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Ben Fry

@benfry.com

Running https://fathom.info since 2010 / spent 22 years building https://processing.org and supporting its community / sometimes seen teaching at https://mit.edu

373 Posts1071 Follower147 Folgt
John Rogers@johnrogers.bsky.social · 4h ago

A family member was working at AVID back in the day, doing well. At a big company-wide meeting the execs announced “95% of television & movies are edited on Avid!” and during the cheers, their boss quietly said “that means one good competitor cuts our sales in half.” They left the next week.

e.w. niedermeyer@niedermeyer.online · 4h ago

I always feel crazy pointing this out, but it's such an important point: having 85% market share isn't actually a good thing, especially when you're buying more of your own product than that 85% of the market is

Ben Fry@benfry.com · last wk.

I spilled some words about my experience with the “demo” culture at the MIT Media Lab and how it relates to what feels like a drastically scaled up variant created by Generative AI tools: information.garden/@benfry/1170...

Ben Fry (@benfry@information.garden)

During grad school at the Media Lab, I learned a ton about building demos. Externally, there was this “demo or die” thing that was part of the PR spiel, though nobody ever talked like that internally....

information.garden

Ben Fry@benfry.com · 2w ago

I've not seen the Nolan movie, but I *have* listened to both of these books from Emily Wilson, and I cannot recommend them highly enough. The Iliad translation is so good it feels like music, while The Odyssey is a perfect balance of engaging its history while still feeling contemporary. Amazing.

EMILY WILSON@emilyrcwilson.bsky.social · last mo.

My Odyssey and Iliad translations are available as audiobooks, read/ performed by very talented real people: Claire Danes and Audra MacDonald. They do a much better job than the robots! www.audible.com/pd/The-Iliad...

Ben Fry@benfry.com · 3w ago

“MIT mechanical engineers designed a robot that can swim underwater, break through the surface, and continue flying in air. Diving birds manage this feat. ‘So we knew it was possible. Just no one had tried this in a mobile robotic system’” news.mit.edu/2026/new-fla...

Ben Fry@benfry.com · 4w ago

A 12yo watches JAWS for the first time… (We've started having our daughter write down what she thinks will happen, to keep her from spending the movie blurting things out and ruining the surprise—or simply frustrating—the rest of the room.)

Page from a notepad showing a 12yo's notes while watching Jaws. Includes things like Someone's gonna die ✓ (pls) John Williams? ✓✓✓ … gonna hire the guy – prob gonna die } torso bitten? / get sucked in with fishing rod / spear → expert hates him
Molly McKew@mollymckew.bsky.social · last mo.

And, I just want to say, because none of our recent political leaders ever seemed to think it was worth doing — THIS IS AWESOME The American people, for about $15/person/month, saved 90+ million lives because doing good because we COULD is part of what we believe in — and I think we still do /1

Lauren Dobson-Hughes@ldobsonhughes.bsky.social · last mo.

USAID provided ~ $63BN a year to 130 countries for essential food, health, agriculture, rights and democracy needs. The US accounted for nearly half of global Official Development Assistance

#BruceSterling@bruces.bsky.social · last mo.

*Also, nonfiction books which attempt to document and describe real events are not a whole lot more convincing than fiction. Just read one written five hundred years ago, all its core realistic assumptions feel completely off-the-wall

LesPhaith@lesphaith.bsky.social · last mo.

Fiction has rules and a demand to be engaging and make sense. Reality is under no such compulsion. People can be just as stupid as they please. It isn't like they are trying to sell a book after all.

Ben Fry@benfry.com · 2mo ago

Had to dust off an ancient piece of code from 2004 that used an early version of Processing. Amused to see the supported platforms list in the source:

screen capture of Java source code reading: static final String[] platforms = { "", "windows", "macos9", "macosx", "linux", "irix" };
Ben Fry@benfry.com · 2mo ago

Really enjoying all the people in Boston for the World Cup. Never seen such a happy, noisy, hilarious bunch of fans descend on the city in jerseys (and kilts for the Scots) all while randomly chanting or bursting into song *even when their team is days from playing* Here's them taking over Fenway:

Josh Kantor@jtkantor.bsky.social · 2mo ago

Scottish soccer fans in town for the World Cup made a side-trip to Fenway on Sunday and brought actual magic with them. It was such a delight and honor to get to accompany their singing.

Ben Fry@benfry.com · 2mo ago

Kinda floored that this was 1943 (or that BIC was 1950), I would have expected it was 2-3 decades earlier…  Didn't realize the extent to which, say, my parents would have been using fountain pens on a regular basis, perhaps well into college.

Present & Correct@presentcorrect.bsky.social · 2mo ago

For Ballpoint Pen Day, the original patent filed by László Bíró (Hungarian journalist) in 1943. It was the first commercially successful design, later purchased by Marcel Bich (aka BIC) in 1950.

Alexander Obenauer@alexanderobenauer.com · 2mo ago

We also have a "proposals" form if you'd like to get feedback on your idea before a full submission. Some wonderful submissions have already filtered in that way! And we have a "nominations" form if you'd like to submit a prompt for someone - a good prompt can be a wonderful gift.

Alexander Obenauer@alexanderobenauer.com · 3mo ago

Today, I'm excited to announce our next title! "Augment" is a forthcoming book featuring a collection of essays on the future of personal computing — specifically, on the kind we’d like to see more of in the future, and the ideas that might help us get there.

Augment is a forthcoming collection of essays on the future of personal computing: specifically, on the kind we as a species need in order to move beyond our stuck present, and on the ideas that will help us get there. This book is meant to serve as guidance and inspiration as we build a next generation of hardware, software, and systems. We hope you’ll share this page with those you think might write great essays for Augment, and even consider writing one yourself. Submissions are due by July 31. The technology field is today in a precarious state. A tsunamic tide of commercial thinking has managed the wholesale capture of practitioners, institutions, and dialogue. This capture has drained all imagination from our surround, and so actual invention has slid likewise near to zero. Along the way, the systems meant first to extend human reach have instead become dull and clanking manacles. Yet the same quality that makes technology easy to hijack — that massless, abstract ductility — leaves it as easy to re-form. The opportunity is still with us, undimmed, to build anew the beautiful thing, the powerful thing, the luminous thing, the human thing. This then is the invitation: to trawl a net through waters that, far enough down, remain idea-rich and that, with care, might still teem.