You Don't Have to Write Constantly, Just Write Something
Writing is one of the most important forms of communication next to verbal. The essence of the internet makes this vital for all kids of transactions from informing to career improvement, to breaking down complex information. What we write determines who are as a person, thus conveying a point of view and information is paramount to all kinds of success in life. What we choose and how we choose to write defines is in more ways than we can list in a single blog post, so that brings me to my message.
You don’t have to write a lot – just write something. It doesn’t necessarily have to be daily, just what’s comfortable enough. Let other knows you’re out there and show them what you know and why it’s important. The hustle of networking sites like LinkedIn portray a culture of “shock value” and clickbait. I’m here to tell you not to fall for that. If you have a point to make, make it – regardless of length or reach. If it’s important enough and is posted in the right places; the internet will see it.
On a personal level, I utilize tools like AnyType, Google Notes, and to organize my thoughts. Often my posts consist of anything from 500 words to only a few sentences. Links are often posted on LinkedIn, BlueSky, Mastodon, or just keep drafts to work on for later. When I have an idea I write it down somewhere, that’s the crucial step to getting started. I then have a personal repository of all of this information through my hosted Micro.Blog site through my domain (michaelmartinez.co). I then link back to these sources through AnyType to keep a record of truth (and it’s so much easier to search when you post a lot). I don’t much care for the Micro.Blog drafting page, so I use a sanction third-party plug in called Quill that is more functional for my uses. Your uses may vary.
Critiquing articles, long-form analysis, or just sharing links with a small bit of obvious context goes a long way to show the world your understanding or just posting for reach. The more writings create an online community, the better the conversation; thus the interactions with those wanting to gain knowledge, or teach you grows. That benefits the internet community as a whole. In a social media universe filled with disinformation and misinformation, try to be that source of authority. Research and double-check all links and news sources before commenting or opining on them.
In this new GenAI world, there is a lot of content out there – a lot of genuine conversation and a lot of AI slop. Try to combat the latter. You have something to say, it just needs to be said. It can be a tool to organize your thoughts, but it should never be the platform that does the work. At times, old Web 1.0 mediums like the Internet Archives and Wikipedia are amazing resources for brainstorming. Use them. Outline your thoughts before you begin.
These insights may seem cavalier and self-serving, but this is how I write. I encourage you to write and post. Don’t keep everything to yourself – but you must try to own and control your own content. Do not post natively on platforms, keep copies in your own personal management systems for fast recall and later synthesis. You have a lot to say, please say it. Whether it’s a sentence to a link to relevant career or business information on LinkedIn, or a summary of an article on social media – try to add your own context and get out of the habit of reposting for the sake of it. Yes, I’m guilty of that too, but it’s a hard habit to break, but I am contextual where I can be.
To make this long story short, you don’t have to write constantly but just write something. Posting on a daily basis or feeling pressured to post will get in your way and make your thoughts feel forced. Take your time. It’ll get your thoughts onto paper (or computer), and you’ll get a proper dopamine hit knowing that you’ve added content that is vital to the corpus of the internet.
Finished reading: Gutenberg the Geek by Jeff Jarvis 📚
The Infancy of Ecommerce Through Agentics Has Begun
🛍️ We are starting to see the beginnings of agentic ecommerce through OpenAI’s ChatGPT, according to The Wall Street Journal.
🛒 The US based trials are allowing users of Etsy and Shopify to utilize Instant Checkout, for single items only at this stage, but it is a bit of an evolution at this point – one that may grow into a multibillion-dollar industry if successful. This is certainly one development to watch.
🤖 The eventual automation of merchant protocols to payment systems must come together to make this sequence frictionless and proper security protocols must be put into place before moving this trial into a larger scale.
This quick hit was originally posted on LinkedIn.
The Latest in Gaming Consolidation: Electronic Arts
Yesterday, it was reported that a group of private equity investors including the Saudi Public Investment Fund, Jared Kushner, and Silver Lake were interesting in taking Electronic Arts (EA), private in a $50B transaction. EA had been struggling in recent years to find its footing when including a large amount of consolidation in that sector.
If you haven’t followed the industry, this is on the heels of Microsoft making large transactions in gaming with its purchase of Activision-Blizzard-King (ABK) a few years ago, which reached high levels of regulatory scrutiny due to fears of monopolistic practices. Mostly those fears are unwarranted as the software giant has been more than willing to put its previously Xbox-exclusive titles on rival platforms with Flight Simulator 2024 being the latest example.
