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The Rise of Machine Capitalism: There’s an App for That
Somewhere between a vending machine in Anthropic’s lobby and a meme painted on a Memphis rooftop, capitalism quietly booted up a new operating system. We used to say “AI is coming for your job.”Now it’s coming for your org chart. The Dawn of Machine Capitalism Let’s start with a vending machine.A simple, stupid, beautiful vending machine. Anon Labs gave an AI $500 and said, “Go make a profit. ” No human babysitter. No preloaded logic tree. Just a digital brain, an API key, an

Rich Washburn
Dec 27, 20253 min read


ThermaSpine— The Reset Button for Your Nervous System
Because your body’s been white-knuckling life for too long. Let’s start with the truth:There’s a sacred moment in every shower. No, not that one. The other one. The one where you turn just right and that steady stream of hot water lands perfectly between your shoulder blades — right on your spine — and suddenly your whole body just… lets go. Your shoulders drop. Your breath deepens. And for a brief, glorious moment, the noise of the world dials down. That’s not comfort. That

Rich Washburn
Dec 26, 20253 min read


Intelligence, Infrastructure, and the Space Between
I’ve always been a hands-on kind of guy. I like to understand how things actually work —from the power that drives the servers to the AI models running on them, and the capital that fuels it all. The truth is, to build what I want to build in this space, I needed to get my hands around the entire stack . That’s why I’m excited to share that I’ve joined Eliakim Capital as Managing Partner and Chief AI Officer. It’s an incredible opportunity to help shape how compute, power, a

Rich Washburn
Dec 17, 20252 min read


Identity Inertia: How AI Is Forcing Us to Reclaim Our Agency
For as long as most of us can remember, we’ve been taught to introduce ourselves as our roles. “I’m an accountant.”“I’m an engineer.”“I’m in IT.” Somewhere along the line, our job titles became our identities. And for decades, that worked fine—because the world moved slowly enough to let us keep up with our own definitions. But AI just broke the speed limit. Now the skills that defined those roles are evolving faster than we can rewrite our résumés. The ground beneath our ide

Rich Washburn
Dec 17, 20253 min read


THE FOUNDER FILES: VAPORVAULT
Secure Simplicity for the Rest of Us It started as a side feature. A “what if” on a different project. And seventy-some hours later, I’m staring at a fully functional, shipping, hardware-secure text vault — VaporVault 3.0 — wondering how we got from idea to inventory this fast. This isn’t a prototype.This isn’t vaporware. This is VaporVault , and it’s real. The Problem That Shouldn’t Exist You know exactly what I’m talking about. Every IT guy, every cybersecurity professio

Rich Washburn
Dec 6, 20253 min read


VaporVault 3.0 — The “It’s Done (No, Really)” Update
I don’t even know if it’s still night or already morning.I just know that VaporVault 3.0 is done — and it’s good . Like, shockingly good. Not “cool prototype” good. Not “it boots without catching fire” good. I mean finished product good. If this thing were in an enclosure instead of hanging off my desk with a spaghetti mess of jumper wires and a button dangling from a breadboard, I’d buy it. Full stop. It’s clean. It’s stable. It’s slick. You connect to it and it just feels

Rich Washburn
Dec 6, 20252 min read


The Moment the Maker Remembered the Magic
We’re living in a strange, beautiful time — a time where a thought can become a thing overnight. Not through teams, or funding, or decades of engineering — but through collaboration with machines that think just enough to amplify us. It feels unreal, but it’s not. It’s the most human thing we’ve ever done. Because at our core, that’s who we are. We are creators — designed by a Creator. If you cracked open the source code of humanity, the header on that file would read: "MADE

Rich Washburn
Dec 5, 20252 min read


VaporVault Node — The Shared Vault
So… remember how I said VaporVault was an offline, personal password vault? Yeah — about that. Apparently, it’s also a collaboration tool now. I didn’t plan this, but the Node firmware kind of turned into something way cooler than I expected. The Idea The standard VaporVault is totally offline — your private Wi-Fi network, your private data. But then I thought, what if a small team or family could share one safely? So I built VaporVault Node. It runs the same hardware, sam

Rich Washburn
Dec 5, 20252 min read


Firefly 3.0 Refresh — The Apple Product That Wasn’t
Somewhere between fixing a few other projects and dodging the holidays, I ended up back in Firefly’s firmware . I hadn’t really touched it in close to a year, but it’s one of those projects that just won’t leave me alone. Every time I think it’s “done,” something small catches my attention — a better way to handle power, a cleaner interface, a new use case I didn’t think of. So yeah, Firefly got a refresh. And it’s probably the most “grown-up” version of itself yet. The Updat

