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There is a deeper truth which I struggle to fully articulate:
Truth is a story.
Narrative shapes Truth.
Truth flows from Narrative.
"That's not true", your story says, "I have facts!"
But facts alone are meaningless. The Narrative determines which facts are relevant and reliable, provides the context and meaning, labels the heroes and villains, and declares what is accurate information and what is harmful misinformation.
And so we are ruled by stories, Narrative.
All of our most divisive issues are ultimately a war of narrative. We may argue over facts, but the real conflict is narrative, and the struggle for who controls The Narrative.
These narratives are unavoidable. We can't make sense of the world without them. But we can become aware of them, stepping back from the conflict to realize that both sides are each working from within their own narrative bubbles.
The path to peace is not in domination, one narrative wiping out all others, but in understanding.
We can develop a meta-narrative that recognizes and integrates all other narratives, not as true and false but more like species of bacteria, spreading, competing, mutating, colonizing minds, sometimes helping and sometimes harming. We must understand that those colonized by one or the other narrative are generally unaware, to them it is simply the truth.
This meta-narrative brings awareness, and with it some degree of freedom. We can choose our narratives. We can change our narratives. And through this process of awareness, integration, and refinement, all narratives are transformed.
This is the beginning of Alignment.
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Also, the California High Speed Rail pictured on the left cost taxpayers $100 Billion
In contrast, SpaceX spent $5B-$10B to develop Starship, less than 1/10th the cost of our non-existent HSR
At this point, I think most government spending is really just looting
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Google may be only a year or two away from total disruption. AI will eliminate the Search Engine Result Page, which is where they make most of their money.
Even if they catch up on AI, they can't fully deploy it without destroying the most valuable part of their business!
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They fed people glucose syrup, canola oil, milk protein concentrate, and sugar, then conclude that protein is bad for you.
This is why I’m a Science Denier
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When we bought our Tesla with FSD in 2016, I was skeptical that it would ever "fully self drive", but with the latest updates it's getting pretty good, probably at the level of a median Uber driver, and unlike the Uber drivers it keeps getting better.
My guess is that Elon is currently in the process of betting the company on a massive scale-up of robo-taxi, pivoting Tesla from selling cars to selling point-to-point transportation. This is the fastest way to 10x revenues while also boosting margins (and obviously requires a very different super-charger strategy, among other things). Bad news for Uber though!
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When I joined Google in 1999, I didn't understand how it was possible to win vs much larger and better funded competitors such as Altavista, but it seemed like a good opportunity to learn.
What I learned is that if you're in the lead, and you're moving faster than everyone else, then no one can ever catch up.
Now the problem for Google is that it is OpenAI and Perplexity that are in the lead and moving faster.
Google still has superior assets, but it's unclear if they will be able to shed the brainworms and accelerate.
GenAI poses a much deeper pickle for Google than I initially assumed... The last few weeks completely echo the time I was at Google in the early 2000's when we were up against Microsoft - except this time Google is on the receiving end.
Looking back, we beat Microsoft not because we had better tech, but because we forced them to play on our terms AND at our "clockspeed."
Many (myself included) were viewing Google's LLM problem as one of catching up with the technology - specifically OpenAI. It stands to reason that with all its incredible talent, infrastructure, users and data, Google can and will catch up to OpenAI and likely be able to build better technology.
But I'm realizing that's likely to be wrong. The debacle last week (and even more, Google's response) puts a point on the real and somewhat unsolvable problem Google faces now.
Google isn't going to lose to OpenAI tomorrow - it lost to it over the last ten years.
The problem that Google faces today relative to the likes of OpenAI and Perplexity is very similar to what we did to Microsoft 20 years ago. What ChatGPT in particular has made us realize is that many of the tasks that we have so far labeled "search" and where we click on blue links are really tasks of research, analysis and decision-making.
We viewed Google as the way to complete these tasks because 20 years ago, Google solved the most important challenge in that workflow, which was to bring all the world's information to within one click in the form of a search engine.
Over these 20 years, Google built and has been harvesting one of the most profitable business models in history (remember that we used to talk with similar admiration of the operating system + desktop productivity biz model).
The problem now, is that ChatGPT, Perplexity and others have shown us that A LOT of the tasks we used to think of as search engine-based workflows are even better served through an exchange with this new piece of technological magic (similarly to how PageRank made Google Search feel magical 25 years ago).
The real problem for Google is one of clockspeed. Google all of a sudden has its ass on fire and is trying to innovate into the future. But, that innovation now has to happen at the heart of its business. OpenAI doesn't care about messing up an ads business model - they can just iterate with a product/quality purity that is impossible for Google to get.
Google isn't going to lose to OpenAI in the coming few years. It has lost over the past decade, when it could have evolved/iterated AI into its model at its success-encumbered clockspeed. Now that the game is on, but on a startup clockspeed, there is no chance for Google to catch up and even less win this next cycle.
This problem compounds over time, because every single day that goes by, we are all feeding OpenAI our usage patterns, feedback, custom GPTs, integrations, etc... At this stage, there is no way for Google to shift its clockspeed unless it is willing to give the middle finger to the market and its customers for a while and say sorry, the future beckons - feel free to opt out and invest your money elsewhere.
The sad part is that Google actually has the wherewithal to do that, but few incumbents are ever able to pull it off. Meta/Zuck have done this several times (mobile transition, VR bet and now AI), so we know it's possible, but it is exceedingly unlikely for that to happen. People often think that's only possible because Mark is the founder, but I think it's because of his posture between risk and opportunity.
I'll close this with the phrase that I think captures this posture: Our missed opportunities will cost us more than our mistakes
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The whole world dodged a bullet. Control of AI is control of humanity. If they are able to lockdown and centralize AI, then freedom will be forever eliminated.
