"That thing that rich people do where they turn money into more money. Can you teach me how to do that, Jack?” - Tina Fey, 30 Rock Jack, “With my eyes closed.”
Lhasa, Tibet
Joined June 2020
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Compound248 💰 retweeted
Odds of getting paid on 👇🏻 appear to have increased.
Then again, perhaps we all underestimated @rabois integrity. And for that we may owe an apology.
For everyone who’s scolded me that @rabois will never pay me when I win our $100,000 $OPEN bet, I have defended him as a man of honor.
Today, Keith paid @Geiger_Capital $50,000 for a bet on Tuesday’s election.
Men of honor live up to their word. 🫡
Compound248 💰 retweeted
On AI and elections:
If you can’t build data centers, value will pile up for those who already own them.
WINNERS:
Google, Microsoft, Amazon are, by far, the biggest owners, also may ease their CapEx requirements. $DLR, some neoclouds, etc.
LOSERS:
Those who rent compute (Anthropic is Exhibit A). Equipment guys who are today’s bottlenecks ($MU).
Will be interesting to see how contracts for 2029 etc deliveries are structured.
Compound248 💰 retweeted
“Intensity is the price of excellence.”
- Warren Buffett
You can feel the toll that paying that price has taken on Caro - look at his eyes, as he contemplates his answer.
Compound248 💰 retweeted
On Agentic:
Amazon used to say that when it reduced webpage load time by 10%, sales rose 10%: humans are incredibly sensitive to any friction, and removing it drives usage.
Internally, I've been sharing the view that the power of agents is not "please book me a flight next Tuesday using such and such criteria."
That is high friction: I am doing the work of asking, defining, etc. I may as well just do it myself.
Rather, the agent is useful when it finds you and prompts:
"Good morning, Compound. I saw you emailed @AndrewYAVB about visiting him in NYC next week. I've checked flights and your favorite hotels; here are some great options. Let me know if you want to book one or if you'd like me to use different criteria. Do you also want me to look at restaurants near your hotel for dinner?"
Or:
"Hi Compound, I saw you paid your September Verizon bill for $200 for four lines. Xfinity offers nearly identical service for $100 a month. I doubt you care who your phone provider is, and I can switch your whole family to Xfinity without you lifting a finger or noticing. I'll keep monitoring for even better deals down the road. Shall I proceed with switching?"
We want proactive AI that doesn't require you to ask it to do things. Rather, it anticipates your needs because you trust it with access to your information and it KNOWS you.
A few companies are natively well positioned for this:
Tier 1: Apple, Microsoft, Google
Tier 2: Meta
Tier 3: OpenAI, Anthropic, Amazon
Tier 1: companies that ALREADY see everything you are doing and have access to messaging, passwords, card data, addresses, contacts, calendar, purchase history, etc.
Tier 2: a ubiquitous company that passively knows a TON about you, but has much less ACCESS than Tier 1.
Tier 3: these aspire to move up and have a reasonable shot at doing so.
In Tier 1, Apple seemingly isn't even trying, which is mind-blowing. Apple might natively be the best-positioned company in the world, yet it seems ready to just ask Google to handle agentic for it.
Microsoft has a great position in enterprise, but Cowork remains Clippy, whereas Google has both enterprise and consumer.
That is also why all the AI companies want you to adopt devices you take everywhere you go, so they can monitor what you are doing and assess what you might need.
Given Apple seems to have forfeited, $GOOG probably has the pole position - it is Tier 1 AND has a world-class frontier lab.
The key is friction removal.
1/2
Compound248 💰 retweeted
This is an excellent post, and the core thesis on incremental demand is right, but I’d flip tiers A &B.
Only Meta has built an ad platform on cross-selling. Microsoft is a B2B play, Apple prides itself on privacy, Google intercepts people that are already searching for something
On Agentic:
Amazon used to say that when it reduced webpage load time by 10%, sales rose 10%: humans are incredibly sensitive to any friction, and removing it drives usage.
Internally, I've been sharing the view that the power of agents is not "please book me a flight next Tuesday using such and such criteria."
That is high friction: I am doing the work of asking, defining, etc. I may as well just do it myself.
Rather, the agent is useful when it finds you and prompts:
"Good morning, Compound. I saw you emailed @AndrewYAVB about visiting him in NYC next week. I've checked flights and your favorite hotels; here are some great options. Let me know if you want to book one or if you'd like me to use different criteria. Do you also want me to look at restaurants near your hotel for dinner?"
