🏇 The Harness Comes of Age (Latent.Space)
Sometime around Christmas 2025 your AI tooling got a lot better. The models had got marginally better, the tooling got exponentially better. You could finally do useful things with your agentic harness. Your AI is no longer a brain in a vat. Comparing AI tools is really comparing harnesses.
⚡Buying Amps Not Brains (CipherTalk)
One challenge with new technologies is “how do I bill this thing?” The concept of billing by the watt-hour is easily understood, so we bill AI based on the tokens used. A consumption-style nugget we can all agree on. This might not be sustainable, better harnesses use fewer tokens to get to the same places. And we might figure out how to charge by outcome rather than time and materials.
🤷♂️ Do Hyperscaler Growth Numbers Add Up? (Overweight Skepticism)
Many people are shouting that the top-line AI growth numbers do not add up. That much is true, but exactly how depends on how you squint at the numbers. One way to look at it is Azure, Google Cloud Platform and Amazon Web Services all have much different customer relationships and risk profiles.
🔬 AI Needs Your Failed Experiments Too (Air Street Press)
Published papers only show the happy, successful path. They don’t include the blind alleys and wrong turns it took to get there. Getting the discarded papers and failed ideas into the corpus will help training. Failed experiments inspire successes.
🏭 Steel Mills vs Data Centers (Andy Masley)
Gwangyang Steel Works is the world’s largest steel mill. It uses massive amounts of water and creates tons of emissions. How different is it from a data center?
☎️ Why There Will Not Be Another Bell Labs (Investing 101)
Bell Labs was a product of its space and time. The funding and incentive structure are hard to repeat today, riding on an illegal industrial arrangement.
🏠 Backyard Bodegas For All (On the Lege)
Before the 20th century, it was pretty common to run a retail shop out of the front room of your house. Aggressive zoning in the name of conformity pulled the retail out of your neighborhood. Accessory Commercial Units need to find a way back into our neighborhoods. Bring on the backyard bodegas.
🏈 Johnny Unitas Got Cut (Throwbacks: A Newsletter About Sports History and Culture)
Scouting quarterbacks is a tough business. The Steelers even cut some kid called Johnny Unitas because the coach thought he was dumb.
👀 Speed Reading Isn’t Real (Cognitive Wonderland)
Various speed reading systems make promises, but they really just help you skim in a more structured manner. Understanding takes time.
🥜 The Great Peanut Crisis of 1980 (Eat Shit and Prosper)
Was the great American peanut allergy wave caused by a bad peanut crop and mass peanut butter consumption?
⛵ Do not Build the Vasa (Sahil Bloom)
Swedish King Gustavus Adolphus wanted to make the grandest ship to match his imperial ambitions, the Vasa. Scope crept, the ship got heavier. The ship never made it out of the harbor, sinking on its maiden voyage. Feature bloat played a role. Subtraction wins wars.
👠 RushTok Isn’t Real (a16z)
Janie appeared to be a 19-year-old PNM in Tuscaloosa participating in #rushtok. Janie was actually a figment of a16z Partner Olivia Moore’s imagination.
The Look
Data Center support is falling among all parties via Don't Worry About the Vase.
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