Month: January 2026

Success is often built on what happens at 2:00 AM

We often celebrate the launch ceremonies and the awards, but we rarely talk about the chaos right before the ribbon-cutting.

Back in 2001, my team was preparing to launch Hong Kong’s first comprehensive e-government platform. But at 2:00 AM on launch day, we discovered a show-stopping issue: a missing SSL Certificate on a key server.

There was no “download from the cloud” back then. I had to physically go get it.

I took a taxi to the Certification Authority in Kwun Tong, told the driver to keep the meter running, and rushed into the data center. An hour later, I emerged with a floppy disk in a brown paper bag-the missing piece of the puzzle.

As I jumped back into the cab and told the driver to floor it, he looked in the rearview mirror and asked, “Mission accomplished?”

“Accomplished,” I said.

He smiled and drove us to the finish line. He probably thought we were spies, but the reality was just as high-stakes for us. The system went live, and the project went on to win the Stockholm Challenge Award.

Reflecting on this 25 years later, the technology has changed, but the lesson hasn’t: Delivery isn’t just about code; it’s about doing whatever it takes to get the job done.

AI Anxiety

Feeling the “AI Anxiety”? You aren’t alone.

Open LinkedIn right now, and it feels like a firehose of information. New tools, new models, new agents, new frameworks. It seems like AI is moving at breakneck speed, and if you blink, you’re already behind.

I’ll be honest: sometimes it feels impossible to catch up, let alone “master” it all.

But then I remembered a quote by E.L. Doctorow (originally about writing, but perfect for the AI era):

“It’s like driving a car at night. You can see only as far as your headlights, but you can make the whole trip that way.”

You don’t need a map of the entire territory. You don’t need to understand every layer of the neural net or every new tool released this morning.

Stop trying to master everything. Start by mastering something.

You just need to see as far as your headlights:

  • Learn one new prompt technique today.
  • Test one new tool this week.
  • Read one paper that interests you.

You can navigate the entire AI revolution just by focusing on the few meters of road right in front of you. Just keep driving.

What is the “one thing” you are focusing on learning this week?

#AI #ArtificialIntelligence #ContinuousLearning #TechTrends

2026, I’m Ready

Goodbye, 2025.

For many, this was a year of silent grinding. You put in the work. You showed up early. You stayed late. You trained hard.

And yet, maybe the promotion didn’t happen. Maybe the deal didn’t close. Maybe the scale didn’t move.

Do not confuse a delay with a denial.

The gap between “doing the work” and “seeing the result” is where most people quit. But you aren’t most people.

If 2025 was the grind, make 2026 the breakthrough. Keep the standard high. Keep the foot on the gas.

Remember: You didn’t come this far to only come this far.

Let’s get to work.

#Motivation #NewYearGoals #KeepGoing #2026Ready

The Hidden Message, The 9 Pages, and The Wrong Tool

Happy Genesis Block Day.

On this day in 2009, Satoshi Nakamoto mined the first block of Bitcoin. Buried deep within the coinbase parameter was a hex-encoded string that decoded to a stark headline from The Times:

“Chancellor on brink of second bailout for banks.”

It was a timestamp, but it was also a mission statement. It signaled the shift from opaque centralized finance to a system defined by absolute mathematical transparency.

Yet, nearly two decades later, I still hear people challenge the “vagueness” of blockchain.

My response is always the same: Read the “Bitcoin: A Peer-to-Peer Electronic Cash System” whitepaper.

It is only 9 pages long.

It’s not vague; it is a masterclass in transparency. If you read it, you understand that the “vagueness” exists only in the commentary, not the code.

The same logic applies to the current wave of AI skepticism.

I constantly see posts mocking LLMs because a chatbot couldn’t solve a simple math problem or hallucinated a fact. “It’s broken,” they say.

My response? Read the “Attention Is All You Need” whitepaper.

If you understand the architecture, you understand that these models are probabilistic next-token predictors, not deterministic calculators. When you ask a language model to do strict arithmetic, you are essentially asking a creative writer to do your accounting.

It comes down to this:

🔹 Bitcoin is the right tool for trustless, transparent value transfer.

🔹 LLMs are the right tool for pattern matching, summarization, and generation.

The tools aren’t broken. We just have to stop trying to use a screwdriver to hammer in a nail.

Right tool for the right task.

#Bitcoin #GenesisBlock #Blockchain #AI #TechLiteracy #Satoshi