Category: Thinks

Mint: “In 1848, Samuel Brannan struck it rich—not by mining gold, but by selling shovels. Today, India’s ‘market plumbing’ follows his blueprint. While investors chase the next big stock, the real fortune could lie somewhere else.”

Doug O’Laughlin: “Claude Code (and subsequent innovations) clearly will change a lot about software, but the typical (and right) pushback is that you cannot use “non-deterministic software” for defined business practices. However, there is a persistent design pattern in hardware that addresses this difference: the memory hierarchy. No one can rely on anything in a computer’s non-persistent memory, yet it is one of the most valuable components of the entire stack. For those unfamiliar with computer science, there is a memory hierarchy that trades capacity and persistence for speed, and the system works because there are handoffs between levels. In the traditional stack, SRAM sits at the top; overflow is to DRAM, which is non-persistent (if you turn it off, it goes away), and then to NAND, which is persistent (if you turn it off, it persists). I don’t think it’s worth matching the hierarchy too closely, but I believe that Claude Code and Agent Next will be the non-persistent memory stack in the compute stack. Claude Code is DRAM.”

Business Standard: “A decade into Startup India, most Indian unicorns are clustered in consumer and finance, highlighting limited depth in enterprise tech and frontier technologies like AI.”

NYTimes: “Luiz Pessoa, who runs the Maryland Neuroimaging Center, recently offered a metaphor that helps a layman like me understand what’s going on. In an essay for Aeon, he asks us to imagine a flock of starlings swooping and swirling in the sky. No single starling organizes this ballet, yet out of the local interactions between all the starlings a coordinated dance emerges. As the brain is trying to navigate through the complex situations of the day, it is creating what Pessoa calls “neuronal ensembles distributed across multiple brain regions,” which, like a murmuration of starlings, “forms a single pattern from the collective behavior.” This makes sense to me. Life is really complicated. To deal with a million unexpected circumstances, you wouldn’t want a brain filled with just a few regions doing just a few jobs. You’d want the brain to be able to improvise a vast number of networked ensembles that would dynamically affiliate and thus coordinate sensible responses.”

Telegraph UK: “Scientists have revealed the secret to living longer. Harvard experts believe the optimal way to extend life is adding more variety to exercise routines. They tracked more than 111,000 people over more than 30 years, finding that those with the broadest mix of physical activity had an almost 20 per cent lower risk of early death from all causes. Walking was the single activity associated with the lowest risk of death – 17 per cent lower for those who did the most walking compared with those who did the least. Individually, tennis, squash and racquetball were found to cut risk by 15 per cent, rowing by 14 per cent, running or weight training by 13 per cent, jogging by 11 per cent and cycling by 4 per cent. Climbing the stairs regularly was linked to a 10 per cent lower risk.”

Seb Krier: “To solve hard problems, reasoning models sometimes simulate an internal conversation between different personas, like a debate team inside their own digital brain. They argue, correct each other, express surprise, and reconcile different viewpoints to reach the right answer. Human intelligence probably evolved because of social interactions, and it seems like a similar intuition might well apply to AI!”

Naushad Forbes: “A developed India demands that we do better. That we invest in quality education as a society. That entrepreneurs in both manufacturing and services invest in the capacity and employment that skills our wider workforce. That we as a society have faith in the idea of progress, that we have a better future, and that the responsibility for delivering that better future rests with ourselves and not the government. And that we embrace the creative destruction that replaces inefficient incumbents with more nimble competitors.”

WSJ: “For most of the 20th century, pop culture was the glue that held the U.S. together. But what will it mean now that everything has splintered?…Like so many 21st-century trends, what feels good for us as individuals is eroding us as a populace. We stare at our phones rather than each other. We find out someone else has different political views than ours and swipe left on a dating app. And if we discover the person next to us on the plane listens only to truecrime podcasts and streams true-crime documentaries, we may feel there’s an unbridgeable gap between us and load up our favorite science-fiction series rather than talk to them.”

