I watched Thunderbolts*

As I walked out of the theater (after waiting for the full credits to roll so I could see the movie’s final scene, naturally) I thought to myself “that wasn’t bad, for a Marvel movie.” During Marvel’s Infinity …

I read Fourth Wing

Fourth Wing was my first romantasy read and I wasn’t expecting much from it. How could I? I had people recommend it to me and the very next moment dismiss it as smut. Imagine my surprise, then, at Rebecca Yarros’ restraint, dela…

I watched Sinners

I’ll say it up front: Sinners is great and you should go see it on the best quality screen you’re willing to. It’s a rare, original movie that delivers with confidence. Writing, performances, cinematography, music, themes—…

I read Red Rising, Golden Son, and Morning Star

This trilogy is a ride. For three books Pierce Brown flexes his mastery over pace and action via the first person perspective of his protagonist, Darrow. Through his eyes, he tells a story of oppression, violence, and uprising in a future s…

It’s not a good look when publications are posting articles advising users how to turn off your new, heavily marketed flagship software feature en masse. I understand that defaulting the features on is a change from release, but I don…

I read This Is How You Lose the Time War

I plucked this book from my reading list because I wasn’t sure what I wanted to read next but I really needed to leave and catch the train to work. This Is How You Lose the Time War won because it’s a novella that’s just o…

I read Horus Rising

I can’t believe I read a novel in the Warhammer universe and that it was also good. Warhammer has always been on the fringes of my radar, given my nerdy interests. It’s always seemed inscrutable, though—a massive collection of b…

What happened this past weekend to Tiktok is a loud reminder of how important owning where the content you produce lives. Whether or not Tiktok survives in some fashion, the lesson is that platforms control what’s on them; that’…

Pixel 9 and corner radii

I can’t stop staring at the back of the Pixel 9 series. It looks like Google ignored conventional design wisdom on how to nest rounded shapes within one another. The back of a 9 Pro for reference: Take a close look at the relationship…

I watched The Holdovers

A mediation on loneliness told from the perspectives of three people who are forced to spend time with one another. Each of them is burdened by their past in a way that makes their present harder to navigate. Through their time together the…

I watched American Fiction

A dark comedy about the commodification of blackness in America that also features a compelling family drama that borders on tragedy. It’s not subtle in its satire but it does avoid getting too overt with its delicately balanced humor; it’s…

I watched Past Lives

A slow burn love story that feels more genuine than what tends to be featured in Hollywood films. The overarching theme is the concept of “inyeon”—a Korean word that defines a kind of fate in relationships. It’s a beautifu…

OpenAI’s Sora is insane

Today, OpenAI announced Sora, a text-to-video model. In OpenAI’s own words: Sora is able to generate complex scenes with multiple characters, specific types of motion, and accurate details of the subject and background. The model unde…

If I were in charge of Xbox’s multi-platform strategy…

I would focus the rumored change on Game Pass and would not offer any first party Microsoft game as a stand alone physical or digital purchase outside of the existing ecosystem. If you have a PS5 and you want to play Starfield, your only wa…

I watched Poor Things

An unusual film from subject matter to direction but it fits with what the Academy would nominate for Best Picture. The settings, wardrobe, and cinematography—especially shot composition and framing—are strong, obvious standouts. Everything…

If you only watch one video about Apple Vision Pro, it should be Casey Neistat’s

Without burying the lede, here’s Neistat’s video. I’ve followed Vision Pro closely since the review embargo lifted. There’s a lot of videos out there already, including good ones from the usual suspects. Those videos…

Weather phenomena have the wildest names

Heat dome: A heat dome is a weather phenomenon that occurs when a high-pressure system traps hot ocean air over a region. Ring of Fire: The “Ring of Fire” is a weather pattern that occurs during the summer. It’s a large ri…

Gurman on Magic Battery

Funny but Gurman’s sentiment feels right here—more over the top branding from Apple’s marketing team.