Or:
"Hi Compound, I saw you paid your September Verizon bill for $200 for four lines. Xfinity offers nearly identical service for $100 a month. I doubt you care who your phone provider is, and I can switch your whole family to Xfinity without you lifting a finger or noticing. I'll keep monitoring for even better deals down the road. Shall I proceed with switching?"
We want proactive AI that doesn't require you to ask it to do things. Rather, it anticipates your needs because you trust it with access to your information and it KNOWS you.
A few companies are natively well positioned for this:
Tier 1: Apple, Microsoft, Google
Tier 2: Meta
Tier 3: OpenAI, Anthropic, Amazon
Tier 1: companies that ALREADY see everything you are doing and have access to messaging, passwords, card data, addresses, contacts, calendar, purchase history, etc.
Tier 2: a ubiquitous company that passively knows a TON about you, but has much less ACCESS than Tier 1.
Tier 3: these aspire to move up and have a reasonable shot at doing so.
In Tier 1, Apple seemingly isn't even trying, which is mind-blowing. Apple might natively be the best-positioned company in the world, yet it seems ready to just ask Google to handle agentic for it.
Microsoft has a great position in enterprise, but Cowork remains Clippy, whereas Google has both enterprise and consumer.
That is also why all the AI companies want you to adopt devices you take everywhere you go, so they can monitor what you are doing and assess what you might need.
Given Apple seems to have forfeited, $GOOG probably has the pole position - it is Tier 1 AND has a world-class frontier lab.
The key is friction removal.
1/2
Compound248 💰 retweeted
oh my god
i can’t believe i never saw it before. this explains everything
anthropic are a bunch of FUCKING VEGETARIANS. the root of all of their perversity
Compound248 💰 retweeted
This is called "talking your book"
Tremendous clip about Dario’s reaction when he realized he invented a God: 🔥
“I was super freaked out... I said, ‘My God, you just scale this thing up by another factor of a million and it will be better than humans at everything.’
- Upon witnessing GPT-2 responding to scaling laws (more data = better model) in 2019
We also learn Dario and Daniela hold grudges (watch to the end):
“We remember…”
Upon witnessing GPT-2’s generalizability across domains, where it wasn’t yet great at anything but it was capable at many things:
“This is the defining economic and scientific moment of the modern age. This is going to determine the fate of nations…and the future of humanity.
“It really scared me. And maybe 10% of the people around me had exactly the same reaction, and it was often the smartest ones.”
Compound248 💰 retweeted
It’s like witnessing the Dawn of Man with Adam and Eve.
Or, maybe, the Twilight of Man and the Dawn of the Machines.
Depending…
Tremendous clip about Dario’s reaction when he realized he invented a God: 🔥
“I was super freaked out... I said, ‘My God, you just scale this thing up by another factor of a million and it will be better than humans at everything.’
- Upon witnessing GPT-2 responding to scaling laws (more data = better model) in 2019
We also learn Dario and Daniela hold grudges (watch to the end):
“We remember…”
Upon witnessing GPT-2’s generalizability across domains, where it wasn’t yet great at anything but it was capable at many things:
“This is the defining economic and scientific moment of the modern age. This is going to determine the fate of nations…and the future of humanity.
“It really scared me. And maybe 10% of the people around me had exactly the same reaction, and it was often the smartest ones.”
Compound248 💰 retweeted
This is a good synopsis
Brazil Election Chaos Cheat Sheet:
• Brazil provides free busing to and from voting centers
• In order to be deemed neutral, those buses are not allowed to have any political signs, etc
• In several states that skew toward Lula, the buses had "PT" stars affixed to them (PT is Lula's party). The official in charge of busing said those buses could not run unless the signs were taken down, delaying the busing. Lots of finger-pointing ensued
• There is an election tribunal in Brazil that oversees election legal issues, but Lula went around it and appealed directly to the Supreme Court
• The SC assigns a single justice to review; Lula asked for an extension specifically IN THOSE STATES (which heavily skew toward Lula)
• The Justice who made the decision was previously Lula's PERSONAL LAWYER and is a Lula appointee
• Once Bolsonaro knew Lula was asking for extensions and suspected it would be granted (given which justice was reviewing), he also requested extensions so they would be nationwide, and not just in Lula territory
• A nationwide extension was granted just AFTER the polling stations were supposed to close (5:00pm). However, once a voting machine is locked for the day, it cannot be unlocked. In practice, this meant most polling stations were not able to reopen and offer extended voting because they'd closed at 5pm
• By an AMAZING coincidence, nearly all of the voting machines that hadn't yet locked were in the four states where Lula polls well over 70% popularity (northeast)
• There are supposed to be two observers (one from each side) at all polling stations. At many of the extended stations, the word is there were not two observers
• In the first round voting (three weeks ago), Bolsonaro won 47% and Lula 45% of 119mm votes, with ~8% to third-party candidates
• Of the 8%, the candidates skewed strongly to the right (Bolsonaro); everyone assumed Bolsonaro would take the large majority of that 8% and win easily in round two (yesterday)
• As it turned out, Lula "outperformed" in basically every state
• Also, apparently 5 million more people voted in round two (yesterday) than in round one
• Lula picked up 10.5mm votes, whereas Bolsonaro picked up 3.7mm, leading to tremendous suspicion, as 3.7mm isn't even the majority of the 8% right-leaning opportunity from round one, and implies Bolsonaro received 0% of the incremental 5 million votes and less than half of the jump ball votes
• Chaos ensues. The $EWZ Brazil index ETF has been down as much as 28% this morning (mix of currency and index declines)
Compound248 💰 retweeted
Good concise summary of the sketchy things in Brazil.
