No, no…AI won’t replace you.
A person using AI will replace you and 4,999 other people.
Winning in AI, story mode
Winning in AI is now defined as having a great chat app, not the AI infrastructure running that app. Amazon (AWS) has no chat app (that I know of, which is the point!), so people don’t think they’re winning. If AWS did have an app, and evolved it as a product, they would be at the AI table.
It doesn’t matter that AWS might have the “picks and shovels.” That’s not where the definitional power and attention and leaderboard is.
I wasn’t really sure what hardned images were, let alone “distroless,” so Tony and I were lucky to get William on this week’s Tanzu Catsup to sort it out. We also discuss how it fits into platform engineering.
Facebook shutting down metaverse.
It’s fine to use your mountains of spare cash (and voting control) to try out new things. We’re all about innovation and expect it; you have to embrace lots of failure, giant failure.
The actual problem is then discarding all the people you hired to help you. It shucks the “with great valuations comes great responsibility” principle that big tech shits on. (Except, maybe Google and a little bit Microsoft?)
Also, once again, we show that VR/cyberspace is a solution that will never find its problem.
Relevant to your interests, Tuesday
- 3 + 4 - On the three day work week.
- AWS in 2026: The Year of Proving They Still Know How to Operate - “Internal documents reportedly show 69-81% ‘regretted attrition’–meaning the people leaving are the ones Amazon desperately wanted to keep. Where have the senior engineers who’ve been through this dance before gone? They’ve walked out the door with decades of hard-won knowledge about how AWS’s systems actually work when everything’s on fire at 3 AM.”
- Joint statement from Google and Apple - Apple to officially use Gemini, though still host it on its own infrastructure (I think). Also, very weird press release. The title is like an after thought, rather, not even a thought. I mean, I’m sure it’s all incredibly thought through, which is what makes it so much the weirder.
- My town looks okay, for now (photos) - ‘I wonder why the river is called “Varmá” (literally “Warm River” in Icelandic)?’
- These 36 Airlines Offer iPhone Feature That Helps Find Your Lost Bags - A practical, everyday use of computers.
- Welcome to the Party: Why Healthcare AI Needs More Than a Chat Box - Advanced product thinking for AI healthcare apps and workflows.
- How Home Depot, Wayfair executives are preparing for an agentic AI future - Home Depot’s experiments with AI. At the moment, better search and finding out what projects people are working on. The second leading to more sales and stickyness/loyalty, I guess.
“cradle-to-crematorium biography” The best non-fiction to read this year
Recursive Loops, Enterprise Nanny-states, Garbage Chairs, and Improv
Garbage Chairs of Amsterdam, Duivendrecht edition.Original ContentFrom Platform Engineering to Stand-Up Comedian, with Lian Li, Software Defined Talk #117: “In this episode, Whitney and Coté talk with Lian, a “cloud-native human” with a 15-year career in tech. Lian discusses her transition from tech to performance art, her experiences in amateur musical theater, stand-up comedy, and improv theater. She talks about platform engineering, the importance of community building in tech, and balancing professional life with personal projects.
🤖 Summary of "Economist Tyler Cowen on the positive side of AI negativity" podcast
The below is a summary of the original transcript from ChatGPT 5.2.
Conclusion: Cowen’s core claim is simple and sharp: in the US, most people won’t lose jobs to AI, they’ll lose them to other people who use AI better. The real bottleneck isn’t models or GPUs - it’s institutions, habits, status hierarchies, and people’s unwillingness to adapt. The transition will be slow, uneven, and psychologically unpleasant, but materially beneficial.
Garbage Chairs of Amsterdam.
