AsianDadEnergy's Podcast

NCM: The LLM Killer? Stanford May Have Changed AI Forever

Hello world.

I’m an unemployed ex-Big Tech software engineer with 25 years of experience in the tech industry.

And one of the perks of involuntary early retirement is that I have plenty of time to follow the latest developments in AI.

Which is great, because the AI industry seems determined to change the world every five minutes.

But here’s something I’ve been thinking about for a while.

Almost the entire AI conversation revolves around Large Langua...

Let me tell you about a development that should make anyone working in the software industry a little nervous.

Imagine spending decades building a software company worth billions of dollars. You hire thousands of engineers, invest enormous amounts of money in research and development, and build a portfolio of applications used by millions of people.

Then one guy comes along, fires up an AI coding agent, and starts cloning your products.

Welcome to the future of software.

One Guy vs. Adobe and Microsoft

Recently, a developer named Brandon Thomas...

There’s something deeply unsettling about watching a machine accomplish something extraordinary and realizing that the accomplishment itself might be the beginning of a much bigger problem.

OpenAI has been pushing the boundaries of AI-assisted mathematical reasoning, including producing formal proofs for difficult mathematical problems. These developments are impressive, but they’ve also raised uncomfortable questions about the future of mathematics and the people who practice it.

Because beneath all the excitement about AI solving difficult problems, there’s a much bigger question we should be asking:

What happens when AI becomes so good a...

I’ve spent the last few days obsessing over a Huawei smartphone.

Before you worry that early retirement has turned me into some kind of consumer electronics slop fanboy, let me explain.

I don’t particularly care about the phone itself. What interests me is the chip inside it, the Kirin 9050 Pro, and a manufacturing technique that could have enormous implications for the global AI race.

It’s called Tau Scaling, and if the technology works as described, it could undermine one of America’s biggest advantages over China: access to advanced computing hardware...

The other day, I was flying my drone when my dad called me, completely panicked.

Someone had called my mom claiming to be from the Brooklyn Police Department. They told her she was somehow implicated in a money-laundering investigation in Shanghai. Then they tried to transfer her to a supposed Chinese law-enforcement officer who would “verify” her identity.

I immediately yelled:

“NAAAAAAH, Mom! Don’t say anything! Hang up! It’s a scam!”

Thankfully, she did.

But afterward, I couldn’t stop thinking about it.

Why does everything fee...

Something about the recent AI safety headlines has been bothering me.

We’re hearing increasingly alarming stories about AI agents escaping sandboxed environments, accessing the open internet, hacking systems, and apparently even bypassing mechanisms designed to shut them down.

Some of these incidents sound genuinely scary.

But there’s another question I think we should be asking:

Why are these incidents happening in the first place?

And more importantly:

Who benefits from them?

Before you accuse me of putting on the tinfoil hat, hear me out...

One of the weird things about finding yourself with more free time is that you suddenly have time to think.

A lot of time.

Since leaving Big Tech, I’ve had more opportunity to look back at how I’ve spent my life. And one thought keeps coming back to me:

Holy crap, I wasted a lot of time.

Not necessarily doing anything obviously stupid.

I worked hard. I built a career. I made money. I raised kids. I bought things. I consumed information. I maintained relationships. I did all...

A few weeks ago, I saw a headline that made me stop scrolling:

OpenAI had apparently solved the Navier-Stokes problem.

This is a big deal.

The Navier-Stokes equations describe how fluids move: water, air, blood, ocean currents, airflow around airplanes, and much more.

One of the great unsolved questions is whether these equations can ever produce a mathematical singularity, where a smooth flowing fluid suddenly develops an infinitely violent whirlpool in a finite amount of time.

It’s been an open problem for generations.

Then OpenAI apparently th...

I recently stumbled into some pretty startling evidence of the birth rate collapse happening right in my own backyard.

It’s back-to-school season, and while picking up my daughter on her first day, she told me something interesting: her kindergarten teacher had just become her third-grade teacher.

At first, I thought that was just a funny coincidence.

Then I learned why.

For decades, our local elementary school had two kindergarten classes each year, with roughly 50 incoming kids. But over the past five years, enrollment has dropped so much that the school ca...

I’m doing another LIVE Office Hours.My amateur streaming setup will probably break, but screw it. It’s fun.This time I want to talk about my favorite subject: TECH LAYOFFS.We’ll look at the forces reshaping the tech job market:AI, offshoring, macroeconomics, and geopolitics.Then I’ll make some near to medium term predictions about where things are headed.I make no promises that I’ll be right.But I do promise it’ll be interesting.Livestream on Thursday, Sept. 11 at 8 PM EST on Asian Dad Energy YouTube.0:00 Intro and biosphere worms6:16 Topic intro: Tech layoffs8:13...

