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Top pick: Elizabeth Dias's NYT piece on Anthropic, recommended by Bill Gurley
Gurley said he was "grateful" that Elizabeth Dias of The New York Times wrote this article. It covers how Anthropic thinks about its model, software consciousness, and the model's role relative to religion. His reason is practical. If you are a customer or partner of the company, press evaluating it, or a government regulating it, "it is important to know how 'they' think about their models." He says the company's approach is "very different from any software company that ever existed." He doesn't say whether he agrees with it: "Judge for yourself... but be aware and informed" .
Tim Ferriss: Small Giants by Bo Burlingham
In a thread arguing that "everything big starts small and focused," Ferriss asks: "Do you really want to build and manage a big company?" For most people, he says, it's "an all-consuming taskmaster." He then recommends Small Giants "for some fantastic examples of companies that choose to be the best rather than the biggest" .
Guillermo Rauch: Jeff Dean's latency numbers and a testing-to-proofs essay
In a video on his agentic engineering workflow, the Vercel CEO recommends Jeff Dean's "Latency numbers every programmer should know." He says he has shared the table "so many times with engineering teams" because it gives "rough senses of scale and orders of magnitude." He adds: "you don't have to memorize everything" .
He also calls an essay on "the spectrum of testing to proofs" one of his "all-time favorite essays on engineering." The essay compares tests, type systems and proof systems on a simple algorithm. It shows that code covering every edge case needs a lot of boilerplate and compiler help . He doesn't name the author or title.
Chamath Palihapitiya: Andrej Karpathy on reading LLM output
Chamath shared Karpathy's post with the comment "The future is taste and judgement" . Karpathy suggests ways to make model output easier to understand:
- asking for writing in the ASD-STE100 controlled language
- diagrams
- interactive HTML pages
- bespoke explainer videos, the format he's "most bullish on"
His argument is that as LLMs do more of the legwork, more of our work moves "into oversight and understanding" .
Jeff Bezos: José Andrés on housing
Bezos called Andrés's post a "100% correct diagnosis and prescription," adding: "it's not just in Spain" . Andrés, writing in Spanish, says Spain doesn't lack decrees; it lacks homes. His prescription is to build much more: more available land, permits in months rather than years, and more density .
Fred Wilson's old AVC posts, as used by USV's Nikhil Raman
On a video with Wilson, Raman said he searched his texts and found that he regularly sends Wilson's blog posts to people. One was a roughly 13-year-old post on Don Valentine's 2x2 of founder quality against how easy founders are to work with. Raman sent it during a debate about whether today's founders have "softened." Wilson's point from the post: hard-to-work-with great founders are where "we make all our money" . The second was a decade-old post on career investors versus founder investors. Raman sent it while thinking about how a non-founder VC earns credibility with founders .
Shorter mentions
- No Priors with Fractile founder @goodwin_ml, from Sarah Guo (her own show). She called it "really fun." Topics include how to win the AI chip market structurally, memory bandwidth and new hardware scaling laws . Full interview.
- KQED's report on California legalizing balcony solar, from Matt Mullenweg. He called it "Another win for solar!" and said he hopes Tesla offers products for it . Link
- A MilHistNow post on the 1942 V-2 test, from Paul Graham. He said it explained why he'd never considered what the first man-made object in space was: "We don't talk about that milestone" .
- Guillermo Rauch recommends Jeff Dean’s Google resource “Latency numbers that every programmer should know.” Its table gives rough orders of magnitude for engineering-system latency, and Rauch says understanding these system concepts is useful even if programmers need not memorize every number.
- Rauch calls an essay about “the spectrum of testing to proofs” one of his all-time favorite engineering essays; its author is not named in the exchange. The essay compares tests, type systems, and proof systems for correctness, and discusses the boilerplate and compiler support needed to cover edge cases.
- Rauch praises 3Js eval.com, whose creator is not named in the exchange, as a site for voting between model-output alternatives (for example, which grass looks better). He uses it to illustrate the value of judging AI-generated 3D against a high bar, not just for novelty.
- Nikhil Raman said he had sent Matt Mandel an older Fred Wilson blog post—about 13 years old—quoting Don Valentine’s 2×2 of founder quality and how easy or difficult founders are to work with. It came up in their debate over whether tech founders today seem uniformly “nice.” Wilson recalled Valentine’s view that the great founders who are hard to work with are where “we make all our money,” connecting the idea to founders following their own instincts.
- Raman also said he had sent someone a roughly decade-old Wilson post on career investors versus founder/operator investors. He brought it up while considering how, as an engineer but not a founder entering venture capital, to build founder empathy and the ability to help; the discussion’s takeaway was that either investor path can work, while firsthand founder experience can lend advice credibility.
