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Steve Farrugia

@fasterandworse.com

1.1K followers 130 following 3.7K posts

Experienced user Australian In Amsterdam I talk about product design and I'm quite critical open to work, open to talks Words: https://fasterandworse.com Videos: https://youtube.com/@fasterandworse Audios: https://pnc.st/s/faster-and-worse

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Steve Farrugia @fasterandworse.com · 20d

Dispatch #31: Anti-Design

Design to compensate for a lack of design

Video: www.youtube.com/watch?v=V3eL...

Audio: pnc.st/s/faster-and...

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Dispatch #31: Anti-Design

YouTube video by Faster and Worse

www.youtube.com

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Reposted by Steve Farrugia

Steve Farrugia @fasterandworse.com · 7h

This is where the term "user" dies.

The user experience has no boundaries when you're wearing cameras and microphones in public

Hypervisible @hypervisible.blacksky.app · 7h

Today in luxury surveillance.

“They’ll [ai wearables] be embedded in what we already wear: glasses, jewellery, clothing. Fashion will play a critical role in normalizing them.”

Style Meets Surveillance as Agentic AI Redefines Wearables

Are we seeing the rise of smarter accessories—or sleepwalking into a future where data privacy is out of style?

threemagazine.com

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Steve Farrugia @fasterandworse.com · 6h

important point.

They are happy to advertise a purpose that appeals to the business (scale, productivity, etc) but has very little meaning to the individual it is then imposed upon.

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tweety fish of innsmouth @sifu.tweety.fish · 6h

n.b., relatedly, basically nobody working in autonomous vehicles has a particularly solid grasp of the "users" you should be thinking about when designing a vehicle operating on public roads

Steve Farrugia @fasterandworse.com · 7h

This is where the term "user" dies.

The user experience has no boundaries when you're wearing cameras and microphones in public

Hypervisible @hypervisible.blacksky.app · 7h

Today in luxury surveillance.

“They’ll [ai wearables] be embedded in what we already wear: glasses, jewellery, clothing. Fashion will play a critical role in normalizing them.”

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Steve Farrugia @fasterandworse.com · 6h

when I say "everything is potential, nothing is purpose" I'm talking about the product pitch and how much evidence of it coming into existence via a design process to satisfy a concrete purpose

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Steve Farrugia @fasterandworse.com · 7h

there is a difference between the purpose people find for themselves and the lack of assertion from the makers of these products that these are the purposes it is created for.

A rock has purposes here and now. Being able to find something useful is the lowest possible bar.

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Steve Farrugia @fasterandworse.com · 7h

there is this need to talk more about "seamfulness" from this perspective where tech is just as much used by the people around the user as the user themselves.

Like how a self-driving car should have a big clear external indicator when it is being driven by a computer

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Steve Farrugia @fasterandworse.com · 7h

This is where the term "user" dies.

The user experience has no boundaries when you're wearing cameras and microphones in public

Hypervisible @hypervisible.blacksky.app · 7h

Today in luxury surveillance.

“They’ll [ai wearables] be embedded in what we already wear: glasses, jewellery, clothing. Fashion will play a critical role in normalizing them.”

Style Meets Surveillance as Agentic AI Redefines Wearables

Are we seeing the rise of smarter accessories—or sleepwalking into a future where data privacy is out of style?

threemagazine.com

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Reposted by Steve Farrugia

Pavel @spavel.bsky.social · 9h

Guide to writing every article:

1. Pretend that AI works

2. Pick an arbitrary timeline for when that happens (don't try too hard with this one, "soon" or "inevitably" is good enough)

3. Convince yourself that this isn't just Sam Altman fanfiction

4. Rake in big bucks from every publication

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Steve Farrugia @fasterandworse.com · 7h

I'm not saying this to undermine the work of Ed, btw. This is me appreciating all his hard work wading through the shit and showing that the numbers don't add up

Reposted by Steve Farrugia

Hypervisible @hypervisible.blacksky.app · 7h

Today in luxury surveillance.

