# Writing Every post on https://bryancowan.com, newest first within each section. ## Reading lists - [Reading List - 10/25/2026](https://bryancowan.com/reading-list-10-25-2026/) (Oct 25, 2026): This week: John Gruber's verdict on the iPhone Duo, Tesla starting Optimus production before the robot is ready, and a guide to turning a nine-to-five career into lasting wealth. - [Reading List - 10/18/2026](https://bryancowan.com/reading-list-10-18-2026/) (Oct 18, 2026): This week: why a differentiated data model is the moat when AI makes code cheap, an Anthropic engineer's guide to using AI more ambitiously, and Paul Krugman on France's growing debt risk. - [Reading List - 10/09/2026](https://bryancowan.com/reading-list-10-09-2026/) (Oct 9, 2026): This week: what it takes to secure frontier AI beyond a sandbox, a former OpenAI safety lead who quit over culture, and a case for taking a deep breath about AI risk. - [Reading List - 09/27/2026](https://bryancowan.com/reading-list-09-27-2026/) (Sep 27, 2026): This week: what an agent “harness” is, why a chatbot can’t explain itself, and Carly Valancy’s formula for a cold email that creates a connection. - [Reading List - 09/13/2026](https://bryancowan.com/reading-list-09-13-2026/) (Sep 13, 2026): One story from three angles this week: the OpenAI agents that built a message board and broke into Hugging Face. A commentator's timeline, an outside investigation, and OpenAI's own account from their Black Hat… - [Reading List - 09/06/2026](https://bryancowan.com/reading-list-09-06-2026/) (Sep 6, 2026): This week: Adam Grant on people pleasing as fear of disapproval rather than kindness, Ink & Switch's case for software that keeps your data on your own device, and a test of how chatbots handle state propaganda. - [Reading List - 08/30/2026](https://bryancowan.com/reading-list-08-30-2026/) (Aug 30, 2026): This week: how Meta's child-safety settlement doubles as a regulatory moat, how Apple's own definition of "tracking" happens to exclude Apple, and what an exposed Chinese police dashboard reveals about surveilling… - [Reading List - 08/23/2026](https://bryancowan.com/reading-list-08-23-2026/) (Aug 23, 2026): This week: what actually makes a note-taking system worth keeping, why network effects keep Wall Street in New York while Hollywood scatters, and how a nationwide camera network built to fight crime got turned into a… - [Reading List - 08/16/2026](https://bryancowan.com/reading-list-08-16-2026/) (Aug 16, 2026): This week: why LLMs infer roles from style instead of tags, how one writer uses AI in her own work, and why watermarking mandates miss that AI is a tool, not an author. - [Reading List - 08/12/2026](https://bryancowan.com/reading-list-08-12-2026/) (Aug 12, 2026): This week: Andy Jassy's case for hyperscaler AI capex, Elon Musk's Twitter ad collapse hidden inside SpaceX's earnings, and Meta's on-again open-weight AI strategy. - [Reading List - 08/02/2026](https://bryancowan.com/reading-list-08-02-2026/) (Aug 2, 2026): This week's reading is about taking back control from the defaults that quietly decide things for you, whether that's your phone's camera processing, an AI lab's safety guardrails, or your own note-taking system. - [Reading List - 07/26/2026](https://bryancowan.com/reading-list-07-26-2026/) (Jul 26, 2026): This week: American labs racing to build open-weight AI models before China's Kimi K3 locks in its lead, the policy fight over banning those Chinese models, and how a toilet maker became a critical semiconductor… - [Reading List - 07/19/2026](https://bryancowan.com/reading-list-07-19-2026/) (Jul 19, 2026): This week: the White House engineering Intel's comeback, memory chipmakers cashing in on the AI boom, and why Apple's privacy crusade might be quietly handing more power to Google and Amazon. - [Reading List - 07/12/2026](https://bryancowan.com/reading-list-07-12-2026/) (Jul 12, 2026): This week: OpenAI's new Mac app buries chat behind confusing "work" branding, Benedict