Hriday Jain: “The internet already made knowledge free decades ago. During the software revolution and the internet boom, access to knowledge and skills skyrocketed. Tutorials, blogs, courses, and open-source code almost anything you wanted to learn was available to anyone, often for free. But there was a limitation. Internet knowledge is static and broadcasted. It’s written for everyone, which means it’s perfect for no one. You had to spend time finding the right content, translate it into your own context, fill in the gaps, and hope you were understanding it correctly. AI changes this completely. Knowledge is no longer one-to-many. It is shared on a 1:1 basis, at immense speed. You can reshape information until it fits how you think and what you are trying to do. You can counter-question anything instantly. You can ask for explanations in exactly the form you need and keep refining them until they click. This is what I like to call Personalized knowledge.”

WSJ: “Employees say AI isn’t saving them much time in their daily work so far, and many report feeling overwhelmed by how to incorporate it into their jobs. Companies, meanwhile, are spending vast amounts on artificial intelligence, betting that the technology’s power to speed everything from sales to back-office functions will usher in a new era of efficiency and profit growth. The gulf between senior executives’ and workers’ actual experience with generative AI is vast, according to a new survey from the AI consulting firm Section of 5,000 white-collar workers. Two-thirds of nonmanagement staffers said they saved less than two hours a week or no time at all with AI. More than 40% of executives, in contrast, said the technology saved them more than eight hours of work a week.”

Mint: “A glue player holds a team together, helps new recruits settle in and identifies the best way forward—without seeking the spotlight. Employers who formally recognize and reward such employees could count on team cohesion for superior results.”

FT: “Physical AI takes robots to a new level. They can now combine autonomy with hardware that moves objects in the physical world – the robot itself, instruments or materials – using sensors to perceive their surroundings. This marks the next step in the evolution of robots from deterministic machines, which perform the same precise task over and again, to those that can complete varied, complex tasks and which respond to changing circumstances. Robots can learn from seeing people perform tasks and even from watching videos of people doing a particular job. They perfect their actions through trial and error, either in the real world or, increasingly, in a simulated environment. So-called one-shot learning algorithms require only a single demonstration for a robot to learn a task. These however are newer and more difficult to design. They require extensive training and are not yet widely available.”

WSJ: “Researchers at Penn and the University of Michigan have created the world’s smallest, fully programmable, autonomous robots, packing significant capacities into a device smaller than a grain of salt. These are parsimonious little things, barely visible to the naked eye yet able to sense their environment, respond to it and move around in complex patterns. As described in a new paper in the journal Science Robotics, they run on infinitesimally small quantities of energy and gain power from light. “These are the smallest programmable autonomous robots that I have seen,” said Kevin Chen, an MIT roboticist who wasn’t involved. “This is an exciting advance for the nanorobotics community.””

SaaStr: “Here’s a pattern I’ve seen play out dozens of times now, and it’s worth talking about honestly. When a B2B company’s growth slows — say, drops from 50% to 20% or even 15% — the CRO role fundamentally changes. Not officially, of course. The title stays the same. The comp plan still has new logo targets. The board deck still shows pipeline metrics. But in practice? When growth slows, the CRO job often becomes about one thing more than anything else: extracting more revenue from the existing customer base.”

Transformer News: “Combined with the “Claude in Chrome” extension, which lets Claude Code control your browser, the result is something like having a very smart generalist at your command, 24/7 — one which never gets tired, never gets bored, and can do almost anything you ask in a fraction of the time it would take a human.”

NYTimes: “In adulthood, open friendship markets become harder to find. But there’s a key to finding new ones: a shifting sense of self. We define ourselves through our relationships with friends. These connections help us to construct our desired selves, who we are, and who we are becoming. The key, then, is not just to start an activity or join a club so you can meet new people. It’s to join one related to a new sense of self or an identity you’re looking to deepen. Pregnant women, for example, will look for friendships in prenatal classes — not only to find people who understand their experience but also to reaffirm their emerging identity as a mom.”

NotBoring on a16z, a 16K word essay.

