Sooraj

DESIGN: THE FIRST AI CASUALTY I'm increasingly sure that 2026 signals the end of product design as a full-fledged stand-alone function within companies. If so, it will be the first role / function to be eliminated by AI on a go-forward basis. Instead of hiring FT designers, startups are hiring / will hire design consultants to create a design system that the founder likes (this takes a few weeks max). Once the design system is finalized, PM/Eng feed it into their AI tool of choice to generate prototypes. The design system is refreshed annually by the same consultant. Larger companies will likely not backfill design roles and will do some targeted attrition to reduce the design department to 20% the size it is today. If you're a designer, I think you have two choices: 1. Become an entrepreneur: Start a design agency and become the go-to resource for design systems for startups and even larger companies. This can be a good recurring revenue business. 2. Become a builder: Add PM/Eng responsibilities to become a product builder. Would suggest you embrace this proactively vs waiting for the other shoe to drop. I'm really sorry about this - some of my best friends and the people I admire most and have learnt the most from are designers - but it seems inevitable.

"In the next 12-24 months, we're going to see massive shedding of staff, and then a massive rehiring. You might see a company shed 30,000 and hire 8,000. But the 8,000 people they're gonna hire are going to all be AI-first."

We’re launching a brand new, full-stack vibe coding experience in @GoogleAIStudio, made possible by integrations with the @Antigravity coding agent and @Firebase backends. This unlocks: — Full-stack multiplayer experiences: Create complex, multiplayer apps with fully-featured UIs and backends directly within AI Studio — Connection to real-world services: Build applications that connect to live data sources, databases, or payment processors and the Antigravity agent will securely store your API credentials for you — A smarter agent that works even when you don't: By maintaining a deeper understanding of your project structure and chat history, the agent can execute multi-step code edits from simpler prompts. It also remembers where you left off and completes your tasks while you’re away, so you can seamlessly resume your builds from anywhere — Configuration of database connections and authentication flows: Add Firebase integration to provision Cloud Firestore for databases and Firebase authentication for secure sign-in This demo displays what can be built in the new vibe coding experience in AI Studio. Geoseeker is a full-stack application that manages real-time multiplayer states, compass-based logic, and an external API integration with @GoogleMaps 🕹️

One of life’s newfound joys is getting locked out of Claude because you’ve used up all your credits.

A free web mentions API? - Yes, please! @Ahrefs just launched Firehose. And it's kind of a big deal. 👉 firehose.com It captures updates from across the web, filters them using rules you define, and delivers results via API (for bots and agents) or a frontend UI (for humans). Under the hood, it's powered by @Ahrefs' massive crawler infrastructure (one of the largest on the web), so the coverage is legitimately impressive. Now that AI has made coding accessible to everyone, there's no excuse not to spin up a free Firehose account and start experimenting. Track brand mentions, monitor competitors, catch keyword trends — whatever you want. Want more ideas? Just feed the API docs to Claude Code and ask it what to build: 👉 firehose.com/api-docs Happy building! P.S. Firehose is free until further notice.

Introducing Perplexity Computer. Computer unifies every current AI capability into one system. It can research, design, code, deploy, and manage any project end-to-end.

Introducing Claude Code Security, now in limited research preview. It scans codebases for vulnerabilities and suggests targeted software patches for human review, allowing teams to find and fix issues that traditional tools often miss. Learn more: anthropic.com/news/claude-co…

This is Claude Sonnet 4.6: our most capable Sonnet model yet. It’s a full upgrade across coding, computer use, long-context reasoning, agent planning, knowledge work, and design. It also features a 1M token context window in beta.

Gokul explains why outcome-based software companies like Zendesk are more exposed to AI than systems of record like NetSuite, and why public markets are not distinguishing between the two. He argues that the only way AI-native startups can disrupt systems of record is by spending 1-2 years building migration tools to get data off of incumbent platforms. "The software companies that should be the most worried right now is where they are pricing the product based on utility. Zendesk is a good example. Instead of paying for 50 Zendesk seats, you can pay for 20 and I can have 30 AI agents sitting next to Zendesk. For these companies you need to change your pricing model to be based on outcome. It's going to be hard for them to stay public. The companies that are less exposed are ones based on data that has been collected and captured over a period of time. ERP is a great example. There is no compelling reason for someone to put their career at stake by ripping out NetSuite. NetSuite has more time to build AI agents on top of it because they have the data, they can train the AI agent on top of it and bundle it. I think the public markets do not distinguish between these two types of companies."

Indeed! For ten years now I have run a RoundTable on Air Pollution without getting the political traction i had hoped for. Finally i am relieved that the issue has broken through in public consciousness this year and is now also getting global attention. We need a #SwachhVayuAbhiyan with an Air Quality Czar who can whip all concerned departments into focused action. Hope @PMOIndia is thinking seriously about such an approach.

Honestly, Ben Affleck actually knowing AI and the landscape caught me off guard, but as a writer, makes sense. Great takes across the board.

