A lot of the emails I get from founders are now written in a hard-hitting journalistic style. I know they're written by AI, because no founder ever wrote this way before. And once you realize something is written by AI, it's hard not to ignore it.

I have never knowingly finished reading an email signed by a human but written by AI. It feels like being lied to, and who would stand for that?

[...] It makes me think less of the author. It means they can't write well unaided (or feel they can't), and that they're trying to trick me.

It's not impressive to use AI to write stuff for you; any teenager can do that.

— Paul Graham

Tags: writing, ai-misuse, paul-graham, generative-ai, ai, llms

The thing about 90% of TDMs [Technical Decision Makers] is that they're motivated primarily by NOT GETTING FIRED. These aren't people who browser Lobsters or push to GH on the weekend. These are people that work 9 to 5, get paid, go home, and NEVER THINK ABOUT WORK AGAIN. So to achieve all that, they follow secular trends supported by analysts and broad public sentiment. Oh, Gartner said that "AI strategy" is most important? McKinsey said "context" needs to be managed? Well, "Context Engine for AI Apps" is going to be defensible. Buy it.

— Mitchell Hashimoto, in a conversation about the design of the Redis homepage

Tags: marketing, mitchell-hashimoto, redis

Headless everything for personal AI

Why? Because using personal AIs is a better experience for users than using services directly (honestly); and headless services are quicker and more dependable for the personal AIs than having them click round a GUI with a bot-controlled mouse.

Evidently Marc Benioff thinks so too:

Welcome Salesforce Headless 360: No Browser Required! Our API is the UI. Entire Salesforce & Agentforce & Slack platforms are now exposed as APIs, MCP, & CLI. All AI agents can access data, workflows, and tasks directly in Slack, Voice, or anywhere else with Salesforce Headless.

If this feed does take off it's going to play havoc with existing per-head SaaS pricing schemes.

I'm reminded of the early 2010s era when every online service was launching APIs. Brandur Leach reminisces about that time in The Second Wave of the API-first Economy, and predicts that APIs are ready to make a comeback:

Suddenly, an API is no longer liability, but a major saleable vector to give users what they want: a way into the services they use and pay for so that an agent can carry out work on their behalf. Especially given a field of relatively undifferentiated products, in the near future the availability of an API might just be the crucial deciding factor that leads to one choice winning the field.

Tags: apis, matt-webb, salesforce, saas, ai, brandur-leach

The problem is that LLMs inherently lack the virtue of laziness. Work costs nothing to an LLM. LLMs do not feel a need to optimize for their own (or anyone's) future time, and will happily dump more and more onto a layercake of garbage. Left unchecked, LLMs will make systems larger, not better — appealing to perverse vanity metrics, perhaps, but at the cost of everything that matters.

As such, LLMs highlight how essential our human laziness is: our finite time forces us to develop crisp abstractions in part because we don't want to waste our (human!) time on the consequences of clunky ones.

— Bryan Cantrill, The peril of laziness lost

Tags: bryan-cantrill, ai, llms, ai-assisted-programming, generative-ai

In 2023, the Swedish government announced that the country’s schools would be going back to basics, emphasizing skills such as reading and writing, particularly in early grades. After mostly being sidelined, physical books are now being reintroduced into classrooms, and students are learning to write the old-fashioned way: by hand, with a pencil or pen, on sheets of paper. The Swedish government also plans to make schools cellphone-free throughout the country.

Educational authorities have been investing heavily. Last year alone, the education ministry allocated $83 million to purchase textbooks and teachers’ guides. In a country with about 11 million people, the aim is for every student to have a physical textbook for each subject. The government also put $54 million towards the purchase of fiction and non-fiction books for students.

These moves represent a dramatic pivot from previous decades, during which Sweden—and many other nations—moved away from physical books in favor of tablets and digital resources in an effort to prepare students for life in an online world. Perhaps unsurprisingly, the Nordic country’s efforts have sparked a debate on the role of digital technology in education, one that extends well beyond the country’s borders. US parents in districts that have adopted digital technology to a great extent may be wondering if educators will reverse course, too.

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If you’ve ever had to deal with a flat tire, you know how quickly it can derail your day. That’s why it’s worth considering a portable inflator like the Fanttik X9 Pro. The small, rechargeable air pump that can quickly inflate tires on cars and bikes is down to $59.98 ($20 off) at Amazon and directly from Fantikk as a part of Amazon’s Big Spring sale. This sale price is the best we’ve seen since July.

Fanttik X9 Pro Portable Tire Inflator

Where to Buy:

• $79.97 $59.98 at Amazon (with on-page coupon)
• $79.97 $59.98 at Fanttik (with code X9PRO1)
• $79.99 at Best Buy

Fanttik’s portable pump can inflate a compact car tire from 30 to 35 PSI in about a minute, and with a maximum pressure of 150 PSI, it works with everything from SUVs and bikes to sports balls. Using it is simple; pull out its air hose, attach it to your tire (or other inflatable doodad), then select from one of the four preset modes for cars, motorcycles, bikes, and balls — or switch to manual if you want more control. The built-in display shows your tire’s pressure in real time, your selected target level, and remaining battery life, so you can easily track progress on the most important metrics. It also automatically shuts off when it’s done, so there’s no need to keep checking it. 

Weighing in at about a pound, the X9 Pro should be easy to carry, and its slim design includes built-in storage for accessories (it comes with adapters for different valve types). Its battery recharges via USB-C and can run continuously for up to 23 minutes.