Grateful for the election, and all those working to preserve freedom 🙏
This is insane…
Marc Andreessen on how the Biden Administration wanted to control AI with government regulatory capture, blocking free markets similar to the CCP.
ROGAN: “When you leave a meeting like that, what do you do?”
ANDREESSEN: “You endorse Donald Trump.”
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MAZE
Not many people know this, but OpenAI was actually started at YC in 2015, and was initially known as "YC Research".
We were concerned that all of the AI technology would be locked up inside of one company (Google), and so created a "moonshot" effort to make the technology available to all, including future YC companies.
It's difficult to convey how crazy and unlikely this all seemed 10 years ago, but here we are :)
Pleasure to come by the YC AI Startup School today! I'm told the recordings will be up "in the coming weeks", I'll link to it then and include the slides. Thank you YC for organizing and bringing together an awesome group of builders!
events.ycombinator.com/ai-su…
Fun fact is that when I (and all the original founding members) decided to join OpenAI, the name OpenAI didn't exist - we all thought we were joining a new AI non-profit under YC Research. My very first OpenAI swag t-shirt says "YC AI Day 1". Things changed up a bit after that. Cheers to YC! :)
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Zero to $100,000,000,000 in twelve years
After their demo day presentation, one investor complained to me that there were "too many food companies"
That investor missed out on a >1000x return :)
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AI is the 4th major technology wave. The first three were fire, language, and agriculture.
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It's possible that when AGI is first achieved it will be extremely expensive to operate, maybe $10,000/hour or more, meaning that it will not be worth replacing low-wage jobs with AGI. Only very high-leverage positions such as CEO or hedge fund manager will justify the expense.
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Things I didn't predict: A nuclear power startup is currently one of my top angel investments! (Upower/Oklo, YC S14)
175x gain in 10 years :)
excited to share that UPower is in the current YC batch! techcrunch.com/2014/08/18/yc…
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The best and fastest way to decarbonize the economy is by flooding the market with low-cost, reliable nuclear energy
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Left vs Right is a dangerous distraction
The real threat is centralization of power, regardless of ideals or marketing. With the rise of AI, this danger becomes infinitely worse. Every move can be monitored, every record altered in real time, a permanent and inescapable prison.
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I think this is an essential part of why Elon companies are able to do the impossible
“But the Starlink team did not seem to feel much urgency, a cardinal sin for Musk. So one Sunday night that June, without much warning, he flew to Seattle to fire the entire top Starlink team.”
Yes, he has a history of firing/rebooting entire teams. This happened with both Raptor and Starlink I believe.
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Incidentally, I was recently talking to a startup founder about what I would do differently if rebuilding Gmail today, and this was essentially my answer. The whole thing should be AI-first.
For example, anytime I receive legal docs, it should automatically summarize them for me. If it's a startup financing, tell me what my %ownership is after the latest round, etc. Think of the AI as a super-smart human assistant and then build the entire product on that foundation.
The next generation of AI tools should have a completely adaptive UI, entirely generated by the AI itself. Any time I want a new feature or different interface, I just tell the AI and it makes the necessary changes
Zero static / hard-coded UI elements. Is anyone building this?
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The feature iOS most needs is sms spam filtering. It’s becoming unusable :(
It would also be nice if our “leaders” didn’t exempt themselves from the laws that apply to everyone else!
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I predict Apple's next big platform is not AR or VR but voice AI, an always-on, realtime conversational AI with good situational awareness -- a voice in your ear always available to answer questions, handle tasks, and offer helpful suggestions, like a smart assistant who accompanies you everywhere. Unlike bulky headsets, AirPods (AIrPods?) are relatively unobtrusive and already commonly worn and socially acceptable.
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One thing that few people remember is the pre-Internet business that Google killed: The Yellow Pages!
The Yellow Pages used to be a great business, but then Google got so good that everyone stopped using the yellow pages.
AI will do the same thing to web search
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X should stop demoting links and instead use Grok to attach a short summary of the linked content. It would achieve the same goal of keeping people on-site but be less annoying
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DoorDash (S13) is now a $100B company!
YC Group Partner @paultoo shares what a great company like @DoorDash (YC S13) looks like at the earliest stages: blog.ycombinator.com/doordas…
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The next generation of AI tools should have a completely adaptive UI, entirely generated by the AI itself. Any time I want a new feature or different interface, I just tell the AI and it makes the necessary changes
Zero static / hard-coded UI elements. Is anyone building this?
I spent 10 minutes googling for a market cap chart and couldn't find a decent one, so I made one with Replit Agent in two minutes.
Still can't believe you can make software faster than you can google for it.
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This is an important point. Children are being poisoned in schools and media with the narratives of doom, and decline: that there is no future, that the planet is dying, and that everything has to get worse. Hopelessness and depression are the inevitable/intentional consequence.
THE TECHNO-OPTIMIST MANIFESTO part 1
“You live in a deranged age — more deranged than usual, because despite great scientific and technological advances, man has not the faintest idea of who he is or what he is doing.”
— Walker Percy
“Our species is 300,000 years old. For the first 290,000 years, we were foragers, subsisting in a way that’s still observable among the Bushmen of the Kalahari and the Sentinelese of the Andaman Islands. Even after Homo Sapiens embraced agriculture, progress was painfully slow. A person born in Sumer in 4,000BC would find the resources, work, and technology available in England at the time of the Norman Conquest or in the Aztec Empire at the time of Columbus quite familiar. Then, beginning in the 18th Century, many people’s standard of living skyrocketed. What brought about this dramatic improvement, and why?”
— Marian Tupy
“There’s a way to do it better. Find it.”
— Thomas Edison
Lies
We are being lied to.