NYTimes: “The more brain power you’ve built up over the years, the more you can stand to lose before you experience impairment. Researchers still don’t agree on how to measure cognitive reserve, but one theory is that better connections between different brain regions corresponds with more cognitive reserve. To build up these connections, you need to stimulate your brain, said Dr. Joel Salinas, a neurologist at NYU Langone Health and the founder and chief medical officer of the telehealth platform Isaac Health. To do that, try an activity that is “challenging enough that it requires some effort but not so challenging that you don’t want to do it anymore,” he said.”

Mint: “Data-centre investments hint at a shift in the AI race. Soon, reliable and affordable electricity will confer a decisive advantage in this sector. As Albert O. Hirschman argued in National Power and the Structure of Foreign Trade, an economy’s true power lies in its ability to manage the choke points that affect its industries. In the AI ecosystem, the US has been leveraging its dominance in chip design by strategically limiting exports to China, while Beijing has exerted pressure on the US through its control of rare-earth materials needed to make chips, magnets and other components of advanced technology. But as the scale of the AI industry and its reliance on computing power grows, the bottleneck will move from chips to electricity because all the data centres in the world will not help if they lack a continuous supply of affordable energy. The International Energy Agency estimates that roughly 20% of planned global data-centre capacity will be at risk by 2030, owing to grid bottlenecks and interconnection queues. And as energy supplies are constrained, costs will rise, eventually trickling down to households and firms.”

Dean W. Ball: “Coding agents are language models situated within attendant software infrastructure (variously referred to as an “AI system,” “agent scaffolding,” or an “agent harness). There are many apps you can download that allow you to use coding agent, like Cursor, Windsurf, Cognition’s Devin (which is more focused on enterprise uses), Factory AI’s Droid system, or Google DeepMind’s Antigravity. But if you are new to coding, I think many of these tools could overwhelm you at first (though you may want to try them after you gain experience). They are what are known as integrated development environments (IDEs), with more of an emphasis on looking at and editing code than is in fact necessary for most new users…These agents have been around for almost a year now, but in recent weeks and months they have become so capable that I believe they meet some definitions of “artificial general intelligence.””

WSJ: “Meta Platforms Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg announced on an October earnings call that Instagram and Facebook Reels had surpassed a $50 billion annual run rate, which means that the company is on track to make that amount of revenue in the next 12 months. By comparison, analysts expect YouTube to bring in $46 billion in advertising revenue this year, and the research firm eMarketer estimates TikTok will bring in $17 billion. Zuckerberg credited the company’s AI recommendation systems which, he said, have been delivering higher quality and more relevant content on its platforms. “Video is a particular bright spot,” he said, noting that people were spending 30% more time watching videos on Instagram than they did the previous year.”

Business Standard: “More than 16 million subscribers, about 50 million viewers and close to ₹4,000 crore in revenues. Ten years after it entered India in January 2016, Netflix has firmly captured the country’s affluent, high-value consumer segment, which generates over three times the industry’s average revenue per user (Arpu), says Mihir Shah, vice-president at Media Partners Asia. Netflix accounts for roughly 10 per cent of India’s streaming video market by value and about 6 per cent of the 272 million over-the-top (OTT) subscribers the country had in 2025.” 

Digiday: “Nearly a decade after it began acquiring agencies, Accenture’s marketing arm is now comparable to the largest ad agency holdcos — and is still aggressively expanding — while sitting outside many of the structural constraints that define them. Accenture Song generated roughly $20 billion in revenue over its last fiscal 2025, up 8% on the previous year. By comparison WPP reported £14.7 billion in 2024, while Publicis Groupe made €16.03 billion. Sure, the comparison is imperfect since they’re not the same, but the signal is clear: a consulting firm now runs a marketing operation with the economic weight comparable to the largest agency networks — and unlike them, it’s not in a stabilization phase. On the contrary, Song continues to widen its footprint through acquisitions, platform investments and ecosystem partnerships. What’s emerging is a control layer in marketing services — one that increasingly determines how marketing labor, data and tech are orchestrated inside large enterprises.”

WSJ: “The Trader Joe’s tote, which sells for $2.99 in the U.S., has joined the ranks of geographically specific status bags like those from London’s Daunt Books or Paris’s Shakespeare and Company. In addition to London, they’re being carried in Seoul, Melbourne, Australia, and Tokyo. Because there are no Trader Joe’s stores abroad, the bags are listed on resale platforms like Depop, eBay and Korea’s Karrot market for up to $10,000—with some eBay listings reaching $50,000.” I got one, too!

