My irregular newsletter on work and play. Unsubscribe at the bottom. LinkedIn
Surf’s up with AI!
MENU
1. WORK: Events
2. VIBE CODING: New Course, Free Workshop, AI in a Box
3. CULTURE: Bad Picks Again
1. WORK
Events
Our virtual Health Tech matchmaking has over 700 registrations from investors and founders. Meetings take place next week. Register here (free)
Bitter Truths and Sweet Lies — a hybrid event about metabolic health at our NY office on July 30. Register.
We also announced the upcoming Climate Tech Matchup in September.
Our annual Climate Tech Summit will be in November. Register here.
Events
Berlin (September) - I’ll be at the VC Platform EU event where I’ll give a talk about “Vibe Coding for VCs”.
NYC (September) - I’ll be at NYCW. We’re hosting a bunch of events at our NY office.
2. VIBE CODING
First Online Cohort
My up-skilling course on Vibe Coding (using AI to code without needing to know how to code) in partnership with Code For All in Portugal will start on July 1st!
It will be 15 hours total, on Tue/Thu at 7pm-9:30pm UK/Lisbon time (3 weeks). I might do a US-time version later on.
This a great skill unlock to future-proof careers.
No coding experience needed. You will learn to use AI to generate code for personal apps, using libraries and APIs.
If you’re a Portuguese resident, a government coupon can cover 100% of the cost!
I am facilitating the first run of the course. They will run it with a license later on.
More info / register here (info in Portuguese but the course is in English).
Free Intro Workshop
I will run a free 1-hour hands-on intro workshop next week on June 26 (Thu). 7pm-8pm UK/Lisbon time. Register here (free).
Udemy Course
My Vibe Coding Bootcamp has passed 2,500 students on Udemy. It’s a fast-paced cornucopia of tech with practical and quirky examples. Watch in one go, then try some!
Latest Project: AI in a Box
I vibe coded a few things - including a scraper for X.com which was harder to do since Elon wants people to pay for data, but the project I am most excited about is this one:
I use ChatGPT for search constantly and found myself longing for a more direct system than typing or talking to my phone. What if I could have a simple box on my desk with one big button that I could press to ask a question, then get an answer?
Initially it was only for me, but I also thought that our son is an “AI native” and will soon enough have plenty of questions, so a kid-friendly safe simple and safe AI would be useful. Maybe for survivalists, campers, sailors, and others too.
Though I have worked with many hardware startups, I don’t know electronics and last time I soldered was probably 30 years ago in a middle-school technical class. So I asked ChatGPT, who helped me narrow down the options to a Raspberry Pi 5 as the main brain. I then vibe coded two systems:
Online: using the OpenAI API for transcribing, prompt and even text-to-speech. This runs pretty fast. I called it “Tim” (for “Tiny Him”, as a reference to the movie Her).
Offline: I wanted a way to work ‘off-grid’, potentially for wilderness or privacy reasons. So this mode does all locally: it uses a local speech-to-text model, a local LLM and local text-to-speech. I called it “Pim” because it runs entirely on the Pi, and also because it is slower and not as smart ;p
I still have a few kinks to iron out, but I have connected a USB microphone, a bluetooth speaker, and a friendly guy at the local hackerspace showed me how to solder the button and a couple of LEDs. Now I need a few more hours to finish and put it in a box.
Possible developments: memory / private mode, solar or crank-powered (to be 100% off-grid). Depending on your knowledge, this project might sound hard or easy (it is quite easy, though it uses cutting edge tech), but more importantly to me, it really feels great to build a first gadget!
3. CULTURE
MOVIES
It hasn’t been a good time for me.
Broken Rage*
I used to love Takeshi Kitano’s movies — Sonatine, Kids Return, Hana-bi, Kikujiro, Violent Cop… — and saw he had a fairly new one on Prime. Sadly, after a first half hour of average yakuza story, it switched to some nonsense slapstick comedy. Did he need money from Amazon? Maybe that’s the real yakuza move. I stopped before the end.
Gladiator 2*
I tried to watch it on a flight. I thought it was a sequel of some kind, but it looked more like a remake, with unnecessarily better special effects, a dose of wokeness and a lack of emotional connection. I stopped in less than 10 minutes. Better rewatch the first!
Maybe I should try and ask ChatGPT for recommendations…
SHOWS
Clarkson’s Farm*** (new season)
This time he’s trying to buy a pub while fighting bad weather. I like this show, which illustrates the difficulties, constraints and uncertainties of running a farm.
Rick and Morty** (new season)
Alongside Black Mirror, here is another show I really liked that I feel got worse. Is the loss of flavor due to the firing of one of the creators? Has this show run its course? Is this part of the enshittification trend?
PODCASTS
I was interviewed on a podcast focused on the immigration journey. I was recommended by Derek Sivers as I lived in 10 countries, dabble in 7 languages, and apparently have interesting ideas about cultures and communication. I wondered initially why I was asked as I don’t see myself as neither an immigrant nor an expat, but we had a good chat. The episode should come out this summer - we’ll see how it turned out!
As a side note, these days I’m listening to:
Peter Zeihan on geopolitics. He likes hyperbole but he knows a lot.
Greg Isenberg / Matthew Berman / Fireship on AI.
Word of the day: parsimonious.
Word of yesterday: profligate.
Keep vibing!
— Ben