The economics of that don't work out. Government is a small market and can't drive frontier innovation at the scale it's happening today, let alone in the future. Look at the defense industry: The Big 5 contractors…
In many ways investing in a very late IPO like SpaceX, Anthropic, or OpenAI is the worst of all worlds for the public investor. On the one hand you'll never see a 100x return – that's been captured by private equity.…
I've been a continuous subscriber since the early 1980s. The magazine's low point was the infamous op-ed in 2021 about E.O. Wilson a few days after the biologist's death. It was basically a woke hit piece accusing him…
There's also the way AI itself tends to work: In my experience it very rarely refactors existing code when it's adding something new. AI tends to layer new code on top and you get a steaming mess very quickly if you…
Democracy never handles situations well where one side of an issue is a small highly motivated group, and the other side is a larger group that kinda-cares. It's the reason we subsidize farmers. It's the reason our tax…
Math is likely moving into a big science era, much like experimental particle physics and astronomy did before it. Once AI mines the easy unsolved problems, it will take large token budgets to make meaningful advances.…
> The AI was able to race its car very well, but it took a lot of risks that a human player probably would not. There is a parallel with autonomous vehicles in real life. On northbound 1 in SF going through GG Park, the…
This is the direction of experimental particle physics and observational astronomy, where the budgetary scale at which progress occurs means we now fund these efforts at a societal level. These fields have graduated…
What is extremely valuable in slime mold organizations is clear direction from above on the relative importance of different objectives. This doesn't have to be very specific - senior people often aren't in a position…
I think most people see AI as an economic inevitability, immune to what any of us thinks. Why spend the time and energy making a reasoned critique if nobody has a real choice in the end? It's like railing against the…
Alas I suspect that no combination of business and technical decisions could have allowed Commodore to succeed long term. They never had the scale or product market fit to succeed in the 32 bit era. Apple barely made it.
I too learned C on an Amiga 1000. Somehow I scrounged together $300 to buy the Lattice C compiler and all its manuals – a steep price in 1985-86. Funny to think that much better tools are now free.
A lot of people believe in Musk and will invest in anything he wants to do. Is this rational? It depends on how it plays out. I think we may be seeing a new type of capitalism that maybe Steve Jobs and Warren Buffet…
Second-highest P/E is Tesla, currently at 97. Apart from Palantir and Tesla, the other big companies are trading at what would historically be considered reasonable P/Es given their growth rates and profitability.…
Japan is a classic example. You can drop your wallet there and someone will send it to you with all the cash intact. It makes you realize how much overhead it causes when you need to guard against cheaters and thieves.
I was an undergrad at Caltech in the late 80s and likewise it never even occurred to us to cheat on take-home exams. Maybe things have changed. People did plenty of collaboration on homework sets. Some of the harder…
Academic integrity committees at prestigious schools are horribly lax. They want these types of issues to go away quietly. I have a friend who in college had another student take his test from the "complete" pile, erase…
This is exactly right. Gone are the days when you could get a C+ average at Harvard and still land a good job or a spot in a prestigious law program – purely by virtue of having gone to Harvard. Everyone is in…
If you posit that Altman suffers from main character syndrome (as many CEOs do), then he likely believes that he alone can lead OpenAI to success. In this case, doing whatever it takes to get himself back into the job…
CEOs are hired to run companies and make themselves, and their investors, wealthy. That is their prime directive and CEOs are the ultimate partisans. If a CEO feels that bending the truth, or outright lying, will…
> You cannot be sure that anyone other than yourself is conscious. It is only basic human empathy that allows people to believe that. In Bayesian terms what makes it reasonable to ascribe consciousness to other people…
Bitcoin attempted to replace cash, but failed because the transaction costs are orders of magnitude too high. The high cost of zero-trust makes it a desirable medium of exchange only for criminals and scammers. In an…
I can see Apple's position: The Mac has been through four major ISAs and the value to most users of maintaining that entire stack indefinitely in the current macOS is nil. A number of digital preservation standards are…
More likely they would buy the assets of AI companies for pennies on the dollar. There could be a lot of H100s floating around at fire sale prices. Or they would acquire these companies for talent. Google did this for…
Unless they change their tack, Apple is unlikely to go head to head against Microsoft 365 or Google Workspace because they only target their own ecosystem (macOS/iOS). For MS and Google these Apple-owned platforms are…
