ZD 26.17: Designing With Care
Software interior design matters and more from the week that was.
🛋️ The Interior Design of Software (Digital Native)
Historically, software has been utilitarian. Interfaces have dramatically improved, and will only become more important in a world where anyone can build software but few have an eye for design.
🙁 The Unhappiness Permademic (Derek Thompson)
COVID created a wave of unhappiness that has not left the anglophone world.
🚘 Waymos are Too Cautious (Understanding AI)
Waymo self-driving taxis have been involved in very few accidents overall, and most of them are in scenarios where they were too cautious and ended up doing things human drivers were not expecting.
💪 The Tokenmaxxing Trend (The Pragmatic Engineer)
Incentivizing anything often leads to gamesmanship. Especially among engineers. And especially when they are spending other people’s money.
🧪 A Robotic Biolab (Core Memory )
Medra is building a biolab of the future with an army of seeing, sensing robotic arms. Are we on the cusp of real productivity gains in the lab?
🏃 You Are Not Racing AI (Hilary Gridley)
Signs of low-effort AI-generated work are obvious. Showing you care counts.
🧑✈️ Escape the AI Autopilot (Every)
AI is getting more reliable, leading you to have less incentive to check the work. Here are a few techniques to leverage AI while avoiding getting stuck in autopilot mode and letting slop slip out the door.
🖼️ Artifacts Are Alive (Works on My Machine)
Artifacts are functioning little HTML+JavaScript programs created by claude and other AI tools. They are transportable pieces of software content. They are a new medium of the AI age.
🤵 Building a Management Flight Simulator (Strange Loop Canon)
Figuring out a “what if” simulator for business has been a dream for a while. But in 2026, if you feed your enterprise world model enough email, you can relive the corporate dramas of your dreams.
📍 How GPS Works (PerThirtySix)
GPS is an astoundingly important component of the modern world. It is also disturbingly simple and fragile.
☎️ Using the Internet Like it is 1999 (Joshua Blias)
Turn the clock back to take control of your feed. Some of the advice is a bit extreme, but tools like RSS are amazing ways to follow many creators on YouTube or Substack.
🪶 The Meaning of Yankee Doodle (Past Life, Present Cleavage)
Yankee Doodle Dandy meant something very different to the British soldiers who created the song.
The Look
What happens when you have AI agents simulate famous technology company organizational charts? Kun Chen worked out the math.
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