The first time I ever used dial-up internet was sometime in the 1990s. Some of you will remember that a company called CompuServe used to mail out floppy disks with "10 free hours." And I still remember the feeling of amazement the first time I tried it. Suddenly, I could chat with people from around the world. Remember a/s/l? It was so enthralling that those 10 free hours certainly didn't last very long.

Fast forward to more recent times, and I got that exact same feeling of amazement when I started diving into crypto. The first time I created a wallet, logged into to a service (using only the wallet), and then transferred funds around, I thought to myself, "Wow, this is a fundamental shift in how the world works." A lightbulb went off. And I still feel this way about crypto, which is why I remain long ETH.

But now I'm also excited about AI (along with the rest of the world). With every new model release, it gets that much more impressive. Last week I wrote about Gemini 3 and, since then, I decided to cancel my ChatGPT subscription and move all my activity over to it. I'm sure that a better model will get released before we know it, but for right now I'm having a lot of fun creating just about everything.

Here's a cartoon isometric of Toronto that I prompted to include "landmarks" and the day's weather.

Here's a photo of a woman standing in the middle of a street in Tokyo wearing a trench coat and holding an umbrella. My prompt also asked it to make it look like a "grainy digital photo."

And here's a knolling shot (new word I just learned) featuring the gear of a global citizen (or globizen if you will). I prompted each of the objects, down to the white panel on the Blue Jays hat.

It's not perfect. Text remains an issue. If you look closely at the front of the passports or the text on the Fujifilm camera, you'll see that it's AI. But it's only a matter of time before this goes away. These kinds of images used to require a lot of time and effort. Now I can create them with one hand on my phone while I'm eating a bowl of cereal and having a morning coffee. There's zero marginal cost.

Thank goodness I've got more than 10 hours of usage.

The first time I ever used dial-up internet was sometime in the 1990s. Some of you will remember that a company called CompuServe used to mail out floppy disks with "10 free hours." And I still remember the feeling of amazement the first time I tried it. Suddenly, I could chat with people from around the world. Remember a/s/l? It was so enthralling that those 10 free hours certainly didn't last very long.

Fast forward to more recent times, and I got that exact same feeling of amazement when I started diving into crypto. The first time I created a wallet, logged into to a service (using only the wallet), and then transferred funds around, I thought to myself, "Wow, this is a fundamental shift in how the world works." A lightbulb went off. And I still feel this way about crypto, which is why I remain long ETH.

But now I'm also excited about AI (along with the rest of the world). With every new model release, it gets that much more impressive. Last week I wrote about Gemini 3 and, since then, I decided to cancel my ChatGPT subscription and move all my activity over to it. I'm sure that a better model will get released before we know it, but for right now I'm having a lot of fun creating just about everything.

Here's a cartoon isometric of Toronto that I prompted to include "landmarks" and the day's weather.

Here's a photo of a woman standing in the middle of a street in Tokyo wearing a trench coat and holding an umbrella. My prompt also asked it to make it look like a "grainy digital photo."

And here's a knolling shot (new word I just learned) featuring the gear of a global citizen (or globizen if you will). I prompted each of the objects, down to the white panel on the Blue Jays hat.

It's not perfect. Text remains an issue. If you look closely at the front of the passports or the text on the Fujifilm camera, you'll see that it's AI. But it's only a matter of time before this goes away. These kinds of images used to require a lot of time and effort. Now I can create them with one hand on my phone while I'm eating a bowl of cereal and having a morning coffee. There's zero marginal cost.

Thank goodness I've got more than 10 hours of usage.