ZD 25.34: Linking Different
Curious about GPU smuggling, AI and housing bubbles? You found the right thing to read.
Is GPU smuggling the sign we are an in AI bubble? Does it matter if we are in an AI bubble? Is housing in a recession at the same time? Weird prompts get you better answers. What is involution and why does it matter?
Enjoy this week’s links links. I wanted to test a new format. Let me know if the pull quote is helpful for context. I thought it was interesting pulling them.
In other news, things have been very busy at the Zeitgeist ranch. Unfortunately we ran out of time to compose a musical coda this week.
Let me know what you think about the new format in the comments.
The Distilled Spirit
AI on Three Levels
Looking at AI on a macro, product and user level.
GPUs and Bubbles
🕵️♀️ How to Smuggle GPUs into China ()
High-end GPUs are perfectly legal to possess and use in China even if it is not legal to send them there. It creates an interesting supply chain. One gem:
Jordan Schneider: This needs to sink in for people. There are server racks which the US government — even the Trump administration — has decided are too powerful, too dual-use, too scary to give China access to. But we still need Chinese firms to make these things.
💔 Broken Economics of AI (CipherTalk)
The AI you and I are using is heavily subsidized by venture capital. What happens when prices have to rise?
The economics work like Russian dolls of subsidy. Microsoft loses money on every GPT-5 call to capture Office and Azure customers. OpenAI loses money on API pricing to gain developer mindshare. Cursor loses money on unlimited plans to hook coding teams. Each layer absorbs losses, betting they can change terms later.
🎈 A Bigger DotCom Bubble ()
US equities markets have been in a nearly two-decade long QE-driven bubble. AI is continuing this economic distortion.
The U.S. economy has some real issues: a federal deficit growing by a trillion dollars every 100 days, 60% of people barely getting by, and 20% buying groceries on credit or using “buy now, pay later” schemes. Yet the stock market and the broader economy keep humming along, thanks in part to a financial system designed to keep the party going.
Building AI Products
Helpful guidance for building apps around AI.
🎲 Building Products in the Probabilistic Era (Gian Segato)
AI deeply and radically changes the way software behaves — we grew up in a world of deterministic software, we design deterministic software and we expect deterministic software. But AI is probabilistic, it changes the way we think about, build and test software. This time really is different in this case.
It's ontologically different. We're moving away from deterministic mechanicism, a world of perfect information and perfect knowledge, and walking into one made of emergent unknown behaviors, where instead of planning and engineering we observe and hypothesize.
🤡 Your AI Product Needs a Different Lifecycle (Lenny's Newsletter)
”This time is different” applies to your product development lifecycle too. Your strategies need to change to embrace the non-deterministic nature and work carefully.
We often compare working with AI to onboarding a new teammate. The teammate might be brilliant, but they don’t yet know how your team works. You don’t hand them your highest-stakes projects on day one. You start small, observe, build trust, and, as they show what they can handle, you gradually expand their scope. AI systems need that same path. That’s what the CC/CD framework is designed to support.
👁 How AI Sees ()
One of the amazing things about AI is that it opens the door to make apps that can see, hear and watch videos. But AI does not see like you and me — it looks at things in a different light. This is a really good guide to understand the physics.
Multimodal tokenization extends the concept of text tokens to images, audio, and video. Images get converted through patch embeddings (splitting into grid squares), vector quantization (learning visual codebooks), or contrastive embeddings (CLIP-style). Audio uses neural codecs (preserving sound quality), ASR transcription (converting to text), or hierarchical approaches (multiple resolution levels).
Using AI
The pointy end of AI: your workflows.
🧠 Weird Prompts, Better Answers ()
Pushing AI to be bold or weird gets interesting and useful results. It can help you get out of a creative rut and help you find new and potentially amazing results. Here are some ways to get started.
“Point out blindspots. Spotlight what others with radically different perspectives might find problematic if they were to read this with a critical eye. Offer a list of unconventional suggestions for addressing these issues.”
5️⃣ You Are Using GPT-5 Wrong (Artificial Corner)
GPT-5 caught a lot of people off guard, causing some user consternation. Don’t belive the hype, or cries as the case may be. The new platform is probably pretty good once you get through the learning curve, here are some pro tips to get you there.
According to OpenAI, cleaning up ambiguities and contradictions in prompts drastically improves GPT-5’s performance.
📖 A Tale of Three AI Study Modes ()
Claude, ChatGPT and Gemini each have a study mode to assist with learning. Comparison shows a clear winner. If you are looking for a study buddy, Claude seems to be the choice.
Silliness aside, this was a pretty telling test. In my book, Claude handled it exceptionally well. It used Socratic questioning to gently nudge me into confronting my assumptions without sounding dismissive or patronizing.
