Spare a GPU?
What did you do last week? Part III
Hello from Austin, where yesterday’s high was 84° and the crowds were back out in force. I made my way down from our house to the big open lawn outside of Barton Springs pool, which had turned into a rolling wave of sunbathers1 basking in the bright sun after several weeks of harsh winter finally subsided2.
I can’t say that I remember the bluffs in Santa Monica having a scene exactly like what I saw yesterday at Barton Springs, but whatever mix of the South Austin vibe and my own diverse brain topography snapped me back to 2003. The pier off in the distance. Beck’s Sea Change on the iPod. My first real grown-up apartment at 6th and Wilshire, where I was working at one of the earliest digital marketing agencies, while tinkering and building random internet experiments on the side.
Los Angeles in the early 2000s was still a nascent market from a tech standpoint. People who’d go on to found billion-dollar companies would host community-driven events like BarCamp LA.
With no million-dollar jobs out there for industry rockstars, incredibly capable designers and developers were available for next to nothing, and often down to participate in experiments and hackathons pro bono.
The tools to experiment and build were also becoming much more broadly available. Open-source software continued to mature, barriers to adoption lowered. Launching a website went from something requiring many months of bespoke design and coding to something you could spin up through a hosted service provider.
By 2003, I was able to find a guy named Rusty Foster, who had written software called Scoop to power his site Kuro5hin, and with only the most basic of programming skills, I launched a social platform called The Edge City Chronicle that let users post, share, comment, and all from the comfort of an algorithm-free homepage. The site didn’t change the world, but it ran as a moderately-successful two-person operation for several years, something that would have required a team 5-10x as large just a few years prior.
It’s a long way from ‘00s-era Santa Monica back to Austin and the worlds of tech and creativity today, but I do see connective threads from those early days to what lies directly in front of us. AI actually offers both talent and tools to try new things like we did back then. No need for a business plan or a seed round or a proper analysis of the TAM, just a little bit of tinkering and you can build a simple tool just for yourself, or something you might scale into a business. For the first time in a long time, the field of possibilities is looking bright.
Not a Coder? With A.I., Just Having an Idea Can Be Enough. (NY Times)
The term ‘vibecoding’ feels a bit wonky, but I can attest that with tools like v0 from Vercel, you can sit down and in a few minutes build something. Roose’s own list is good inspiration:
A tool that transcribes and summarizes long podcasts
A tool to organize my social media bookmarks into a searchable database
A website that tells me whether a piece of furniture will fit in my car’s trunk
An app called LunchBox Buddy, which analyzes the contents of my fridge and helps me decide what to pack for my son’s school lunch
Don’t take Roose’s (or my) word for it, you should read the article and start messing around with some of the tools yourself. I’ll be tinkering away here, Beck on in the background, and will share some of my early work here soon.
FROM SMALL THINGS…
The ChatGPT Prompts That Can Be $1B+ Companies (
)We create new products and services. We bundle them up. Then we unbundle and rebundle3, and motion continues whether or not progress is made. Cable and streaming are the first one that comes to mind today, but for years everyone’s favorite digital example was Craigslist4:
ChatGPT and the other big LLMs like Claude to feel like the next one-stop shop primed for unbundling.
The ability to build simple tools and services with little more than some structured prompts creates an ideal environment for low-risk experimentation, not unlike the early 2000s with the cloud and early 2010s with iOS and Android.
My hope is not that we build yet another layer of websites and apps, but that tools like OpenAI and its APIs are the VC-subsidized new building blocks that we can use to build the infrastructure that finally connects the platforms across which all of our digital lives are scattered.
FEED THE BEAST
All of the above is possible in a world measured not in years, but NVIDIA earnings reports. Where natural resources and old nuclear power plants alike are summoned to feed the almighty lord Compute. But will it ever be enough?
OpenAI CEO Sam Altman says the company is ‘out of GPUs’ (TechCrunch)
Altman’s statement came in a post on X as he announced the launch of GPT-4.5, its new (and much more expensive) model:
Giant Corporations Are Hoarding the World's AI Talent (Wired)
It’s not just the raw computing power, the need for engineering brains has made “the cost of acquiring a top AI researcher is comparable to the cost of acquiring an NFL quarterback.”