Paul Graham shared a MilHistNow post with an embedded video describing Nazi Germany’s 1942 V-2 test fire as the first man-made projectile to leave Earth’s atmosphere and reach space . He said the post explained why he had never considered what the first man-made thing to reach space was, adding that “We don’t talk about that milestone” .
@saranormous called a No Priors episode with Goodwin, founder of Fractile, “Really fun,” highlighting discussions of AI-chip-market strategy, AI for chip design, memory bandwidth, and new hardware scaling laws . The show’s stated takeaway is that accelerating experiments is becoming as important as accelerating AI itself, from chip design to scientific discovery . Episode post.
Patrick O’Shaughnessy promoted his conversation with Ben Thompson, calling Thompson one of his favorite business thinkers and inviting readers to “Enjoy!” (conversation) . In an excerpt, Thompson argues that AI may currently generate more incremental monetization for Google and Meta through improved advertising than AI labs get from selling AI; their ad marketplaces let them test generated content, and even a few percentage points of improvement could be worth billions .
Tobi Lutke recommends attending or tuning in to endurance racing at Road Atlanta, starting noon EST the following day, saying it was fun to introduce old friends to the sport . The linked context identifies the event as Motul Petit Le Mans, a 10-hour endurance race in Atlanta .
Brian Armstrong shared an AiFi video clip, captioning it “AiFi gives everyone a financial advisor.” The linked Base post features Armstrong and @everythingempty of Virtuals.io discussing Butler’s thesis, AiFi’s future, and adoption of tokenized stocks.
Brian Armstrong urged followers to try Coinbase’s AI-agent workflow by pasting Connect to https://coinbase.com/skill.md into a preferred agent; he said it can access portfolios, trade crypto, stocks and derivatives, and pay for premium data with x402. He linked Coinbase’s “AiFi: Start Trading With Your First Five Prompts” guide, a five-prompt walkthrough for moving from a market hunch to a structured trade.
- Packy McCormick recommends Not Boring’s Deep Dive on Airbound, adding, “We are going to fly.”
- In his Starship coverage, he points readers to SpaceX’s post about the orbital flight, saying, “just take a look at these beauties.”
Tim Ferriss invited listeners to enjoy his new podcast episode, “How to Simplify Your Life,” featuring Chip Conley, Gregory McKeown, @gtdguy, Elizabeth Gilbert, and Oliver Burkeman. Listen on Spotify or Apple Podcasts.
Sarah Guo calls a No Priors episode with @goodwin_ml, founder of @fractile_ai, “really fun.” It covers AI chip-market strategy, AI chip design, frontier-lab requirements, memory bandwidth, and hardware scaling laws. The full interview is available on YouTube or podcast platforms: YouTube.
Bill Gurley recommends Elizabeth Dias’s New York Times article about Anthropic’s thinking on its model, software consciousness, and the model’s relationship to religion. He says customers and partners, press evaluating the company, and government regulators should understand its approach because it differs from that of any software company before, while urging readers to judge for themselves and stay informed. Article
Aravind Srinivas praised AskPerplexity’s Computer demo: a searchable 3D map of nearly 26,000 restaurants and cafes across New York City, with searches by dish or neighborhood and the ability to step inside venues. He said projects like this can be left to an agent for hours to produce something great, with creativity as the limit.
Chamath Palihapitiya shared Andrej Karpathy’s post, adding that “the future is taste and judgement.” Karpathy’s post suggests using LLMs to create controlled-language writing, diagrams, interactive webpages, and bespoke explainer videos; he says explainer videos are the format he is most bullish on.
Chamath Palihapitiya enthusiastically recommended The All-In Podcast’s “Super Intelligence Pod”. The episode covers the Trump Super Intelligence Summit and how the AI Safety Accord was created and signed, as well as data-center national security and the cybersecurity arms race .
Scott Belsky shared a clip posted by @yzycrave of Ye performing “Runaway” with Pusha T live on SNL, saying he remembered being mesmerized by it; the post says the performance was 16 years earlier .
Tim Ferriss recommends Small Giants by Bo Burlingham for its examples of companies that choose to be the best rather than the biggest, in a discussion of the trade-offs of building and managing a large company .
Matt Mullenweg endorsed companies making “more art,” replying to @eglyman’s account of a company putting on a Broadway musical about accounts payable. He urged combining efforts to fix things with making them “beautiful and sing”; his link was https://x.com/eglyman/status/2106095498704851419.
Elon Musk endorsed SpaceX’s post showing Starlink V3 deployment, calling it a “Beautiful view”; the post says Starship’s first orbital flight delivered 26 Starlink V3 satellites and includes images.
Jeff Bezos endorsed José Andrés (@chefjoseandres)’s X post on Spain’s housing crisis, calling its diagnosis and prescription “100% correct” and saying the point applies beyond Spain. Andrés argues that the problem is a shortage of homes, not decrees, and calls for substantially more construction, including more available land and faster permits.
