Lam

Exploring Insurance 🏥 & AI 🤖 | Product Manager / Engineer | 🎙Podcast Host | Ex-@sony & @soneium | Follow for insights on AI & business!

[Lam @LamWeb3]

What was an impromptu decision to come to Argentina turned out to be a pleasant surprise! I didn't expect that my team would be able to deliver the full solution, nonetheless winning one of the finalists prize.

After 3 days and 2 nights of little sleep and hours of coding/building/discussing, my team eventually was invited to the stage to pitch in front of 750+ hackers and audience. Quite a surreal experience that I was able to crown @ETHGlobal finalist a 2nd time, even though this hackathon had the most number of ETHGlobal finalist, meaning it was very competitive.

I think this moment, taken by a professional photographer, captured the spirit of hacking and what it meant to take ownership. The photo was taken at around ~6:30AM in the morning, just a couple of hours before the final submission was due. At that point, I was still struggling to give the right pitch, and the audio from my mic didn't function properly, but after the 6th recording, I came to an acceptable demo and submitted our project!

Thanks to my team (@vaughnhew @ballew @netun0 @Ghost_xD2) that pulled all nighters with me to build this project. Also thanks to all the organizers and sponsors for making this hackathon experience smooth and fun!

Until next time in this little Web3 world! Hasta la vista!

[Lam @LamWeb3]

Just had the most terrible flight experience with @AirCanada, but the person suffering it was my unfortunate friend.

I travel a lot, so as a result I've racked up points and miles with different programs. I've flown with the 3 major airline alliances (OneWorld, SkyTeam, and Star Alliance), and have frequent-flier memberships in many programs. I've been very happy with @staralliance, especially with @FlyANA_official and @Flyasiana because they're superb, but this time I can't say any good thing about Air Canada.

I'm currently in Shanghai for a month-long cultural and technology exploration program. After being here for a couple of weeks, I thought my friend may like it, so we discussed and planned the trip together for her to come. While I was searching around for the tickets, I happened to find a round-trip reward ticket via Air Canada with the perfect timing for my friend. I proceeded to transfer my points to Air Canada frequent-flier program called @Aeroplan and booked the ticket and paid the required fees (I still have receipts) with my card. Afterwards, I forwarded all the trip and booking information to my friend.

1 day before the flight, she was able to go online and did her online check in with All Nippon Airways (ANA) since it was a code-share flight. On the day of her flight, she came to the airport early (4-5 hours before her flight) and was able to check in at the counter smoothly with ANA ground staff. She proceeded to go through immigrations, and waited at the gate for her flight.

About 50 minutes before her flight, she texted me saying: "Lam, I cannot get on this flight, did something happen?" I was bewildered by her sudden question. I did not know how to respond, because when I checked online the day before (see image below), all the information was correct. I called her briefly and told her that I'd try to figure out what was going on. I rushed to go on Air Canada, and I saw that my miles came back to me with a banner saying that I needed to contact Air Canada customer service.

I proceeded to call Air Canada customer service number to see if I can resolve this situation and get her on the flight, but the 15-minute wait was the longest wait I experienced since I knew my friend was panicking and she was stuck at the airport. When I got on the line with the representative and after giving the Air Canada representative lady most of my personal information including my home address, DOB, and Aeroplan number, she told me that their fraud department had suspected that this was a fraudulent booking, so they proceeded to cancel it last-minute WITHOUT informing me anything. I was livid beyond imaginable after hearing that, but remained calm with the representative to see if we could resolve anything since I knew she was just a messenger. She told me that I have to send my document and proof of address to their fraud department email address. I asked her if this can be resolved in 30 minutes so that I could still fix the situation for my friend, but she told me that it'd take days, or even weeks.

The next several hours was me in frantic mode trying to figure out alternative flights for my friend since @AirCanada just left her stranded. I cannot even begin to imagine the face of my friend when she went to the gate with the boarding pass in her hand but was told that she couldn't board this flight that she had successfully checked in few hours earlier.

In the end, I don't know whether it was AI or human that flagged the ticket in Air Canada system at the very last minute, but this whole experience left me with an impression that among Star Alliance, Air Canada has the worst travel experience possible. I don't think this message will get anywhere, but I just needed to rant to inform other travelers and passengers.

On a good note, kudos to the @FlyANA_official ground staff at the Haneda airport for assisting my friend professionally.

