Retrospectiva #7
Another month bites the dust. We've been back in Denmark for the past couple of weeks. I often joke that these are the only months in the year where Copenhagen is actually worth it. At least weather-wise.
I've ditched the running leggings, and we're back in shorts. Running has been consistent, although not as much as I'd like. I've got a new virtual coach helping me stay consistent and on top of things. More on that below.
We're deep in conference season. AI Engineer Europe was fun, until the whole family got sick in a small London hotel. This week I'm travelling to Data Makers Fest in Porto to give a talk about... I'll publish the slides in /talks in due time.
Using
Hermes Agent: You've heard of OpenClaw, the famous assistant everyone's talking about. It didn't hit home for me. For the past month though, I've been running the Hermes Agent on a VPS and talking to it via Telegram. I can't believe I'm saying this, but I'm hooked. Comparing flight options, coaching me through my running plans, organizing my calendar, sending emails, tracking calories, you name it. Hermes has handled it. Beware though. None of this works out of the box. I've had to tweak, customize, spend hours making sure it works exactly like I want. It's powered by two open-weight Chinese models: Kimi 2.6, and DeepSeek V4 Pro. I'll write more about this soon.
Bevel: I spent two weeks testing Bevel out. Their promise is a Whoop competitor (they are even getting sued by them) - without the steep price tag. You can use your Apple Watch, Oura, or Garmin, and they'll deliver all the health insights you might possibly need. The design of the app is clean and polished, a much better experience than any of the usual players. The AI assistant story is... messy. The intentions are great, but unlike the clean and polished design of the app, the whole assistant thing looks half baked. Missing to reference plans I built. Derailing. I've replaced it with Hermes. Still worth the mention.
Scaleway: We need more and better European AI. Everything is too US or China focused. For the past 2/3 years, whenever I needed a GPU I went with Vast.ai. Don't get me wrong - it's a great, cheap, and mostly reliable service. But as I deploy more and more GPU based workloads, I've longed for something EU-based. Scaleway is exactly that. With data centers in France and Poland, the machines have been extremely reliable. It's not the cheapest out there, but it's European, and that's a price I'm increasingly willing to pay.
Reading
Note: There's now a /books page in this blog, where you can see most of the books I've read.
Anaximander - Carlo Rovelli: I picked up this small book when taking a small break from AI Engineer Europe at a Foyles book store in London without many hopes for it. Carlo Rovelli is an incredibly talented writer and storyteller. I got completely immersed in how the ancient Greeks looked at the world. Is the earth floating? Does the sun go around it? How did written language come about? Why was China behind? Why Greece? How does science progress? These are just some of the questions Carlo dwells on. And he does so beautifully.
Lifestyle Medicine - Valerio Rosso: I wanted to read a first book in Italian, by an Italian author. The ideas in it were interesting, but it was a bit repetitive. It argues for the idea of the 7 Pillars for a great life: Letting go of addictions, stress management, physical activity, nutrition, sleep hygiene, nurturing relationships, and optimizing your environment. It was recommended by an Italian blogger I follow. Interesting, but a bit too dense for my taste.
"And so the tech industry is rushing forward to put AI everywhere at enormous cost — energy, emissions, manufacturing capacity, the ability to buy RAM — and locked into the narrow framework of software brain without realizing they are also asking people to be fundamentally less human. They then sit around wondering why everyone hates them" - Nilay Patel
THE PEOPLE DO NOT YEARN FOR AUTOMATION - Nilay Patel: I resonate with a lot of this. Everyone is being told they have to use AI or become obsolete. The effect: everyone is starting to hate AI. The tech industry is forcing an idea onto people, and no-one wants to buy the future they are selling.
Listening
Jensen Huang – TPU competition, why we should sell chips to China, & Nvidia’s supply chain moat: Sometimes, Dwarkesh's podcast is a bit too AGI pilled for my taste. Other times, it just nails it. This was one of those times. I loved the discussion: particularly the part about China. Arguments can be heated – because people care – but they can still be civilized and interesting.
Building Pi, and what makes self-modifying software so fascinating: Two of my favourite people on the pragmatic side of LLMs. Mario and Armin talk about building Pi, and how human judgement still matters in the age of LLMs. Matters a lot, actually.
vinyl house mix from the living room: I saw someone recommend Brain.fm the other day on X. Don't listen to generic AI bs. There's so much good music out there. Don't have good taste? Then listen to someone that does. That's the role of a DJ. And Chris Luno is one of my favourites.
Watching
I Spent £300 on Chinese Running Shoes, Were They Any Good?: If you run a lot, you probably also buy a lot of running shoes. I just had a brand new pair of New Balance shoes get the sole completely ruined after only two months. It made me think - what else is out there? What if I didn't go mainstream this time?
White Lotus - Season 3: Not as great as the first two seasons, but definitely worth the watch. Had Vitto and me glued to the screen and making strong bets on who we think will die in the end - as normal couples do. She always wins the bet - I always try to cheat my way out.
The Plastic Detox: We thought this was going to be another brainless Netflix documentary. The reality was quite different. It's not a super scientific experiment. But you definitely don't look at the world with the same eyes after watching it.
See you next month!