I'm a chess player and one of the things I still enjoy about twitter is stumbling on diagrams of chess tactics and trying to solve them. A couple weeks ago I thought I had the answer to a tactic so I started to scroll through the responses to see if it was right. That's when I saw someone respond by tagging @ChessvisionAI and I discovered an awesome product.
ChessvisionAI is a twitter bot. Someone responds to a tweet with a chess diagram in it by tagging the bot and then Chessvision.ai analyzes the position and responds with links to both chess.com and lichess.org with an analysis of the next best move. Here's an example of it in action.
I'm a chess player and one of the things I still enjoy about twitter is stumbling on diagrams of chess tactics and trying to solve them. A couple weeks ago I thought I had the answer to a tactic so I started to scroll through the responses to see if it was right. That's when I saw someone respond by tagging @ChessvisionAI and I discovered an awesome product.
ChessvisionAI is a twitter bot. Someone responds to a tweet with a chess diagram in it by tagging the bot and then Chessvision.ai analyzes the position and responds with links to both chess.com and lichess.org with an analysis of the next best move. Here's an example of it in action.
I really like that ChessvisionAI responds with options to analyze positions in both chess.com and lichess.org and gives the user a choice as to which service they want to use (preferences can be pretty polarizing in the chess world). The experience is smooth and fast, and I now see ChessvisionAI popping up in the responses to virtually every chess tactic diagram. It's taken ahold of the chess world.
I find the idea behind this bot to be very powerful. It's a headless application, summoned in certain contexts and responds within the UI of that context. There's no home or central application for ChessvisionAI. It can live across Twitter, Discord, Reddit, etc. It's fluid and interoperable.
ChessvisionAI was created and is managed by one person, Pawel Kacprzak. He wrote a great post explaining the initial inspiration behind the idea and how he built it which went viral on Hacker News years ago. It's cool to see one individual have such an impact on the way we interact with chess diagrams and how their flexible approach meets users wherever they are.
Earlier this week, I hopped in an Uber with my family to get to our Lisbon apartment rental, and I felt a profound appreciation for the company. We were in a foreign country, and with the tap of a button, I could summon a car to safely get us home. It was reliable and worked the exact same way it does when I’m home in NYC or traveling anywhere else for that matter.
What Uber has accomplished over the past 15 years is nothing short of miraculous. I remember sitting outside TechCrunch Disrupt in San Francisco in 2010 when Travis pulled out his phone and showed Steve and me (and anyone else in a 2-mile radius who would pay attention) how he was calling a black car to pick him up. The app was clunky and the wait time was something like 20 minutes for a ride. Today I wait less than five minutes for a ride that is cheaper and safer than a taxi and available to me through the same app in virtually every city in the world. I don't think I've witnessed another company do anything like that in my career.
The media did an exceptional job vilifying Uber during its rise, and as a result, its history is often associated with scandal. That’s a shame because there are many important and positive things to learn from the company. Three of them are presently top of mind as I reflect on it:
Super outcomes require superhuman effort. Emil Michael, Uber’s chief business officer, has been a long-time friend of mine and was an advisor to both my companies. I watched him as he helped to build Uber from a company that had recently achieved product-market fit to a global behemoth. I’ve founded two companies and I’ve never worked as hard as he did when he built Uber. Absolute commitment to winning was part of the culture of the company. As my family was safely being transported around a foreign city earlier this week, all I could think was that wouldn’t have been possible were it not for the Uber teams’ maniacal work ethic. I remember it being commonplace to vilify the company and its leadership for its intense work culture. It would have never worked without it.
Another underappreciated aspect of Uber was its bold and innovative “capital as a moat” strategy, rapidly raising billions of dollars round after round. They were criticized for their lack of profitability and for using equity capital to block their competitors from markets and investor pools. They were deemed a capital-inefficient business that was never going to work. But they took that capital and built out physical infrastructure across the world in one decade in a way that had never been done before and at a speed that, in retrospect, seems unfathomable. Now it’s a $150B market cap and cash flow positive company that pioneered a bold and counterintuitive capital raising model currently employed by everyone involved in another transformative category, the LLM wars.
Think for yourself, and don't get swooped up by media narratives. Uber caught an infinite amount of flack as it was coming up. It was as if the world, particularly the media, was rooting for its downfall. During the moment, its hard-charging culture and agglomerate-all-the-cash strategy seemed like a recipe for disaster. At least that’s what the public narrative portrayed. But look at it now. It is almost certain that the global infrastructure Uber has built over the past 15 years would not exist were it not for the things that most people once lambasted about the company. Yes, absolutely Dara has done an exceptional job as CEO, shepherding the company as a public institution. But you don’t get to a place where you can hire a CEO like Dara without breaking some eggs along the way.
