The extremely online report: February 2025
A monthly digest of discourse, drama, and digital ephemera
Despite being the shortest month of the year, February had no shortage of news—AI debates, design tool showdowns, and existential crises about the future of... well, everything. Let’s unpack what happened.
On vibe coding
Andrej Karpathy introduced a new term to our ever-growing tech lexicon: vibe coding—a way of building software that’s more conversation than code. I explored the phenomenon on Figma’s blog, where the consensus emerged: magical for quick prototypes, spaghetti nightmare for anything complex. As Figma Engineer Anro Robinson puts it: “I’ve definitely gotten 80% of the way to what I wanted, which is truly magical, but I always end up with a pile of spaghetti code that doesn’t really have a coherent internal data model.” The vibe giveth, and the vibe taketh away.
Is Figma dead?
The “will AI replace designers?” debate found its February poster child when Pietro Schirano declared: “There is legitimately no reason to use Figma anymore.”
Although easy to write off as click bait (especially with Pietro plugging his own startup in the replies), it struck a chord. Steve Ruiz diagnosed “major dumbass vibes” from the Gen UI crowd, while others dug into the irony that Pietro’s own AI startup website was... underwhelming. Daryl Ginn tweeted: “‘there’s no reason to use figma anymore’ *looks at your website* hmm, how do i put this.”
Figma VP of Design Noah Levin eventually stepped in with a call for “level-headed curious discussion” over hyperbole. His take: Design transcends rectangles; teams will always need collaborative spaces to evolve ideas. As the dust settled, Cameron Moll posed a paradox: “If Figma et al are ‘no longer needed’ because we’ve replaced them with no-code/no-design tools, what software are we using to design such tools?”
The build wars begin
The UI generation vs. design tool craftsmanship battle continued later this month as 40k tuned in to watch BUILD WARS LIVE, a high-stakes design battle between Brett from DesignJoy (wielding Webflow) and Henrik Wes (armed with Lovable.dev). The catalyst? Henrik declaring “Webflow officially dead,” prompting Brett’s challenge and spawning design’s answer to WWE SmackDown.
The 45-minute design battle played out like a tortoise/hare fable for the digital age: Brett meticulously built his design system foundation before accelerating, while Henrik quickly prompted a decent site into existence only to flounder when tweaking details. After declaring Brett victor, Hunter Hammonds announced: “150,000 Views in less than 24 hours. We hear the community loud and clear. More!” Design is now a spectator sport—with +$190k on the line via Polymarket, too.
The AI marketing Super Bowl
For those of us who watch the Super Bowl for everything but the game, this year was dubbed the “AI Bowl,” with tech giants dropping millions to make AI resonate with the masses. OpenAI debuted with “The Intelligence Age,” 60-second pointillist manifesto, while Google’s Gemini promotion succeeded at making my mom cry, but had to pull another ad due to—wait for it—an AI-generated error. No gouda!
Perplexity sidestepped screen time altogether with an NY Times print ad. Their VP of Growth Raman Malik tweeted: “No clue how to measure the ROI of a Superbowl commercial, so instead we’re giving away $1M.”
Humane AI shuts down, is acquired by HP
Pour one out for the AI Pin. After burning through $230 million and moving 10k units (of a planned 100k), Humane discontinued its wearable moonshot. Existing devices go offline by month’s end—a bittersweet finale for one of tech’s boldest hardware experiments as of late. HP acquired their assets for $116 million, absorbing their Cosmos platform, tech talent, and patent portfolio. The team will form “HP IQ,” focusing on AI integration across HP’s ecosystem.
As Gergely Orosz observed: “This is a VERY good save by Humane’s leadership... Now sold for $116M and most employees keep their jobs.” Hardware remains undefeated in its ability to humble even the most well-funded startups.
YC deleted video for sweatshop startup Optifye
In the dystopian nightmare category, Y Combinator hastily yanked a video featuring their latest prodigy, Optifye.ai—an AI-powered factory worker surveillance system. The founders demonstrated monitoring workers like NPCs in a management sim, calling out “workspace 17” for a paltry 11.4% efficiency rating. The internet had a field day, dubbing it “Sweatshops-as-a-Service” with plenty of worker 17 jokes.
Leet code cheating maker pisses off Amazon
A Columbia student engineered the perfect tech career self-destruction sequence: built AI cheating software for technical interviews, landed offers from Amazon, Meta, and TikTok—then posted a YouTube tutorial of himself using it. The tool, InterviewCoder.co, helps candidates solve coding challenges undetected during interviews. After companies rescinded his offers, Roy Lee claimed it was a stunt exposing flaws in tech hiring. The saga illustrates the escalating arms race between AI tools and traditional assessment methods. Tech companies now face an existential question: Is any human evaluation method truly AI-proof?
Other AI questions I clocked this month
February brought more philosophical AI musings:
What things will people definitively not want to use tech for?
If your AI team exists in the cloud, what are you doing sitting at the office?
What’s a boomer prompt? (I fear I am boomer prompting)
In other news
YC is hosting an AI startup school in San Francisco featuring Elon Musk, Satya Nadella, and Sam Altman
Terrain launches Free Agency to help you pick the right startup idea
Daniel Penny hired by a16z— truly taking “a non traditional path to venture”
Google removed its pledge to not use AI for weapons or surveillance (cool, cool)
Worth your time
“Delve with Mel”: 3 words, 3 AI takes. Charming!
“To be a true lover of the world you have to also be an intense hater of those who inflict harm”
“The reason for being a critic is to better whatever you are reviewing. To better cinema, to better Shirley Temples, to better anything.” —Leo Kelly, the Shirley Temple King
That’s a wrap! What’d I miss? Let me know.
loved that I found this newsletter, and now I need to go back and read some older ones. Have you written on AI's influence for writers specifically and content designers?