I can add to some of the points:
*Brazil has a court specifically devoted to election decisions
*Lula bypassed that court and instead filed a motion with the Supreme Court, magically heard by a justice who previously was Lula's personal criminal defense lawyer before being appointed by Lula. He ordered the time extension.
*The elections court, headed by a Bolsonaro Sr. appointee, might nullify the election based on these events
Brazil Election Chaos Cheat Sheet:
• Brazil provides free busing to and from voting centers
• In order to be deemed neutral, those buses are not allowed to have any political signs, etc
• In several states that skew toward Lula, the buses had "PT" stars affixed to them (PT is Lula's party). The official in charge of busing said those buses could not run unless the signs were taken down, delaying the busing. Lots of finger-pointing ensued
• There is an election tribunal in Brazil that oversees election legal issues, but Lula went around it and appealed directly to the Supreme Court
• The SC assigns a single justice to review; Lula asked for an extension specifically IN THOSE STATES (which heavily skew toward Lula)
• The Justice who made the decision was previously Lula's PERSONAL LAWYER and is a Lula appointee
• Once Bolsonaro knew Lula was asking for extensions and suspected it would be granted (given which justice was reviewing), he also requested extensions so they would be nationwide, and not just in Lula territory
• A nationwide extension was granted just AFTER the polling stations were supposed to close (5:00pm). However, once a voting machine is locked for the day, it cannot be unlocked. In practice, this meant most polling stations were not able to reopen and offer extended voting because they'd closed at 5pm
• By an AMAZING coincidence, nearly all of the voting machines that hadn't yet locked were in the four states where Lula polls well over 70% popularity (northeast)
• There are supposed to be two observers (one from each side) at all polling stations. At many of the extended stations, the word is there were not two observers
• In the first round voting (three weeks ago), Bolsonaro won 47% and Lula 45% of 119mm votes, with ~8% to third-party candidates
• Of the 8%, the candidates skewed strongly to the right (Bolsonaro); everyone assumed Bolsonaro would take the large majority of that 8% and win easily in round two (yesterday)
• As it turned out, Lula "outperformed" in basically every state
• Also, apparently 5 million more people voted in round two (yesterday) than in round one
• Lula picked up 10.5mm votes, whereas Bolsonaro picked up 3.7mm, leading to tremendous suspicion, as 3.7mm isn't even the majority of the 8% right-leaning opportunity from round one, and implies Bolsonaro received 0% of the incremental 5 million votes and less than half of the jump ball votes
• Chaos ensues. The $EWZ Brazil index ETF has been down as much as 28% this morning (mix of currency and index declines)
Compound248 💰 retweeted
😬
Compound248 💰 retweeted
$META going all-in on #Ai. I sure hope it won't fail like Zuckerberg's last tech "innovation", the #Metaverse, for which he even changed FB's name and stock symbol! LOL.
$META quietly filing that it may need to raise up to $700 BILLION in equity. 👀
…and in every case, at least “hundreds of billions.” lol
Hey, at least if it doesn’t go well, Zuck will have used this as a way to solidify voting control for the rest of his life. 🙌
Compound248 💰 retweeted
Is this alot?
$META quietly filing that it may need to raise up to $700 BILLION in equity. 👀
…and in every case, at least “hundreds of billions.” lol
Hey, at least if it doesn’t go well, Zuck will have used this as a way to solidify voting control for the rest of his life. 🙌
Compound248 💰 retweeted
$ASTS Fortunate for Spacemob, the market doesn't believe AT&T. They need to prove they will be competitive in the evolving landscape.