It took an Uber ride in a foreign country to appreciate these things fully. It’s easy to sour on companies as they are growing for doing things differently and for making mistakes publicly. But you don’t go from nothing to iconic without trekking through many gray areas. It’s important not to rush to judgment when the narrative and public sentiment turn. We see this every day in national politics, and we also see it when startups and new technologies make their way into the zeitgeist. Sometimes, things that are different that ruffle our feathers end up being true superpowers. I'm trying to be more conscious of that.
We just had a family vacation in Portugal. Last summer, we took our kids to Italy for two weeks and showed them Rome, Umbria, and Sardinia. It was a magical trip so we decided to do it again and this time traveled across Lisbon, Algarve, and Santa Cruz for roughly ten days.
There are so many things to love about the country. Some that stood out to me on our trip:
The beaches are beautiful, serene, and remarkably clean. Even on the most crowded of beaches, I don’t think I saw a single piece of trash on the ground.
The view from one of our favorite restaurants, Bronzear
The climate and topography very much remind me of California. The Santa Cruz area is like Big Sur with big cliffs that drop into the ocean. There are beaches here that are totally deserted and wild and make you feel like the last person on earth.
Surfing in Santa Cruz is a super fun family experience, even in the cold water
Like most of Europe, the food is meaningfully different than the US. I am rather disgusted by our domestic food system. It costs an arm and a leg, and it’s practically a full-time job to be able to heat healthy whole foods and avoid processed poison. I feel great after meals in Europe, and Portugal has delicious, fresh and affordable food all around. The seafood is incredible.
One thing I really like is how rest stops on the highway have delightful restaurant-like areas with terrific food you can either grab to go or comfortably sit and eat there. They also have quaint outdoor picnic areas. It was a delight to see a service stop be idyllic.
I barely noticed a police presence anywhere, and at no point did we feel unsafe in Lisbon (which was crowded). We maybe saw two groups of police officers in the city.
Portuguese fashion is awesome and places a focus on sustainability and quality. It’s now up there for me with Japanese apparel, and I am going to go out of my way to shop for Portuguese brands. There are tons of cool stores and places to shop in Lisbon, and street art is part of the culture.
August is becoming impossibly hot to travel in Europe. We will likely do these trips in June and early July to avoid the heat and the crowds.
I am looking forward to returning to Lisbon and exploring other parts of Portugal like the Douro Valley and Silver Coast. I really love our annual summer Europe trip and im glad it’s now a tradition of ours.
I really like that ChessvisionAI responds with options to analyze positions in both chess.com and lichess.org and gives the user a choice as to which service they want to use (preferences can be pretty polarizing in the chess world). The experience is smooth and fast, and I now see ChessvisionAI popping up in the responses to virtually every chess tactic diagram. It's taken ahold of the chess world.
I find the idea behind this bot to be very powerful. It's a headless application, summoned in certain contexts and responds within the UI of that context. There's no home or central application for ChessvisionAI. It can live across Twitter, Discord, Reddit, etc. It's fluid and interoperable.
ChessvisionAI was created and is managed by one person, Pawel Kacprzak. He wrote a great post explaining the initial inspiration behind the idea and how he built it which went viral on Hacker News years ago. It's cool to see one individual have such an impact on the way we interact with chess diagrams and how their flexible approach meets users wherever they are.
Earlier this week, I hopped in an Uber with my family to get to our Lisbon apartment rental, and I felt a profound appreciation for the company. We were in a foreign country, and with the tap of a button, I could summon a car to safely get us home. It was reliable and worked the exact same way it does when I’m home in NYC or traveling anywhere else for that matter.
What Uber has accomplished over the past 15 years is nothing short of miraculous. I remember sitting outside TechCrunch Disrupt in San Francisco in 2010 when Travis pulled out his phone and showed Steve and me (and anyone else in a 2-mile radius who would pay attention) how he was calling a black car to pick him up. The app was clunky and the wait time was something like 20 minutes for a ride. Today I wait less than five minutes for a ride that is cheaper and safer than a taxi and available to me through the same app in virtually every city in the world. I don't think I've witnessed another company do anything like that in my career.
