Dave Morin 🦞 retweeted
A small peek at the details going into our upcoming Sunflower Beta launch:
This is the blank state—when you’ve cleared out your high-signal emails
A 3D sphere coalesces from scattered points. You can play with it, rotate it, tap it
The points on the sphere are arranged in the Fibonacci sequence… which the center disc florets of a sunflower also follow
Look closely at the center of a sunflower and you’ll see this same pattern
We’ll reveal the rest of our new Home tab soon. (it’s changed how I use email) Until then: I’m damn proud of the attention to detail poured into every corner of this app
My co-founder @michaelbrooksjr is the best designer I’ve ever worked with, and @leeadkins the best engineer. We can’t wait to launch this thing 🌻
Dave Morin 🦞 retweeted
@davemorin’s question for @bingfish: games make effort meaningful, and AI promises to remove effort. So what part of life gets worse if an agent wins for you, and what do you deliberately leave in for the human to do?
“Friction is what makes pearls. If you don’t get a sand in the oyster, you just get an oyster.” He adds the qualifier most people skip: sand doesn’t always produce a pearl. It’s just necessary to one.
@brit asks what friction means here. Constraints.
And AI generates its own. “Ten other people are doing the same prompt as you. You’ve got to do something better than them.”
Which raises the bar continuously. “What we now think is great, three years from now we’re going to think of as slop.”
@bingfish was there at the founding of Electronic Arts in 1982, spent 18 years at Kleiner Perkins, and sat on Amazon's board for 15.
He was also on Zynga's board, which is why it lands when he says players felt relief when they quit Farmville while retention and revenue were still climbing.
So where's the line between good game design and gaming your users? His answer takes in TikTok doom scrolling, WhatsApp as the rare product nobody complains about overusing, the sponsored products Amazon still shows Prime members, and ChatGPT ending every answer with one more question.
Then @davemorin asks what the agent era keeps circling: what gets worse if your AI wins for you?
"Friction is what makes pearls. If you don't get a sand in the oyster, you just get an oyster." And the next frictions, he says, come from edge conditions nobody tested for.
Plus the wow/WTF scale he used to judge EA's Hall of Fame games, and the bet-your-job letter he kept in a drawer.
@brit hosts. New episode out now.
Topics:
01:02 No Lessins this week: Brit and Dave bring in Bing Gordon
02:42 Amazon's board, Prime, and 18 years at Kleiner Perkins
05:03 Disneyland inside the computer
06:51 The classroom question that led to Electronic Arts
09:44 Raising $2M in 1982, then Atari collapsed
10:56 Vision, and why people think you're stupid
11:37 Bathroom OKRs and why goals beat perfection
13:13 Word of mouth, and why coin-operated hires leave
14:44 "Can a computer make you cry?" and hiring on mission
16:53 Why games retain: where everybody knows your name
17:34 Which social network did it best?
18:36 LinkedIn endorsements and getting people to come back
20:19 Farmville: players felt relief when they quit
21:18 Growth hacking is human growth hormone
23:04 Amazon, TikTok, ChatGPT: who's gaming their users today?
24:21 What gets worse if your AI agent wins for you
25:03 Friction is what makes pearls
26:30 Hugging Face, Cruise, and the edge conditions nobody tests
29:04 Writing Everybody Wins with his daughter Chloe
32:19 The visionary and the operator
33:20 The wow/WTF scale, and how to manufacture a wow
36:08 Wow moments in games, Facebook, Instagram and Amazon
38:42 Creating wow moments as a parent
41:28 The bet your job moment
42:23 You only got fired for blaming someone else
43:19 Good risk vs bad risk
43:53 Invest and express: Twitch, chat, and kids' art on the wall
45:59 Dave's favorite Bing-ism: the airplane aisle test
47:30 The best retention hack ever made is a wedding ring
48:01 Session economics, novelty, and leveling up
51:51 How to gamify a board meeting
54:03 Why a founder who loses the board twice gets replaced
55:23 Family board meetings and the vice president of fun
56:17 Lightning round: books, heroes, best investment
58:41 Bing's p(doom): doomers are gonna doom
59:36 The three things that make a good day
1:01:59 Dave's iPhone Duo verdic
Dave Morin 🦞 retweeted
@davemorin asks @bingfish the question every dashboard hides: people who quit Farmville felt relief, while retention and revenue were still climbing. What could have told you the truth at the time?