[Lam @LamWeb3]

@PositivFuturist A dog that can jump the fence like human and can briefly transform into human. This game is defying the law of nature and physics, lol

What game title is this?

[Lam @LamWeb3]

@Rei102rei Had some good old Chinese food!

[Lam @LamWeb3]

@grugcapital Isn't it 2?

[Lam @LamWeb3]

@_nwyin Don't get shocked from too much power, brother, lol

[Lam @LamWeb3]

@nikitabier In-n-out hamburgers

[Lam @LamWeb3]

@pcshipp Can you share your app here? If I have to surmise, it looks like you may be solving a problem that nobody or too little people care about. You should solve the problems that customers are willing to pay for and gate that feature.

[Lam @LamWeb3]

@karpathy @sh1sh1nk Wow, Anthropic got all the superstars with them now!

[Lam @LamWeb3]

Used Meituan in China for the first time last night, and the biggest takeaway wasn’t food delivery.

It was seeing how mature the China super-app stack has become.

Ordering food is just the surface layer. Underneath it is payments, merchant software, logistics density, recommendation systems, address infrastructure, consumer trust, and habits already trained at national scale.

That’s why the UX feels so normal, despite the Chinese language still being a big hurdle for non-Chinese speakers. The ecosystem is doing most of the heavy lifting.

A lot of people outside China still evaluate these apps feature by feature. I think the real moat is system design.

Which China product feels most misunderstood from the outside?

[Lam @LamWeb3]

@RVAClassic Nope, bro, I'm in Shanghai this month!

[Lam @LamWeb3]

@_nwyin Happy birthday, bro, where are you these days?

[Lam @LamWeb3]

@KHAMCHANH I think that using nominal GDP would reflect better the realities of the countries on a global scale (external view) since it uses real exchange rate. PPP makes things skewed because things are inherently cheaper in ASEAN countries than in Western countries.

[Lam @LamWeb3]

Most people trying to build in insurance start from software.

I’m starting from the classroom.

I’m sitting in a financial advisor class right now because I want to understand how insurance is actually sold, explained, and trusted by real people, not just how it looks in decks, product docs, or carrier org charts.

A lot of the real signal is probably in the friction:
- What clients ask,
- What advisors repeat all day,
- What still breaks trust,
- And what never makes it into official process maps.

If you want to build for insurance, you probably need to study the distribution layer up close.

If you want to build in insurance, how close do you need to get to the frontline?

[Lam @LamWeb3]

@NoLimitGains @grok why the steep decline?

[Lam @LamWeb3]

@robj3d3 Nice, man, welcome to my country! What are you building this time while in Da Nang?

[Lam @LamWeb3]

@JoshYusifov Should have told her "I will miss bạc sỉu" (coffee with condensed milk), everyone in 🇻🇳 loves that

[Lam @LamWeb3]

@tibo_maker Go to Sapa for rest/sightseeing and then go hiking (need a guide) all the up to Phan Xi Pang, the tallest mountain in Vietnam

[Lam @LamWeb3]

'@calcom going closed-source for security reasons feels like an early signal of what’s coming.

As AI tools get better at finding and exploiting vulnerabilities, companies handling sensitive customer workflows will get more cautious about leaving core systems fully exposed.

Open source isn’t dead. But the security calculus is changing fast.

I think we’ll see more companies (both B2B and B2C) become hesitant to open-source core software over the next few years.

[Bailey Pumfleet @pumfleet]

Open source is dead.

That’s not a statement we ever thought we’d make.

@calcom was built on open source. It shaped our product, our community, and our growth. But the world has changed faster than our principles could keep up.

AI has fundamentally altered the security landscape. What once required time, expertise, and intent can now be automated at scale. Code is no longer just read. It is scanned, mapped, and exploited. Near zero cost.

In that world, transparency becomes exposure. Especially at scale.

After a lot of deliberation, we’ve made the decision to close the core @calcom codebase.

This is not a rejection of what open source gave us. It’s a response to what risks AI is making possible.

We’re still supporting builders, releasing the core code under a new MIT-licensed open source project called cal. diy for hobbyists and tinkerers, but our priority now is simple:

Protecting our customers and community at all costs.

This may not be the most popular call.

But we believe many companies will come to the same conclusion.

My full explanation below ↓