AI progress and takes - Feb 2026
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Facebook's first Director of Product Engineering and prior CTO of Dropbox on his lifetime craft of coding changing rapidly
Why download an app when you can soon conjure one up tailor fit for you (per legendary engineer Andrej Karpathy)
AI was able to make a very realistic fight between Brad Pitt and Tom Cruise…The effect AI will have on film and TV is titanic
Olympics!
Connor Hellebuyck saved 41 of 42 shots to lead the USA hockey team to its first gold medal since 1980 - the road to the gold was filled with resilience at every level, from high school to college to professional.
Brad Jacobs is one of the best business people you've never heard of, having started EIGHT (yes, 8) separate billion dollar companies. Here's a couple of the top quotes that stood out for me from his books "How to make a few billion dollars" and "How to make a few more billion dollars".
Visualize a specific employee walking into your office and quitting without warning. Your immediate, visceral gut reaction tells you exactly what kind of "player" they are:
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C-Players (Relief): If your internal reaction is a secret sense of relief or a feeling that "the problem solved itself," they are a C-player.
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B-Players (Annoyance): If you feel annoyed because you know you’ll have to spend time and energy finding a replacement, but you aren't devastated, they are a B-player.
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A-Players (Panic): If your heart sinks and you feel a sense of panic or a desperate need to keep them at all costs, they are an A-player. Jacobs argues you should "overpay" these people because their ROI is exponential.
Jacobs on one of his secrets to success: "Execs don't learn enough from their employees. I ask my employees two questions and it has a huge impact on how I lead:
- What's your best idea for this company?
- What's the stupidest thing this company does?"
"Get the long term trend right. What's the top long term trend of the last million years? Humans make tools."
"You have to rearrange your brain...Business is problems, it is solving problems again and again so you have to get your mindset into a place to like having and solving problems, and you have to find ways to handle the stress [Jacobs meditates twice a day]."
“Go all in. Go deep on a project and do the best work you’ve ever done. Put your whole heart and soul into a project. You have it in you to create something fantastic and really achieve something. It’s a critical moment in your life, when you understand that it’s up to you. You can diddle daddle through life and just kind of sleepwalk, or you can have big dreams and find your passion and go all in.”
Life advice from Kevin Kelly:
- "Enthusiasm is worth 25 IQ points."
- "To make something good just do it. To make something great just redo it, redo it, redo it. The secret to making fine things is in remaking them."
Music producer Rick Rubin:
- “Do you know the biggest mistake most musicians make? Their first album comes from love, heartbreak, passion, or depression. They have no expectation of how the world will respond. They write it from the heart, and if it catches on, they’re validated by the world. But then they start writing their second album, and they don’t necessarily write it based on love, heartbreak, or passion. They write the album they think the world will want…When making art, the audience comes last.”
- "Rules direct us to average behaviors. If aiming to make something exceptional, most rules don’t apply. If anything the goal is to amplify your differences. Communicate your singular perspective."
AI happenings and takes - January 2026
One of the best engineers in the world on the massive leap in AI coding effectiveness in December 2025
Which products win and lose in a world where AI Agents, as opposed to people, pick them more and more?
Box CEO on the future of enterprise software in a world of AI. Lots of very thoughtful points (see snapshots) and worth reading for anyone in tech, but the core thesis is:
“In contrast to some of the public discussion, l'd argue that in a world of 100X more Al agents than people in an enterprise, the value of the systems of record and tools agents will use will go up, not down. Because in this new world, software provides the guardrails on which agents can operate successfully within an enterprise, and gives them the underlying tools to use to be more productive themselves and work alongside people."
Boston was once the clear number 2 for behind Silicon Valley in venture capital - what happened? See Boston VC Michael Campos’ take here
Top 10 geopolitical risks for 2026 from the Eurasia Group. Excerpt from risk #2 snapshot, which I thought was a significant macro callout
Miscellaneous- 2026
John Rawls argues that advantages from the “birth lottery” (family, class, talents) are morally arbitrary. Because people don’t deserve them, society should be designed as if no one knows their starting position (the veil of ignorance).
This position is certainly thought provoking, but coming across this site helped me empathize more with it and make it a bit more concrete. Give it a go and see if it does the same for you.