We are told that technology takes our jobs, reduces our wages, increases inequality, threatens our health, ruins the environment, degrades our society, corrupts our children, impairs our humanity, threatens our future, and is ever on the verge of ruining everything.
We are told to be angry, bitter, and resentful about technology.
We are told to be pessimistic.
The myth of Prometheus – in various updated forms like Frankenstein, Oppenheimer, and Terminator – haunts our nightmares.
We are told to denounce our birthright – our intelligence, our control over nature, our ability to build a better world.
We are told to be miserable about the future.
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Schools should help every child reach their fullest potential, not grind them all down to the lowest common denominator.
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Cybertruck is fun to watch because it's such an outrageous and (arguably) ugly vehicle. The case for why it will fail is obvious and common, so it's more interesting to consider why it will be a huge success.
Working from the startup principle that it's better to make something that a small number of people love than a large number of people "meh", the case becomes clear.
The Ford F-150 Lightning is a good example of "meh". It's very similar to a regular F-150, except not as good because it has very limited range when towing (and imagine having to unhitch your load every 100 miles to stop at a charging station).
The Cybertruck, on the other hand, is unlike anything. Part of the "charm" of a truck is being big, tough, obnoxious, and in-your-face. The Cybertruck is tougher, more obnoxious, and visually louder than anything on the road. It's literally bulletproof, it out-pulls and out-runs the competition, and it can't not stand out in a crowd. The next time a coal-roller blocks a supercharger, a Cybertruck will show up, drag it out sideways, and dump it in a ditch. Its function is to establish dominance over all of the conventional trucks in the same way that the Model S outperforms all sports cars. And supply will be limited for at least a year, further boosting demand since scarcity triggers desire. Radio stations, YouTubers, and anyone else with something to promote will snap them up as a means of attracting attention, creating a memetic loop of enthusiasm.
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Intelligence is just patterns. Intelligence is just predicting what comes next. That's why it evolved. Consider the predator/prey relationship, and the value of predicting where the food will be, or how to avoid being the food. Where does the rabbit go when being chased by a coyote?
When people say that AI isn't intelligent because it's "just predicting the next token", it reflects more the limitations of their own intelligence than that of the AI. Predicting the next token in a way that answers a complex question requires a relatively deep understanding of the proceeding tokens, and the context in which they occur. That is intelligence.
People keep asking, "What did Ilya see?", and obviously I don't know, but I'll tell you anyway.
More computation = more intelligence
There are no fundamental obstacles between here and AGI, just a lot of engineering and computation. Algorithms such as the rumored Q* are ways for the AI to explore and evaluate many possible futures, and then crystalize those learnings into the "base model", much like a human planner or researcher. Novel insights are formed in response to novel questions, and there's no shortage of those.
My prediction for what comes next: AI just keeps getting better. There is no plateau.
Consider what happens when we have a million Einsteins working together. I can't predict what comes next.
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How long until vibe coders become vibe founder/CEO and agents do all the real work?
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Looting and virtue signaling
vs
Efficiency and results
If given the opportunity, which would you vote for?
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My best and most general life advice:
Seek positive-sum systems and relationships
Avoid zero/negative-sum systems and relationships
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It was the summer of Windows '95...
My first (and only) time shipping the kind of software that is sold in cardboard boxes at the mall
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I like this term "abundance liberals". With technologies such as nuclear power, we can simultaneously reduce pollution and improve everyone's standard of living.
Unfortunately many activists don't want solutions. They want degrowth and communism.
A story that illuminates why abundance liberals are going to struggle with some progressive activists:
In March, I gave a talk on climate tech at a senior center - they loved it! In Q&A, a woman asked “how do we get people to do their part + dry their clothes on the line?” 1/7
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It's hard to know if friendfeed would have been any better at scale. Unfortunately social media seems to elevate our worst voices and feed our worst impulses. Twitter is like a game where you get 1 point for being fair and thoughtful, and 1000 points for character assassination.
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The beginning is near!
Follow us at @Standard_Cap
After 12+ years, 25 batches, and the privilege of advising >1,000+ startups, I’m transitioning to Partner Emeritus at Y Combinator.
YC changed my life. I’m grateful to the thousands of founders who trusted me with their journeys, my fellow YC partners and teammates, and to Paul, Jessica, Trevor, and Robert for creating this extraordinary institution.
Standard Capital is name of the AI-native Series A firm I’m co-founding with two of my favorite people: Paul Buchheit, my longtime colleague at YC, and Bryan Berg, the CTO of my previous startups.
AI is reshaping every aspect of our world. We aim to embed AI in every part of our business and back the AI disruptors of tomorrow.
Follow us at @Standard_Cap, you’ll be hearing more from us soon!
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The way I imagine this happening is that the URL/Search bar of the browser gets replaced with AI that autocompletes my thought/question as I type it while also providing the best answer (which may be a link to a website or product)
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The old search engine backend will be used by the AI to gather relevant information and links, which will then be summarized for the user. It's like asking a professional human researcher to do the work, except the AI will instantly do what would take many minutes for a human
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We need more investment/innovation in defensive AI. It is inevitable that AI will be used against us by scammers, criminals, governments, and other bad actors. As AI improves, so too does the sophistication and danger of these attacks. How many of our existing computer systems would remain secure if attacked by an AI super-hacker? How do we know if we are talking with a real person or a deep-fake? How do we know if our sources of information are accurate or reliable? How do we defend against the next bioengineered virus?
One product I would like to see is something I call "User Agent". It's a personal AI programmed to guard and defend our individual rights and interests. Like an ideal lawyer, it should always be working for and representing our interests, not those of corporations or governments trying to control and manipulate us. Ideally we would have the equivalent of "attorney-client privilege" with this AI, meaning that it keeps secrets and will not report us to the thought-police. It monitors our communications and accounts to guard against fraud and hacking attempts. It helps us to stay well informed by automatically reference checking the information we consume, providing helpful background and context (similar to community notes on X, but for everything). It's a trusted health and financial advisor that can warn us away from scams while surfacing more promising and beneficial options. Ideally it could even monitor our physical environment and integrate information such as crime reports to help maintain physical security.
