justin․searls․co

In a post on X (formerly Twitter), Kosutami explained that Apple has stopped production of FineWoven accessories due to its poor durability

Sorry cows, your skin is simply too good to not wrap our metal devices in.

The company may move to another non-leather material for its premium accessories in the future.

On second thought, it's very unlikely Apple would ever go back to leather. My guess is FineWoven quietly disappears and isn't immediately replaced with another "premium" material in 2024.

Spotted: Gyu-kaku

A local friend is taking his first trip to Japan this week, so we took him to one of the two(!) local Gyu-kaku locations here in Orlando.

A ton of these have sprung up throughout the US in the last few years, and if your town has one, I'd strongly encourage you to check it out. It's a cook-your-own-food restaurant chain in Japan and the American renditions (mostly) do their Japanese counterparts justice.

If you want to know what to order, go for the top-of-the-line ("Supreme"?) all-you-can-eat menu and just keep ordering harami skirt steak (salted, not sauced) until your stomach explodes.

Meta's new AI chat sucks at coding

Yesterday, Zuck got on stage to announce Meta's ChatGPT killer, Llama 3, apparently making this bold claim:

Meta says that Llama 3 outperforms competing models of its class on key benchmarks and that it's better across the board at tasks like coding

Coding? You sure about that?

I've been pairing with ChatGPT (using GPT-4) every day for the last few months and it is demonstrably terrible 80% of the time, but 20% of the time it saves me an hour of headaches, so I put up with it anyway. Nevertheless, my experience with Llama 2 was so miserable, I figured Zuck's claim about Llama 3 outperforming GPT-4 was bullshit, so I put it to the test this morning.

TLDR: I asked three questions and Llama 3 whiffed. Badly.

Question 1

Here's the first question I asked, pondering a less messy way to generate URL paths (secretly knowing how hard this is, given that Rails models and controllers are intentionally decoupled):

Let's dive in and find out…

Breaking Change artwork

v10 - Inhumane A.I.

Breaking Change

It's been over two weeks! Let's catch up. We can talk about anything you want, so long as it's App Store policies regarding "retro" game emulators or where to find the best Japanese love hotels.

Also, I hate to spoil an announcement, but due to a lack of mailbag engagement, e-mailing podcast@searls.co after you listen to each episode of the program is now mandatory for all listeners. Figure it out.

Citations follow:

Show those show notes…

Fix your Rails Fixtures with this one neat trick

If you have any Rails models that define a custom table_name AND you load fixtures in your test database, then you're probably going to have a bad time. Maybe you're here from Google. If so, hi, hello! You're in the right place.

Here's the model I just ran into this issue with:

# app/models/build/program.rb
module Build
  class Program < ApplicationRecord
    self.table_name = "build_programs"
  end
end

Keep reading…

How should I have known I wasn't supposed to put down my masseuse's phone number as "current therapist" on the patient intake form?

Vision Pro was a better deal than my Mac Studio

As the post-launch hype has cooled, the Apple-watcher zeitgeist has started to turn against the platform—some are even bold enough to invoke the word "failure".

(Aside: if Apple considers Vision Pro a failure, it's not because of sluggish sales figures or a weak App Store lineup. It was clear from the jump that Apple is committed to a ten year roadmap for this thing, regardless what you or your favorite Youtuber thinks. Burback's video was hilarious, though.)

I've been using Apple Vision Pro for no purpose other than Mac Virtual Display for 4-8 hours a day, 7 days a week, since it launched on February 2nd. Meanwhile, my brand-spankin'-new M2 Ultra-equipped Mac Studio and 32" 6K monitor are collecting dust. More than that, I'm getting more done than at any point in my career. So I figured I'd share the Good News with y'all, in case it might sway anyone sitting on the fence into giving Vision Pro a shot.

First, I'll explain why my productivity shot through the roof once I strapped a computer to my face. Then, I'll show why such an expensive device is no more an irresponsible use of funds than other "Pro"-tier equipment in the Apple ecosystem.

Let's dive in and find out…

Saw a family out to dinner the other day and the kid ordered milk. The waiter responded, "regular or chocolate"?

The mom got very mad at the waiter's mention of chocolate milk. It's a little shocking how far the Ovaltine window has shifted in recent years.

The co-founder of a nascent game studio learned of a significant internal leak when a reporter called him for comment. He notified his publishing partner who responded to the leak by cutting funding. Then, after breathing what I'm sure were a series of very deep, very audible sighs he decided to say, "fuck it," and close the whole damn studio:

As a result of the cancellation of the publishing relationship and after careful consideration, I am closing Possibility Space. Today is your last day of employment at Possibility Space and Prytania Media. Your final paycheck including pay for work through the end of today will be deposited to your account, along with any other required payments, as dictated by your work location.

And exit the industry while he's at it:

As of today I am stepping away from the game industry to focus on my family and care for Annie [Delisi Strain]. I wish all of you the best as you navigate this complex industry and the challenges and opportunities ahead.

In a recent episode of Breaking Change I talked at length about why the "AAA" gaming industry is falling apart before our eyes, so reactions like this don't seem so unreasonable to me. I've been wondering aloud for my entire career why the hell anyone gets into the gaming business when virtually everyone involved could make an order of magnitude more money working half as many hours doing literally anything else involving software. Now that the free money spigot has been shut off, investors are starting to realize the same thing and are looking for any plausible pretense to pull the plug.

I'm sure the journalist named in the piece (incidentally, by his own employer, via this article) doesn't feel awesome that his reporting indirectly led to his sources losing their jobs. And the fact he apparently never bothered to contact Annie Delisi Strain—the rare-for-the-industry woman CEO currently on medical leave—for comment is certainly a bad look. But he's probably got enough to worry about, considering that one of the few industries closer to the brink of collapse than games is games journalism.

Down for everyone because of me?

Just signed up for bandsintown to look for live concerts during my next Japan trip. I created my account using Sign in With Apple and the site immediately started behaving weirdly. Then I opened my devtools and it was spewing an unbelievable number of XHR errors. Within 90 seconds the entire site was down. It didn't come back for about 5 minutes.

I have are a very particular set of skills.

I've written more tests than just about anybody. Spent years comparing dynamic and static type systems. My life's work is to maximize correctness and minimize maintenance.

All it's taught me: the single most important thing programmers can do to improve their code is to minimize branching (e.g. if statements). Code that executes the same set of instructions every time behaves the same way every time.

TFW you can't work up the motivation to program all day and then when you finally get into the zone, you run out of time and have to go be somewhere.

Spatial Personas are terrifyingly cool

Is the Apple Vision Pro "Persona" feature still firmly stuck in the uncanny valley and make me feel like I'm trapped in a Polar Express vortex? Yes.

Is the newly-released Spatial Persona mode way cooler than the default Persona-in-a-box the device shipped with? Yes.

Does all the engineering Apple has poured into the SharePlay API and frameworks finally have a meaningful purpose? Yes.

Yes. Yes. Yes. That earns Spatial Persona's a Certified Cool Stuff™ rating from me.

Super fun experience playing around with this new beta-of-a-beta feature with Aaron today. I'll definitely chat about it on my next podcast.

Before buying Apple Vision Pro, my biggest worry about the ergonomics was that I would ABSOLUTELY HATE touching my forefinger and thumb together to "click" things.

200 hours later: I was right! Still not used to it. Just supremely off-putting and uncomfortable compared to clicking a mouse, tapping a screen. Gross.