Links #123

Jason Kottke on Peter Ablinger’s talking piano. Wow. That’s…crazy.

Behdad Esfahbod on the state of text rendering in 2024. (Esfahbod is the author of HarfBuzz, the predominant open source shaper.) Fascinating read. I also liked Some Font Tools, his presentation with Marianna Paszkowska on some new fonttools features.

GT Academy, a series on how to design a sans serif typeface.

Benjamin Reinhardt on what it takes to get new materials out of the lab and into mass production. “Despite university teams regularly announcing triumphantly that they’ve created a material with seemingly magical properties like artificial muscles made out of carbon nanotubes or ‘limitless power’ from graphene, new materials-enabled human capabilities have been rare in the past 50 years. Why is there such a gap between headlines and reality when it comes to new materials? Is there anything we can do about it?”