Hyundai is going wild with their EV design language

I don’t know what got into Hyundai’s water but they’re having a design renaissance with their post-ICE vehicles. Whether you like them is less important than acknowledging the huge departure this new design language is from the Hyundai we’r…

YouTube’s Shorts Shelf on web looks like what you get when the business wants one thing, Product/UX want another, and you arrive at the wrong compromise. YouTube put that strip on the home page right under the first two rows of recomm…

Spatial sticky notes are a mixed reality use case I’m looking forward to

There’s been a lot of chatter that mixed reality devices will be solutions looking for a problem. Well, I’m looking forward to attaching digital notes to physical objects. Then I can ditch sticky notes for good and skip the conf…

Stanford created generative agents that simulate human behavior in a virtual environment

Stanford published a paper a few days ago detailing their work with Generative Agents and it sounds like tech that is destined to show up in video games. …computational software agents that simulate believable human behavior. Generative age…

Diablo IV’s open beta was fun

I’m not a Diablo expert but I did spend some (read: too much) time with Diablo IV this past weekend. My goal was to get a sense of whether I’d want to purchase and play the full title when it releases. I’m more interested …

Apple should make Siri smart enough to generate Shortcuts

Given that GPT-4 can write code well enough to generate functional games and web sites, Siri ought to be good enough to listen to a user input and spit out a working Shortcut. Imagine saying “hey Siri, make me a shortcut that allows m…

I’m not convinced by Redfall yet

It appears a preview event embargo was lifted for Redfall, as several outlets and creators have published their videos today. They’re all full of the same b-roll, so the meat of this round of content are the opinions and analyses shar…

Apple really ought to say/do something about Siri

Apple should publicly do or say something related to LLMs and Siri to reassure customers that real improvements are coming to their virtual assistant. They were well behind the curve before ChatGPT blew up and now that it has, the gap betwe…

Generative content in Google docs

Google is bringing generative AI features to Workplace. Looks useful—much better showing than when they revealed Bard. When this type of content generation is normalized, I wonder if those who can skillfully edit it will separate themselves…

Arc CEO, Josh Miller, live reacted to MKBHD’s team talking about his product and I wish more tech CEOs did this sort of thing. He also said something wise about disruptive products in response to David Imel struggling to describe Arc …

Five Figma tips that are essential to my workflow

Navigate the layer panel with keyboard Much faster than clicking around. If this list was one item long this would be it. Apply Auto Layout with zero padding Adding Auto Layout to a single object applies default padding that’s equal t…

I’m already exhausted by the deluge of AI-related news, products, and grifts that have followed Bing’s ChatGPT reveal—except for Kevin Roose’s piece in the Times about its alter ego, Sydney, which is fascinating and should…

Apple MR headset reveal (maybe) set for WWDC in June

Gurman reports the delay for Apple’s next big thing: Apple’s earlier plan was to unveil the product in early spring at a launch event aimed at consumers. It could then provide more extensive details and development tools to third-part…

Patch notes: byte sized reviews is now whatbrentplay

byte sized reveiws is dead, long live whatbrentplay Review detail is more concise

Patch notes: WBS → better excerpts, visible tags

Quick note—in the the interest of tracking progress and working in public, “patch notes” posts like this will highlight changes to any public project I have. Excerpts are shorter and conditional The overflow indicator for excerp…

Is Google Search in danger?

Google certainly thinks so. The Times reported in late December that the swift rise of ChatGPT was a “code red” for them internally. For more than 20 years, the Google search engine has served as the world’s primary gateway to t…

When is it okay to change a franchise’s gameplay?

A few screens and a brief bit of combat footage leaked for Dragon Age: Dreadwolf a few days ago. I’m not here to judge alpha footage for a game that doesn’t even have a release date but the internet’s reaction to that foot…

Saw this headline for an article written in 2001—many years before the mainstream smartphone era began—on the Nielsen Norman Group site. That sure aged well. It’s hard to believe we lived in a world where the usefulness of mobile devi…

Is Apple making a big foldable device?

Three of Apple’s biggest leakers have been talking about foldable devices this week. Ming-Chi Kuo issued a handful of tweets, communicating his confidence in such a device: I’m positive about the foldable iPad in 2024 and expect…