I’m Daniel. Together with Matt, I’m building Inanimate - devices and a platform to transform any home or workplace into an agentic environment. 

This is Lab Notes - a record of our work as we build and ship Inanimate. What influences, informs, and inspires us; and maybe you too.

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Here’s what’s been happening this week.

And here until Thursday 12th.

We hosted a New Wave Hardware Meetup at Betaworks on Monday for next-level founders finding their way in the AI Era.

We visited the Brooklyn Navy Yard to see critical technology platform New Lab, and catch up with the inspiring Mitchell Joachim from Terraform ONE.

We’re looking for a Principle Embedded Engineer to be a founding team member at Inanimate.

Know someone awesome? Connect us up! [email protected]

We’re creating product reference libraries, getting audio working, building an Atomic B.O.M (bill of materials), and exploring collaborations.

Here’s what’s been influencing and inspiring me this week.

We visited Block Party, a hacker community show-and-tell sponsored by Macro and hosted at the Secret Riso Club, a charming artist collective and print store.

Six presentations, six minutes each.

A man who built his own display driver to get an arcade game working again.

A guy who made his explanation of building a relay computer for your browser feel more like stand-up comedy and performance art.

It was a wonderful, supportive expression of technical enthusiasm. These playful rabbit holes are sometimes where great inventions are discovered. More of this sort of thing!

London is one of the great cities of the world (even if the weather sometimes sucks). After a wave of negativity, people are standing up and celebrating the best about London as a tech hub to live in and build from.

Grit Cult lays out the bull case for London. B1rdmania maps the startups, and now the pubs (of course).

Are you Londonmaxxing?

Elite university sweaters. Local coffee shop cups. Anthropic “Thinking” caps. Space-X “Occupy Mars” t-shirts.

There is swag, merch, and now supply. It’s elevated merch, usually employee only, sometimes specific to a team, and only leaking into the world through exclusive drops, if at all.

Plum Soda (a “Merch Agency for Startups” that makes “Apparel & Objects”) suggests founders should treat “merch as a brand channel”. And Open AI’s Supply Store suggests they might be right.

What do we call good AI slop?

That’s what the AI creative collective / agency The Slop Shop are making. Their series about The Shape Store (check here + here) is like a geometrically obsessed skate video dispatch from the 00s LA underground, and it’s wild. Also check-out: Bird Game Studios. It’s strange, unique work.

I also love the hyper-real generative collages of Omar Karim (Arthur Chance on Insta). He perfectly captures the aesthetic of underground London, and the culture of 90s jungle music. Check this + this.

Generative nostalgia never looked so good.

Like it? Share with others. Expand the community.

Appreciations.

Daniel