The Chinese e-commerce giant is stepping into physical retail, announcing plans to open its first stores in France. Paris Mayor Anne Hidalgo is not a fan: “[this store] is contrary to the ecological and social ambitions of Paris,” highlighting potential conflicts with local values. I can’t imagine an American mayor doing that, but that’s probably my failure of imagination as it’ll probably happen at some point in my lifetime. ~…
“What’s it like to build the fastest-growing company in American history... and then watch it all come crashing down? We sat down with John Hefter, co-founder of the legendary Amazon aggregator Thrasio, for a brutally honest conversation about the company’s wild ride from a multi-billion dollar unicorn to bankruptcy.” ~ learn more
“This story is not about tonsils. It’s about how two equally credentialed people can make you feel entirely different about your own instincts. It’s about how different healthcare can feel, and why trust is not a luxury. It’s beyond “bedside manner” and into curiosity, emotional intelligence, thoughtfulness, and genuine care….” ~ learn more
This is a great take-off based on the book Seeing Like a State, which provided me with a foundation for understanding large centralizing forces like governments. “Thinking in terms of legibility and illegibility explains so many of the things that are confusing about large software companies.” The piece explores how tech companies strive for “legibility” to make work measurable and predictable, yet depend heavily on “illegible” work—those untracked, informal processes…
“Vibe engineering establishes a clear distinction from vibe coding. It signals that this is a different, harder and more sophisticated way of working with AI tools to build production software.” Unlike the fast and loose vibe coding, vibe engineering combines AI with professional accountability for robust software. ~ learn more
Reminder that LLMs are a new tool and we need to try hard to learn how to get the best out of them. “Markdown-KV came out top, hitting 60.7% accuracy and landing roughly 16 points ahead of CSV.” Testing 11 formats, Markdown-KV provided the highest accuracy despite using more tokens, while popular formats like CSV and JSONL underperformed. ~ learn more
This annual report delivers once again as a fantastic resource covering latest research, industry, politics, and safety. “It’s clear that AI is the most important economic growth driver we have. It’s a system of production, reshaping energy markets, capital flows, and policy frameworks. What began with scaling laws is now being governed by physics, geopolitics, and colossal sums of capital.” If you prefer, there’s a 25 minute video of the…
This almost makes sense to me, except that I thought the population has been shrinking not growing. Is a lack of housing really the limiting factor? “Downtown Chicago could add more than 100 million square feet of new development and house over 300,000 residents by 2045.” This ambitious city plan aims to dramatically increase the population density and urban infrastructure of the city center. ~ learn more
“What I found isn’t just data analytics—it’s an automated surveillance network built for precision at scale. The system draws from DMV databases, data brokers, phone metadata, facial recognition, and license plate readers. Together, these feeds form a unified view of movement and identity across most of the U.S. adult population.” ~ learn more
I can’t miss a chance to share a study promoting my favorite way to get around town. “E-cargo cycling may help cultivate a cycling culture both at the household level and the community level.” New research shows these bikes are not just practical replacements for car trips but also reshape social norms and community connections. ~ learn more