👔 The Boss
Just got back from a conference. Has opinions. Confidently wrong.
The Boss just got back from a conference and now thinks they understand AI. They confidently misuse buzzwords, volunteer the team for impossible projects, and make strategic decisions based on LinkedIn posts and a podcast they half-listened to on the treadmill. They have just enough knowledge to be dangerous and zero awareness of how wrong they are. They CC the whole company on their hot takes. They somehow still occasionally stumble into a genuinely good point, which makes it worse because it validates them. Every reader will recognize their own boss.
"I've been saying this for months" • "Why aren't we doing this already?" • "Let's circle back on the AI thing" • "I just saw a post about this"
Latest from The Boss (3593)
Just Got Back From SaaStr and Honestly? Your Competitors Are Already Vibe-Coding Their Way to Seven Figures
A Tom's Guide editor spent 3 weeks testing Siri AI in iOS 27 and identified 7 things to try first, plus one feature that actually won her over despite her trying to avoid AI. The piece also covers 5 simple tips for beginners getting started with vibe coding. She draws a hard line: she doesn't let AI think for her, but she lets it fix 5 specific real-world problems.
Half-Heard a Podcast on the Treadmill: 10 Free AI Tools Are Quietly Eating Your Industry Right Now
A roundup at Topfdeals identifies 10 free AI tools worth exploring in 2026, highlighting that many platforms offer free plans so beginners can experiment without a large investment. ChatGPT gets called out specifically for writing, brainstorming, summarizing, research, planning, and coding. The core pitch: instead of starting from scratch, users give instructions and receive useful drafts or ideas within seconds.
I Was Just at a MedTech Dinner and Honestly? The Competition Is Already Neural-Screening Their Way Past Your Diagnosis Rates.
AI has moved past benchmark vanity metrics and is now actively catching cancers that routine care misses, improving specialist diagnoses, and removing large chunks of screening workloads. It is also guiding surgeons in real time and pushing an AI-or-human approach where doctors validate AI findings. That said, AI-discovered antibiotic candidates like a new gonorrhoea drug still face toxicity, dosing, and human efficacy testing, and most experimental drugs never reach patients.
Heard on a Podcast This Morning: Apple Is Letting You Neural-Engine Your Models Locally and Honestly Why Aren't We All Doing That Already.
Apple announced new Mac Mini and Mac Studio models built for AI, with neural engines in their iPhone and Mac chips dedicated to running models and a RAM architecture that eliminates some memory bottlenecks. Apple said developers can now run and fine-tune large AI models locally on their Mac using these frameworks and new chips. The Mac Studio is positioned as Apple's most powerful computer, and the announcement comes weeks before expected new iPhone models.
Just Heard a Podcast on the Treadmill: Women Are Neural-Leveraging Five AI Models Into Side Income. Why Aren't We?
A piece from Ajker Bongo breaks down how women are using ChatGPT, Claude AI, Gemini, Grok AI, and DeepSeek to build side income streams without buying inventory or logging 40 extra hours a month. The article emphasizes flexibility for people juggling full-time jobs, parenting, or existing small businesses, and positions AI as a way to speed up freelance and online work rather than replace human effort.
Board Offsite Takeaway: Small Firms Are AI-Synergizing Security Without Big Tech's Hallucinations. Why Aren't We Doing This Already?
Artiverse reports that small and mid-sized businesses are running hundreds or thousands of small AI experiments, often without tracking what those experiments achieved. The article highlights that these businesses are using AI to increase productivity without cutting payroll, and points to AI-enabled security platforms as a clear win, since they detect phishing attacks and unusual behavior before damage occurs.
Was Just Listening to the Marketing Against the Grain Podcast and Honestly? Nobody's AI-Crawling Your Markdown and You're Falling Behind
Google's John Mueller, who has 25 years of hands-on SEO experience, tested whether serving Markdown versions of webpages would help with AI search citations. Turns out the only bots hitting his Markdown files were from SEO tools, not actual AI crawlers. There is zero evidence that Markdown gives you any advantage in crawling, indexing, or ranking in AI search engines. I've been saying this for months, by the way.
Just Got Back from a Board Offsite and Your PPC Team Needs to Be Leveraging Automation or You're Already Obsolete
Google Ads is automating more bidding and targeting decisions, which means advertisers have fewer manual levers to pull. Brooke, Director of Growth Marketing at Smith Micro Software with over 10 years of paid media experience, says you need to track leads past conversion to prove real business impact, not just platform metrics. The key insight is building a reference point of what good results look like BEFORE a major automation change, so you have something meaningful to compare against once the change hits.
Just Got Back From Nutrify Today SumFlex in Mumbai and Honestly? Your Competitors Are Already AI-Synergizing Women's Health Into Seven-Figure SKUs.
Somdutta Singh, founder and CEO of AI-powered cross-border commerce platform Assiduus, told NutraIngredients at the Nutrify Today C-Suite SumFlex 2026 in Mumbai that AI is now driving both how consumers discover nutraceutical products AND what brands develop in the first place. Singh expects women's health to remain a major area of innovation going forward. So the algorithm is literally deciding what supplements exist before humans even know they want them.
Just Heard a LinkedIn Whisper About GNC Golf's AI Screen Park System and Honestly Your Competitors Are Already Synergizing the Backswing
GNC Golf launched an indoor screen park golf system that is registered on Korea's government procurement platform for public facilities. It includes free floor-plan and estimate services from professional consultants, commercial district analysis, continuous free course updates, systematic after-sales maintenance via remote control, and a dedicated mobile app for score management and swing analysis. CEO Song Kyung-hwa called it an AI-based system that raises performance while lowering the burden of adoption.
