Build to Buy

In our May 2025 meeting the Austin CTO Club took on the theme of “Build versus Buy”. Much of the discussion centered around the …

A Pianist's Scales

Tyler Cowen will never have the opportunity to ask me his question “What is it you do to train that is comparable to a pianist …

Aider First Impressions

One trend among AI-enabled development tools is tight integration with an IDE. A popular example is Cursor. If you already use a similar IDE …

Training Data Shortages

A common view holds that the human-generated data set for training LLM models has been exhausted. All of the accessible digital data have …

Austin CTO Club

In June of 2025 the Austin CTO Club celebrates its one-year anniversary! That means it’s time to share how we got here and what …

Necessity and Luxury

Someone once asked me “What used to be a necessity that is now a luxury?” Some variations of this question make the rounds, such …

Which Way Will Models Go

The so-called foundation models grab all of the headlines at present. And small wonder. They progress at a dizzying pace. The major …

Spontaneous Order, Lunchtime Edition

At a recent conference the organizers set up the food tables in a hallway. The layout was the familiar one: a long set of tables with access …

MCP and Firecracker

Widespread adoption of MCP seems to be happening. There are already thousands of MCP servers available for download and easy incorporation …

Does Art Make the Cut

After my recent post about defensible moats in an AI-powered world, a friend responded to the question of what categories I overlooked, …