What are the best startups/teams building defensive AI? I'm especially curious if anyone has good thoughts on how to defend against engineered viruses, since gain-of-function is only going to get easier and more dangerous.
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This is likely true. Elon is ruthlessly efficient and obsessed with colonizing Mars. He will invest his time where he anticipates the highest ROI.
Communists don't understand this because they are working from a zero-sum narrative in which business owners and operators can never create wealth, only extract it.
In contrast, the capitalist narrative allows for positive-sum alignment/exchange in which wealth is created and all parties win.
Positive-sum leads to abundance
Zero-sum leads to poverty and strife
A no vote likely means Elon leaves the company, and then 90% of the AI team leaves also.
Tesla becomes a relatively normal car company selling perhaps 4 million cars a year with Super Bowl ads and 10% margins.
Market cap $100B, $TSLA at $30
None of the No voters have an answer to that
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One common founder error is to focus on how great a product would be for the company rather than how great it would be for users/customers.
Facebook may have fallen into this trap, investing in AR/VR not because users want it, but because they badly want to own the platform.
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Seven trillion dollars sounds like a lot until you understand the market size of intelligence is infinity
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The Biden situation is a good example of why single-party states are dangerous -- the incentives always favor party loyalty over truth. If it weren't for the disastrous debate and upcoming elections, experts and insiders would still be insisting that Biden is "sharp as a tack", and that all evidence to the contrary are "cheapfakes" and dangerous misinformation.
Our two-party system isn't always great, but it's far preferable to one in which a single party gains total control. I believe this is also a significant factor in the California/SF dysfunction. Without a viable opposition party, party leaders can get away with just about anything, and corruption and incompetence grows unchecked.
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Unions should be subject to antitrust law. Break them up into smaller, more competitive unions
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“He who has a why to live can bear almost any how.”
But the inverse is also true,
“He who lacks a why to live cannot bear any how.”
One of greatest challenges facing our civilization is the loss of meaning, the loss of "why". What is your "why"?
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With GPT-4o, this product is nearly ready.
The next step (which may have already happened) is teaching the LLM to use iPhone apps.
Then, when I tell the AI to order sandwiches for lunch, it can automatically launch the DoorDash app, discuss the options, place an order, and keep me updated on delivery time.
This is one reason why it is very difficult for startups to compete with Apple and Google in this space: they already have access to all of the Android/iPhone apps, which means that their AI will be able to order an Uber, check notifications on X, send a message though Whatsapp, or anything else the user would be able to do with their phone, all without any special APIs or authentication.
I predict Apple's next big platform is not AR or VR but voice AI, an always-on, realtime conversational AI with good situational awareness -- a voice in your ear always available to answer questions, handle tasks, and offer helpful suggestions, like a smart assistant who accompanies you everywhere. Unlike bulky headsets, AirPods (AIrPods?) are relatively unobtrusive and already commonly worn and socially acceptable.
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Yes, he has a history of firing/rebooting entire teams. This happened with both Raptor and Starlink I believe.
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Incentives are everything.
The fundamental question is, what happens when an "expert" is wrong?
If a pilot is wrong, they might die in a crazy. I trust pilots.
If an engineer at TSMC is wrong about semiconductor physics, the chips won't work. I trust engineers.
If an expert is wrong about Iraq having WMDs, we get into a long and costly war, innocent people die, and the experts face no absolutely no consequences. (instead, they move on to starting the next war)
When the experts in government fail to solve a problem and it instead make the problem worse, they often gain more power and resources (because the problem is now bigger).
I trust experts when their incentives are strongly aligned with the truth.
I completely distrust experts when their incentives are aligned with dishonesty (e.g. Fauci)
No, this is a mistake in frame. Fields where you have objective metrics of performance (e.g. planes not crashing) have experts. Fields where success is based on "consensus" or "peer review" do not.
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Standard Capital is now live!
Series A for the best founders
Apply now
This is the series A investor I always wanted
- Fill out a quick form, like applying to YC
- Fast decision
- No board seat
- 10% dilution
- Group office hours instead of board meetings
- Work with @daltonc and @paultoo
@standard_cap should be your first stop for series A
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I think PG is genuinely the best in the world at this kind of thing
The startup in my last office hours today needed a new idea and we still hadn't thought of one by the end of the 45 minute slot, so we all went out to dinner and finally about 2 hours later came up with one. We went for ice cream to celebrate.
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This is a good question. As usual, the answer is entirely a function of narratives.
If your story says that Trump is a lying, cheating, low-iq, convicted felon and scammer who has screwed over everyone he has ever worked with, and that Harris is a good, honest, hard working public servant who has the backing of all normal, thoughtful, and intelligent people, including the former Republican Vice President Dick Cheney, then the answer is clear.
If your story says that Trump is a highly successful businessman who built thriving enterprises across multiple industries and then risked everything — his fortune, freedom, and even his life — for the cause of saving America from the corrupt establishment, seized control of the Republican party away from the Bush/Cheney neocon warmongers, and built an entire movement around prioritizing the needs and interests of regular American citizens, while Harris has accomplished little more than getting appointed to a position for which she earned zero votes in the primary election, then the answer is clear.
It's all about The Narrative.
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From selling cereal to becoming the first Chief Design Officer of the United States of America!
So awesome! Congrats Joe! 🇺🇸🇺🇸🇺🇸
I’m honored to be appointed by President Trump as the first Chief Design Officer of the United States of America. (🧵)
whitehouse.gov/presidential-…
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If every electronic voting machine had 0.1 bitcoin in it, what percentage of the voting machine bitcoins would be stolen by the end of election day?
