This so true, as I crossed my 30s, some old friends stayed but most of them have their own lives now that we both are too busy to try to keep up. This hit close home.
Radar
Links, articles, and things I find interesting around the web.
Why I built this →May 17, 2026
May 10, 2026
One observation I have on feedback loops was that it used to require a team of people to discuss, debate, collaborate and agree up on the right path forward. With AI agents assisting your thinking and being your thought partner, it changes the team dynamics of how you solve problems as a group of people. I still advocate for human dicussion and understanding of what the problem is, but once we agree, having someone own it with agency to use whatever tool at their disposal to go build it seems to be where I'm leaning towards. It comes down the question of "are we solving the right problem"?
This article was very interesting in this regard. Can you describe the requriements for your actual need? There in lies the key to anything AI can do go "make it go faster".
This article was very interesting in this regard. Can you describe the requriements for your actual need? There in lies the key to anything AI can do go "make it go faster".
May 9, 2026
Apr 25, 2026
Apr 17, 2026
When token costs are on everyone's mind
R
The $20/month Claude plan is enough.
But only if you stop making these 17 mistakes:
1: You upload PDFs raw. One page = 3,000 tokens.
Fix: Paste the text into a Google doc. Download as .md format. Under 200 tokens.
2: You build files inside Cowork too early.
Fix: Plan in Chat first. Move to Cowork only when you know exactly what you want.
3: You write 500-word prompts that reload.
Fix: Write 29 words instead: "I want to [task] to [goal]. Ask me questions using AskUserQuestion."
4: You say "redo the whole thing" to correct part 3.
Fix: "Only redo section 3. Keep everything else. No commentary. Just the output."
5: You send 3 separate messages for 3 tasks.
Fix: One message, three tasks. "Summarize this, list the points, suggest a headline."
6: You type "No, I meant," stacking on the history.
Fix: Click 'Edit' on your original message. Fix it. Regenerate. History replaced, not added.
7: You use the Opus model for a grammar check.
Fix: Sonnet or Haiku for quick tasks. Save Opus + Extended Thinking for deep work.
8: You dump 50 files into Cowork "just in case."
Fix: Only include what this task needs. Zero folders for quick tasks like email drafts.
9: You never restart fresh & keep having long chats.
Fix: Every 15-20 messages → summarize, copy the brief, start a fresh session.
10: You keep 3 topics in 1 chat. Claude re-reads all.
Fix: New topic = new chat. Always. Dead context is dead tokens.
11: Your about-me file is 22,000 words (too long).
Fix: Trim to under 2,000 words. End sessions with "Write a session-notes.md."
Paste my .md file prompt: https://ruben.substack.com/p/how-to-stop-hitting-claude-usage
12: You leave search & connectors on by default.
Fix: Default everything off. Turn features on per task, not per account.
13: You upload the same PDF to 5 different chats.
Fix: Use Projects. Upload once. Every chat inside references it without re-burning tokens.
14: You skip Personal Preferences & waste setup.
Fix: Settings → Personal Preferences. Set your tone and style once. It persists forever.
15: You rewrite prompts from scratch every time.
Fix: Keep a prompt library. Same structure, swap the variable. Stable prompts get cached.
16: You manually run the same report every week.
Fix: Use /schedule. "Every Monday at 7am, create my weekly briefing." Wake up to a finished doc.
17: You use Claude for things it can't do.
Fix: Know your tools. Images → Gemini.
Real-time search → Grok.
Stop burning tokens on dead ends.
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To download all of my Claude infographics:
Step 1. Go to http://how-to-ai.guide.
Step 2. Subscribe for free. Don't pay anything.
Step 3. Open my welcome email (most skip this).
Step 4. Hit the automatic reply button inside.
Step 5. Download my infographics from my Notion.
Bonus. Enjoy my best copy-paste prompts, too.
It is here!
B
Opus 4.7 feels more intelligent, agentic, and precise than 4.6. It took a few days for me to learn how to work with it effectively, to fully take advantage of its new capabilities.
Will post a few more tips throughout the day, starting with this blog post: https://claude.com/blog/best-practices-for-using-claude-opus-4-7-with-claude-code
Very interesting
Mar 27, 2026
Lol
H
Somebody just trained an LTX 2.3 LoRA of George Costanza at home on a 5090 in about a day with AI Toolkit.
Then generated a 30-second video with ComfyUI on the same setup in just 6 minutes.
Open source is, always has been, and always will be, the future of generative AI.