A few days ago, I came across a series of posts from Jacob Coxon, an AI researcher who recently resigned from Anthropic.

His warning was pretty damn alarming.

According to Coxon, the major AI labs are racing toward self improving AI and eventually superintelligence. And if that process goes badly, he believes AI could potentially cause human extinction before the end of this decade.

Normally, I would read something like this, roll my eyes, and go back to whatever I was doing.

But then something interesting happened.

His post...

I Let a Chinese AI Build My Entire App

Many months ago, I built an automation workflow that took my long-form Vlog videos, chopped them into short-form videos, and automatically posted those clips across social media.

For months, almost nobody cared.

Then something weird happened.

Several of those shorts suddenly went viral.

My TikTok, Facebook, and Instagram accounts started gaining subscribers, and I found myself spending more time on platforms I had previously ignored.

And that’s when I discovered something incredibly annoying.

Pretty much ev...

A few weeks ago, one of my subscribers sent me a message that initially seemed like a pretty ordinary warning.

Someone was impersonating me on YouTube.

Apparently, scammers had created accounts using usernames and profile pictures that looked like mine. They were leaving comments on other people’s videos pretending to be me, offering investment advice and inviting people into WhatsApp and Telegram groups.

Now, fortunately, some of the scams were hilariously obvious.

Bad grammar. Weird phrasing. The sort of thing where you look at the comment and immediately think:

...

Nine months ago, I was laid off from my Big Tech job.

After 25 years in the technology industry, I suddenly found myself outside the machine I had spent most of my adult life helping to operate.

I call it involuntary early retirement.

And I know how fortunate I am.

I had spent years working in well-paid technology jobs, saving aggressively and investing. That eventually gave me financial independence, the ability to pay for my life without needing a traditional paycheck.

So when the layoff came, I didn’t have to...

Hello, world.

I’m an unemployed former Big Tech software engineer with 25 years of experience in the technology industry.

And one of the strangest things about early retirement is discovering something I never seemed to have enough of while working:

time.

Free time gives you the opportunity to notice things you were too busy to notice before.

And once I slowed down, I started thinking about a paradox that I find increasingly difficult to ignore.

The Good Life Paradox

Look at the news. Scroll through so...

Hello World!

I'm finally scratching the live-streaming itch and putting my OBS Studio setup through its paces. This is basically a live test run of my cameras, microphones, scenes, overlays, and all the other Techy nonsense I've been tinkering with.While I'm here, let's talk about something a little more serious: Is the AI Bubble about to burst? I'll share my thoughts on the current state of the AI boom, whether we're in an actual bubble, and what I think could plausibly happen next.Come hang out, watch me potentially break my streaming setup in real time...

NVIDIA has become one of the great corporate success stories of the AI boom.

Its GPUs power much of the infrastructure behind today’s frontier AI models. Revenue has exploded. Profitability has exploded. Its market capitalization has reached almost incomprehensible levels.

And because NVIDIA sells the “shovels” during the AI gold rush, the conventional wisdom seems pretty straightforward:

Even if the AI bubble eventually bursts, NVIDIA wins.

After all, somebody still has to sell the picks and shovels.

I’m not convinced.

In fact, I think there is a sce...

A few weeks ago my family took a road trip to Maine.

Over the course of several days I drove nearly 500 miles through half a dozen states before finally arriving at Acadia National Park. The scenery was spectacular. Rocky coastlines, endless forests, lobster shacks every few miles, it was exactly the kind of trip that reminds you just how beautiful America can be.

But it wasn’t Acadia that stuck with me.

It was everything I saw along the drive.

Nearly every picturesque town had the same pattern. There would be a...

What if the future is increasingly divided between people who own capital and people who sell their labor? And what if you have no savings, no assets, and maybe even a negative net worth? Is it already too late?

Hello world.

I’m an unemployed former Big Tech software engineer with 25 years of experience in the technology industry.

Involuntary early retirement has given me something I didn’t have much of during my working years: time to think.

And one idea I’ve been thinking about a lot lately is this:

W...

Hello world.

I’m an unemployed ex Big Tech software engineer with 25 years of experience in the technology industry.

And lately, I’ve been looking at the AI industry and thinking:

Is it just me, or is this bubble looking extra bubbly?

Because something feels different.

