the only way to escape your most likely destiny as a middle manager is to be open / honest / public about your work & your thoughts.

reminder: my whole account is macro commentary on culture, society, markets, economics, & especially technology. if i see a broken market w/ distorted signals, & no clear “price” discovery then i get super fascinated. everything is roughly economics + anthropology & when you add technology to that mix you get this insanely intoxicating brew. & every human who lives in society *has* to consume this brew, it’s not a choice. i’m merely the analyst & it doesn’t necessarily mean i have a dog in the fight. it’s amazing we get to live in a world where change happens this fast that this all even matters.

all the ai labs will now start implementing a “severance” protocol for employees so they don’t leak any secrets & they can’t take them to the next lab when recruited.

there’s no “secret sauce” in software or research anymore. just speed. whoever ships faster, learns faster, wins. the only real edge is compounding attempts… engineers who’ve tried, failed, & tried again. experience is the only multiplier left & even that gap closes quickly to a certain extent. even in research it’s more about iteration loops... how fast can you build, test, discard, repeat.

windsurf c suite + senior engineers = $2.4b 200 other people + $82m ARR business = $300m? contrary to popular belief acquirers like this model because they are not interested in peripheral roles other than eng in acquisitions & possibly the IP. big tech is shrinking, not growing in terms of ppl.

lmao the people with $42 in their checking account are out here posting like philosophers, meme generals, & world leaders because they got nothing to lose. meanwhile rich guys are locked in drafts wondering if a joke might ding their next LP meeting. relative poverty might be the last frontier of real authenticity online.

most people have no clue how hinge ban works. let me explain. it’s pretty much biometric exile. hinge uses facial recognition for identity locking, & taps into apple’s device level APIs (like devicecheck) to make bans stick across reinstallations, even icloud. once you’re out, you’re really out. there’s now a whole shadow economy built around getting unbanned. people edit photos, distort selfies, apply ai filters, swap devices, spoof identifiers… anything to confuse the system. some even generate slightly tweaked versions of their face just to slip through verification. it’s all wildly dystopian & absolutely perfect for this cultural moment. these apps are now the border patrol of digital intimacy. & somewhere in brooklyn, a guy is jailbreak testing 3 iphones just to match with sarah, 28, who is liberal loves traveling, hikes, & tacos.

at the current velocity of culture, odds are it’ll be none of these people. this list already feels cooked. also… where is trump? that’s a non zero chance at this point.

tired: viral memes. wired: viral mini apps based on the memes.

the tech is solid, & execution’s sharp but if i were openai, i’d ditch the flights & wedding demos. tired, overplayed, & utterly sterile. there are hundreds of easy to understand, richer, more human use cases that actually fit better. the ones that are always used as examples don’t spark curiosity, they actually drain it. bordering on parody at this point.