Darling City, Emo Comm, Insulting Gogh 🌌

San Francisco has and will always be the epicenter for startups. Entrepreneurs have always flocked to the city, hoping to capture the magic needed to turn their ventures into household names. Sure, big tech investors and CEOs like Elon Musk and Mark Cuban brag about functioning from Texas and Florida. And COVID and the rise of remote work introduced new competition, with cities like Austin and Miami vying for tech talent. Yet, despite these newcomer places, San Francisco remains the top hub for venture capital.

According to PitchBook’s latest Global VC Ecosystem Rankings, SF startups raised a staggering $430 billion in venture funding from 2018 to mid-2024—more than double New York’s total and significantly ahead of Beijing’s. 

With $300 billion in untapped VC funds, San Francisco remains poised to fuel the next wave of startups, particularly in AI, which continues to dominate and drive soaring valuations.

A recent survey by Atlassian found that more than a third of knowledge workers across five countries lose over 40 hours annually trying to decode unclear workplace communication. That’s a full week of productivity lost. Nearly two-thirds said they face confusion interpreting messages from colleagues at least a few times a month, with some struggling daily. There's a term for this situation - "Emotional Overhead". 

The way to combat this? Emojis. The survey found that teams are three times more productive when they incorporate emotion into their written communication. In fact, 65% of workers already use emojis to make their tone clearer, and 78% are more likely to open messages that contain them.

Of course, not everyone agrees. While 88% of Gen Z finds emojis helpful, only 49% of Boomers and Gen X feel the same. Plus, emojis themselves can lead to confusion. A 2024 Preply report revealed that 81% of workers have misunderstood an emoji’s meaning, leading to awkward situations.

The takeaway? Emojis can help, but clarity still matters. Adding a thumbs-up emoji can transform a vague “This is fine” into something much clearer.

Last week, NIST dropped its second draft of the updated Digital Identity Guidelines, and it’s a doozy—35,000 words packed with dense, technical language. But don’t worry, we’ve broken it down for you.

First off, what is NIST? It’s the National Institute of Standards and Technology, responsible for setting tech guidelines—like the number of characters in a password, the need for special characters and numbers, and related annoying rules that make it difficult to remember passwords. While their rules aren’t binding, organizations working with the federal government have to follow them.

So, what’s new? The updated guidelines scrap some old-school password rules. No more mandatory password changes and no more rigid character mix requirements (like special characters, numbers, and uppercase/lowercase combos). Now, passwords can be up to 64 characters long (with a minimum of eight).

The rationale is simple: forcing frequent changes or complex combinations can actually lead to weaker passwords. When people are forced to switch passwords every few months, they often choose simpler, more predictable passwords that they can remember. Instead, NIST now recommends longer, random passwords that are much harder to crack. Besides, when passwords are sufficiently long and random, there’s no benefit from requiring or restricting the use of certain characters.

Bottom line: the new guidelines focus on making password policies more practical—and more secure.

Can an AI judge Van Gogh? That’s the latest question causing a stir in the world of technology and journalism. 

Here's how it started: Brian Sewell, a well-known art critic who spent over 30 years with the Evening Standard, passed away in 2015. Now, the famous London newspaper plans to resurrect his voice through AI to review a Van Gogh exhibit. He of course, never agreed to such a thing before dying. In fact, Sewell was not one for traditional honors. He once famously said Banksy should’ve been “put down at birth”. He didn’t even want a funeral. Therefore it's unlikely that he would have wanted his words to live on through an AI. 

But this raises more complicated questions: Art is emotional and subjective. Can a machine, which lacks human intuition and emotional depth, accurately assess art beyond technical details? Moreover, it seems like a gross insult to the genius of Van Gogh and other classic artists to pass critique on their work using an algorithm or a bot. Art lovers everywhere must be shuddering. Artists in their graves must be turning.  

The timing raises eyebrows: The Evening Standard recently laid off 150 employees and moved from daily to weekly editions. Some see this AI move as a calculated attempt to attract attention amid tough times.

Still, with tech already blamed for media layoffs, replacing a critic with AI, even temporarily, was bound to trigger a backlash.

📃 Paper Worth Millions - Bidding for a piece of a rare copy of the U.S. Constitution is starting at $1 million. 

💶 More Value Than the Swiss - The AI market could be worth $1 trillion in 3 years - that's more than the GDP of Switzerland or Netherlands. 

👎 Flop Rating - In a collective survey, Amazon workers rated the company's 5-day in-office work-week at 1.4 out of 5. 

💳 Deviating From Credit - 45% of all Visa payments today come from debit cards - a huge jump from the mere 30% in 2009. Back then, credit cards ruled payment at 55%.  

🔶 Recycled Jewels - Pandora, the world's largest jewelry brand, now plan to exclusively use recycled silver and gold, saving approx. 58,000 tons CO2 per year.