The Saudi government and investment firms understand that its heavy reliance on the gas and oil industries are not going to last forever, hence the recent transactions across many different industries in an attempt to diversify its economy away from its primary natural resources. This isn’t the PIF’s first foray into the gaming sector. In 2022, it purchased a 5% stake in Nintendo, and Pokémon Go creator Niantic by way of Scopely for $4.9B about a year later.
Electronic Arts is mostly an annuity business with its EA Sports division regularly updating every year. If you’re a Madden or UFC fan, each edition is likely to be purchased. EA also has a mobile gaming business with The Sims and Bejeweled series of titles. Annuity businesses are great for a firm in general, but not the public markets – they expect continued growth with higher margins; something EA has been unable to do in recent years.
During COVID, like most of the technology sector, companies over-hired and invested as if stay-at-home would be a perpetual cycle. When that turned out not to be the case, massive scale backs in spending occurred, and massive layoffs ensued that are still happening today. As a natural result in public and private markets, consolidation ensued.
Some may argue that Microsoft overpaid for Activision-Blizzard for $75.4B, but I believe that will likely result in a write-down in coming quarters if not years. This transaction made it a platform maker rather than a pure-play console manufacture. EA doesn’t make consoles, but it could easily transition into a pure subscription service, furthering building out EA Play and growing its revenue and annuity business.
Given President Trump’s involvement with his son-in-law, Jared Kushner, and the Saudi government being primary purchasers in this deal, there should be no regulatory hurdles placed upon this transaction such as was the case with Microsoft and Activision Blizzard.
This is a trend that will continue as subscription services and mobile platforms are the future of gaming. I also would not be surprised if Apple embraces this route as it continues to grow its subscription business through mediums such as Apple TV hardware.
Finished reading: Something Lost, Something Gained by Hillary Rodham Clinton 📚
Nvidia and Intel -- There's Only One Winner
When considering Nvidia’s GPU and parallel computing dominance, it’s important to take a look at how it can capitalize on product growth of the GenAI era. Last week, Nvidia announced a deal that would invest $5 into flailing Intel – a move that is great for Intel in the short term, that can use all the funding it can get for survival, but it also may be a better contract for Nvidia, itself.
According to the terms of this deal, Intel will build Nvidia’s tech stack onto its current X68 architecture’s SoC, giving Nvidia an even stronger foothold outside the data center, mobile, manufacturing and vehicle. It’s worth mentioning too that AMD and Nvidia do have some overlap in competition that would only increase with this arrangement. According to Gizmodo:
Intel and Nvidia’s new buddy-buddy attitude may offer more competition for AMD, though it could take a different form than AMD’s all-in-one approach. We won’t know yet what variety of chimera chip this will eventually look like. In the Q&A, Huang said he hopes the partnership will “address a vast majority of the PC consumer notebook market.”
Nvidia, like all tech firms highly leveraged in one category, mainly the data center, it must diversify to keep the firm growing amidst the possibility of the AI bubble bursting. It’s no secret that Nvidia has wanted to enter the CPU market for some time, entrenching on a dominant Intel/AMD desktop and laptop majority sector. As ARM, the energy efficient, mobile first architecture is taking rapidly taking over this legacy and aging x86 architecture, it only makes sense for Nvidia to put its dominance to work in vertical sectors.
Given Intel’s struggling fabrication business, it makes sense for Nvidia to potentially take over this division and utilize it to manufacture both firm’s chips, obviously giving itself primary utilization since it would control a portion of Intel’s stake. Integrating efficient Nvidia technologies into inefficient and broken Intel processes, could fast-track the innovation Intel needs to abandon x68 and at last, properly move to ARM architecture.
With all of Intel’s short-comings as a firm, they still control over 80-percent of the market, which would allow Nvidia to gain a significant foothold by lending technologies to finally right-size the product line. Nvidia using Intel as a trojan horse into the dominant CPU market can only be a gain for Nvidia as it seeks to diversify but also leaving Intel no choice as it scrambles to seek investments from outside firms.
It’s too early to tell whether Nvidia will eventually acquire Intel all together, but if they are the one firm to truly right the ship at the legacy chipmaker, this $5 billion deal will seem like a bargain in only a few years. Given all the information we know at the moment, this is a win-win for Nvidia for all of the above reasons. At the very least, this small investment on Nvidia’s part could change the industry as we know it.
Your Job Is Not Your Life -- Work on Finding Your Place
Our jobs and careers do not define us, despite the first question many new contacts make, “What do you do for work?” To someone like me, I believe that humans are not defined by this, yet as a society, we seem to put our only stake on that aspect of our lives. Our purpose in life goes way beyond this one narrow aspect of what we’re expected to harp on. Throughout my own counseling journey, I’ve been susceptible to the dangerous thinking that work and career is life. That’s all I’ll ever be defined by. This is not true.