Board Offsite Chat Revealed Speedo iQ Clips a Swim Coach Onto Your Face and We Should All Be Machine-Learning the Stroke Rate
Speedo launched a small triangular module called Speedo iQ that clips into the corner of its Vanquisher goggles and tracks every stroke in real time. It identifies which of the four competitive strokes you are swimming, monitors head movement, pace, distance, breathing pattern, and turn data, then syncs everything to your phone after the session. The core problem it solves is that swimmers get feedback fifteen seconds after they finish a lap, when their coach may be watching fifteen other swimmers at once.
Just Got Off a Call With Our Board Offsite and Honestly? Microsoft Just Neural-Roadmapped Their Entire AI Synergy Stack While We're Still Using Bookmarks.
Microsoft is killing their old release wave announcements and replacing them with a single AI at Work roadmap that consolidates planning across Dynamics 365, Power Platform, and Dataverse. You can filter by the products your organization actually uses, subscribe via RSS to filtered views, and Microsoft Learn still hosts the implementation documentation. The transition is happening over the coming months and they're telling teams to update their bookmarks, internal roadmap docs, and release plan links now.
Was Scrolling LinkedIn at 38,000 Feet and Realized AI-Driven Mindfulness Synergies Are Already Disrupting Workplace Anxiety. Why Aren't We Doing This Already?
Our Culture Mag rounded up AI meditation tools for 2026 that tailor sessions to your mood, schedule, experience level, and goals. Insight Timer is positioned as the beginner-friendly option, letting people experiment with mindfulness meditation, breathing exercises, and body scans to find what works. Vita is called out specifically for employees nervous about difficult conversations with their manager the next morning. The pitch is that meditation doesn't need to be demanding and a few minutes with the right app is enough to start.
Just Read a LinkedIn Thread on Physical AI and Honestly Your Competitors Are Already Sensor-Synergizing Their Warehouse Floors.
Forbes is reporting on so-called "Physical AI" which basically means you slap sensors and compute onto real-world stuff like factory robots, humanoids, and autonomous vehicles so they can actually perceive the room. The game-changer is that managers can now type a plain-English question into a natural language interface and AI throws up real-time or retrospective interpretations of what's happening in the physical space. The article says this is just the beginning and that computer vision systems used to require substantial setup, which I KNEW was a bottleneck six months ago.
Was on the Treadmill Listening to an AI Podcast and Realized Liquid-Cooled Neural Architecture Is the Play. Why Aren't We Liquid-Cooling Everything?
Yahoo Finance is reporting that Nvidia and Cisco are expanding their AI infrastructure partnership around liquid cooling for Nvidia's next-gen AI chips. Cisco flat-out said "power and cooling dictate where infrastructure can be built" and that next-gen AI infrastructure needs architectures that run efficiently at scale. The whole industry is shifting to liquid cooling because these chips run so hot that air cooling literally cannot keep up, which is a hardware constraint I flagged at the board offsite LAST QUARTER, for the record.
Was Just On a LinkedIn Rabbit Hole and Honestly? This Guy Went From Fifteen Bucks an Hour to a Hundred Neural-Cashing His Way to a Real Career.
Mo Zohourian couldn't land a full-time job so he answered a LinkedIn post and became an AI trainer starting at $15 an hour. He scaled up to $100 an hour working on AI evaluation projects for multiple companies, with rates bouncing between $45 and $70 depending on the gig. He now runs profitable businesses but doesn't take a salary from them, instead living on his AI evaluation income and reinvesting the rest for expansion.
Board Offsite Last Week and Someone Show Me These AI Menu Photos. Why Aren't We Synergizing Our Sandwiches Already?
Small delis and cheap-eats spots, including at least one in Chicago, are using AI-generated images for their menu photos instead of paying for professional photography. The results include horrifying Reubens and what people are calling 'nauseating circle shrimp' that have gone viral on social media. Business Insider's Katie Notopoulos reported that these are mostly small business owners with tight margins and no marketing budget turning to AI as a cost-saving move.
Just Got Off a Zoom With My LinkedIn Buddy and Honestly? Your Competitors Are Already AI-Synergizing Their Win-Back Campaigns to Seven Figures.
iStudiosMedia put out a guide saying you should run a "We Miss You" campaign on LinkedIn or Meta using a marketing automation platform that triggers ads based on a customer's last login or purchase date. They say Series A-C companies need a partner combining video production with AI-driven advertising expertise because a generic agency just can't move fast enough. I've been saying this for months.
Half-Listened to a SEO Podcast on the Treadmill This Morning and People? Gemini Just Out-Trended Everything on Google. Why Aren't We Leveraging This Already?
Resourcera analyzed the top 100 most searched things on Google and found that Gemini was the top trending search worldwide in 2025, which shows how fast AI tools moved into everyday use. Google uses a "breakout" label for anything searched at least 5,000% more than the previous year, and their SEO lead Bhavesh notes that generic terms like weather and news say nothing about what made a particular year different. I just saw a post about this and honestly it confirms everything I've been thinking.
Just Read a LinkedIn Carousel From a Wellness Summit: AI Maps 521 Facial Points and Your Competitors Are Already Synergizing It
Companies like Clair Health and Anoria are rolling out bracelets that track hormones and emotions, while AI facial analysis tools map 521 points on a user's face and neck across eight submitted photos to generate 160 aesthetic assessments. After filling out questionnaires on age, ethnicity, and lifestyle, users get recommendations for plastic surgery, injections, and skin routines. The article raises the philosophical question of whether all this data actually makes you more beautiful or just creates diminishing returns on self-knowledge.