P.S. You Should Know... | Issue #446
Robots
my story 🚀
🤖 We brought a robot into our house. It’s not our first one. We tried this before, many years ago. Back then, the poor thing would get stuck on our rug each night and we’d find it there. Eventually we kicked it out of the house, taking Bed Bath & Beyond up on their generous return policy. (Aside: they later went bankrupt, and Overstock.com forked over $21 million for their name and IP, and proceeded to hastily rebranded to Bed Bath & Beyond.)
All around us there’s evidence of the growing capability of robots. You can buy a functional humanoid robot for under $20k. Yes, you! Please invite me over if you do. This is the same model by Unitree that fought in the World’s First Humanoid Robot Kickboxing Tournament held in China. There’s also a guy in SF named Cix Liv who started a real robot fight club. The robotic cars (mostly Waymo) driving themselves all around me are now so common that I don’t notice them. Robots are a growing part of our future.
So after many years away, we re-entered the market for robotic vacuums during a recent Amazon sale. This one vacuums, mops, and is supposed to never get stuck. During setup, the app even had us give it a name. In her (we gave it a girl’s name) first night of service, she ate a Barbie and couldn’t make it home. In the 8 days since, she’s failed another 9 times. She’s going to be kicked out of the house soon. Yet, I hold out hope that there’s a better home robot experience just around the corner!
fun facts 🙌
Back up your data. A blaze at South Korea’s National Information Resources Service destroyed the government’s G-Drive cloud system. “Due to the system’s large-capacity, low-performance storage structure, no external backups were maintained — meaning all data has been permanently lost.” ~ learn more
The myth of medieval beer over water. Contrary to the popular belief that medieval people drank beer to avoid unsafe water, historical evidence suggests they were more than willing to drink water when it was clear and odorless. I admit that I’ve believed this claim uncritically in the past, though in my defense I thought it was true only in limited times/places. Not only does this debunk the idea of ubiquitous alcohol consumption for safety, but it also highlights that people knew the value of good water even in ancient times. ~ learn more
E-cargo bikes change family travel. I can’t miss a chance to share a study promoting my favorite way to get around town. “E-cargo cycling may help cultivate a cycling culture both at the household level and the community level.” New research shows these bikes are not just practical replacements for car trips but also reshape social norms and community connections. ~ learn more
Reverse engineering ICE’s AI. “What I found isn’t just data analytics—it’s an automated surveillance network built for precision at scale. The system draws from DMV databases, data brokers, phone metadata, facial recognition, and license plate readers. Together, these feeds form a unified view of movement and identity across most of the U.S. adult population.” ~ learn more
oh, chicago 🏆
Downtown Chicago’s ambitious growth plan. This almost makes sense to me, except that I thought the population has been shrinking not growing. Is a lack of housing really the limiting factor? “Downtown Chicago could add more than 100 million square feet of new development and house over 300,000 residents by 2045.” This ambitious city plan aims to dramatically increase the population density and urban infrastructure of the city center. ~ learn more
tech, startups, internet ⚡
State of AI Report 2025 by Air Street Capital. This annual report delivers once again as a fantastic resource covering latest research, industry, politics, and safety. “It’s clear that AI is the most important economic growth driver we have. It’s a system of production, reshaping energy markets, capital flows, and policy frameworks. What began with scaling laws is now being governed by physics, geopolitics, and colossal sums of capital.” If you prefer, there’s a 25 minute video of the highlights from Nathan Benaich, the report’s O.G. creator. ~ learn more
Which table format is best? Reminder that LLMs are a new tool and we need to try hard to learn how to get the best out of them. “Markdown-KV came out top, hitting 60.7% accuracy and landing roughly 16 points ahead of CSV.” Testing 11 formats, Markdown-KV provided the highest accuracy despite using more tokens, while popular formats like CSV and JSONL underperformed. ~ learn more
What is vibe engineering? “Vibe engineering establishes a clear distinction from vibe coding. It signals that this is a different, harder and more sophisticated way of working with AI tools to build production software.” Unlike the fast and loose vibe coding, vibe engineering combines AI with professional accountability for robust software. ~ learn more
better doing 🎯
Seeing like a software company. This is a great take-off based on the book Seeing Like a State, which provided me with a foundation for understanding large centralizing forces like governments. “Thinking in terms of legibility and illegibility explains so many of the things that are confusing about large software companies.” The piece explores how tech companies strive for “legibility” to make work measurable and predictable, yet depend heavily on “illegible” work—those untracked, informal processes that often drive actual productivity. ~ learn more
to your health ⚕
A tale of 2 ENTs. “This story is not about tonsils. It’s about how two equally credentialed people can make you feel entirely different about your own instincts. It’s about how different healthcare can feel, and why trust is not a luxury. It’s beyond “bedside manner” and into curiosity, emotional intelligence, thoughtfulness, and genuine care….” ~ learn more
retail therapy 💸
Thrasio cofounder on the Operators podcast. “What’s it like to build the fastest-growing company in American history... and then watch it all come crashing down? We sat down with John Hefter, co-founder of the legendary Amazon aggregator Thrasio, for a brutally honest conversation about the company’s wild ride from a multi-billion dollar unicorn to bankruptcy.” ~ learn more
Shein’s first French stores. The Chinese e-commerce giant is stepping into physical retail, announcing plans to open its first stores in France. Paris Mayor Anne Hidalgo is not a fan: “[this store] is contrary to the ecological and social ambitions of Paris,” highlighting potential conflicts with local values. I can’t imagine an American mayor doing that, but that’s probably my failure of imagination as it’ll probably happen at some point in my lifetime. ~ learn more
under the microscope 🔬
Stevia in hair growth treatment? Researchers have developed a microneedle patch using stevioside, a natural sweetener from Stevia, to enhance minoxidil absorption. “The treated mice also had hair coverage of 67.5% in previously bald areas after just 35 days.” ~ learn more
Junk food’s sudden brain impact. “We knew that diet and metabolism could affect brain health, but we didn’t expect to find such a specific and vulnerable group of brain cells, CCK interneurons in the hippocampus, that were directly disrupted by short-term high-fat diet exposure.” Even just a few days of a high-fat diet can impair memory, spotlighting the rapid influence of diet on brain health. ~ learn more
Self-driving labs. These labs are robotic platforms that use machine learning and automation to conduct dynamic flow experiments, continuously varying chemical mixtures and capturing data in real-time. “Imagine if scientists could discover breakthrough materials for clean energy, new electronics, or sustainable chemicals in days instead of years, using just a fraction of the materials and generating far less waste than the status quo.” ~ learn more
big ideas 📚
Solar energy hits new low cost. “In the sunniest countries, it costs as little as £0.02 to produce one unit of power, making it cheaper than electricity generated from coal, gas or wind.” Researchers from the University of Surrey argue that solar technology is now foundational for a low-carbon energy future. ~ learn more