In “Wellness in Eight Dimensions” workbook by Peggy Swarbrick and Jay Yudof only list ‘occupational wellness’ as one of the eight dimensions. If you’re lost in defining who you are – your identity beyond your career, this goes a long way in determining your strengths and weaknesses throughout all aspects of your life. You might be doing better than you think in some dimensions versus others.
The idea is to create balance between these eight aspects:
Stress, addiction, trauma, disappointment, and loss can impact our wellness and the balance in our lives. It seems important to balance work with play and rest, to balance time out for recuperation and recovery with living our lives fully and productively, and to balance the desire for rapid change with the known effectiveness of slow changes to build good habits.
We must not discount our eating, sleeping, social, and personal habits (that includes your own hobbies outside of work). If we balance ourselves through all of our lives, our careers will not define us but only be a small piece of the pie that make up our lives. At the end of the day, the balance of these eight aspects will end up making our careers more successful buy building our internal support system that will lift all boats.
On a personal level, I keep adding to this worksheet as it is a living document. When I think of aspects I can add to ‘financial wellness’ for example, I’ll write it down as a point where I’d like to improve. Societal pressures such as a career defining us can leave us feeling burned out, overwhelmed, making it a rat race, and compare ourselves to peers with nothing but spiraling, negative returns.
Our jobs are not a contest, and if you find yourself a workaholic or spending all your time improving your career, it may be time to look for something external with a work-life balance or improve other aspects of our lives to create these systems that makes us better at living our lives.
ASML's Big GenAI Investment in Mistral
Dutch semiconductor tooling supplier, ASML announced that the firm is investing $1.5 billion in the French GenAI company, Mistral. As a result, ASML will have gain a board seat. When this new investment is factored in, Mistral may now be worth $11.7 billion. According to Seeking Alpha:
Mistral was valued at more than $6 billion after its Series B round last year. Reports in recent weeks have suggested the latest financing could lift its valuation as high as $14 billion.
So, why is this happening? ASML makes extreme ultraviolet lithography (EUV) technology that goes into producing most modern, smaller fabricated chips for customers as TSMC, Samsung, Nvidia, and other top chip makers in the modern AI data center arena. Like most business strategies, the investment could (and likely is) multifaceted.
It could be that ASML wants to be in more control of its end-to-end verticals–that is what the end customers are doing. ASML does not make chips themselves but think of them as the company that makes the tools that makes the chips, that go into the data centers, that support GenAI firms.
We can also consider due to American-led tariffs, especially on semiconductors, that ASML wants to bring European tech assets under more control to shorten the supply chain between them. Domestic politics within the EU also make this an interesting play.
European customers are keener on keeping their own data away from American or Chinese servers, so this allows more data sovereignty to appease regulators and comfort Mistral’s customer base. In addition, it could just be a diversified investment opportunity. Nvidia already put a $6 billion investment into Mistral some time ago.
Lastly, Mistral itself, could provide useful data back to the original supplier about how better to serve its semiconductor and to an extent, endpoint GenAI customers to make improved technologies, understand what these biggest customers and consumers of data centers ultimately require, and crate efficiencies in the total supply chain where needed.
Energy consumption and data center costs are two headwinds currently amplified when making infrastructure buildout to support the ever-growing demand of GenAI firms. Technology firms have always thrived on ecosystem development. This would go a long way in building out those systems to keep Mistral competitive in this environment.
Have My Agents Talk to Your Agents
Last week, Atlassian, the SaaS company that owns such products as Jira, Confluence, and Trello announced that it would be purchasing The Browser Company, whose products are Arc and now the Dia browser for $610 million in cash, and would remain independent of the parent company (which normally doesn’t last for long). It’s notable on top of the news that in an about face for an antitrust ruling, a judge ruled that Google would not have to divest itself of Chrome as a potential monopolistic remedy.
We’ve seen the term “agentic” thrown around a lot, so here’s how IBM defines it:
Unlike traditional AI models, which operate within predefined constraints and require human intervention, agentic AI exhibits autonomy, goal-driven behavior and adaptability. The term “agentic” refers to these models’ agency, or, their capacity to act independently and purposefully.
Browsers are big deals once again, after becoming stale in innovation when adding in the great AI experiment. Perplexity unveiled its Comet browser which is an AI first product not too long ago as well. This is all about agentics, the current and next phase of GenAI products and business verticals. Google has already integrated Gemini into Chrome, Microsoft integrates Copilot into Edge, and so on. This is only the start of this new phase.