The Athletic: “There was a time when cricket was desperate for Test matches to speed up and provide more entertainment. Take the period between 1969 and 1985, when almost half of all matches in the ultimate form of the game lasted five days and finished, to the bemusement of those not invested in the intricacies of Test cricket, in stalemate. During those 16 years of extreme negativity, 43.1 per cent of Tests ended in draws but in the last five years, that has dropped to 8.2 per cent. In this era of Twenty20 cricket and instant thrills, bore draws are virtually a thing of the past.”

WSJ: “If 2024 was the year of the podcast, 2025 was the year of the newsletter. A wave of musicians, writers, journalists, comedians and brands have launched direct-to-consumer newsletters, often mixing written words with video and audio.”

MaxSource: “The United States now has 29.8 million solopreneurs contributing $1.7 trillion to the economy. That’s 6.8% of total economic activity from businesses with no payroll. The numbers tell you this isn’t a fringe movement anymore.”

NYTimes: “Throughout 2025 in the war between Russia and Ukraine, in largely unseen and unheralded moments like the warehouse strike in Borysivka, the era of killer robots has begun to take shape on the battlefield. Across the roughly 800-mile front and over the airspace of both nations, drones with newly developed autonomous features are now in daily combat use. By last spring, Bumblebees launched from Ukrainian positions had carried out more than 1,000 combat flights against Russian targets, according to a manufacturer’s pamphlet extolling the weapon’s capabilities. Pilots say they have flown thousands more since.”

WSJ: ““Toy Tycoon” is a role-playing strategy game for up-and-coming leaders. Promising managers inside Hasbro chosen to play the game become CEOs for the day, facing decisions like whether to push into electronic games or go all-in on plush toys. Is that Marvel or Pokémon license worth it? How about that star hire? How much product should they produce? Did they hit the plan communicated to Wall Street? “I think the job of a CEO is very similar to a grand strategy game,” said Hasbro Chief Executive Chris Cocks…The goal of the game is to help the player executives think through how to manage their company’s cash, time and other resources—and pivoting when the most thoughtful plans are torpedoed. Players aim to build a brand, scale a business and smartly apply market research. Milestones include hiring the best talent, controlling inventory and dominating a category.”

NYTimes: “Build real-world strength. Nearly all of your everyday movements, even ones as simple as getting into and out of a chair, use multiple joints and muscles. And just like any feat of strength, training can help you perform those movements properly and without pain. “We have to think about daily life as an athletic event,” said Disa Hatfield, a professor of kinesiology at the University of Rhode Island. “You want to remain a competitor as long as possible.” Most of your everyday tasks involve one of these six movements: hinge, squat, lunge, push, pull, rotate. All of these motions can be trained in the gym using your body weight or minimal equipment. Start by doing a full-body workout that incorporates those movements twice a week. Make sure to take 48 hours of rest between full-body workouts to properly recover.”

Shekhar Gupta: “1985-1995 would have the most stories that dominate our democracy and debates today.  At home and around, think terminal decline of the Congress after peaking, the first coalitions, the Bofors scandal, Mandal versus Mandir contestation, insurgencies in Punjab and Kashmir, two Indian military interventions overseas (Sri Lanka and the Maldives), two war-like situations with Pakistan (Brasstacks, 1987; Pakistan’s first nuclear blackmail, 1990), a fraught Sumdorong Chu standoff with China (1986-87) and then a thaw with Deng Xiaoping, assassinations of Zia-ul-Haq and Rajiv Gandhi, the globalisation of Islamist (as distinct from Islamic) jihad and its spread to Kashmir, and the freeing of India’s economy. Although it started with rock-like stability with the Congress at 414 in the Lok Sabha, the 10 years saw four Prime Ministers. Isn’t that enough for a mere decade?“