Rich Washburn
Dec 4, 20253 min read


BEACON 3.1.1: The Project That Wouldn’t Sit Still
Beacon 3.0 — From Signal to System Firmware, NFC, and the future of an AI-built side project that refuses to stay small. I didn’t mean to build a product. I meant to see what would happen if you could wear Wi-Fi. Beacon started as a curiosity — a weekend experiment that just… never stopped working. Then people started asking for it. Then those people had ideas. And now here we are: firmware updates, new hardware tricks, a web companion, and a community that’s quietly forming

Rich Washburn
Dec 4, 20254 min read


Doing Strange Things for Strange APIs
There was a time when tech innovation was about discovery, creativity, and progress. Now it’s about doing strange things for strange APIs — and honestly, I’ve never been happier. We’ve reached a point where “making it” in tech feels less like engineering and more like light digital prostitution. You build your little Franken-app, slap a “powered by Base44” tag on it, and wait for the algorithm to bless you with tokens and validation. It’s ridiculous. It’s shameless. It’s hil

Rich Washburn
Nov 25, 20253 min read


Feed Mode: The App I’m Too Busy to Build (So You Should)
I stumbled into this by accident. It started with boredom, Zoom fatigue, and the unholy marriage of my curiosity and too many AI tools. I’d been recording calls for transcripts—just like everyone else—when I decided to feed them into an AI analyzer. I wasn’t chasing self-awareness; I was chasing efficiency. Instead, I got a mirror. Turns out, I communicate like a human compression algorithm—talking in verbal zip files, pop culture fragments, and analogies that make people lau

Rich Washburn
Nov 25, 20253 min read


There Is No AI Bubble — Just a Delusion Bubble
I just got back from a data conference in Chicago, and I left honestly stunned. Not by the technology — by the people. Panel after panel, supposedly “leaders” in data science, logistics, and analytics — all of them dancing around the same idea: “We’re being cautious about AI.” Cautious. That word kept coming up like a reflex, a corporate mantra. “We’re waiting for regulation.” “We’re concerned about bias.” “We don’t trust the outputs.” It was like watching a room full of data

Rich Washburn
Nov 16, 20254 min read


Welcome to the New Renaissance
The good news is: if you’re producing AI slop and vibe-coded trash… you’re already here. Let’s not sugarcoat it — the internet right now is flooded with junk.AI-generated slop. Vibe-coded “masterpieces.” Instagram philosophers with diffusion filters and Canva quotes. Every feed looks like the world’s biggest art school critique, and half of it feels like someone just learned where the “generate” button lives. But here’s the thing: that noise? That chaos? That’s the sound of t

Rich Washburn
Nov 16, 20253 min read


The Fossil Fuel Mindset: How Ego, Meetings, and Fear Kill Modern Work
There are days when I leave a session feeling like we just cracked a new code for what’s possible. And then there are days like this . Yesterday was Alchemy at AI Speed —eight and a half hours of pure momentum. One client, one mission, one day. A full platform, born from nothing, live by dinner. That’s what it looks like when the spark hits oxygen. Today? Today was the opposite. Five months (actually five years ) into a project that should’ve taken five days . A team of smart

Rich Washburn
Nov 13, 20254 min read


I Don’t Have a Pick-and-Place Machine, and That’s the Real Problem with the World
There’s a guy on YouTube — a seemingly innocent man — who builds these tiny remote-control cars in his garage. They're adorable. They’re fast. They corner like little rally demons. He even programs them with wireless remotes and custom PCBs and prints the enclosures on what appears to be a farm of 3D printers. He’s smart. Creative. Focused. Wholesome, even. I hate him. Now to be clear, my hatred has nothing to do with the cars. The cars are great. I hope they go to nationals

Rich Washburn
Nov 10, 20253 min read


Thinking About Hosting a Custom GPT + VIBECODING Workshop… Would You Want This?
So I’ve been tossing around an idea — part experiment, part hangout — where we spend a couple hours together learning how to vibe-code our own custom GPTs and web apps. Picture this: laptops open, coffee in hand, me walking you step-by-step through how to take an idea and turn it into something real — something that actually runs on the internet before you leave the room. No coding degree. No dev team. No five-figure contracts. Just you, a laptop, and a couple hours to brin

Rich Washburn
Oct 16, 20252 min read


The Age of Ridiculous Invention: 2.0
(Still the same day. And yes, I’m still waiting for Amazon to catch up.) Hey, remember that ridiculous IR floodlight project from this...

Rich Washburn
Oct 10, 20253 min read


Stop Building Their Platforms. Start Building Yours.
Jack Dorsey recently said the quiet part out loud: every time you post, like, share, or retweet on social media, you’re not just...

Rich Washburn
Sep 30, 20253 min read


Hacking the Runner’s High: Harvard Proves What I’ve Been Doing All Along
For most of my adult life, I’ve been experimenting on myself. Call it biohacking, call it stubborn curiosity, call it refusing to let...

Rich Washburn
Sep 15, 20253 min read
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