David Mendes

We dream of social interaction, yet we live obsessed with tech.

Snap from a #photo shooting

LinkedIn in a nutshell: I’m better than you.

I suspect AI cloning the Adobe Creative Suite will be SaaS Napster moment

AI, third world war, energy crisis, shaky job market, and all the techno optimism running on unsustainable AI capex. Wild year.

When people say they’ve lived with no regrets… I have so many!

People on the other side suggesting that you should bribe people with gifts in order to get prospects on a call. I work in a regulated industry and would probably get fired for accepting bribes.

Love LinkedIn and its notifications: “Random” person invites you to subscribe to “random” format.

Taking my read cv tote for a walk

Time asking Claude how dangerous it is . . . Claude told me in 2023 Forced cannibalism dangerous

So sleepy in the evenings since moving to decaf after lunch. I guess I need a coffee 😭

I’ve been blogging under IdeasOnDesign for the past 6 years and just reached the 1000 subscribers mark. I am not very regular with my publishing and I don’t always have the time or even something interesting to say. I enjoy it very much, though. I put together some custom numbers as celebration 😅

10% 50% 70% Cmon, just make it quick.

As prices keep increasing there seems to be a divide between purchase power in tech driven economies and the rest of the world. $1999 for a phone or $200 for an AI sub might be peanuts in parts of the world, but that’s crazy over here (iPhone duo goes for 2400€)

Late afternoon trawling #photography

Consoles I own or owned. Stopped right there with the Xbox One, once Dieter Rams found its way into gaming.

Some things go well together. Not AI & toys.

People complaining about people complaining about the Instagram rebrand, don’t realize that most inhouse driven rebranding initiatives are just ego driven initiatives by people attempting to have some sort of impact, even if that means changing something that was perfectly ok.

The first device that stuck with me because of how advanced it felt was a VCR. A black Panasonic one I had as a kid. It came with this little red laser emitting gadget that my mother used to scan timestamps off a sheet and schedule late night recordings. Futuristic stuff.

During university I wrote a few essays on Amadeo de Souza-Cardoso. He’s my favorite artist from my home country. He befriended other artists like the Delaunays and Picasso, but died too early in 1918 from the Spanish flu at just 31. Really like his cubist/collage era

AI is tiring. Not the usage of AI, but the topic in itself. You can’t go one single day without it being mentioned hundreds of times. Not even crypto was this exhausting.

In the list of things that are damaging to a developing brain, YouTube Shorts must be right there at the top.

There is a world of inspiration out there

Pre LLMs being succinct and precise was a strategic skill in being able to push things through. Post LLMs it feels like everyone is just including as many words as possible into every piece of comms.

We’re living in the Frankenstein era of tech. Over time every digital product and company slowly becomes a complex patchwork of different ideas and directions. Funnily arguing it’s for the user.

Who in their right mind thinks it’s a good idea to send a newsletter with the headline “What’d you cook this weekend?” unless it’s about food?

Keeping this one in the box until I retire. Let’s see if it outperforms the S&P 500

Oops

A nice public Patio I walked by during the weekend

I miss Posts. Damn Perplexity…

I never thought real wealth would end up defined by how many external SSDs you can afford.

It’s funny how designers tend to speak about the practice of design in absolutisms as if design is nothing but digital products and websites

So Meta’s AI token consumption costs the same as 9000 full time engineers, and the only innovative thing they ship is Ad-breaks on Instagram?

It’s fine if you don’t drink a beer or a glass of wine once in a while, but all the virtue signaling (by YouTubers) on not drinking alcohol is getting tiring. I’m not an alcoholic, I drink like one beer during the week, it doesn’t ruin my life, and I really enjoy it.

I’m not sure about Figma’s mantra of not becoming Adobe. Packing every possible feature under one tool doesn’t make it easier to use.

The internet is amazing. Spent like 30 minutes chatting with my favorite musician/producer from when I was 20 or so.

Had to order this. I really like Ethiopian Jazz. Unfortunately no digital version available, other than this YouTube video. youtu.be/0v5KEqZoiC4?...

What’s the deal with Matcha? Why is everyone drinking Matcha now? Is it good? Better than coffee?

Many seem to know what matters now that anyone can ship anything. It’s usually taste, or craft. The thing is that people value scarcity, and when almost everything becomes abundant, even craft, the question is what becomes scarce?

Going through the photos on my phone. This one is cool. Not sure what it’s supposed to be though.

Monetisation was the worst thing that happened to Twitter. It really incentivises the worst kind of behaviour and content.

I think that experience comes (or should come) with the ability to take something very complex and make it very easy to take decisions on. With AI, I feel like people are ok to even make things more complicated. Longer lists, longer texts, all the time.

There must be something very deceiving with iOS battery health. My phone is at 89% max capacity but it feels it lasts around 50% less than when it was new.

I just realized that most young and coming rappers must be using ChatGPT to write their songs 🧐