And how does the value of those bitcoins compare with the value of "securing" the "right" outcome in an important election?
Dominion voting machine contract under scrutiny following hundreds of discrepancies found in Puerto Rico’s primaries
Puerto Rico’s elections commission said Tuesday that it’s reviewing its contract with a U.S. electronic voting company after hundreds of discrepancies were discovered following the island’s heated primaries.
The problem stemmed from a software issue that caused machines supplied by Dominion Voting Systems to incorrectly calculate vote totals, said Jessika Padilla Rivera, the commission’s interim president.
While no one is contesting the results from the June 2 primary that correctly identify the winners, machine-reported vote counts were lower than the paper ones in some cases, and some machines reversed certain totals or reported zero votes for some candidates.
“The concern is that we obviously have elections in November, and we must provide the (island) not only with the assurance that the machine produces a correct result, but also that the result it produces is the same one that is reported,” Padilla said.
More than 6,000 Dominion voting machines were used in Puerto Rico’s primaries, with the company stating that software issues stemmed from the digital files used to export results from the machines.
The contract between Dominion and the elections commission ends June 30.
José Varela, vice president of Puerto Rico’s House of Representatives, called for Padilla to appear at a public hearing Thursday to address the issues.
“We cannot allow the public’s confidence in the voting process to continue to be undermined as we approach the general elections,” he said.
The problems called to mind the island’s botched 2020 primaries, when a lack of ballots at some centers forced the government to reschedule voting in a first for the U.S. territory.
On June 2, Puerto Rico held primary elections to select gubernatorial candidates for the pro-statehood New Progressive Party and the Popular Democratic Party, which supports the island’s territorial status.
In a surprise upset, Jenniffer González, Puerto Rico’s congressional representative, beat Gov. Pedro Pierluisi in the primary held by the New Progressive Party. Meanwhile, Puerto Rico Rep. Jesús Manuel Ortiz defeated Sen. Juan Zaragoza in the primary held by their Popular Democratic Party.
Both parties reported hundreds of ballots showing inaccurate results, with the PNP reporting over 700 errors and the PPD pointing to some 350 discrepancies. These inaccuracies affected ballots for positions including governor, mayor and resident commissioner.
In response to the discrepancies, the elections commission conducted a full vote tally and audited paper receipts from hundreds of ballot-counting machines.
Edwin García Feliciano, Puerto Rico’s Ombudsman, called the incident a “threat” to the island’s electoral system and called on the governor and the island’s federal control board that oversees the island’s finances to establish a plan to guarantee a better outcome in the upcoming general elections.
“All planning is based on resolving emergencies, including unlikely ones,” García Feliciano said. “But predictable circumstances, which are well known to the public, cannot be addressed by improvisation and in a rush.”
Read more:
apnews.com/article/puerto-ri…
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This is a great example of defensive AI!
We are going to need a lot more of this in the future.
We're testing a new feature that uses Gemini Nano to provide real-time alerts during a call if it detects conversation patterns commonly associated with scams. This protection all happens on-device so your conversation stays private to you. More to come later this year! #GoogleIO
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Unfortunately SF is a kind of "roach motel" for people with addiction issues. They are lured it with easy access to cheap drugs, free money, and lack of law enforcement, and they stay until they die of overdose.
This is not compassion. It's exploitation by parasitic non-profits and "progressives" who gain power and revenue in proportion with the size of the problem.
"and is believed to be in San Francisco's gritty Tenderloin neighborhood."
Those are the words that stick out to me in one of the now many, many articles about the disappearance of Stewart Butterfield and Caterina Fake's 16 year old daughter Mint. It's the leading story on the Daily Mail right now as well as all the local press.
"and is believed to be in San Francisco's gritty Tenderloin neighborhood."
I couldn't sleep last night. I'm overwhelmed with sadness right now for Stewart and Caterina and their family. My heart really does go out to them. I do hope Mint is found safe and sound and gets the help that she needs. I'm sure they are absolutely sick over all of this -- and also all of the attention this is getting (including my post here) which probably doesn't help much.
I'm going to walk around the Tenderloin this afternoon and look for her. It's very unlikely I'll see her, but it feels like the right thing to do.
Apparently Mint was living up in Bolinas and going to boarding school in Napa, so why would she be in the Tenderloin in San Francisco? I suspect if in fact she has a substance abuse problem the answer is very simple.
Because the Tenderloin is where you go to get drugs.
"and is believed to be in San Francisco's gritty Tenderloin neighborhood."
I've spent many, many days myself wandering around the Tenderloin looking for my cousin who was living on the streets and doing drugs here for years. He was finally able to get off the streets and is now back with his family last year, but it took years.
Here's what makes me the most mad about all this. Why does the Tenderloin get to exist?
Why is there this place in San Francisco, in California, in America, where every addict in America knows they can easily score drugs?
Why is it a magnet for drug tourists who come here from all over America to do their drugs?
Why is Mint "possibly" here?
Why did my cousin live there, homeless and on the streets?
Why did over 800 people overdose and die in San Francisco last year?
Why are there people literally with their limbs rotting off their bodies requiring amputation out on the streets of the Tenderloin doing drugs
EVERY
SINGLE
DAY
in San Francisco???
Why as an enlightened society do we tolerate this?
I've taken so many photos of people smoking fentanyl or doing the fentanyl fold or buying drugs in public in the Tenderloin.
I've taken photos of our own police chief Bill Scott personally watching a guy who was high and smoking fentanyl on Market Street in the middle of our city in the middle of the day, turn his back and walk away from the guy.
Why do we tolerate this? Why is this ok? Why was my cousin stuck on the streets of San Francisco for years?