Self-Improvement
Learn to leverage your superpowers, leadership and productivity.
🦸♂️ How to Master Your Superpower (Jason Feifer)
What if your greatest strength is your greatest weakness? You need to understand and control your trait blind spot to succeed.
Then I watched a video of myself at that event. My wife was right. I wasn’t just energetic. I was an uncontrolled explosion.
🗽 Leaders Who Refuse to Submit to the Mob (Admired Leadership Field Notes)
Leadership is about making the right, not the popular decision.
Leaders who submit to the mob almost always regret it after the dust has settled. And let’s be clear: Mobs take many forms, including boards, senior leadership teams, activists, media, and vocal team members.
📝 Tool Up and Use AI like Casey Newton (The Platformer)
A really interesting look at the tools a very advanced knowledge worker is using on a day to day basis and how he leverages AI. It is a great long term review of platforms like Notion, Recall, Capacities.
For what it's worth, my most-used models are GPT-5 thinking (previously o3), and Gemini 2.5 Pro. GPT-5 is my daily workhorse, but I also think Gemini is underrated.
📰 Learn Self-Publishing From the Best ()
Wired Senior Maverick Kevin Kelly has published a few things. He shares his collected wisdom on how to publish and self-publish today.
In conclusion, the way I approach publishing today is with as much self-publishing as I can handle. I’d write in public installments, as a subscription newsletter, or e-book single chapters, or simple posts on my blog.
Housing and Involution
Maybe there is an AI bubble. Is there a housing bubble too? And what is Involution?
❄ Frozen Housing Market ()
Americans have stopped moving, effectively freezing the housing market and perhaps causing more knock on effects.
If people feel locked in their current house and can’t upgrade because they cannot afford the mortgage payments, I wondered if it can affect fertility rate.
🔻 Is Housing in a Recession? )
Single family housing starts have hit the lowest level in two years. Lumber prices are collapsing because people are not buying wood.
To pull out of this housing recession, I think we’re going to need the 30-year mortgage rate to start with a 5. Even then, that may not be enough to spark an immediate turnaround. And let’s be clear, we’re not going back to the 3–4% days anytime soon.
💫 Chinese Involution (CipherTalk)
If it feels like Chinese firms want to race to he bottom and beat you on price, it is because they have evolved to eat themselves rather than grow. Often with CCP support.
For one, the government already coordinates action among key industrial giants. For example, Beijing effectively forced the only US producer of rare earth elements, Mountain Pass, out of business in 2015 by cutting prices by 80% before letting prices go back up.
Tech War Stories
Palm pilots and defeating lead paint are interesting tech tales.
🌴 Remembering The Palm IIIx ()
The Palm piloted a lot of what we now do with our phones. It still required now archaic offline synch to be able to use, but having an assistant you could sync beat processing hand written notes by hand.
This Palm runs at 16Mhz, has 4MB of RAM and a resolution of 160x160 pixels. Those fonts and graphics are chonky! I remember thinking this was a technical wonder for the time. After all, it had very similar specs to my Mega STE from 1992 except that it fit in the palm of your hand!
🎨 Defeating Lead Paint (The Works in Progress Newsletter)
Lead paint was a necessary evil until a Norwegian chemist figured out how an industrial byproduct could produce a better paint.
. . . Peder Farup, a chemistry professor in Norway’s first technical school, tried to separate titanium from its ore, following a request from a government-backed committee. The new country, which had abundant iron ores of which titanium is a byproduct, was searching for uses. Farup noticed opaque red and yellow by-products: pigments.
Other Interests
The Wide World of Sports
🧓 Offensive Formations from 1955 ()
A guided tour through a 1955 football manual. It is interesting how many of these sets look not too different than some of the pistol and direct-snap formations we see today. Don’t miss part 2.
⚽ From Green Hell to the First Division? ()
Villa Hayes is called the gateway to Green Hell; the last stop before the Gran Chaco and the dense interior. Development has come to the region, and 12 de Junio finds itself as the first club from the west bank of the Paraguay river with a chance to enter the first division.
Medieval Times
👩🌾 Life as a Medieval Peasant (ACOUP)
No social mobility and subsistence living were not fun. We live in amazing times.
🏰 BYO Trebuchet (Barn Lab)
In case you want to DIY a small-scale medieval siege weapon. Who doesn’t love making things fly?
Cooking
🥩 All Hail The Flip Flop (General Sport Club)
Try this at your end of summer BBQ — I think it would work well with a beef shank if you don’t have a deer leg handy.
💯 100 Cookbook Test Lessons (The Cookbook Test)
Great list of cooking lessons from an interesting publication.
The Look
Grade inflation hit Rotten Tomatoes too. Via Stat Significant:
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