Articles

Building a Serverless Image Processor with AI Assistance – Part 2 of 6 – The Blueprint

Part 2: From Idea to Blueprint – Why the PRD is Your Most Important Prompt In any development project, the temptation to jump straight into coding is strong. You have an idea, you’re excited, and you want to see results. However, my primary goal was to learn how to collaborate effectively with an AI assistant, and I knew that vague, iterative prompts would lead to a frustrating, circular process. That’s why the first real step of this project wasn’t writing code; it was writing a plan. I created a Product Requirements Document (PRD) to serve as the single source of truth—the “master prompt”—for the entire build. The Power of a Detailed “Master Prompt” Instead of asking the AI, “Build me an image resizer,” which would yield a generic and likely useless result, the PRD allowed me to provide a rich, detailed context. It forced me to think through the user’s Read more

By David Tong, ago

The Unsinkable Ship: Navigating the Storm of an Unplanned Retirement

There is a quiet, tectonic shift happening in the world of work, a tremor just beneath the surface that many of us in our fifties are beginning to feel. It isn’t a sudden earthquake, but a slow, grinding pressure.

The ground we’ve stood on for thirty years, the reliable bedrock of experience, loyalty, and deep institutional knowledge is becoming unstable. We are being unceremoniously ushered towards an exit we did not choose, caught in a perfect storm of ageism, automation, and the relentless, short-term logic of the spreadsheet.

(more…)
By David Tong, ago

How My Rescue Cat Taught Me About Stoicism and Stress Survival

In the relentless, humid hum of Singapore, a city-state that rewards frantic motion and punishes pause, I had become a master of the urgent.

At nearly fifty, my life was a carefully constructed edifice of full Google calendars and anxieties. I navigated the currents of a high-stakes career with the weary expertise of a long-distance swimmer, convinced the only way forward was to never stop kicking.

(more…)
By David Tong, ago

Your Life is Getting More Expensive to Feed the AI Beast

Let me be perfectly clear from the start, I love technology. I believe in its power to solve big problems and make our lives better. I’ve been a tech nerd since I was a kid, since Commodore to Apple IIe days.

But true support doesn’t mean blindly cheering from the sidelines. It means asking hard questions, especially when the hype train is roaring ahead without any thought for the tracks it’s laying down, or who might get run over.

My loyalty isn’t to the tech giants, the investment firms, or the CEOs promising a shiny AI future. It’s to you and me, the everyday person who feels things getting more expensive and wonders why. It’s to the broader society that has to live with the consequences of these grand experiments.

(more…)
By David Tong, ago

Open Letter to Toxic Workplace Culture Incubators

My friends,

I’m writing to you today not as a consultant or a guru, but as a peer, heck even a virtual friend.

Someone who has sat in the same meetings, felt the same pressures, and wrestled with the immense responsibility of guiding a group of people toward a common goal. It’s a privilege, this work we do. But I’ve also seen the dark side of it and it’s getting worse with the pace of life and technology we’re facing.

I’ve watched brilliant, passionate people slowly dim under the weight of so-called “leadership” that fails to understand its own impact, not just in the workplace, but to people’s personal lives outside of work.

(more…)
By David Tong, ago

I Want My Internet Back!

It was 1995, I flick the power switch of my Compaq Presario desktop in my dorm room, the first time I heard that screeching modem tone just weeks before our campus upgraded to T1 connections. That free AOL CD from a PC Mag became my passport to something extraordinary.

Back in those days, the internet felt like exploring a strange new city where every alleyway held potential surprises. You’d stumble into chat rooms with names like “DragonSlayer42” or “BeavisOwnsButthead69” and actually have conversations with real people about ridiculous topics that somehow mattered in the moment. You argue, you laugh, you use weird ASCII combos to make a crude but complex reaction.

(more…)
By David Tong, ago

How Big Tech’s AI “Neutrality” Enables Ethical Disasters: 3 Cautionary Tales for Business Leaders

AI is often marketed as an impartial, efficiency-boosting tool, but the reality is messier. As highlighted in videos like “How AI Decisions Go Rogue”, “The Hidden Biases in AI”, and “When Automation Goes Wrong”, AI systems don’t operate in a moral vacuum. They mirror and amplify the data, incentives, and oversight gaps built into them.

For business leaders, this isn’t just a technical issue, it’s a strategic, legal, and reputational risk. When deployed without guardrails, AI can silently automate discrimination, escalate PR crises, or even violate regulations without malicious intent.

Below, we dissect three high-profile cases where household-name companies enabled ethically dubious AI outcomes, unintentionally. Each reveals a critical flaw in how corporations approach AI governance, with actionable lessons for leaders who don’t code but do control budgets and policies.

(more…)
By David Tong, ago

The Mat After 40: When Your Body Keeps Score (But Forgets the Rules)

You know that moment when you’re warming up and your body starts listing its grievances like a disgruntled employee? Left knee: “We need to talk about these torreando passes.” Lower back: “I didn’t sign up for this berimbolo nonsense.” Meanwhile, your brain’s back there filing a formal complaint about the new guard retention system it’s supposed to implement.

Here’s what they don’t tell you about jiu-jitsu after 40 – it becomes less about collecting techniques and more about curating survival strategies. The young guys? They’re out there building libraries. We’re building escape rooms.

(more…)
By David Tong, ago