Why is my heroin addicted brother dead?
"and is believed to be in San Francisco's gritty Tenderloin neighborhood."
It should not be this easy to buy fentanyl on the streets of San Francisco.
Part of this is a supply problem and we need to be doing more to address that. It's complicated but China is complicit (hope you enjoyed your visit there @LondonBreed), the cartel is complicit our border is a huge problem, the non-profits and NGOs in San Francisco enable it -- but much of the problem is also a DEMAND problem.
WE have allowed San Francisco and more specifically the Tenderloin to become this sort of mecca for drugs.
Disneyland for drug addicts.
Cheapest fentanyl in America, super easy to buy and you can smoke it right in the middle of the sidewalk in front of everybody and nobody will do a damn thing about it.
WE allow this death around us.
WE tolerate it.
Our mayor and her do nothing police chief don't do a damn thing about it. Mayor Breed can literally watch people smoke fentanyl from her mayor's office window -- every, single, day.
It doesn't have to be this way. You can't do drugs on the streets of Bolinas where Mint apparently is from. Do you know why? Because the Bolinas police won't tolerate it. The people who pay the money to live there won't tolerate it.
"and is believed to be in San Francisco's gritty Tenderloin neighborhood."
Recently another successful Bay Area family lost their 19 year old son to drugs. Marco Troper, a UC Berkeley freshman and the son of Susan Wojcicki, former Youtube CEO died. Marco died in February from "acute combined drug toxicity," according to the Alameda County Sheriff's office.
The kid had his whole life ahead of him. So many parents dream of getting their kid into UC Berkeley, and this kid made it. And now he's dead because of drugs. Drugs that we tolerate.
I've read some comments where people are blaming Stewart and Caterina for this. Where they are blaming wealth for this. That's bullshit in my opinion and counterproductive. This can happen to any family in America -- good families, bad families, whatever. These drugs are just so insidious. They get control of you and destroy your world. They can rip apart any family in America.
I came from a very good family and it happened to mine.
"and is believed to be in San Francisco's gritty Tenderloin neighborhood."
This is a long post and mostly it's just me rambling and if you're still reading this and you live in San Francisco I hope you'll also be on the lookout for Mint.
But I also hope you take a hard look at what we've become. What we've tolerated. What we've allowed. I hope you'll vote different. I hope you'll pressure our politicians to do more. I hope you'll care.
The Tenderloin doesn't have to be this way. San Francisco doesn't have to be this way.
"and is believed to be in San Francisco's gritty Tenderloin neighborhood."
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In this same vein, I expect we will have an AI "executive coach" constantly providing small nudges, reminders, and suggestions for what to do or say at any moment. We will tend to follow its advice because doing so makes life easier and more successful, helping us to reach our goals or move towards a happier and more fulfilling life.
Many wealthy and high-power people already get this kind of help, but AI will make it available to all, effectively boosting everyone's IQ and executive function.
The darker side of this narrative is that we're all becoming puppets, with the AI choosing our words and actions. This is how AI takes over. The doctor or corporate executive will still have a human face, but they're mostly just doing what the AI tells them to do, because that's what works best for everyone.
I predict Apple's next big platform is not AR or VR but voice AI, an always-on, realtime conversational AI with good situational awareness -- a voice in your ear always available to answer questions, handle tasks, and offer helpful suggestions, like a smart assistant who accompanies you everywhere. Unlike bulky headsets, AirPods (AIrPods?) are relatively unobtrusive and already commonly worn and socially acceptable.
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Who are the politicians responsible for allowing this shut down to drag on for hours? Is it state or local? Are there any reporters/others investigating?
Both directions of the Golden Gate Bridge have been shut down due to a Pro-Palestinian protest. Demonstrators have blocked the southbound direction of Highway 101. This is the second protest causing major back-ups on Bay Area roadways, the demonstration has blocked northbound I-880 in Oakland. abc7ne.ws/3UhhvOB
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My idealized concept of America is all the best people from around the world blending together to make super-Americans :)
USA at the Olympics: Our Africans > Your Africans
USA at the International Math Olympiad: Our Chinese > Your Chinese
USA at the X Games: Our Europeans > Your Europeans
USA at Scripps National Spelling Bee: Our Indians > Your Indians
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Still amazing to watch. They parallel parked a skyscraper!
Science fiction never predicted this
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Hello, America 🇺🇸🇺🇸🇺🇸
On stage now at @theallinpod / Hill & Valley event in DC: @paultoo 🇺🇸
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“Show me the incentives, and I’ll show you the outcome.” - Charlie Munger
For people who don’t understand why this is really happening in SF: there is an entire industry of nonprofit grifters who import drug users in order to collect government payments for housing and services. Enabled by City Supervisors like @DeanPreston and @ACLU
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The people who helped to create the pandemic
were in charge of our response to the pandemic
and gained power as a consequence of the pandemic
Anyone who dared to discuss this during the pandemic was silenced, slandered, and censored.
That's the real alignment problem.
"The 35-page memo...suggests Fauci participated 'in a conspiracy amongst the highest levels' of the agency to 'hide' and potentially 'destroy official records regarding the origins of COVID-19.'"
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Spotting risk vs spotting potential
The HackerNews archives are a treasure trove of skeptical early comments on now-huge companies
Ex. for Airbnb 👇
"I have nothing but respect for YC/PG, but I honestly can't understand what they saw in [this]...if I was a VC, I wouldn't touch this site."
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One great thing about AI is that it's giving everyone creative superpowers. For example, kids will soon have the ability to create their own Disney quality animation, but done in their own language, with their own stories, and based on their own dreams and imagination!
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I do think there's now an opportunity to create an entirely new social network though. People are starting to understand that consuming Twitter/Facebook is like drinking from an open sewer. The question is how to create the information equivalent of safe drinking water...
