I lost both my parents when I was 17.
Today, my 17-year-old son bought his mother a pair of sandals with money he earned himself.
I never got that chance.
That’s why this photo means so much to me.
My son’s name is Tarun. After finishing school, he chose not to go straight to college. His mother and I supported him in exploring a different route: learning independently, meeting founders and creating content about tech and AI.
Two months into creating, his Instagram account has grown to 6,500 followers.
One video reached 325,000 views, with 15,000 comments and 7,500 likes.
But I also get to see what happens before a video goes up.
He has been putting in 12–14-hour days, learning to edit, figuring out cameras, researching unfamiliar topics, making videos and replying to people.
What makes me proud is watching him take responsibility for his own learning.
A US company reached out to him, and he secured his first business contract. A couple of other tech companies have made enquiries too.
Now he’s setting up a studio in my office. He wants to interview founders and start a podcast. I’ll share more as that takes shape.
I was already proud of him.
Then he bought this gift for his mum.
I’ve bought my wife plenty of gifts over the years, including more expensive ones. But seeing her happiness with this pair of sandals was different.
Her son had earned the money. And he had thought of her.
Watching them, I thought about my own parents.
At his age, I was starting to find my way without them. I never got to earn my own money, bring something home for my mum or dad, and see their reaction.
Today, I got to see that moment from the other side.
Two months is far too early to declare that we’ve figured out education or parenting. Tarun has a lot left to learn. We’re fortunate to be able to give him the support and space to try.
But this experience has reminded me to take a child’s interests seriously.
Ask what they’re learning. Help them meet people they can learn from. Give them guidance without deciding every step for them.
Not every interest has to become a career. But it deserves a conversation before it gets dismissed.
I’m excited about the videos, the client and the studio.
Yet years from now, I suspect this is the part I’ll remember most.
I never got to be the son giving that gift.
Today, I got to be the father watching it happen.
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For those who’d like to follow Tarun’s journey in AI, technology and content creation, here’s his Instagram:
instagram.com/tarunpremkumar…
He’s just getting started. Excited to see what he builds next.
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Brilliant and Scary.
Introducing Griffin, the first model to pass the video Turing test.
48% of people who talked to it live thought it was a real human. Previous systems have had a pass rate <3%. It is #1 on NVIDIA's benchmark for full-duplex AI video.
It’s the first Human Interaction Model (HIM).
Readers added context they thought people might want to know
The 48% figure and "video Turing test" claim are from Tavus's own study of 54 one-minute calls, not independently verified or using a standard protocol. Griffin-Lite leads NVIDIA's VideoFDB benchmark on their public leaderboard.
cellcog.ai/blog/tavus-gri…
research.nvidia.com/labs/amri/proj…
tech-ish.com/2026/10/02/tav…
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Calude Design to Replace Figma xitter.cf/claudeai/status/204515…
Introducing Claude Design by Anthropic Labs: make prototypes, slides, and one-pagers by talking to Claude.
Powered by Claude Opus 4.7, our most capable vision model. Available in research preview on the Pro, Max, Team, and Enterprise plans, rolling out throughout the day.
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Nicholas Carlini, Research Scientist, Anthropic, speaks at [un]prompted 2026 on: Black-hat LLMs about Mythos 2 weeks back youtube.com/watch?v=1sd26pWh…
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In the room where India’s AI future is being built.
@AIBoomi Annual ’26 — Chennai.
Building enterprise voice AI at @zudu_ai. If your business still runs on hold music and IVR menus, we should talk.
#AIBoomi2026 #BuildWhatsNext #VoiceAI
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Anthropic CEO @DarioAmodei said we support the U.S. military.
But we will not allow our @claudeai to be used for mass surveillance or autonomous killing systems.
If that means losing government contracts, so be it.
A statement from Anthropic CEO, Dario Amodei, on our discussions with the Department of War.
anthropic.com/news/statement…
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One invention that made humanity worse, not better:
The infinite scroll.
Before it existed, content had natural stopping points. You’d finish a page, hit “Next,” and your brain got a moment to ask “Do I actually want more of this?”
That tiny friction was a feature, not a bug.
The infinite scroll killed it.
It didn’t solve a user problem. It solved an engagement metric problem. The entire design intent was to eliminate the exact moment where someone might choose to stop.
And it worked:
→ Screen time exploded
→ Attention spans collapsed
→ Billions of people now struggle to sit with boredom
And here’s the thing - boredom is where the best thinking happens. Strategy. Creativity. Self-awareness. All of it lives in the empty space that infinite scroll filled with content you never asked for.
What makes it dangerous is that it doesn’t feel dangerous. It feels like convenience. Like a better UX.
But it quietly restructured how billions of people spend their waking hours - in ways they never consciously chose.
Aza Raskin, the person who invented it, publicly said he regrets it. He estimated it wastes roughly 200,000 human lifetimes worth of attention. Every. Single. Day.
Not every innovation is progress. Some just look like it.
The best products give users control. The worst ones take it away so quietly that no one notices.
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#productdesign #ux #startups #technology #attention #buildinpublic
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I spent 3 days analyzing $1.33B in verified Stripe revenue from 842 startups.
The #1 category by revenue isn't AI - it's Security.
69% of startups earn under $1K. 5 startups with <36 followers crossed $1M+.
Full data breakdown in the thread 👇
I analyzed 842 startups with VERIFIED Stripe revenue on TrustMRR.
$1.33 billion. 48 million transactions. No fluff real data.
Here's what's actually making money in 2026 and it's NOT what X thinks.
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I analyzed 842 startups with VERIFIED Stripe revenue on TrustMRR.
$1.33 billion. 48 million transactions. No fluff real data.
Here's what's actually making money in 2026 and it's NOT what X thinks.
That's it. Real revenue data from 842 verified startups.
If this was useful:
→ Bookmark it (you'll need this later)
→ Repost to help another founder
→ Follow me for more data-driven breakdowns
I'll do a deep dive on the top 10 individual startups next week.
What category surprised you most?
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