Friction, MechaHitler, Resistance Tools, and Bedbugs
Weekly Review of News in Technology, UX and AI
Here’s the latest news, resources, and use cases from the world of product, UX, AI and technology. Let’s go:
📊 Unstructured Data
🥵 Friction
📱 Samsung
🌍 MechaHitler
😓 Layoffs
🎮 Resistance Tools
👺 Marc Andreessen
🪳 Bedbugs
Podcast
Structured Thinking for Unstructured Data: A Conversation with Founder Kirk Marple
In this episode of Product by Design, Kyle is joined by Kirk Marple, founder and CEO of Graphlit, to explore the world of unstructured data and how it’s transforming with the rise of LLMs and AI-native tools. Kirk shares his journey from working at Microsoft and General Motors to building Graflit—a platform designed to make unstructured data as usable as structured data.
News and Useful Reads
In the AI Age, Making Things Difficult Is Deliberate
I’ve been thinking about friction a lot lately. Our technology, especially AI, is making everything much easier. But what is the cost? If we don’t take time to hone and develop our skills, will we eventually lose the ability to create unique work? For example, I enjoy writing. AI can generate a paragraph more easily than I can, but it often isn’t good. But knowing is good and what isn’t only comes from years of putting in the work.
But friction, once an indispensable process of building competency and perspective, is vanishing to AI. A single prompt generates polished landing pages, completes brand systems, and ships working applications. The fruit that once required long, arduous labor now drops directly into our laps, ripe yet uncannily hollow.
9 things we learned from Samsung's Galaxy Unpacked July 2025 event
Samsung had its Unpacked event this week, and it was a good one if you’re into foldable phones and smart watches.
As predicted by the (many) leaks and rumors, Samsung launched a trio of new foldables. Leading the pack was the new Galaxy Z Fold 7, but we were also treated to more affordable alternatives in the Galaxy Z Flip 7 and Galaxy Z Flip 7 FE (which appears to be the Z Flip 6 in disguise).
It wasn't just a big foldables fest either, with Samsung also delivering the Galaxy Watch 8 series.
Grok’s MechaHitler disaster is a preview of AI disasters to come
Users of Grok, Elon Musk’s AI, seem to think it is too “woke” and not nearly hateful enough. So Elon set out to fix that this week. And, surprising no one, we ended up with MechaHitler.
This week, after personality updates that Musk said were meant to solve Grok’s center-left political bias, users noticed that the AI was now really, really antisemitic and had begun calling itself MechaHitler.
Indeed and Glassdoor to lay off 1,300 workers as AI shakes up job search business
Whether AI is actually driving layoffs or companies are using it as cover remains to be seen. But Indeed and Glassdoor will be laying off about 6% of their workforce
Indeed and Glassdoor, the job search and employee review firms, are slashing a total of roughly 1,300 jobs as their parent company, Japan's Recruit Holdings, embraces artificial intelligence.
The Online Tools That Fueled ‘No Kings’ and the Trump Resistance
Each week, it seems like the overreach of the Trump regime gets to a new, unfathomable level. And then outdoes itself again. But many are resisting using a variety of technologies and tools.
Across the country, small local groups have used a wide variety of online tools to mobilize their resistance to Trump 2.0 while trying to protect themselves against backlash from the administration.
Marc Andreessen reportedly told group chat that universities will ‘pay the price’ for DEI
Don’t ever forget, the oligarchs in running Silicon Valley want to control you and the country as much as MAGA does. While they aren’t full aligned in everything (like immigration), they are pursuing the same authoritarian and racist goals.
Venture capitalist Marc Andreessen sharply criticized universities including Stanford and MIT, along with the National Science Foundation, in a group chat with AI scientists and Trump administration officials, according to screenshots viewed by the Washington Post.
Other Interesting Finds
How to Keep Bedbugs From Coming Home With You
If you, like many of us, are traveling this summer, it may be a good idea to be alert for bed bugs. They don’t need to ruin your trip, but you also don’t want to bring them home.
Don’t let bedbugs, or the fear of them, ruin your travel. Despite the statistics, the chance of encountering bedbugs in any given hotel room is “pretty darn unlikely,” said Michael Potter, then a professor of entomology at the University of Kentucky. (I interviewed Potter and the other experts in this article in 2019.) Here are some simple steps you can take to make sure you don’t run into bedbugs on your trip.