Brad Cooper

Great hearing from Jack Selby of Thiel Capital talking about the current state of venture funding. Lots of opportunity, esp. outside of pure play AI and in areas outside of Silicon Valley. Since we share interests in both tech and storytelling, got to also chat with him about his latest film projects. Enjoyed his humble style and it was fun to get a few of the "Pay Pal Mafia" stories. Thanks, Jack, for sharing!

Just a guess, but I bet this is because Anthropic needed to rent more compute leading up to their IPO, and they probably pay a lot more than Grok Bot subscribers.

What are you vibe coding? One of the reasons I chose the Whoop wearable health tracker is because it has a decent developer API. Whoop's mobile app is OK, but I found it had too many upsells and cross-sells and I wanted better dashboards. I also wanted to get deeper analysis from my LLM. So I build my own desktop web-based and mobile web apps with my own custom dashboard, AI analysis, and agent connections to calendar and email to schedule workouts, sleep time, and alerts. This dashboard image is not my real data, is just sample generated data of an early version of the app from a few months ago. Unfortunately, my real data isn't as "well balanced" the past few weeks, especially the sleep score! So the app nags me to do better. =) Customized UX/UI and custom apps are an awesome outcome of democratizing code!

Lesson learned the hard way after many years in tech: Never launch a new feature or promotion on a Friday. You usually have a reduced staff and so does any support teams at other partners that you rely upon.

Great hearing from @andrewchen @bridgitmendler and Porter Smith at @LATechWeek on Physical AI, Space, and Robotics. @HSBC @a16z

Forget Super Intelligence. Let's just skip right to Ludicrous Intelligence (LI). Or better yet, just skip right to Plaid. Plaid Intelligence (PI).

That's no moon! My son and I captured a Tie Fighter... I mean... the International Space Station, crossing in front of the Sun. Couldn't help but think it looks like a Tie Fighter, or more specifically, a Tie Interceptor. So, of course, I had to add some sound effects and overdramatic music. =) The ISS is moving at 28,000 km/h and is 400 km high, so it transits the Sun in only .55 seconds--the video is slowed down to 5% speed. Have to be at the right spot on Earth at that exact moment to capture it. Our little smart telescope continues to Amaze, Amaze!

It's just a tiny moving dot, but I was very excited that I got to take my first images of an asteroid! Asteroid 1997 NC1 is about the size of a skyscraper, and it made a relatively close pass by Earth over the weekend, coming within 1.5 million miles. It was the closest this asteroid has come to Earth in 400 years, and it won't be this close again for another 100 years. I was bummed because we had heavy marine layer cloud cover here in SoCal on Friday and Saturday night. Sunday night started out the same, but then a miraculous break in the clouds came around midnight, and I was able to capture it for about an hour before the thick clouds returned. And this is with heavy light pollution here in Irvine, along with a nearly full moon drowning out the stars. I continue to be amaze, amaze at how good my little Dwarf 3 AI telescope is. It took some doing to keep it pointed at the target, and there was a bit of a gap where it was pointed in the wrong spot for about 15 mins, but otherwise, very cool. Ps: I suggest watching this video on a computer screen as watching it on a mobile phone doesn't do it justice, it's just too small.

Another night, another @SpaceX launch.

Good to hear.

Amen, preach it.

Lots of potential for ongoing disruption with AI, robotics, and onshoring the production stack in the space tech industry. Spent some time talking with builders at @spacetechexpo in Anaheim. Many of these companies have been around for decades and don't seem to be moving fast enough to integrate physical AI and robotics into everything they do. Caught a demo from a provider of specialized hardware/software and asked, "Why aren't you running this data through AI? Seems like a natural fit?" The guy said, "Yeah, I know, we're working on it. We should expect to see it in a year or two." After picking up my jaw off the floor, I said, "My friend, you and I could probably whip up a decent prototype using Claude Code over the weekend." He just laughed. I can see why the newer space companies are growing fast, and startups are garnering all the attention and VC investment. They are leapfrogging the established companies.

Your musical reminder that spaceflight is hard. #newglenn #NG4

Tonight's @SpaceX launch was 30 minutes later than expected, so it missed the sunset window, which usually creates a bright plume. So my shots didn't turn out so great this time. But it was also cool seeing Jupiter--and its three visible moons--so close to our Moon, making four moons in one shot.

That's no moon... (if you know, you know)

Happy birthday to my friends at @Apple ! It was such a blast working there. It was an exciting time working with so many brilliant people, creating amazing new technologies. Here's to the next 50 years!