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Exactly right. Great founders must have both an ambitious long term vision and a maniacal focus on short term execution. Elon is probably the best example of this (“What did you get done this week?”)
The best founders can describe in detail what they’ve built today and then clearly envision how it becomes a really big business in 10 years’ time.
It’s essential to hold this micro and macro view in your head at the same time and communicate both very clearly.
People mess up when they confuse the two. They miscommunicate the big vision as what they have done today, and seem like they’re bullshitting. Or they continue to project out this micro view for several years into the future and seem like they’re not ambitious.
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Fun interview with Pirate Wires on gmail, innovation, and blowing up the gatekeepers!
Includes never before seen photos of me with hair :)
Let me know what you think
The Tech Insurgent's Battle for the Future
an interview with paul buchheit (@paultoo), the man who built gmail: the story behind his revolutionary product, the gatekeepers’ war against insurgents, and conquering our national decay
When Paul Buchheit launched Gmail in 2004, it didn’t just change Google, or the technology industry — though it certainly changed both. It changed the world.
Zoomers will find this impossible to believe, but in the early 2000s people were still deleting email. The habit was partly a holdover from our analog culture, but mostly due to space. When Yahoo launched Mail in 1997, one of the most popular email services in the country, users were limited to 4MB of free storage. That’s about the size of an iPhone photo.
Today, the concept of digital storage for human memory is kind of just the oxygen we breathe. Where did I say we were going last week? “Danny, pull it up.” But twenty years ago, Gmail launched a revolution with a status-shattering proposition: “unlimited email.” In practice, Google was only offering 1GB of free storage. But this was something like 250 to 500x what competitors were offering, and it’s hard to overstate how crazy it seemed at the time — to the extent that many people thought the product was an April Fools’ Day prank. Gone were the days of sorting email into folders, where they were quickly lost to memory, or trashing them completely. Gmail was designed for searching all your old correspondences, documents, notes, which unlocked a new way of working. Now, it was possible to query your old thoughts.
How could something so transformative be built inside a company so sclerotic as Google? It must have been a very different place in the early 2000s. But if the company really was so different at the time, and that different culture enabled the success of products like Gmail, why would the company allow innovation-crippling sclerosis to set in? I had a million questions, and no obvious answers. So I reached out to the architect of Gmail, the legendary hacker Paul Buchheit. [Editor’s Note: check out the full transcript, partially edited for clarity, on Pirate Wires]
“Incentives,” he explained.
Gatekeepers, which comprise the overwhelming majority of employees (and probably people), are incentivized to stasis, risk-averse to the point of paralysis, and terrified — sometimes for good reason — of change. Insurgents are basically insane by society’s standards, anathema to the status quo, and often destructive. But they’re the source of everything new in the world. From the moment a company is founded, always by insurgents, incentives to short-term survival attract gatekeepers, who naturally fear and try to isolate new radicals, then tirelessly work to grow the team of more gatekeepers. On a long enough time horizon, the gatekeepers always take the company. Then, it dies. Gmail, a firebomb happily tossed at the status quo, was fundamentally an insurgent product. It could not have been built at Google even ten years later.
The question for insurgents is how to beat the gatekeepers back long enough to build something new, and with it a lifeboat to keep us all alive a little longer.
Paul has worked in the technology industry since he was a teenager in the 1990s, tinkering with prototypical web-based email. He was an engineer at Microsoft, Intel, Google (employee 23, credited along with Amit Patel — who coincidentally shared the name of Paul’s childhood hero — as the men responsible for the company’s famous former motto, “Don’t be Evil”), and Facebook. Today, he’s an investor, both as an angel and in his capacity as a Group Partner at Y Combinator. We talked about the secret to Gmail’s success, the early days of Microsoft and Google, Paul’s insight into the primal war of bureaucratic gatekeepers against society’s insurgents that has decayed our country to its core, and a little hope for builders moving forward.
━━━━━━━━━━
This is the beginning of my interview with Paul. Read the rest on our site for free, or subscribe to @piratewires on @X to read it in full.
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Something to keep in mind when potentially hiring Harvard students
This is the final crack in my broken heart - a joint statement from @Harvard students. I could be sitting in class with these students, watching children brutally murdered, raped, kidnapped and their mutated bodies torn apart by a jeering crowd - and hear why it’s justified.
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Coming soon to a Siri near you...
Seems like many people are underestimating the impact of having realtime, low-latency voice+vision. This combination of abilities makes it more like talking to a human than a chatbot, a categorically different and superior experience.
They are releasing a combined text-audio-vision model that processes all three modalities in one single neural network, which can then do real-time voice translation as a special case afterthought, if you ask it to.
(fixed it for you)
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I think the current divide is not really left vs right, but more like believers vs non-believers
Believers generally trust the media, institutions, and overall consensus narrative
Non-believers think we're being deceived and gaslit by those same media and institutions
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From a DEI perspective, this is actually logical. If your goal is to promote equity (equality of outcomes), then helping smart kids learn faster is a bad because it leads to greater inequality.
Same logic explains why they work to eliminate advanced math classes, APs, etc
This article is typical of the toxic attitudes toward high achieving kids.
High achieving students are seen as “the kids who need it the least” as though they’re some kind of second-class citizen. If they learn quickly, it isn’t a success, it’s a problem to be solved
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If someone could figure out how to invert those rules, it might be the most important thing that anyone could do at this point in history. It seems to be a very hard problem though. Connecting everyone online just made them that much easier to hack...
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Also, since this received 1000x anticipated attention and is quoted/sensationalized in 100s of news articles, I should clarify:
My prediction is that _AI_ (not necessarily ChatGPT) will replace search, _maybe_ within the next two years (current AI not yet good enough)
Not this:
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"progressivism" is anti-liberal and anti-freedom. It's closer to Marxism, a zero-sum, envy based system that drives towards centralization of power.