The economics of that don't work out. Government is a small market and can't drive frontier innovation at the scale it's happening today, let alone in the future. Look at the defense industry: The Big 5 contractors…
In many ways investing in a very late IPO like SpaceX, Anthropic, or OpenAI is the worst of all worlds for the public investor. On the one hand you'll never see a 100x return – that's been captured by private equity.…
I've been a continuous subscriber since the early 1980s. The magazine's low point was the infamous op-ed in 2021 about E.O. Wilson a few days after the biologist's death. It was basically a woke hit piece accusing him…
There's also the way AI itself tends to work: In my experience it very rarely refactors existing code when it's adding something new. AI tends to layer new code on top and you get a steaming mess very quickly if you…
Democracy never handles situations well where one side of an issue is a small highly motivated group, and the other side is a larger group that kinda-cares. It's the reason we subsidize farmers. It's the reason our tax…
Math is likely moving into a big science era, much like experimental particle physics and astronomy did before it. Once AI mines the easy unsolved problems, it will take large token budgets to make meaningful advances.…
> The AI was able to race its car very well, but it took a lot of risks that a human player probably would not. There is a parallel with autonomous vehicles in real life. On northbound 1 in SF going through GG Park, the…
This is the direction of experimental particle physics and observational astronomy, where the budgetary scale at which progress occurs means we now fund these efforts at a societal level. These fields have graduated…
What is extremely valuable in slime mold organizations is clear direction from above on the relative importance of different objectives. This doesn't have to be very specific - senior people often aren't in a position…
I think most people see AI as an economic inevitability, immune to what any of us thinks. Why spend the time and energy making a reasoned critique if nobody has a real choice in the end? It's like railing against the…
Alas I suspect that no combination of business and technical decisions could have allowed Commodore to succeed long term. They never had the scale or product market fit to succeed in the 32 bit era. Apple barely made it.
I too learned C on an Amiga 1000. Somehow I scrounged together $300 to buy the Lattice C compiler and all its manuals – a steep price in 1985-86. Funny to think that much better tools are now free.
A lot of people believe in Musk and will invest in anything he wants to do. Is this rational? It depends on how it plays out. I think we may be seeing a new type of capitalism that maybe Steve Jobs and Warren Buffet…
Second-highest P/E is Tesla, currently at 97. Apart from Palantir and Tesla, the other big companies are trading at what would historically be considered reasonable P/Es given their growth rates and profitability.…
Japan is a classic example. You can drop your wallet there and someone will send it to you with all the cash intact. It makes you realize how much overhead it causes when you need to guard against cheaters and thieves.
I was an undergrad at Caltech in the late 80s and likewise it never even occurred to us to cheat on take-home exams. Maybe things have changed. People did plenty of collaboration on homework sets. Some of the harder…
Academic integrity committees at prestigious schools are horribly lax. They want these types of issues to go away quietly. I have a friend who in college had another student take his test from the "complete" pile, erase…
This is exactly right. Gone are the days when you could get a C+ average at Harvard and still land a good job or a spot in a prestigious law program – purely by virtue of having gone to Harvard. Everyone is in…
If you posit that Altman suffers from main character syndrome (as many CEOs do), then he likely believes that he alone can lead OpenAI to success. In this case, doing whatever it takes to get himself back into the job…
CEOs are hired to run companies and make themselves, and their investors, wealthy. That is their prime directive and CEOs are the ultimate partisans. If a CEO feels that bending the truth, or outright lying, will…
> You cannot be sure that anyone other than yourself is conscious. It is only basic human empathy that allows people to believe that. In Bayesian terms what makes it reasonable to ascribe consciousness to other people…
Bitcoin attempted to replace cash, but failed because the transaction costs are orders of magnitude too high. The high cost of zero-trust makes it a desirable medium of exchange only for criminals and scammers. In an…
I can see Apple's position: The Mac has been through four major ISAs and the value to most users of maintaining that entire stack indefinitely in the current macOS is nil. A number of digital preservation standards are…
More likely they would buy the assets of AI companies for pennies on the dollar. There could be a lot of H100s floating around at fire sale prices. Or they would acquire these companies for talent. Google did this for…
Unless they change their tack, Apple is unlikely to go head to head against Microsoft 365 or Google Workspace because they only target their own ecosystem (macOS/iOS). For MS and Google these Apple-owned platforms are…