TRUE
K
found someone charging $9/month for personalized ai bedtime stories. 900 subscribers. pulling $8k+ monthly.
the content is simple. ai generates a 3-5 minute story starring the subscriber's kid. kid's name, kid's favorite animal, kid's favorite color woven into a new story every night delivered via email.
this person picked a niche where "made by ai" is a feature. parents don't care if ai wrote the story. they care that their 4 year old heard their name 8 times and is now asking for the doggy astronaut story again tomorrow.
most people chase niches where ai tries to replace human quality. beauty content, fitness coaching, educational explainers. niches where the audience actively hunts for signs of fakeness and punishes it.
the money moves are in niches where ai capability IS the product. personalization at scale. custom content per user. things a human literally couldn't deliver because writing 900 unique bedtime stories per night is physically impossible.
other niches with this same dynamic: custom ai pet portraits from submitted photos, personalized workout plans based on body type questionnaires, ai-narrated family audiobooks from old letters and journals. the product is the personalization. ai is the only way it can exist at that price point.
Mar 26, 2026
Mar 15, 2026
Mar 14, 2026
Dang, it is real!
T
Australian tech entrepreneur Paul Conyngham explains how he used ChatGPT/AlphaFold (spent $3,000 with no biology background) to create a custom MRNA vaccine to treat his dog’s cancer tumors. Unreal.
this is actually insane
> be tech guy in australia
> adopt cancer riddled rescue dog, months to live
> not_going_to_give_you_up.mp4
> pay $3,000 to sequence her tumor DNA
> feed it to ChatGPT and AlphaFold
> zero background in biology
> identify mutated proteins, match them to drug targets
> design a custom mRNA cancer vaccine from scratch
> genomics professor is “gobsmacked” that some puppy lover did this on his own
> need ethics approval to administer it
> red tape takes longer than designing the vaccine
> 3 months, finally approved
> drive 10 hours to get rosie her first injection
> tumor halves
> coat gets glossy again
> dog is alive and happy
> professor: “if we can do this for a dog, why aren’t we rolling this out to humans?”
one man with a chatbot, and $3,000 just outperformed the entire pharmaceutical discovery pipeline.
we are going to cure so many diseases.
I dont think people realize how good things are going to get
Wow, I'm having a hard time believing this but it is a game changer with how much we can accomplish in real world applications with AI.
Mar 13, 2026
True. I used to go and wait in line at the Besant Nagar Rajaji Bhavan even in the early 2000s before irctc became a thing.
b
Growing up in Chennai, I remember the trips to Central to book train tickets. It was a massive hall with several ticket counters. One had to fill a form/card like thing with details of destination, train, passengers etc. Then the discovery at the counter about wait listed seats. For us Chennai-BLR (Brindavan Express) and Chennai-Mangalore (I think it was West Coast Express) was the most common one. Obviously there was no way to inform family members of the details on mobile. Air tickets were booked through a travel agency. The company I worked for booked air tickets for travel. For wait listed tickets there was some pleading at the counter to accommodate us and confirm the travel. I remember some taking 'urgent' telex messages like 'father unwell come soon' to push one's luck for ticket confirmation ('89-90 I think). All this sounds like those tales of 'I studied under street lights, walked 10Km and then crossed a river to school' etc. Those born in the 90s and 2000s are fortunate not to witness such.
Mar 6, 2026
Agree. Strong execution + great product sense is the sweet spot IMO
This is amazing!
R
You just switched from ChatGPT to Claude. But you’re still not using Cowork.
When Claude released it, software stocks lost $830 billion in 6 days because of it.
And since I published my guide ‘Claude’
Also found this post on hackernews: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47281593
>As somebody who used em-dashes a lot pre-ChatGPT, I have genuinely struggled with feeling I should change my writing style to appear more human. I would be happy with a double dash--but many programs autocorrect that to a full em-dash. So I'm left anxious that people will think I find them so unimportant I have offloaded communication with them to an LLM. So this post resonated with me
This is so true! I still use em-dashes heavily in my natural writing, time to revisit that.
>As somebody who used em-dashes a lot pre-ChatGPT, I have genuinely struggled with feeling I should change my writing style to appear more human. I would be happy with a double dash--but many programs autocorrect that to a full em-dash. So I'm left anxious that people will think I find them so unimportant I have offloaded communication with them to an LLM. So this post resonated with me
This is so true! I still use em-dashes heavily in my natural writing, time to revisit that.
The third era of software development
This is the future I'd like to see..