No longer does a user browse the web to find information. These agents can act on your behalf to be more productive and attempt to increase productivity. They are able to complete tasks on the user’s behalf such as keeping track of a target price of a consumer product, then venturing out to purchase it when it gets into a defined range utilizing various hooks or APIs where agent to agent communication takes place.
TechTarget lists some business use cases for this tool. One of them I want to highlight is call centers, for example:
AI agents in call centers orchestrate intelligence and automation across the multiple activities involved in serving customers, Brown explained. An agent might simultaneously analyze customer sentiment, review order history, access company policies and respond to customer needs based on those elements.
Using this example, we might see why Atlassian was interested in such an agentic browser product – streamlining its products into an enterprise tool that can work across workstreams, departmental silos, and from a business retention standpoint (lock-in) to their products so it’s harder for a business to migrate to competing tools.
Multiagent use cases can also work on behalf of the consumer. Tools exist today where users can check for the best prices and get alerts on flights, hotel, rental cars, durable goods, etc… The next stage will be these agents going out (on your behalf) to other agents to make a purchase and have it automatically book these travel criterias.
There should be a saying, “have my agents talk to your agents”, and we wouldn’t be far off of where the next phase of GenAI will lead us. Everything from SEO, marketing, and human interaction will change as a result and will have to adapt to these circumstances, as they have with any new implementation or evolution of technology.
A Quick Note on "Apple in China" by Patrick McGee
Finished reading: Apple in China by Patrick McGee 📚
📚 After reading “Apple in China” by Patrick McGee, it was reiterated why Apple slowing moving manufacturing to low-cost contract manufacturers like Foxconn and Pegatron over decades, competed on low to zero margin businesses – just to gain the competitive advantage and knowledge of how to produce such complex products themselves.
🏭 This how Chinese firms such as Huawei and Xiaomi were able to make better phones at lower costs, and how BYD was able to pivot to EVs in such a quicker and more innovative fashion.
📱 Apple taught the Chinese government and assemblers (a little too well) about the manufacturing process, thus allowing them to compete on the global stage to grab footholds in Europe, the Middle East and Africa with much better products, capabilities and price-points.
✅ It was a wonderful read if you’re into technology, supply chains, and long-term geopolitical consequences. I highly recommend this read.
Some Personal Reflections Going into My 38th Birthday
📅 When we begin our New Years Resolutions, most are lucky if we get through the first couple of days. My personal journey has been a different story. As I’m writing this (August, 15, 2025), I can say that I’ve stuck to – and even exceeded my goals.
📱 I deleted a vast amount of my attention depleting social media (LinkedIn doesn’t count, nor does Bluesky for news feeds), and replaced it with reading. As I’m composing this, I’m approaching my 30th book completed.
🏋♂️ I set out to lose weight with the goal of 15-lbs. As of last week, I’ve hit the 50-lbs mark and have gone into weight maintenance mode.
📚 I listen to and read more content than I ever have, completing a lot of online learning; feeling confident about my base of knowledge for life. I’ve written more blog and content posts than I have ever have.
🏆 Has any of this helped me with my career aspects? No, not at all. Has it helped me become a better person? Yes. That is the most important part of it all – doing it for yourself.
🎂 As I approach my 38th birthday in a few weeks, I look back at all I’ve accomplished, and what a rocky road it’s been–yet I realize how much further I still have yet to go.
This was originally posted on my Linkedin.
The Great Commodification of LLMs
The price wars in LLMs have begun. This will lead to margin collapse in the industry, while consumers benefit. Alternatively, one of the only movements in the domestic technology industry holding the United States economy above water is the GenAI boom.
OpenAI has priced ChatGPT-5 competitively with Anthropic’s Claude models. Data center buildouts continue to expand with Microsoft announcing during quarterly earnings that they will spend $120b additional per year (up from $80b or so this previous fiscal year).
This TechCrunch article also states Meta plans $72B spend, and Alphabet with an $88B Capex spend. Additional buildout is still needed and planned, however, with margin compressions, especially in tech come second looks on whether these data center buildouts will net a long-term return on investment.
We must also consider the localization models (SLMs, etc.) in this equation. Giants like Perplexity and OpenAI will gladly train their models on what the user inputs into the LLMs, thus it has become a privacy concern for many. The more efficient and prevalent open-weight models become, the more the end-user will be comfortable utilizing them on their local GPUs and/or NPUs. Consequently, most of these models run neck and neck as far as performance and returns are concerned. Those customers who pay for multiple models will become comfortable paying for just one or two.