🍿 Netflix deliberately dumbs down dialogue — because viewers simply don’t follow the plot Matt Damon talked about this on Joe Rogan’s podcast. According to him, Netflix explicitly asks writers to repeat key plot points multiple times in dialogue, so viewers who are glued to their phones can at least understand what’s happening on screen. Watching while scrolling has become the norm — and content is adjusted to fit that habit. As a result, the structure of films has broken down: everything important and “cool” now has to be crammed into the opening minutes. Otherwise, that’s it — people just won’t finish the movie. No focus, no patience, attention spans measured in seconds. The third problem is visuals. Damon says directors no longer see the point in obsessing over cinematography, because most people watch movies on phones, tablets, and laptops. Cinema made for the big screen is turning into content for small screens — and of matching quality.

Introducing Cowork: Claude Code for the rest of your work. Cowork lets you complete non-technical tasks much like how developers use Claude Code.

Adv. Jayashankar recently shared a light-hearted yet telling anecdote on how #Varavelppu quietly influenced society and even reflected in his professional life. The film, starring #Mohanlal and written by #Sreenivasan, was not just popular entertainment. Its sharp social commentary and grounded conflicts were so relatable that similar ideas and references reportedly surfaced during real legal discussions and trials.

Malayalam cinema won't be the same without the genius of #Sreenivasan. From the satirical bites of “Sandesham”to the raw emotion of “Vadakkunokkiyantram”, he taught us to laugh at ourselves while thinking deeper. A true master of the craft who redefined what it means to be a "hero" on screen, & who was an effective director as well. Beyond the actor was a brilliant writer who captured the pulse of Kerala like no other. Sreenivasan’s scripts are time capsules of social commentary, humor, and unparalleled wit. There will never be another observer of life quite like him. 🕉️ शांति! manoramaonline.com/news/just-in/2…

My biggest takeaways from @stewart: 1. Product design is about creating understanding, not removing friction. Teams obsess over reducing friction and removing steps, but 70% to 80% of product design challenges are actually about helping people *understand* what your product does and what to do next. Users arrive barely interested and confused about what you offer. If they can’t quickly grasp what they’re looking at, they’ll leave. Making confusing things faster just gets users to the exit quicker. The mantra should be “Don’t make me think,” not “reduce friction.” 2. You’re not selling features—you’re selling outcomes. Nobody wants a saddle; they want to go horseback riding. Nobody wants a hammer; they want something built. People understand cars and beer without explanation, but new software needs an explanation of both what it is and why people should want it. Slack wasn’t selling messaging features—it was selling better team coordination and reduced email chaos. If you can’t articulate the transformation your product creates in people’s lives, you’re just listing features. 3. Organizations naturally fill with fake work that looks exactly like real work, what Stewart calls “hyper-realistic work-like activities.” Meetings to preview deck slides, analysis of tiny feature differences, elaborate processes around insignificant decisions. People aren’t stupid or lazy; they’re responding to having more workers than valuable work to do. Leaders must continuously ensure there’s enough clearly valuable work and explicitly say no to projects that can’t possibly generate meaningful impact. 4. The value of a feature exists on a "utility curve." There’s the initial flat zone where a feature is too weak to matter, then a steep rise where it brings users to the "aha" moment, then the value levels off where improvements don’t matter much anymore. Teams often give up in the first flat zone or waste resources in the third. The key question isn’t whether you have a feature, but whether you’ve invested enough to reach the steep part of the curve where it becomes genuinely valuable. 5. Small conveniences create emotional connections that drive word-of-mouth growth. No one switches products because of a good time-zone picker or smooth password recovery, but these details make users love or hate your product. Slack grew largely because people who used it at one company would join a new company and advocate strongly for adopting it. That advocacy came from accumulated small delights, not major features. 6. The “owner’s delusion” explains why bad experiences persist everywhere. Restaurant owners create terrible websites even though they’ve experienced the frustration of visiting other terrible restaurant websites. Business owners assume visitors care deeply about their product, when in reality people arrive distracted, in a hurry, just above the threshold of caring at all. The solution is to regularly step back, pretend you’re a normal person with limited time and patience, and honestly evaluate if your product makes sense. 7. Only pivot after exhausting all reasonable ideas. The right time to pivot isn’t when things get hard—it’s when you’ve genuinely tried every non-ridiculous approach and can coldly, rationally assess that the expected value has dropped below alternatives. Pivoting is humiliating because you’ve convinced investors, employees, and users of a vision you’re now abandoning. That emotional cost means most people either pivot too quickly or wait until they run out of money. 8. Treating customers and employees with extraordinary generosity creates a competitive advantage. Slack pioneered fair billing (not charging for unused seats), gave free credits during Covid, and automatically refunded customers for downtime without their asking. This wasn’t just ethics—it helped attract better employees, created positive stories, and built long-term customer loyalty. The mantra was “In the long run, the measure of our success will be the amount of value we create for customers.”

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