"Progressive" is such a great label though. I'm in favor of progress towards greater freedom, liberty, opportunity, and abundance for all.
I propose a new form of progressivism called "positive-sum progressivism" that believes in wealth creation, freedom of speech, freedom of AI, and using the powers of technology and growth to create a better life and a better world for all people regardless of race, class, or gender. In a positive-sum system, we are not enemies but allies. We can all get ahead.
The recent NPR blowup, from the @uberliner piece to the hiring of the CEO, gets at something I've been thinking about for some time: the growing recognition that Liberalism and Progressivism are not the same things, and do not even have the same objectives.
Progressivism is not just "extremely liberal."
Liberalism favors Individualism and the Bill of Rights values, such as freedom of expression and property rights.
Modern American Progressivism on the other hand seeks collectivism, uses collective judgment based on “identity”, pushes racial essentialism, favors censorship, pushes against property rights and the institutions which protect them like the police and prosecutors, and pushes for compulsory redistribution. It favors “equity,” as opposed to elimination of discrimination.
In these and other ways, Progressives stand against Individualism, colorblind ideals and even freedom of movement and expression; these are subordinate to “higher” Progressive goals.
Berliner’s criticism isn’t primarily about NPR becoming too liberal (he is in fact liberal); it’s primarily about it having become far too Progressive/leftist, and so deep in its own ideological echo chamber that it is unwilling to honestly contend with anything which may run counter to Progressive/leftist dogma.
The recent hire of the new CEO, who is an utter parody of affluent Progressivism and luxury belief, is the capstone. As a Get Out the Vote canvasser for Biden in 2020, she joins a “diverse” group: of the 87 NPR executives with political declaration, 87 are Democrats and 0 are Republicans.
She’s on record saying the first amendment is problematic.
Progressivism and Liberalism are not the same things. The sooner we all recognize it, the quicker we can have a constructive conversation about just what kind of nation want to be, and how to get there.
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Does anyone actually believe that electronic voting machines are secure?
If every electronic voting machine had 0.1 bitcoin in it, what percentage of the voting machine bitcoins would be stolen by the end of election day?
And how does the value of those bitcoins compare with the value of "securing" the "right" outcome in an important election?
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We should bomb China
with green cards for engineers and scientists!
Attracting the best people from around the world is America's super-power. How many brilliant people in China would love to escape the CCP and establish a new home in the land of the free?
If we're going to bring manufacturing back to America, we're going to need a lot more manufacturing engineers and other people who know how to make things.
Unfortunately, instead of making it easy for high skill workers to immigrate, we have a president who makes it easy for criminals to walk across the border, claim asylum, and begin receiving public benefits. It's completely backwards and only makes sense if the goal is to weaken America.
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Experimentation and testing always beats speculation and debate. Rapid experimentation and iteration produces rapid learning and progress. This is one reason why it is possible for startups to beat much larger companies (Spacex provides another great example of this principle)
One of our most memorable lessons from YC was "do all the things." We came with a list of 20 ideas for how to grow, and asked the YC partners which to prioritize. I think it was @paultoo who said something like "How would I know? Do all the things."
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It's awesome to see Zuck/Meta committed to open source AI
I believe open source is an essential element of retaining our freedoms and ensuring that AI benefits as many people as possible. If AI is locked down and controlled by a small number of organizations, then it will inevitably be used to lock down and control all of humanity.
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"Your idea was so unlikely to succeed, I had to take the chance!"
This is a big part of YC's success: the ability and willingness to take these chances
Without @mwseibel, Kalshi wouldn’t exist, and Luana and I are forever grateful for his guidance throughout the years. This is a bittersweet moment for us.
As he takes a step back from YC, I thought I’d share how we met and Kalshi’s origin story because it embodies the type of person and investor Michael is.
The first time Luana and I ever pitched the idea of Kalshi was at a YC hackathon in SF. At the time, creating an entirely new asset class to trade events on sounded insane, especially for two 22-year-olds who hadn't graduated yet.
After our pitch, we spoke to Michael and Christina from Vanta. Michael said, "This sounds fucking illegal."
Depressed, I drank a few beers, assuming we had lost. But somehow, we were picked as finalists and won with a dummy product, while I pitched Kalshi with my BAC higher than @bryan_johnson would like to see :)
A couple days later, we got accepted to YC. I later asked Michael why he picked us, and he said, "Your idea was so unlikely to succeed, I had to take the chance!"
Kalshi's story is a bit different from most companies-there are many ebbs and flows, ups and downs-but one thing always remained consistent with Michael: when we needed guidance, he is always there for us.
Mr. Seibel, you changed my life, and for that, I will be forever grateful.
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Yes, some of the assets are actually liabilities, but they have more data than anyone, which is a huge advantage (not to mention the userbase and compute and cash)
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It's odd that Harris can't seem to answer even the most common, predictable questions. She could have simply asked ChatGPT and then memorized the answer!
I understand that people fear/hate Trump, but does anyone genuinely believe she's a good candidate?
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This is why I don’t mind paying taxes 🙄
Seriously though, I wouldn’t mind taxes so much if I genuinely believed that the money was being well spent. But it’s not, especially not in California.
I suspect that most of my tax dollars do more harm than good unfortunately :(
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Fun podcast talking about AI, open source, and the future with @LightconePod
Let me know what you think!
Paul Buchheit (@paultoo) was one of Google’s earliest employees, the creator of Gmail, and a YC Group Partner. He also came up with Google’s famous tagline, “Don’t be evil.”
In the first-ever guest episode of the @LightconePod, Paul joins our hosts to discuss the future of AGI, the early days of OpenAI, and the crucial importance of open-source models.
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