His answer starts with a Bezos line.
“When the anecdotes and the data don’t agree, trust the anecdotes.”
The signal they had was NPS, and it moved the wrong way. People’s scores for Farmville went down afterthey quit. They stopped recommending a game they’d just spent months playing.
He’s careful about where the line sits. Being nudged into things you don’t feel like doing is how training works, and he says you sometimes need to get hacked into the gym.
“But at some point you’ve got a totalitarian dance troupe leader or coach who takes all the fun out of it.”
Reid Hoffman’s version, which Bing quotes: growth hacking works for a short time, like human growth hormone. Get addicted and you’re a cancer risk.
@bingfish was there at the founding of Electronic Arts in 1982, spent 18 years at Kleiner Perkins, and sat on Amazon's board for 15.
He was also on Zynga's board, which is why it lands when he says players felt relief when they quit Farmville while retention and revenue were still climbing.
So where's the line between good game design and gaming your users? His answer takes in TikTok doom scrolling, WhatsApp as the rare product nobody complains about overusing, the sponsored products Amazon still shows Prime members, and ChatGPT ending every answer with one more question.
Then @davemorin asks what the agent era keeps circling: what gets worse if your AI wins for you?
"Friction is what makes pearls. If you don't get a sand in the oyster, you just get an oyster." And the next frictions, he says, come from edge conditions nobody tested for.
Plus the wow/WTF scale he used to judge EA's Hall of Fame games, and the bet-your-job letter he kept in a drawer.
@brit hosts. New episode out now.
Topics:
01:02 No Lessins this week: Brit and Dave bring in Bing Gordon
02:42 Amazon's board, Prime, and 18 years at Kleiner Perkins
05:03 Disneyland inside the computer
06:51 The classroom question that led to Electronic Arts
09:44 Raising $2M in 1982, then Atari collapsed
10:56 Vision, and why people think you're stupid
11:37 Bathroom OKRs and why goals beat perfection
13:13 Word of mouth, and why coin-operated hires leave
14:44 "Can a computer make you cry?" and hiring on mission
16:53 Why games retain: where everybody knows your name
17:34 Which social network did it best?
18:36 LinkedIn endorsements and getting people to come back
20:19 Farmville: players felt relief when they quit
21:18 Growth hacking is human growth hormone
23:04 Amazon, TikTok, ChatGPT: who's gaming their users today?
24:21 What gets worse if your AI agent wins for you
25:03 Friction is what makes pearls
26:30 Hugging Face, Cruise, and the edge conditions nobody tests
29:04 Writing Everybody Wins with his daughter Chloe
32:19 The visionary and the operator
33:20 The wow/WTF scale, and how to manufacture a wow
36:08 Wow moments in games, Facebook, Instagram and Amazon
38:42 Creating wow moments as a parent
41:28 The bet your job moment
42:23 You only got fired for blaming someone else
43:19 Good risk vs bad risk
43:53 Invest and express: Twitch, chat, and kids' art on the wall
45:59 Dave's favorite Bing-ism: the airplane aisle test
47:30 The best retention hack ever made is a wedding ring
48:01 Session economics, novelty, and leveling up
51:51 How to gamify a board meeting
54:03 Why a founder who loses the board twice gets replaced
55:23 Family board meetings and the vice president of fun
56:17 Lightning round: books, heroes, best investment
58:41 Bing's p(doom): doomers are gonna doom
59:36 The three things that make a good day
1:01:59 Dave's iPhone Duo verdic
Dave Morin 🦞 retweeted
@bingfish was there at the founding of Electronic Arts in 1982, spent 18 years at Kleiner Perkins, and sat on Amazon's board for 15.
He was also on Zynga's board, which is why it lands when he says players felt relief when they quit Farmville while retention and revenue were still climbing.
