“If the path before you is clear, you're probably on someone else's.”
- Carl Jung
China Leading the Way in...What??
Effective September 1, 2024, all service providers operating in China will be required to "add explicit labels to generated and synthesized content." This includes: text, image, video, audio, and virtual scenes.
It's very interesting to see this ruling come from China of all places. With their centralized power structure, I thought they would keep the regulatory burden of AI engineering as low as possible to help them win what is effectively an "AI war" with the US.
As AI becomes more powerful, it becomes more dangerous. This could lead to a vicious cycle of regulation. There are a lot of companies who are losing money in AI right now. If many heavy regulatory burdens are strapped onto their rockets, they may fall from the sky.
Speaking of Rockets
The two US astronauts who were stranded aboard the ISS have been successfully and safely returned home by SpaceX.
The two astronauts, Butch and Suni, were only supposed to be on the ISS for eight days. Due to technical issues with the Boeing spacecraft they arrived on that could not be resolved, they were essentially stuck.
No matter what you think about SpaceX's leadership, it is great to know that the most important and capable space company in the world is from the United States of America.
Meme of the week
HR Tech Espionage
Deel, a rapidly-growing HR tech company has had a lawsuit files against them by Rippling, a fellow newer entrant to the HR tech space.
Rippling alleges that Deel engaged in corporate espionage by recruiting a spy within Rippling to steal confidential business information. The spy allegedly conducted thousands of unauthorized searches in Rippling’s internal systems, focusing on details about customers considering switching from Deel to Rippling.
To confirm Deel’s involvement, Rippling set a trap: they sent a letter to Deel’s senior leadership referencing an empty Slack channel named "d-defectors," implying it contained valuable information. Shortly after, the spy searched for this channel, proving Deel’s top executives or legal team were directing the operation.
When confronted at Rippling’s Dublin office with a court order to hand over his phone, the alleged spy locked himself in a bathroom. Despite warnings that non-compliance could lead to jail time, he reportedly said, “I’m willing to take that risk,” before fleeing.
Rippling claims Deel used the stolen data to counter its sales efforts, retain customers, poach employees, and manipulate media narratives. Rippling is now seeking damages and legal accountability.
This will be fascinating to watch unfold, and could be the basis for an interesting book!
Quick Tip - Product Marketing
Good News
A survey of over 95,000 students across 373 universities found that in 2022, 44% showed signs of depression. This declined to 41% in 2023 and dropped further to 38% in 2024. Researchers attribute this to a broader national trend, as teenagers and young adults have reported improved mental health and well-being in seven recent studies.
No-Code Sucks!
Like everything I write in my newsletter, this is an opinion piece. There are, of course, very good no-code softwares that help non-technical people do amazing things.
No-code tools promise simplicity but often create more problems than they solve. The idea of dragging and dropping blocks to build software without coding sounds great in theory, but in practice, it quickly becomes a mess. As workflows grow more complex, no-code users find themselves stuck in an unmanageable web of nodes, conditions, and dependencies. The irony is that while no-code platforms claim to eliminate complexity, they actually introduce a new kind of convoluted logic—one that's harder to debug, less flexible, and eventually forces users to seek real coding solutions.
I've fallen victim to this myself. There is usually a threshold of usefulness with these tools, and after you cross the threshold, it becomes impossible to customize to your needs. No-code platforms also come with significant long-term costs. Subscription fees for no-code tools can quickly add up, especially as businesses scale and require access to more advanced features locked behind higher pricing tiers. On top of that, there's the risk of vendor lock-in—once a company builds its processes around a particular no-code tool, switching away becomes incredibly difficult.
Reliance on third-party no-code solutions also means ceding control over performance, security, and uptime. To me, these are things I'd always like full control over.
So what is the best way for a non-techie to build software? Well I hate to say it but there is none right now. Without any knowledge of how all this stuff works, you are stuck with no-code tools. For simple things, that could certainly work for you. But if you want to create the next billion dollar company, you'll end up giving 30-50% equity to a founding engineer. One day, hopefully soon, this will change.
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