The media did an exceptional job vilifying Uber during its rise, and as a result, its history is often associated with scandal. That’s a shame because there are many important and positive things to learn from the company. Three of them are presently top of mind as I reflect on it:
Super outcomes require superhuman effort. Emil Michael, Uber’s chief business officer, has been a long-time friend of mine and was an advisor to both my companies. I watched him as he helped to build Uber from a company that had recently achieved product-market fit to a global behemoth. I’ve founded two companies and I’ve never worked as hard as he did when he built Uber. Absolute commitment to winning was part of the culture of the company. As my family was safely being transported around a foreign city earlier this week, all I could think was that wouldn’t have been possible were it not for the Uber teams’ maniacal work ethic. I remember it being commonplace to vilify the company and its leadership for its intense work culture. It would have never worked without it.
Another underappreciated aspect of Uber was its bold and innovative “capital as a moat” strategy, rapidly raising billions of dollars round after round. They were criticized for their lack of profitability and for using equity capital to block their competitors from markets and investor pools. They were deemed a capital-inefficient business that was never going to work. But they took that capital and built out physical infrastructure across the world in one decade in a way that had never been done before and at a speed that, in retrospect, seems unfathomable. Now it’s a $150B market cap and cash flow positive company that pioneered a bold and counterintuitive capital raising model currently employed by everyone involved in another transformative category, the LLM wars.
Think for yourself, and don't get swooped up by media narratives. Uber caught an infinite amount of flack as it was coming up. It was as if the world, particularly the media, was rooting for its downfall. During the moment, its hard-charging culture and agglomerate-all-the-cash strategy seemed like a recipe for disaster. At least that’s what the public narrative portrayed. But look at it now. It is almost certain that the global infrastructure Uber has built over the past 15 years would not exist were it not for the things that most people once lambasted about the company. Yes, absolutely Dara has done an exceptional job as CEO, shepherding the company as a public institution. But you don’t get to a place where you can hire a CEO like Dara without breaking some eggs along the way.
It took an Uber ride in a foreign country to appreciate these things fully. It’s easy to sour on companies as they are growing for doing things differently and for making mistakes publicly. But you don’t go from nothing to iconic without trekking through many gray areas. It’s important not to rush to judgment when the narrative and public sentiment turn. We see this every day in national politics, and we also see it when startups and new technologies make their way into the zeitgeist. Sometimes, things that are different that ruffle our feathers end up being true superpowers. I'm trying to be more conscious of that.
We just had a family vacation in Portugal. Last summer, we took our kids to Italy for two weeks and showed them Rome, Umbria, and Sardinia. It was a magical trip so we decided to do it again and this time traveled across Lisbon, Algarve, and Santa Cruz for roughly ten days.
There are so many things to love about the country. Some that stood out to me on our trip:
The beaches are beautiful, serene, and remarkably clean. Even on the most crowded of beaches, I don’t think I saw a single piece of trash on the ground.
The view from one of our favorite restaurants, Bronzear
The climate and topography very much remind me of California. The Santa Cruz area is like Big Sur with big cliffs that drop into the ocean. There are beaches here that are totally deserted and wild and make you feel like the last person on earth.
Surfing in Santa Cruz is a super fun family experience, even in the cold water
Like most of Europe, the food is meaningfully different than the US. I am rather disgusted by our domestic food system. It costs an arm and a leg, and it’s practically a full-time job to be able to heat healthy whole foods and avoid processed poison. I feel great after meals in Europe, and Portugal has delicious, fresh and affordable food all around. The seafood is incredible.
One thing I really like is how rest stops on the highway have delightful restaurant-like areas with terrific food you can either grab to go or comfortably sit and eat there. They also have quaint outdoor picnic areas. It was a delight to see a service stop be idyllic.
I barely noticed a police presence anywhere, and at no point did we feel unsafe in Lisbon (which was crowded). We maybe saw two groups of police officers in the city.
Portuguese fashion is awesome and places a focus on sustainability and quality. It’s now up there for me with Japanese apparel, and I am going to go out of my way to shop for Portuguese brands. There are tons of cool stores and places to shop in Lisbon, and street art is part of the culture.
August is becoming impossibly hot to travel in Europe. We will likely do these trips in June and early July to avoid the heat and the crowds.
I am looking forward to returning to Lisbon and exploring other parts of Portugal like the Douro Valley and Silver Coast. I really love our annual summer Europe trip and im glad it’s now a tradition of ours.
A beach in Algarve
The view atop the cliffs at Praia do Seixo
Crack Kids, a store devoted to street art in Lisbon
A beach in Algarve
The view atop the cliffs at Praia do Seixo
Crack Kids, a store devoted to street art in Lisbon
