allen

in pursuit of taste | cs @princeton

[allen @allenpark]

loading... @apursuitoftaste

[Sarah Chieng @MilksandMatcha]

in pursuit of taste

@allenpark @zhennydez and I are starting an intimate, fine-dining, series in sf

let us know if you'd like to join the next one

[allen @allenpark]

@bykahlil @Henryyinn @naturalpay @thinkwithmark @EasonTang23 insane pull

[allen @allenpark]

@gaby_goldberg omg congrats Gaby!!!

[Ti Morse @ti_morse]

My first interview with @lulumeservey, Founder of Rostra.

0:07 How to Destroy a Terrorist Group
3:01 What Makes a Great Cult Leader
4:42 Unleashing Palmer Luckey
7:34 Why Elon Is Unpredictable
10:41 Demanding a Hardcore Culture After the X Acquisition
13:41 How Napoleon Rallied Troops to Volunteer for a Suicide Mission
18:24 Choosing Who to Alienate
20:59 Picking Someone to Fight For
22:59 Deterrence and Shaping Incentives
25:19 Why Google Had an Activist Problem
29:12 Tyrant Mode: Stopping a Leaky Culture
32:11 Building Loyalty
35:58 Why Visuals Are So Powerful
37:40 Time to Train AlexNet: Jensen Huang and Inventing Metrics
39:36 Why People Root for You
42:15 Recruit Based on the Spirit Not the Letter
43:20 The Three Levels of Story
51:01 Secret Truths and Trusting Yourself
55:25 Cicero’s Impossible Trial
58:11 Offense vs Defense
1:03:44 The Roman Concept of Auctoritas

[allen @allenpark]

To those who celebrate, happy @swyx day!

Shawn was one of the first people I met after moving to SF and it's been a truly special experience working closely with him + watching him operate.

He's overflowing with humility & care while working like an ox. Every day I'm inspired by his attitude to help others for the sake of it and am endlessly grateful to call him a mentor

[swyx @swyx]

https://t.co/k3XbbNGw5s

[Alessio Fanelli @FanaHOVA]

You deserve more than a crowded Blue Bottle and a batch of 400 startups...

I'm launching Kernel Grants, a pre-seed program that will invest $271,828 in 10 founders/year who are building tooling and infrastructure for the token factories of the future.

We have an amazing set of speakers lined up for our first set of events:

- @pirroh, President of Replit
- @soumithchintala, CTO of Thinky
- @jeremyphoward, Founder of https://t.co/RHjK7ZPIFM
- @NaderLikeLadder, Dir. of DevTech at NVIDIA
- @OfficialLoganK, MOTS at DeepMind (and first ever Latent Space guest!)
- @clattner_llvm, Founder of Modular
- @dylan522p, Founder of SemiAnalysis
- @swyx, Editor of Latent Space (+ AIE, Cognition, etc!)

Batches are a relic of pre-AI acceleration. Any day is a great day to start building, so applications are open and we accept founders on a rolling basis. Let's build!

https://t.co/KM8KtRiniH

Enjoy an exclusive tour of our Kernel space 👀

[Dylan Patel @dylan522p]

I want to speak directly about a situation involving a former employee and recent legal filings. This is not something we take lightly.

In January 2026, SemiAnalysis terminated an employee due to severe misconduct. The former employee demeaned coworkers, came to work drunk, refused to work with certain SemiAnalysis employees, caused repeated workplace disruptions, made an inappropriate sexual comment to a coworker referencing another Company employee by name in a demeaning and sexually explicit manner, and engaged in other misconduct.

SemiAnalysis filed suit against this former employee in San Francisco on Friday, March 27th 2026 for breach of contract, trade secret misappropriation, and other claims. On the following Tuesday, the former employee then filed a meritless lawsuit against SemiAnalysis.

We want to be clear: SemiAnalysis unequivocally denies these claims, and we will defend against them vigorously.

Our suit is available here:
https://t.co/jt5iC4CW9E

Case Number: CGC-26-635328

[Latent.Space @latentspacepod]

Touring @ImpulseLabs with the Stove Guy @sdamico and @allenpark featuring never-seen-before AI cooking features.