“They’ll [ai wearables] be embedded in what we already wear: glasses, jewellery, clothing. Fashion will play a critical role in normalizing them.”

Style Meets Surveillance as Agentic AI Redefines Wearables

Are we seeing the rise of smarter accessories—or sleepwalking into a future where data privacy is out of style?

threemagazine.com

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Steve Farrugia @fasterandworse.com · 7h

and because we're well into the age of software products that can be delivered to people without taking up *any* space, it's much easier to hide lack of purpose with claims of potential and it's going to keep happening

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Steve Farrugia @fasterandworse.com · 7h

for example, and this might sound obvious, *everything* is potential, *nothing* is purpose.

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Steve Farrugia @fasterandworse.com · 8h

can I cut in and say as a finance rube the product has tells as well, and it was very easy for me to adapt all of my observations of crypto to LLMs and genAI because of this

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Toronto Will @torontowill.bsky.social · 8h

Very true, it’s the excuses that are (deliberately) convoluted and hard to follow, the reality is incredibly simple. Like, expenses > revenue, that’s not good! If you are announcing yourself as a half trillion dollar company while losing cash, I’m not the one who has some difficult explaining to do.

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Reposted by Steve Farrugia

Amytiville Hoyrror @amyhoy.bsky.social · 8h

pretty sure the best theme engine ever made for a widely adopted web product was movabletype

Baldur Bjarnason @baldurbjarnason.com · 8h

Me when I have to wade into a Discourse theme: "OMG, this is a horrible POS. No documentation to speak of. Why is anybody using this?"

In a Wordpress theme: "OMG, this is a horrible POS. Why is anybody using this?"

It genuinely feels like pretty much everything in tech is just unusably awful.

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Steve Farrugia @fasterandworse.com · 8h

the best thing to happen to WP was MT becoming locked down

Steve Farrugia @fasterandworse.com · 8h

oh god yes. I used to love building MT sites

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Hypervisible @hypervisible.blacksky.app · 8h

Some people have been saying.

How everyday tech is training us to accept constant surveillance

By ignoring small tech intrusions, society lowers the bar for what counts as privacy.

www.axios.com

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Steve Farrugia @fasterandworse.com · Dec 26

The thing is, I can criticise gen ai exactly the same as I criticised crypto and I’ll be able to criticise the next *thing* the same way because they are all just shitty products disguised as technologies and they use potential to distract from lack of purpose

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Hypervisible @hypervisible.blacksky.app · 10h

“Initially, Lyra AI will be available to a subset of its users who are being coached for mild to moderate “challenges” like burnout, sleep, and stress, said the company’s chief clinical officer…”

Lyra launches ‘clinical-grade’ chatbot amid growing concern about mental health and AI

Lyra Health has launched a "clinical-grade" chatbot amid growing concern about mental health and artificial intelligence.

www.statnews.com

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your #3 source for absurdist true crime 🔨 @davidgerard.co.uk · 10h

all these slopwanking fuckwits "i want a *real* AI critic not like that uncouth Zitron fellow"

it's always tone policing the guy with the numbers

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your #3 source for absurdist true crime 🔨 @davidgerard.co.uk · 22h

you must understand, what i want in an AI critic is someone who doesn't shame me about my promptfondling, you know a *real* critic with *substance*

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CAMERON WILSON @cameronwilson.bsky.social · 11h

I put in a request - haven’t heard anything

Jason Andrade @jasonandrade.bsky.social · 12h

I assume eleventy jillion journalists have asked you this already @jay.bsky.team but does BlueSky have a statement on the Australian age enforcement of social media (legislation) and how are you going to go about doing it for an entire country?

Or do you drop Australian access?

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Steve Farrugia @fasterandworse.com · 12h

It's a good way to save characters

Steve Farrugia @fasterandworse.com · 12h

you added a click to my day!