BUY LAND OR BUY SEA
Blackstone Buys Superyacht and Marina Servicer for $5.65 Billion (Bloomberg)
Knowing the company you started had the right idea is at least some measure of success:
While boat sales tend to ebb and flow with consumer sentiment, storage slips tend to be in short supply in all economies, creating opportunities for marina owners to modernize properties and drive higher rents. A trend toward larger superyachts with richer owners has also created opportunities for marinas to sell more services.
Why does Walmart want a shopping mall? (RetailDive)
Walmart is working with Texas-based Cypress Equities to lead the redevelopment process, which includes the mall proper and an annex building of additional retail stores. Beyond that, Walmart isn’t offering many details on its plans.
What Hotelier Ari Heckman thinks about building brand worlds IRL (The Case)
I’m a child of former Disneyland cast members, I will always be a sucker for the center of the brand world and hospitality venn diagram.
The Neighborhood Spat That Went Nuclear (Texas Monthly)
Perhaps things could’ve ended there: with some bad blood and hurt feelings. But then Shanda decided to run for office.
You should read the whole thing, it takes some twists and turns involving angry neighborhood Facebook rants, contentious school board campaigns, all the way up to a bill being brought to the Texas state legislature addressing the pressing issues surrounding the legality of backyard swimming lessons. Everything’s bigger in Texas, including the pettiness.
Editor’s Note: This story pairs well with the story about Diana and Scott Anderson, the couple who got kicked out of Disneyland’s Club 33 and then tried (unsuccessfully) to sue Disney.
Generation X is ready for senior living. Here’s what they want. (MarketWatch)
I know a significant percentage of our readers are Gen X (like me). Does this sound like any of you?
They’re seeking communities that offer both tranquil spaces for outdoor recreation and physical and mental well-being, alongside casual indoor venues for socializing on their own terms. This generation that grew up exploring neighborhoods unsupervised isn’t looking for rigid social calendars. They want welcoming environments that foster organic connections and preserve their independence, all in the backdrop of the resort-style, vibrant and luxury communities.
My first impulse was to make a joke, or share with the millennial and Gen Z readers what it feels like when your generation and “senior living” start being mentioned in the same sentence5.
But if I’m being honest: if they built a community where I could ride my bike (and eventually Rascal) down to Chicago Chicago Pizza and sit in the half-price table underneath the Steve McMichael poster for a thin-crust6, then roll on to the Edwards Cinemas MarketPlace 6 to see the 1:30pm showing of T2 and then sneaking into Point Break7 after, I’d at least look at the brochure.
THE PHONE LINES ARE OPEN
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BALLERS NETWORK
25 Sneaker Releases to Look Forward to in 2025 (Hypebeast)
A lot to look forward to for the remaining heads out there, especially because it’s Jordan’s 40th anniversary. But there’s only one drop that matters to me.
Meet the tallest player in the NBA to have never dunked in a game (The Athletic)
The New York Times: We want to do a feature on you.
Caleb Houstan: Me, really? That’s incredible.
NYT: It’s about how you are 6’8” and have still never dunked in an NBA game.
Inside the Spectacular Rise and Fall (… and Rise Again?) of NBA Top Shot (The Ringer)
We’re back baby. You should hurry up and make an offer on my collection before the prices go any higher.
Gene Hackman (1930-2025)
Gene Hackman was a virtuoso of the smile. When the corners of his mouth curled up, this split-second pause before the unveiling told you something thrilling was about to happen, but he was so inventive that you never knew quite what.
Matt Zoller Seitz
SOURCES
Public Announcement | Today in Tabs |
| | | | | |Fellas, it was like 4-to-1 women to men down there yesterday, y’all blew it.
Seriously, we had a few mornings in the 20s.
Typically for the benefit of investors, not customers or users.
I’ve seen everything from eBay to Google and Uber get the same treatment.
Or talk about the days when we called these “retirement homes” and remark on how distant the concept of retirement seems for the majority of people today.
“Tavern style” if you’re au currant.
Or Regarding Henry