Sam is reinventing the stove from first principles: battery-powered architecture, software-defined hardware, & OTA updates.

In this episode, we discuss:
• Why Impulse centered the stove around a battery
• How they achieved extreme power + temperature control
• Why Sam sees appliances as software-defined hardware
• How Claude and AI tools are already part of the product + how Sam uses AI

Timestamps:
0:00 Intro
0:18 The Impulse Cooktop Demo
0:55 Zephyr Partnership + Showrooms
1:14 Magnetic Knob Interface
2:04 How Impulse Tests and QA’s Every Build
3:34 Rebuilding the Stove From First Principles
5:02 Impulse Core and OEM Partnerships
6:09 How Long It Took to Build the Product
8:07 The Japan Pizza Story That Sparked Impulse
9:22 Why Sam Left Consumer Hardware for Appliances
12:42 Why the Stove Was the Right Entry Point
14:31 Building Appliances “Like a Phone”
17:17 Will Impulse Ship a Single-Burner Version?
17:37 Cooking Begins on the AI Dev Unit
19:10 How Sam Uses AI to Build Software at Impulse
20:36 Scallops Demo: Real-Time Temperature Control
22:20 Boiling Pasta at 10,000 Watts
24:49 AI Recipes, Figma, and Multi-Burner Cooking
28:25 Butter, Pasta, and Controlled Temperature Cooking
30:21 Zephyr Launch and the Bigger Smart Home Vision
32:45 Global Expansion Plans
33:34 AI Features, OTA Updates, and What Ships This Year
35:14 Taste Test with the Judges
36:42 Where to Buy Impulse

[swyx @swyx]

First software ate the world,
Now @OpenClaw + Pi will eat software.

@pmarca 🔜 @latentspacepod

[allen @allenpark]

@adelwu_ @lin_annabeth another banger event

[allen @allenpark]

@floguo @paradigmai sooo clean!! congrats on launch!

[swyx @swyx]

working on something big and need a design engineer!!

i assume @emilkowalski is taken, but if you align with this sort of philosophy here please reach out.

[allen @allenpark]

@adelwu_ @s_afiaziz quality goes crazyyy

[allen @allenpark]

@floguo SOOO COOOOL

[swyx @swyx]

Today I found out (after chatting to @TrungTPhan) that @latentspacepod has crossed over @TBPN and the Collisons

[allen @allenpark]

@adelwu_ such a creative idea!! 👏

[adel 🌟 @adelwu_]

i want to host an event for people confused about their career path.

for the multi-hyphenates who don’t know what to pursue, bc there’s too many things.

i left my last job not knowing what was next, only that i didn’t want to keep doing what i was doing.

when i pivoted from eng to growth, the most eye opening conversations were those with people 2-3 years ahead of me who went through the same struggle.

they could actually resonate with the existential stress i felt navigating the process.

who would be interested?

i’d love to put together a panel of people with amazing multi-faceted careers and took sabbaticals/breaks to figure things out!

[Dylan Patel @dylan522p]

Being in SF is like being in Wuhan right before the pandemic
Something is happening, it's gonna hit everywhere but so few people know it

[allen @allenpark]

@adelwu_ Adel event consulting coming soon 🔜

[Latent.Space @latentspacepod]

Everything Context Engineering & Cookoff between @dexhorthy, co-founder and CEO of @humanlayer_dev, and @allenpark.

0:12 - Meet Dex Horthy (Humanlayer) + Cooking Challenge
1:15 - Tasting Dan Dan Noodles
1:25 - How Dex Got a NASA Internship at 17
3:36 - The Origin of “Context Engineering”
6:24 - What AI “Slop” Actually Means
8:06 - From Engineer to Founder
12:54 - How Context Engineering Is Changing
15:23 - The “Dumb Zone” of Context Windows
18:59 - Will AI Replace Software Engineers?
21:27 - Chaotic Final Plating
22:00 - Taste Test: Who Cooked It Better?
24:24 - Judges Decide the Winner

Look up Latent Space on Youtube, Spotify, Apple Podcasts, etc.

[allen @allenpark]

@adelwu_ @vibhayellamraju What a beautiful space!