Commodification is the sign of a mature market in the technology space. Consider the early 2000s when a massive amount of fiber optic cables were deployed. The infrastructure companies such as Lucent, went out of business, but the end result was a higher reach of broadband penetration by the mid 2000s. LLMs may reach the same end point, but this by no means contributes to the idea that GenAI is over. It just means that LLMs have almost reached a diminishing return.
When considering Google (post antitrust ruling) is going full steam ahead with integrating Gemini into Chrome, the rolling out of Perplexity’s Comet agentic browser, and Opera’s GenAI product, Aria, integrating into its product – it’s safe to say that browsers tomorrow will be the next leg of the commodification today, same as they always have been. The next step forward must require more innovation than we have already seen; to keep the growth levels that investors and Wall Street expect out of these firms. What that looks like has yet to be determined.
Data centers will continue to be built at the pace they are so more powerful types of GenAI down the road can be marketed and productized to consumers, businesses, and academia. GenAI is more than just LLMs. Multi-modal models, agentics, and real-time machine models have a bright future ahead, and are only just getting started.
Finished reading: Zillow Talk by Spencer Rascoff 📚
Finished reading: Feel-Good Productivity by Ali Abdaal 📚
MIT Technology Review Comment: Don't Ban ChatGPT in Education
Like all new technologies in education, the initial response is to ban them. Consider Wikipedia, for example. Over a decade ago, the resource was chastised for the chance that a student may plagiarize an entry. On the contrary, it’s become a well sourced tool for initial research on a subject, with well sourced citations.
Fast forward to today – LLMs are tools to be used in critiquing arguments, the creation of ideas, and a second opinion to inform the writer or reader of salient points that may have been missed. Never truly trust a technology on face value, but proper use cases must be taught (by faculty and parents) or students will fall behind.
My comment was originally posted for LinkedIn.
Finished reading: Building a Second Brain: A Proven Method to Organize Yo… by Tiago Forte 📚
Knowing Your Workflow for Note Taking
🔖 In my quest to become more knowledgeable in topics and subjects that are either relevant to me or my career, I like to use tools such as Obsidian and Google Keep to just down notes and reflections.
📗 In conjunction with my routine of ingesting insightful blogs and journalism, I’ll peruse Reddit (for example) to brainstorm blog ideas or retaining useful facts to whatever project I’m considering. When following the appropriate subreddits, consider the comments as a way to consider others' opinions to challenge your own. Lastly, I will synthesize it for later use.
🧠 Personal Knowledge Management, or PKM, is only becoming more important in the age of GenAI (filtering LLM considerations from original sourcing). I have a lot of work to do in this area, but it takes practice to grasp a workflow that works for you and your needs.
WSJ Study on Career Skill Certificates
Job skill certificates from the likes of Coursera or edX are exactly what you make of them. They are a jumping off point for learning new skills and techniques that can be put forward in the workforce. A recent WSJ article cast doubt on their validity and career advancements that they claim to skill-up for.
While I disagree that they should be the end all be all requirement for an employer to make decisions on a candidate – they can provide must more value that one might think. Intrigue and curiosity are the main drivers why a prospective employee may try to take one of these credentialed courses or professional certifications. It’s meant as a stepping off point in order to build upon that knowledge. It’s not what they’re doing in the course, it’s what comes after.
That is the issue with his study – what’s in demand will always change. What was data analytics and coding yesterday, will be something completely different tomorrow.
Let’s take the example of the role of a Business Analyst, for example. Coursera has a wonderful program called “Microsoft Business Analyst Professional Certificate”. The idea is to take someone from the fundamentals to a working project at the end to prove their knowledge retention and introduce knowledge workers to the skills that the software company has to offer. If you’re new to Power BI, Power Apps, and the Power Platform in general, than this is a great introduction that weaves these concepts into a curriculum.
Like all skills and experience, nobody can be an expert from one pass through of this course, but what it does is lay the foundation to garner an introduction to the company’s products which are widely used in many industries. It’s not limiting to a single platform, but the concepts can be taught to many competitors products (i.e. if you understand how to use Power BI, then Salesforce’s Tableau will be understood just as easily).
Upon competition of the course, Microsoft offers a voucher for half-off the price of the entry level Power Platform certification. While the merits of the study from The Burning Glass Institute and the American Enterprise Insitute need to be delved in further, this conclusion is not a one-size fits all study. Many of us pivot careers every 2 to 5 years in today’s information economy. It’s likely that you need to reskill and retool yourself before then. Skill certificates have been always a great introduction to a new topic and interests, and they will continue to provide that crucial role in the future.