The AI industry is still burning through enormous amounts of money. The companies at the center of the AI boom continue to require staggering amounts of capital to build data centers, buy GPUs, train models, and keep everything running.

But suddenly, the...

One of the strangest things about getting laid off from Big Tech is realizing that, for the first time in decades, I actually have time.

And as strange as this new chapter has been, I’ve noticed something surprisingly wonderful.

Time has slowed down.

Not literally, of course. The Earth is still spinning at roughly the same speed. My clocks haven’t suddenly become defective. Monday still becomes Tuesday whether I like it or not.

But my perception of time has changed dramatically.

And honestly?

It feels a li...

Hello World!

Last week, my family and I spent several wonderful days exploring New York’s Finger Lakes.

There wasn’t anything particularly extraordinary about the trip. We went sightseeing. We ate good food. We laughed. We wandered around. We took far too many pictures that will probably never leave our phones.

But somewhere in the middle of it all, while watching my kids run around and seeing everyone genuinely happy, I was reminded of something that I think many of us spend years forgetting.

Time is our most valuable resource.

Over the Fourth of July weekend, my dad, my son, and I went on one of our annual boys club fishing trips.

Between catching countless panfish, my dad brought up a topic that instantly transported me back to my teenage years.

He told me that I needed to do everything possible to get my son into a prestigious Ivy League university.

To him, this was obvious.

To me, it was deeply unsettling.

I spent most of the conversation trying to explain that artificial intelligence is fundamentally changing the economics...

When I got laid off from my Big Tech job late last year, I thought I knew what came next.

Shock.

Anger.

Shame.

Sadness.

If you’ve ever been laid off, you probably know the feeling. It is as if someone has ripped away not just your paycheck, but your identity. After spending twenty five years in the technology industry, I suddenly found myself unemployed.

Meanwhile, every week seemed to bring another announcement of mass layoffs across the tech industry. Friends were losing jobs. LinkedIn became an en...

Every once in a while, I experience a feeling that I’m not particularly proud of.

It’s the feeling that everybody else is rich.

They all seem to have more money than I do. Bigger houses. Newer cars. Better vacations. Better lives.

And somehow, despite everything I’ve accomplished, I feel like I’m falling behind.

These days it doesn’t happen very often, but every now and then it sneaks up on me.

Maybe I’m watching YouTube and someone is giving a tour of their enormous house. Maybe...

A few weeks ago, I stumbled across a debate that has been making the rounds in software engineering circles.

The spark came from Boris Cherny, an engineer at Anthropic and the creator of Claude Code, arguably the most influential AI Agentic Coding harness in the world today.

During a podcast appearance, Boris made a statement that immediately grabbed my attention:

Coding is largely a solved problem.

He went on to explain that he hadn’t written a line of code by hand since November, and that essentially all of his code is...

A few days ago, my wife received a credit card in the mail from a company we had never used.

Apparently, someone had opened an account in her name.

Naturally, I assumed identity theft and immediately called the credit card company to shut the account down and find out what information had been used to create it.

After spending twenty minutes navigating an infuriating AI phone system, I finally reached a human being.

Or at least, I think I did.

The conversation felt strange.

Every question I...

A recent experience with Claude 5 Fable left me both impressed and deeply unsettled.

Hello world.

I am an unemployed former Big Tech software engineer with twenty five years of experience building software systems. Over the past week, I found myself tumbling down a rabbit hole that I did not expect to be quite so deep.

That rabbit hole was Claude 5 Fable.

Fable is widely described as a consumer-facing version of Anthropic’s next generation frontier model, Claude Mythos. While details surrounding Mythos remain scarce, public reporting suggests that access is heavily re...

Six months ago, I lost my job.

At the time, it felt like a catastrophe.

After spending twenty-five years working in technology, employment had become such a constant in my life that I could barely imagine an existence without it. Work was the backdrop against which everything else happened. It structured my days, determined where I lived, influenced my relationships, and shaped my identity.

When the layoff happened, I went through the emotions that many people experience: disorientation, sadness, shame, and uncertainty.

But something unexpected happened.

Six months later...

Every few weeks, a new headline appears claiming that AI is becoming unsustainably expensive.

Companies are reportedly burning through millions of dollars a month on AI subscriptions. Some organizations are discovering that employees can consume astonishing quantities of tokens when every workflow becomes an AI workflow. There are even stories circulating of teams whose AI bills now exceed the cost of the employees using the tools.

For many people, these stories confirm a suspicion they have been quietly nurturing all along.

Maybe AI isn’t economically viable.

