long-term value… why add barriers?)
This is such a weird self-inflicted wound for a collaboration platform to make. The big tools that won on collaboration (eg. Google Docs, GitHub) have understood that low-friction sharing is critical to becoming the default choice. And that being the default is a flywheel that drives adoption, both in users and in tooling.
It makes more sense if you see it through the lens of Figma trying to juice short-term numbers for their IPO. But it's sad to see because it had so much long-term potential.
That wasn’t my experience, having just driven across the city and back during tonight’s outage. It was actually weirdly inspiring how well people coordinated at so many of the powerless intersections.
There was a lot of confusion, and some people took advantage of it to rush through, but for the most part it was pretty orderly. Which makes sense because in many parts of the world where there are no traffic lights or stop signs, people get on just fine.
The Waymo’s, on the other hand, were dropping like flies. While walking from Lower to Upper Haight I spotted a broken Waymo every handful of blocks. The corner of Haight & Fillmore was particularly bad, with 3 of them blocking traffic in both directions — in the path of both the 7 and 22 bus lines.
So, just to make it clear… you define good art by “whether the artist is any good at art”.
Illuminating…
——
For anyone who’s interested in a slightly more nuanced take on how people in the Middle Ages perceived of “art” — and how different that notion was to how we perceive it today — Forgery, Replica, Fiction by Christopher Wood [1] is a really interesting read.
Here’s the last sentence of the Goodreads summary, which describes the major transition in thinking:
“… Ultimately, as forged replicas lost their value as historical evidence, they found a new identity as the intentionally fictional image-making we have come to understand as art.”
I agree with you to a degree. I considered that as a reason as well, and "meeting people where they are" in communication design is something I think about a lot.
But if using an approachable format to deliver an alternative message was the strategy, I think we'd see a few places where the author tried to stretch the format slightly, to give a few core ideas more chance to resonate. In which case it could have been a masterful use of an antithetical format, to prove and point and enrich the message.
Instead, since the entire post conforms, it feels much more like an internalized autopilot, or purposefully manipulative technique.
I can't help but feel that this article was written in a format that is the textual equivalent of thin desires…
Every sentence is separated into its own paragraph, like each one is supposed to be revelatory (or maybe tweet-worthy). It's pretty common design knowledge that if you try to emphasize everything, you end up emphasizing nothing. The result is that reading the article feels choppy, and weirdly unsatisfying, since the larger arc of each point is constantly being interrupted.
Why choose such an antithetical form, to what is otherwise an important and deep message?
The only answer that comes to mind is that the author's livelihood, or at least their internal gauge of success, is tied to manipulating readers' thin desires.
Basing it around the act of selling data seems like a much better approach to me than what OP suggested, I agree. I imagine there are edge cases to consider around how acquisitions of company assets would work, although it’s not a use case I particularly care to defend.
“Intent to track” could be an approach, but the toll bridges near me use license plate scanners for payment, so I could see it not being that clear cut. There are likely other valid use cases, like statistical surveys, congestion pricing laws, etc.
No I don’t think it’s “very hard”. But I also don’t pretend like OP that it’s super simple, only to suggest a law that would make most people criminals.
I think regulation is critically needed in this area, but acting like it’s easy to do well is a recipe for laws like the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act that have massive unexpected consequences.
Not saying I agree with OP, but for the law you described: any photo you take of a license plate on your smartphone would fit that description (unless you’ve explicitly disabled the automatic location and time stamping default).
So you’d need to further distinguish to preserve that freedom.
Seeing this on the front page again prompted me to dig into some of the Whole Earth Catalog successor publications for the first time.
I came across an article in Whole Earth Software Review, where many participants on a forum discuss the emerging technology of word processors — particularly interesting given the rise of LLMs as a new tool for "writing".
> LEVY: I readily admit that using my Apple and Wordstar has changed me considerably. I do stories faster, write them more organically and have time to play more. I play on my computer a lot. Word processing, even in our current brain-damaged technological state, is something that significantly improves lives.
> SPEZZANO: … You could thoroughly try out five cars in one day, but it would take a month to really test out five word processors.
> SPEZZANO: … I think the overall plan should be to work towards a software aesthetic, a capacity on the part of the reader to appreciate a good program. Most of us don't have this because a computer program is a new medium. Like the appreciation of art or music or literature, software appreciation may not lead to one perfect word processor but an increased ability to see the subtleties of the medium, and to be articulate about what you think and don't like.
> ICENOGLE: … Transparency isn't a property of the program. It concerns the relationship of the user to the program. If you don't have to think about it, it's transparent.
> LISWOOD: Some day I will be able to talk at the screen, and then I can really screw things up in a hurry.
> McWILLIAMS: I have noticed my handwriting has deteriorated significantly ever since my word processor arrived. Is this happening to anyone else?
> NAIMAN: … Yes, my handwriting has gotten much worse since I've been using a word processor. And I find I can hardly ever write a short note, even just a line or two, without scratching something out and rewording it.
The list of "Fifteen Word Processor Commandments" at the end of the article is also a fun read. And right after that:
> The typewriter is a tool that extends human capabilities. It lets the dysgraphic writer read his own writing and allows him to share it with others. The word processing computer goes further. It separates writing (modeling ideas with words) from printing. This is why this tool is so important to me. Since the writing first exists only electronically, one can word and rework it for as long as necessary — moving things around, correcting spelling, transpositions and typos — before it gets printed.
> It's unfortunate that there's been so much hype and lack of imagination an insight about all of the wonderful things computers can do for us. Given this, it was hard for me to visualize a personal use for a computer until I found out about word processing.
FontStruct: https://fontstruct.com/
Calligraphr: https://www.calligraphr.com/en/
Kreative Korp: https://www.kreativekorp.com/software/fonts/index.shtml#rela...
Glyphs: https://glyphsapp.com/learn/pixelfont
PixelForge: https://www.pixel-forge.com/