Ideas Worth Exploring: 2025-04-17
- Charles Ray
- Apr 17
- 6 min read
Ideas: James Myers - Future Chips Will Be Hotter Than Ever
James Myers discusses the ideas related to the increasing heat problem in system-on-chip (SoC) technology, such as CPUs and GPUs, due to Moore's Law and Dennard scaling ending. As chips become more compact and powerful, efficient heat dissipation is crucial for maintaining performance and longevity. The traditional methods of cooling, like air or liquid coolers, may not be enough for future technologies like nanosheet transistors and complementary field-effect transistors (CFETs).
Researchers are exploring advanced cooling techniques such as microfluidic cooling, jet impingement, and immersion cooling. However, these methods might not be practical, especially for mobile systems limited by size, weight, battery power, and user comfort. James Myers also suggests system-level solutions like dynamically adapting to changing thermal conditions, using thermal sensors, and thermal sprinting to manage heat.
Backside technologies are also being researched as a solution to reduce the amount of heat generated by chips. These include backside power-delivery networks (BSPDNs), backside capacitors, and backside integrated voltage regulators (IVRs). BSPDNs aim to lessen resistance and reduce voltage loss, while backside capacitors absorb voltage spikes and fluctuations more quickly. Backside IVRs manage each core individually through a dedicated circuit, thereby improving energy efficiency.
However, these backside technologies may also introduce new thermal problems, such as trapping heat locally and forcing it upward toward the cooler, exacerbating hot spots. James Myers emphasizes that solving the industry's heat problem will be an interdisciplinary effort requiring collaboration between different chip-engineering domains and the development of comprehensive simulation tools for understanding the effects of these technologies on heat generation and dissipation.
GitHub Repo: 12 Factor Agents - Principles for building reliable LLM applications
Even if LLMs continue to get exponentially more powerful, there will be core engineering techniques that make LLM-powered software more reliable, more scalable, and easier to maintain.
GitHub Repo: Codex
Codex CLI is built for developers who already live in the terminal and want ChatGPT‑level reasoning plus the power to actually run code, manipulate files, and iterate – all under version control. In short, it’s chat‑driven development that understands and executes your repo.
Codex requires zero setup, runs network-disabled and directory-sandboxed, and is multimodal. It supports any model available with the Responses API.
Zero setup — bring your OpenAI API key and it just works!
Full auto-approval, while safe + secure by running network-disabled and directory-sandboxed
Multimodal — pass in screenshots or diagrams to implement features
And it's fully open-source so you can see and contribute to how it develops!
GitHub Repo: ActorCore - Stateful Serverless That Runs Anywhere
The easiest way to build stateful, AI agent, collaborative, or local-first applications.
Deploy to Rivet, Cloudflare, Bun, Node.js, and more.
ActorCore is a framework for building stateful, scalable, realtime backend applications. Whether you’re building multiplayer games, collaborative apps, AI agent backends, or any stateful service, ActorCore provides the tools and patterns to simplify your architecture.
In ActorCore, each actor has these key characteristics:
State Is Automatically Persisted: State automatically persists between restarts, upgrades, & crashes
State Is Stored In-Memory: State is stored in memory for high-performance reads/writes while also automatically persisted
Isolated State Ownership: Actors only manage their own state, which can only be modified by the actor itself
Communicates via Actions: How clients and other actors interact with an actor
Actions Are Low-Latency: Actions provide WebSocket-like performance for time-sensitive operations
Broadcast Updates With Events: Actors can publish real-time updates to connected clients
Ideas: Liza Lin and Amrith Ramkumar - U.S. Tries to Crush China’s AI Ambitions With Chips Crackdown
The Trump administration has imposed new limits on the export of chip processors from U.S. companies like Nvidia and Advanced Micro Devices, which have helped advance China's artificial intelligence capabilities.
This decision affects Nvidia's H20 chips and AMD's MI308 products and comes in response to the success of Chinese AI startup DeepSeek in building powerful models with less computing power. The restrictions were announced after a two-week period of market volatility and underscore the Trump administration's determination to limit China's technological advancement, particularly in AI.
Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang has expressed continued interest in the Chinese market, but the new restrictions will significantly impact the company's sales to China. Chinese customers have reportedly made large purchases of Nvidia's H20 chips in anticipation of a ban, and if no exemptions are granted, this could lead to increased demand for local substitutes such as those produced by Huawei and Cambricon AI. The new restrictions will result in charges of approximately 5.5 billion for Nvidia and up to 800 million for AMD.
GitHub Repo: Plandex - An AI coding agent designed for large tasks and real world projects.
Plandex is a terminal-based AI development tool that can plan and execute large coding tasks that span many steps and touch dozens of files. It can handle up to 2M tokens of context directly (~100k per file), and can index directories with 20M tokens or more using tree-sitter project maps.
A cumulative diff review sandbox keeps AI-generated changes separate from your project files until they are ready to go. Command execution is controlled so you can easily roll back and debug. Plandex helps you get the most out of AI without leaving behind a mess in your project.
Combine the best models from Anthropic, OpenAI, Google, and open source providers to build entire features and apps with a robust terminal-based workflow.
Plandex is capable of full autonomy—it can load relevant files, plan and implement changes, execute commands, and automatically debug—but it's also highly flexible and configurable, giving developers fine-grained control and a step-by-step review process when needed.
Ideas: Arunkumar Krishnakumar - What happens to a blockchain when nobody uses it?
Arunkumar Krishnakumar discusses the factors contributing to the death of blockchains, focusing on flawed tokenomics, scams, security issues, lack of community and development momentum as primary causes. Arunkumar Krishnakumar explores reasons for the failure of some blockchain projects, such as Terra in 2022, and highlights challenges faced by the adoption of blockchain technology in 2025, including unclear regulation, fragmented developer tooling, infrastructure gaps, and overrun networks with bots instead of real users.
Arunkumar Krishnakumar further lists active blockchains in 2025 such as Bitcoin, Ethereum, Solana, BNB Chain, Polkadot, Near, Sui, and Tron. These chains are characterized by daily user engagement, developer momentum, sustained transaction volume, and excelling in specific niches like DApps, speed, value storage, affordability, interoperability or scalability. Inactive blockchains like EOS and Terra are contrasted with the active ones due to their lack of real utility, trust, and continuous innovation.
To identify a living blockchain, the article suggests focusing on transaction volume, total value locked (TVL), developer activity, validator count, and liquidity as essential signs of a healthy and trusted chain. Arunkumar Krishnakumar offers strategies for reviving an inactive chain through finding compelling use cases, having a strong community, offering strong incentives, or evolving into new forms like layer-2 solutions.
Ideas: Jon Daiello - A case for slow growth
Jon Daiello discusses the importance of slow and steady growth in the design industry, drawing parallels between modern pine trees that are bred for quick maturity but lack structural integrity, and designers who prioritize speed over time-tested experience.
Jon Daiello argues that true strength in design comes from repetition and a deep understanding of problems, not just quick promotions or learning the latest tools. They encourage designers to focus on depth rather than titles, and for leaders to recognize growth through consistent behavior and problem-solving skills rather than just visibility. The core message is to keep growing steadily, adding layers of experience over time, and not to rush into higher roles without the necessary foundation.
Ideas: David Hoang - Skills are the new currency
David Hoang discusses the increasing role of artificial intelligence (AI) in various industries, particularly in areas such as entertainment, sports, and creative fields. It highlights a few significant examples, including Jet Li's rejection of a role in The Matrix: Reloaded due to concerns about digital ownership of his martial arts choreography, the Ed O'Bannon case challenging the NCAA's ban on compensating college athletes for the use of their name, image, and likeness (NIL), and the use of CGI to bring back deceased actors like Grand Moff Tarkin in Star Wars: Rogue One.
David Hoang argues that as AI becomes more advanced, it is essential to consider issues related to consent, ownership, and compensation for artists, writers, performers, and other creators. The author suggests that foundational human skills, such as discernment, storytelling, and design intuition, will become increasingly valuable in this context, serving not only as means to shape output but also as the products themselves.
David Hoang also explores the potential impact of AI on various industries and jobs, such as fashion, where H&M is creating digital twins of models, potentially rendering roles like photographers and stylists obsolete. The author suggests that when technology commoditizes an industry, one of three paths tends to occur: the entire industry may collapse, remaining artifacts may increase in value due to scarcity, or entirely new economies and creative surfaces emerge from the disruption.
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