John Plender: “Today’s euphoria is chiefly around AI and crypto. The curious thing is why people feel a need for a debate on whether they constitute a bubble, given that they so manifestly meet all the usual bubble prerequisites…Yes, there could be a 1929-style crash. But once again, as after the dotcom burst and the 2007-09 financial crisis, the central bankers will be putting a safety net under markets. And the US will continue to act as the ever constant borrower of first and last resort in the global economy. So this rerun of the Roaring Twenties will not be followed by a Great Depression. The prognosis for 2026 is thus for more froth before the crash, more Fomo and growing financial stress. Nor should we forget geopolitical friction, which could well be instrumental in pricking the bubble. And when we reach the post-crash world, prepare to reconcile yourself to protracted stagflation and unremitting populist political pressure.”

WSJ: “Nvidia’s graphic processing units, or GPUs, dominated the initial push to train AI models. But companies like Furiosa are betting that for the next stage—referred to as “inference,” or using AI models after they’re trained—their specialty chips can be competitive. Furiosa makes chips called neural processing units, or NPUs, which are a rising class of chips designed specifically to handle the type of computing calculations underpinning AI and use less energy than GPUs.”

FT: “In his next chapter, [Yann] LeCun believes that setting up a “neolab”, meaning a start-up that does fundamental research, is the new, most fertile ground. He cites OpenAI former chief technology officer Mira Murati’s Thinking Machines (“I hope the investors know what they do”) and OpenAI’s co-founder and chief scientist Ilya Sutskever’s Safe Superintelligence (“There I know the investors have no idea what they do”) as good examples. His new architecture uses videos to give AI models an understanding of the physics of our world, which will allow them to make better predictions of what will happen next. The model also relies on “emotions”, meaning past experiences and evaluations, to guide its predictions…LeCun says we will see “baby” versions of this within 12 months, and on a larger scale within a few years. It’s not quite yet superintelligence, but a path towards it.”

WSJ: “When Brandon Mancine was in his 20s, he competed in an amateur boxing competition. That’s where he learned how to block out all distractions and focus on his goal. Walking into the ring after months of training, he was hit by an assault of noise: The “Rocky” theme song blasted and the crowd roared. His friends and family cheered. And his opponent’s fans yelled obscenities at him. He ignored it all, stayed focused on his goal–and won the fight. Afterwards, when a local reporter asked him what it felt like to enter the ring, he replied: “You can’t allow yourself to hear the noise. You have to go in with a purpose.””

Mint: “At an individual level, Indians remain behind. Per capita GDP—the real deal—is estimated at $2,818 for 2025-26, and puts India among the 50 poorest countries. The climb up the individual prosperity ladder is steeper than what national-level figures suggest. “Faster (growth) for longer is the only mantra left,” said N.R. Bhanumurthy, director of Madras School of Economics. India’s greatest asset is its crucial demographic dividend window, the stage when, by one definition, the working-age population exceeds two-thirds of the total. India entered this phase in 2019 and will be there until the early 2050s. It’s during this window that several countries made the greatest progress, so the urgency to make it count is also growing stronger for India. The red flag is that Indian youth have yet to reach their full potential; many of the most educated ones are unemployed. This largely speaks to the mismatch between skills and available high-value roles in the labour market.”

Zhengdong Wang: “In Zeynep’s Law, second-order effects are dwarfed by the first-order ones in magnitude until there is substantial and repeated evidence otherwise. I’ve done my best to give substantial and repeated evidence that AI will be a big deal. But there is far to go in making that concrete. So far, second-order thinking about AI has mostly been done by AI people venturing far afield. It needs development from experts in politics, economics, and culture who take it seriously. This is what thinking it through looks like.”

Noah Smith: ““Social media” is shifting toward a combination of A) passive television-like consumption, and B) private conversations in DM groups, private messages, and small-group forums like Discord. The trend where people post things for everyone else to see, and then other people criticize them for what they post, may have been a transient, self-limiting, unhealthy fad…The main dating apps have lost tens of millions of monthly active users since 2022. And surveys suggest that young people, in particular, are abandoning the apps in favor of more real-world connections…This might be another example of how a new technology created temporary disruptions, but over time, people learned how to use it responsibly.” [via Arnold Kling]