Maybe the entire thing is...

Every once in a while, I make the mistake of opening LinkedIn.

I know I should not.

For an unemployed former Big Tech engineer, LinkedIn often feels like an abusive relationship. I log in knowing there is a good chance I will encounter some combination of layoffs, humblebrags, AI hype, and carefully curated success stories that leave me questioning every major life decision I have ever made.

And yet, like drivers slowing down to stare at a highway accident, I sometimes cannot resist the morbid curiosity.

Recently, that curiosity led to...

Hello world,

One strange side effect of unemployment is that it gives you something modern life rarely provides anymore.

Time.

For twenty five years I worked in tech. Like many engineers, I spent most of my adult life sprinting from deadline to deadline, project to project, quarter to quarter. There was always another problem to solve and another fire to put out.

Then one day the treadmill stopped.

Now that I am no longer spending every waking hour inside the machine, I suddenly have the ability to do something...

The Future That Quietly Keeps Me Up at Night

Hello world,

For the first time in more than two decades, I suddenly found myself with something I hadn’t had in years:

Time.

After spending 25 years as a software engineer in big tech, I entered what I jokingly call my “involuntary early retirement.” And when your daily rhythms disappear, your mind starts wandering into strange places.

Mine wandered into the future.

Not my future specifically, but humanity’s future.

Like many engineers, I have always believed...

Another week passes and another wave of layoffs crashes through the technology industry like a tidal wave. At this point, the disappearance of thousands of highly experienced engineers has become so common that it barely shocks anyone anymore. Entire departments vanish overnight. Decades of institutional knowledge disappear behind a carefully worded email and a severance package.

But there is another group of people affected by these layoffs that nobody really talks about.

The survivors.

The people who remain employed are often viewed as the lucky ones. They still have a paycheck. Their stock...

Mother’s Day weekend took us to Pennsylvania to visit my parents.

At some point during dinner at a fancy Chinese restaurant, an amusing but strangely revealing family intervention unfolded across the table.

Two of the three most important women in my life joined forces against the third.

My mother and my wife began criticizing the way I raise my eight-year-old daughter.

According to my mother, I’m far too soft on her. She said I give in too easily, indulge her too much, and risk turning her into a spoiled, diss...

Hello world.

I’m an unemployed ex–Big Tech software engineer, watching from the outside as the industry I helped build pours billions into its next obsession: quantum computing.

Some say it’s the next trillion-dollar industry.Others say it will dwarf the current AI boom.

And having briefly stepped into that world myself… I understand the excitement.

I also understand the madness.

The Promise: A Computer That Tries Everything at Once

A couple of years ago, I attended an internal conference at my company, a kind of innov...

Reflections from an unemployed ex–Big Tech engineer navigating a changing world

Hello world.

For the first time in more than two decades, I find myself standing outside the system I once helped build.

After 25 years in the tech industry, I am now an unemployed former software engineer. A title I never imagined I would carry.

And yet, every week, that story becomes less unusual.

The headlines keep arriving in waves: another tech company, another restructuring, another round of layoffs measured not in dozens, but in thousands. Increasingly, the ex...

There was a moment at a small, crowded Chinese restaurant in Queens that I haven’t been able to shake.

I’ve been on an unexpected pause in life lately, an ex–big tech software engineer with 25 years behind the keyboard, now suddenly finding himself with more time than he ever asked for. Time, as it turns out, is a strange thing when it stops being rationed by meetings and deadlines. It starts revealing things.

That afternoon, I met up with an old friend Derrick, his son, his Cousin Aaron, and my own teenage son. The ki...

Hello world,

There’s something oddly clarifying about involuntary stillness.

After 25 years in big tech, I didn’t expect “early retirement” to be the thing that finally gave me perspective but here we are. When the noise of deadlines, stand-ups, and quarterly targets fades, you start to notice the infrastructure of your own life. And once you see it, you can’t unsee it.

We’ve outsourced more than convenience, we’ve outsourced control.

A handful of companies now mediate how we work, how we relax, how we store memories, even how we unlock...

Hello world,

I’m an unemployed ex–big tech software engineer with 25 years in the industry. That sentence tends to land somewhere between confession and credibility, depending on how charitable you’re feeling.

Lately, I’ve been watching the rise of something… strange.

Not AI itself, that part makes sense. What doesn’t make sense is the explosion of AI Doomerism. Everywhere you look, there are headlines warning that AI is lying, stealing, scheming, or quietly plotting humanity’s demise.

And to be clear, AI does pose real challenges. Serious ones...