P.S. You Should Know... | Issue #418
Rodeo
my story 🚀
🤠 We took a trip to the Austin Rodeo last weekend to walk the fairgrounds, play carnival games and experience a dose of farm and ranch culture. It’s nice that in Texas, summer weather starts early in the spring.
fun facts 🙌
You can flip a Quantum Coin. This coin flip app is connected to an IBM quantum computing service, providing a truly random outcome. ~ learn more
Everyone knows your location. So many apps secretly collect geolocation data without user consent. This developer decided to try and track himself through this backdoor data. He stopped short of buying his data in the database due to the hefty pricetag. “But still, I know my location data was collected and I know where to buy it!” ~ learn more
The 88x31 GIF collection. If you grew up on the internet in the 90s and early 2000s you won’t regret the nostalgia in this link. ~ learn more
tech, startups, internet ⚡
Are we going to pretend $750/hr law firms are going to be business as usual in the AI age? Attention subscribers who are attorneys — I want to hear from you on this… “I just used Grok Deep Research to draft a simple contract. Took 15 minutes. Would have cost $2,000 with a lawyer. When I sent it to my attorney to review, his response was "looks good" 2 days later.” ~ learn more
How to build, scale and win in hard tech. “Those that succeed are focused from day one on developing technology and building companies that deliver real economic value per dollar spent, not by leaning on government crutches, rich subsidies, or vague promises of economies of scale. They develop and build rapidly and iteratively with a maniacal focus on the cash they spend and an unmatched urgency to generate revenue.” ~ learn more
AI is stifling tech adoption. Of course AI assistants lower the bar for who can code and how quickly, expanding the universe of people who can create software. Yet as more code-writing comes through this pipeline, it also creates a choke point for the underlying tech that’s used in the software. This is a great point: “I have noticed a bias towards specific technologies in multiple popular models and have noted anecdotally in conversation and online discussion people choosing technology based on how well AI tooling can assist with its usage or implementation.” ~ learn more
USV’s slow hunch. A rare interview with Fred Wilson and Brad Burnham. “Since founding USV in 2003, Fred and Brad have backed companies like Twitter, Etsy, Cloudflare, and Coinbase while developing an investment thesis focused on enabling new forms of value creation through open access to networks, capital, and knowledge.” ~ learn more
better doing 🎯
The cybernetic teammate. Don’t let this title intimidate you. This post shares the results of very interesting field research among 776 professionals at Procter and Gamble, the consumer goods giant. The upshot: teams do better work than individuals. Yet, individuals with AI do work that’s just as good as a team. And empower a team with AI and they are “significantly more likely to produce [top 10%] solutions.” ~ learn more
Startups should push ambitious public-facing agenda from day one. “A startup’s story isn’t just marketing—it’s how it attracts talent, capital, and customers before it even has a finished product.” ~ learn more
Our job is not to make our kids like us. “Our job is to help our kids become who they are meant to be. Almost certainly, whoever they want to be has some precedent in our family—and history. We owe it to them to show these branches of the family tree, to introduce them to the ancestors who planted the seeds that are now growing inside them.” ~ learn more
to your health ⚕
Big 6™ Lymph Reset. I came across a post on social media about draining lymph nodes. It passed the “ask AI if this is legit” initial screener. So, I searched a bit and found this short instructional video. I haven’t a clue if it actually does anything for me but I’ve tried it a couple times now. If you’re knowledgeable about this please reach out! ~ learn more
under the microscope 🔬
Red onions protect solar cells. “A recent study … found that nanocellulose dyed with red onion skin extract provides very effective UV protection. The nanocellulose film protected 99.9% of UV radiation up to 400 nanometers. This UV filter outperformed even the commercial PET-based UV filter, which was selected for the study to represent the market standard.” ~ learn more
Male blue-lined octopuses paralyze females before mating to prevent being eaten. Who needs fiction when you have reality. “Female blue-lined octopuses are much larger than the males and have been known to eat their partners after copulation.” ~ learn more
thoughts of food 🍔
On the origin of the pork taboo. I had an oversimplified explanation in mind before I read this. Now I know that I know nothing. “Exploring ancient people’s shifting beliefs about rearing and eating pigs…” ~ learn more