So where's the line between good game design and gaming your users? His answer takes in TikTok doom scrolling, WhatsApp as the rare product nobody complains about overusing, the sponsored products Amazon still shows Prime members, and ChatGPT ending every answer with one more question.
Then @davemorin asks what the agent era keeps circling: what gets worse if your AI wins for you?
"Friction is what makes pearls. If you don't get a sand in the oyster, you just get an oyster." And the next frictions, he says, come from edge conditions nobody tested for.
Plus the wow/WTF scale he used to judge EA's Hall of Fame games, and the bet-your-job letter he kept in a drawer.
@brit hosts. New episode out now.
Topics:
01:02 No Lessins this week: Brit and Dave bring in Bing Gordon
02:42 Amazon's board, Prime, and 18 years at Kleiner Perkins
05:03 Disneyland inside the computer
06:51 The classroom question that led to Electronic Arts
09:44 Raising $2M in 1982, then Atari collapsed
10:56 Vision, and why people think you're stupid
11:37 Bathroom OKRs and why goals beat perfection
13:13 Word of mouth, and why coin-operated hires leave
14:44 "Can a computer make you cry?" and hiring on mission
16:53 Why games retain: where everybody knows your name
17:34 Which social network did it best?
18:36 LinkedIn endorsements and getting people to come back
20:19 Farmville: players felt relief when they quit
21:18 Growth hacking is human growth hormone
23:04 Amazon, TikTok, ChatGPT: who's gaming their users today?
24:21 What gets worse if your AI agent wins for you
25:03 Friction is what makes pearls
26:30 Hugging Face, Cruise, and the edge conditions nobody tests
29:04 Writing Everybody Wins with his daughter Chloe
32:19 The visionary and the operator
33:20 The wow/WTF scale, and how to manufacture a wow
36:08 Wow moments in games, Facebook, Instagram and Amazon
38:42 Creating wow moments as a parent
41:28 The bet your job moment
42:23 You only got fired for blaming someone else
43:19 Good risk vs bad risk
43:53 Invest and express: Twitch, chat, and kids' art on the wall
45:59 Dave's favorite Bing-ism: the airplane aisle test
47:30 The best retention hack ever made is a wedding ring
48:01 Session economics, novelty, and leveling up
51:51 How to gamify a board meeting
54:03 Why a founder who loses the board twice gets replaced
55:23 Family board meetings and the vice president of fun
56:17 Lightning round: books, heroes, best investment
58:41 Bing's p(doom): doomers are gonna doom
59:36 The three things that make a good day
1:01:59 Dave's iPhone Duo verdic
Dave Morin 🦞 retweeted
“Friction is what makes pearls. If you don’t get a sand in the oyster, you just get an oyster.”
Bing Gordon co-founded Electronic Arts in 1982 and has spent the eighteen years since at Kleiner Perkins.
@davemorin asks him the question AI keeps raising: what part of life gets worse if an agent wins for you, and what do you deliberately leave in for the human to do?
His answer is that constraints are the point, and the new frictions are already forming.
“Ten other people are doing the same prompt as you. You’ve got to do something better than them.”
On what went wrong with the last platform shift: The Facebook Effect promised that connecting would let you move mountains socially.
“But then it turned out the money was clicks. And so Facebook never measured on the server how much friendship you were building.”
@brit asks for his p(doom) by 2030. “I’m not a doomer.”
New episode out soon.
Dave Morin 🦞 retweeted
Well, well, well. A new rocket player has entered the arena.
Lots about the rocket and engine looks fairly standard. But then it's rockets. The physics gives what it gives.
What is quite novel is a second stage that turns into . . . a data center with all sorts of dual use parts. I like this idea.
Looks like lots of Blue Origin and Ursa folks.
Launching in 2028 is, in the parlance of our times, 🙈
Here for the aesthetic
Dave Morin 🦞 retweeted
Tune in this evening, I'm sitting down with @ShawnRyan762 to unveil @CowboySpaceCorp's rocket architecture.