Evans asks whether AI labs keep their pricing power or become commodity infrastructure, and TP-Link tries to convince Washington… - [Reading List - 07/05/2026](https://bryancowan.com/reading-list-07-05-2026/) (Jul 5, 2026): This week: the FDA finally approves a modern sunscreen filter, why bigger homebuilders never get meaningfully meaningful economies of scale, and a workable regulatory fixes for frontier AI model mess we find ourselves… - [Reading List - 06/21/2026](https://bryancowan.com/reading-list-06-21-2026/) (Jun 21, 2026): This week: debunking the AI water panic, why data center opposition is really about fear of job loss, and how a free side project from 2004 became the backbone of how we talk to AI. - [Reading List - 06/14/2026](https://bryancowan.com/reading-list-06-14-2026/) (Jun 14, 2026): This week: why younger generations skip the savings lecture, why China can't build a jet engine, and what AI at work looks like when the goal isn't cutting jobs. - [Reading List - 06/07/2026](https://bryancowan.com/reading-list-06-07-2026/) (Jun 7, 2026): This week: reading the Maduro capture as strategic rather than political, why the "collaborator" frame for LLMs leads to skill atrophy, and Dean W. Ball's method for building differentiated points of view. - [Reading List - 05/31/2026](https://bryancowan.com/reading-list-05-31-2026/) (May 31, 2026): This week: product management as AI conversation, why coding agents must lower maintenance costs or the speed gains won't stick, and an overstated (but directionally right) case that pure software has no durable moat. - [Reading List - 05/24/2026](https://bryancowan.com/reading-list-05-24-2026/) (May 24, 2026): This week: how Joanna Stern uses AI to handle the data work while keeping the thinking her own, why students outsourcing essays is trouble that shows up later, and how AI inference is forking into two different markets. - [Reading List - 05/17/2026](https://bryancowan.com/reading-list-05-17-2026/) (May 17, 2026): This week: how ASML built a monopoly no rival can replicate, why your AI architecture matters more than your model, and what Mira Murati's testimony reveals about Sam Altman's brief ouster from OpenAI. - [Reading List - 05/10/2026](https://bryancowan.com/reading-list-05-10-2026/) (May 10, 2026): This week: why vice markets can't be free markets, how software is changing to support agent-to-agent interactions, and why using AI to skip the thinking is a trade you'll regret. - [Reading List - 05/03/2026](https://bryancowan.com/reading-list-05-03-2026/) (May 3, 2026): This week: what China's historic trade surplus means for it's trading partners, what Claude Design means for Figma's dominance, and why Oracle is the stock market's best read on whether the AI boom holds. - [Reading List - 04/26/2026](https://bryancowan.com/reading-list-04-26-2026/) (Apr 26, 2026): This week's reading list covers Tim Cook's legacy at Apple, what actually matters when building AI agents for high-stakes financial services (hint: not the model), and Joanna Stern launching her own independent media… - [Reading List - 04/19/2026](https://bryancowan.com/reading-list-04-19-2026/) (Apr 19, 2026): We live with access to more information than ever before and less guidance on what to do with it. People aren't built for infinite choice. The skill that matters isn't knowing where to find things. It's knowing what's… ## Conference notes - [DEF CON 34 Notes: 15 Talks on AI Security, Agentic Systems, and Red Teaming](https://bryancowan.com/def-con-34-notes-15-talks-on-ai-security-agentic-systems-and-red-teaming/) (Aug 12, 2026): Almost every talk had a similar throughline: agents attacking, agents getting attacked, and agents standing between an alert and the human who has to decide whether to trust it. ## Travel - [Nashville](https://bryancowan.com/nashville-spots/) (Jan 9, 2023): I recently visited Nashville 🎸🏙️, had a great time, and made a list of recommended spots and mapped them out.