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What To Read This Weekend
It has been a week of inference. I started the week writing about OpenClaw and its growing popularity. And I end the week with a recap of Nvidia’s GTC event. A lot has been written about the event, especially about Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang’s big claims of quadrupling his revenues to above a trillion dollars, the question that wasn’t asked, why?
Sure, we can dismiss this as a bluster of a bull-market darling, but in reality, if we believe that AI is going to be the new way of interacting with information (as I do) and will impact all sorts of industries, then you have to give his claim some thought.
As I explain in my breakdown of Nvidia GTC, Jensen’s Trillion Dollar Token Factory, for CrazyStupidTech, his boast makes sense for two reasons. First, this is indeed an inference inflection. What that means is that AI goes from being in the “capex” phase to being in the “opex” phase. That key distinction is why you see Anthropic adding a billion or so in revenue every week or so. And that is why OpenAI is in a tizzy. And that is why Elon Musk has made “coding” a top priority for his Grok.
I am hoping to shift gears next week and write longer essays, eschewing news and daily goings-on. I have a few personal pieces that remain unfinished, including reviews of a new photography geegaw and of course the MacBook Neo.
Till next week. For now, enjoy these lovely articles.
- Why Tech Bros Are Now Obsessed with Taste. Kyle Chayka in the New Yorker on Silicon Valley’s latest borrowed virtue. Silicon Valley is a taste dead zone. I have written about this many times. Now the same people without taste are arguing that because AI levels the playing field, and anyone can build anything, so the only edge left is knowing what’s worth building. That’s “taste.” Don’t look for it in these parts. Chayka makes my point without me losing my hair. [New Yorker]
- We Have Learned Nothing. Jerry Neumann is my favorite venture capital and startup writer. None better. In his latest piece he makes a point to remind us that the whole edifice of the science of entrepreneurship is just that, an edifice. So, to paraphrase Steve Jobs, think different. And do different from whatever the current advice says. [Colossus]
- In Search of Banksy. Reuters spent a year using what they call a “reverse forensic” approach to unmask the world’s most famous anonymous artist. Wow. What a great story. I mean, make this a documentary. The journalism is meticulous. [Reuters]
- Russia’s Self-Inflicted Communication Crisis. Politico maps the race to cut Russia off from the global internet. Telegram, WhatsApp, YouTube, Signal, Discord, X, FaceTime, LinkedIn, all blocked or throttled. Russian President Putin signed a law letting the FSB shut down cellular and internet access on demand. The twist is that the Kremlin’s own military depends on Telegram for frontline communications and crowdfunding. They’re destroying the infrastructure their war machine runs on. What an amazing story. [Politico]
- The Repricing of Time: Equity in the Age of Agents. Jordi Visser makes the financial argument for what many of us feel intuitively. AI doesn’t just disrupt business models. It compresses time. When competitive half-lives shrink from a decade to months, equity stops representing ownership of a durable franchise and starts resembling a call option on execution velocity. This is the best thing I’ve read on what AI actually does to market structure. I wish I had written this piece. [Visser Labs]
Things I wrote this week, ICYMI:
- Lobster Boil
- OpenAI Has New Focus (on the IPO)
- How Not to Interview Interesting People
- Why Fraud Is the Boring Problem
- Jensen’s Trillion Dollar Token Factory
In Memoriam.
Miles Rose, who passed away on March 1, 2026, in Puerto Rico. He was 72. And he was a friend from the Internet’s halcyon days and ran SiliconAlley.com. I lost touch with him over the past decade or so, but he was and will remain a cherished friend and a reminder of happier, more innocent times in the evolution of the internet. Rest in peace, Miles.
Len Deighton, one of my favorite authors and a master of the spy genre, passed away. I enjoyed this recap of his work. In the end, this is the best way to remember someone who made words his everything.
March 22, 2026. San Francisco