Watch here, 6:30PM PT: xitter.cf/i/broadcasts/1pKkOXwQj…
Dave Morin 🦞 retweeted
i've used all of these and keep coming back to @openclaw
the personality feels best to me and i can actually make it mine. if something annoys me or i need it to work differently, i can change it.
more tinkering for sure but it's become the one i use for almost everything and it has really paid off
Dave Morin 🦞 retweeted
Boring Company building a tunnel from Long Beach to the Inland Empire so we can move containers on electric self-driving chassis at 100 mph average speed (versus ~10 mph today) would transform American logistics forever.
Dave Morin 🦞 retweeted
We've been blown away by the iPhone Duo apps the community has built with Bitrig, so we added a new #MadeWithBitrig section to our website to recognize them.
Have you made something cool? Let us know!
↳ bitrig.com/#madewithbitrig
Dave Morin 🦞 retweeted
Thank you @dens
Foursquare was the coolest product. You, last.fm, Path, blogger and a few others defined and inspired a whole generation
@kevinrose @davemorin
Dave Morin 🦞 retweeted
Come build OpenClaw along side our team!
We're inviting people to join our Maintainers on our team server
Come prompt along side us and work on things that will meaningfully improve OpenClaw!
openclaw.ai/blog/openclaw-fo…
Dave Morin 🦞 retweeted
When I was writing Unreal Engine 1, my time was divided as follows:
- Around 30% went to seriously deep coding on hard problems: assembly language texture mappers, C++ BSP trees, data persistence, object oriented systems design, and networking.
- Around 70% was just typing and refactoring large bodies of code needed for a complete engine feature set. This was not hard, and while I was doing it my mind was mostly on the deeper coding topics, thinking and planning for what's next. It didn't feel much different from vibe coding today, except that it was just me typing code on an IBM Model M keyboard rather than prompting it and reviewing the results.
So, it has always seemed perfectly logical that we would rely on AI for that 70%, once the AI could do it with a similar quality standard as we could, which has never been perfection. It came as no surprise that, after a few years of AI model evolution, it was able to take the reigns on that 70% and free up programmers' time for more valuable tasks.
What's more of a surprise is the emergence of AI as a sort of insta-Carmack able to solve hard technical problems quite cleverly and often cleanly, and that it's able to reason about and work in complex 3D scenes both by operating the tools and by directly understanding the raw data files.
I abandoned assembly language in 1998 when out-of-order CPUs made much simpler C/C++ code faster, and never I missed it. If prompting through architectural documents, concept art, and design plans can transcend typing code and tweaking vertices, that will enable developers to spend their time on higher-level, higher value technical and creative tasks.
What matters is the end product, whether it's a game or an engine. Anything developers can do to try out more ideas and make better software and games faster is a win for everyone.
Dave Morin 🦞 retweeted
I’ve been thinking about @davemorin’s observation a lot this weekend. Since we launched @itsdazzleai, I’ve been making the case that your camera roll is a better basis for personal assistant work than email is. While getting access to both email and photos would be great, if I get one, I want photos.
Part of it is that we can get a sense of your taste and part of it is that *you* decide what you take pictures of so you decide what’s in your camera roll. It’s *your* to-do list, not someone else’s for you.
Dazzle puts you in charge and lets us anticipate what you need and what you like. Try it at dazzle.ai/app
There's an insidious new type of slop happening at work. Email used to just be other people's todo list for your life. Now the people you work with are driven by their AI agents, which often lack the context to know what matters for them, let alone for you. So they ask you for things as if they were priorities. It feels off because it is: Email is now other people's agent's todo list for your life. This is going to take some work to fix.
Dave Morin 🦞 retweeted
The voices in your head are layered thick upon your consciousness. So will the agents be layered thick upon you. We will need to meditate them all away. The voices, and the agents.
There's an insidious new type of slop happening at work. Email used to just be other people's todo list for your life. Now the people you work with are driven by their AI agents, which often lack the context to know what matters for them, let alone for you. So they ask you for things as if they were priorities. It feels off because it is: Email is now other people's agent's todo list for your life. This is going to take some work to fix.