Recommendation: If you're not a big fan of podcasts this interview with AirBnB CEO Brian Chesky might change your mind. Hear surprisingly honest and captivating answers that covered a brief history of industrial design, how he totally changed his leadership style, what his first and last call of every workday is, and where AirBnB is heading next

AI Happenings - May 2026

Miscellaneous - May 2026

• “The big change over the last year was going from chat-based where AI tells you what ti do to agent based where AI just does it for you”
• “At a lot of companies roles are very strictly defined. But jobs are kinda fake delineations at times and you can just do things”

• “Trading is like boxing. You have an opponent - the market. You’re feeling each other out, gathering information, trying to do well enough, and every now and then you’ll see an opening for a knockout, an opportunity for a major investment win.”
• “I love to find peak Spring and peak Fall. You can find that day in a neighborhood. And in peak Spring, when the colors are vibrant and the fragrance is just overwhelming, I’ve never felt so alive in my life. And I’ll look for that. I travel the US for that moment because I know when peak Spring is in Georgia, I know where peak spring is in Tennessee, and I know where it is in New York City. Same thing in the Fall where you see those great color changes by day, by tree. And you find that day with that intersection of color change, you can feel the energy. I’ve never felt so alive in my life. It’s such a wondrous moment how you go through how life is changing so fast. Those days are so energetic and so exciting and I highly recommend people try to in their neighborhood find that day, boy, make sure you’re walking that afternoon before sunset. Oh my gosh, it’s a joy.”

• Definition of an engineer: “an engineer is someone who obsoletes themselves from everything they do”
• “Your goal when you’re in your 30s and 40s is to equally disappoint everyone in your life:
  • Wife
  • Kids
  • Parents
  • Health 
  • Work
  • Friends
  • Retirement account”

Rich Newman joined BlackRock around the time I did (at a far more senior level after acquired his startup). For a few (intense) quarters, he was one of the leaders I’d update on a weekly product call around “Aladdin Studio”, BlackRock’s API & data software platform. I knew him from afar, and what stood out to me the most was his obvious decency - he treated people well when based on his position and the pressure of the job he could have easily acted differently.

A few years ago, Rich retired, and a few months ago, I saw he’d written an autobiography. I listened to it, and learned much more about him, including how we overlapped in multiple ways (a bit regarding family history similarities, experience running distance races, love of building software, etc). I really enjoyed Rich’s book, and have shared a few quotes that stood out to me the most.

The biggest thing I took away is that there is a lot of benefit to knowing our colleagues better. I realized I left on the table what could have been a lot of helpful questions and conversations by thinking of Rich mainly as a “senior leader” and seeing just that iceberg from work meetings instead of everything underneath. I don’t propose we all write biographies and have our colleagues read them, but if we did I think it would make our careers and companies stronger, more connected, and more interesting. 

A few lines that stayed with me from “Don’t Be Such A Bigshot”

• On startup life: “It was lonely. It was a grind. Endless small decisions, long nights, and a constant hum of fear underneath it all…You had to believe in something no one else could see yet. Our founding engineer slowly pulled his technology vision out of his head and into code. We collectively willed something new into existence.”
• On the essence of marathon running: “Just continued forward motion.”
• “Looking back, what amazes me most is how easily people who, persecuted in one area of life, can turn around and participate in persecuting others in another.”
• “You don’t need to come from a world to succeed in it… Any success I had in learning the inside game came from never fully letting go of the outside one, the Queens one, the immigrant one.”

Really would like the opportunity to try Project Genie sometime soon. I wonder if AI generated games will be the standard in a decade or two, or will they always have a bit too much latency?

Amazed by this robot running a half marathon!! I heard the argument so many times in the past that humanoids are impractical because there is no reason to copy the human form for a robot.

In addition to the obvious argument that our world is build for the human form, doesn't our success as a species somewhat negate this argument? Aren't two legs for walking over a variety of terrain and two arms for grabbing objects a pretty solid, minimal design?

AI keeps making significant leaps, including two recent releases from Anthropic with major implications for cybersecurity and design