# Patrick Collison recommends Matt Faherty's NSF report; Balaji points to Vernor Vinge's "True Names"

*By Recommended Reading from Tech Founders • October 18, 2026*

Collison wants more deep audits of government agencies like Faherty's. Balaji cites a classic sci-fi novella on pseudonymity, and Sacks points to two replies against a 10²⁵-FLOPs AI bill threshold.

## Patrick Collison: Matt Faherty's report on the NSF

Collison called Matt Faherty's [report on the National Science Foundation](https://newscience.org/nsf/) "excellent." His reason goes beyond this one report: "I wish there were more deep investigations and assessments like this of government agencies in the US, the EU, and elsewhere." [^1]

## Balaji Srinivasan: Vernor Vinge's *True Names*

In his TOKEN2049 talk "The Zcash Moment," Srinivasan cited "a great science fiction book… called True Names" by Vernor Vinge. He summed up its premise: people go online under an alias, and "if the government discovers the connection between your NIM and your real name, they'll go to your house and kill you." [^2] He used it to show why Satoshi's anonymity was "another form of decentralization." Because the pseudonym wasn't tied to centralized records, attackers had nothing to go after beyond the name itself, so there was no "radar lock." [^2]

## David Sacks: two replies on the AI bill's FLOPs threshold

Sacks wrote that a new "Anthropic-written safety bill" would define frontier models at 10²⁵ FLOPs. He argued that line is outdated, since the frontier "actually is today" at 10²⁷. He also objected that the count is cumulative and includes fine-tuning and reinforcement learning (RL). [^3] He then pointed readers to two replies:
- [@KryptonCGO](https://x.com/kryptoncgo/status/2111504267777294572) notes that Meta's Llama 3.1 405B used 3.8×10²⁵ FLOPs and has been downloadable since July 2024. Under the cutoff, "a two-year-old open-weight model" would count as frontier. [^4][^5]
- [@sagivo](https://x.com/sagivo/status/2111496523154616353) writes that because the count is cumulative, his weekly post-training on small models could mean "filing compliance paperwork for models that are nowhere near frontier." [^6][^7]

## Harrison Chase: Factory's blog posts on model routing

On [20VC](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1jDCPEHwQfI), the LangChain founder said "factory does a tremendous job" at routing (sending each task to the right model). He added that Factory has "written a number of technical blogs that are very well done" about how it does this. His view is that routing has to be "harness aware," meaning it depends on the agent's setup and on the domain. [^8]

## Guillermo Rauch: Tim Sweeney on AI-assisted development

Rauch quoted [Sweeney's post](https://x.com/timsweeneyepic/status/2111633221725122769) and called it "Well said!" [^9] Sweeney says about 70% of his time writing Unreal Engine 1 went to "typing and refactoring." He also says AI has surprised him as "a sort of insta-Carmack" that can solve hard problems. He concludes: "What matters is the end product, whether it's a game or an engine." [^10]

## Shorter mentions

- **Elon Musk** recommended Gad Saad's book on "suicidal empathy." He said the degree to which people in the West fall prey to it "continues to astonish me." His post doesn't give a title or link. [^11]
- **Paul Graham** linked [@lefineder's post](https://x.com/lefineder/status/2111217686776815968) on Norman land grants after 1066. It says 57 followers were given control of half of England's land, and English landholders held 8% of landed wealth. [^12] Graham's takeaway: before you could get rich by creating wealth, you did it by winning "a military or political dispute." [^13]
- **Marc Andreessen** named *You Can See Everything*, *Primetime* and *Digger* as making 2026 "the best year for film since 2015." His 2015 examples are *Sicario*, *Ex Machina* and *Mad Max: Fury Road*. "At long last, movies are back." [^14]
- **Martin Casado** shared [Ekimko's post](https://x.com/ekimko/status/2111347724071088497) of clips showing an ASCII MMORPG, a game built entirely from colored text. The clips are credited to TikTok user @Ansenjeo. [^15] Casado called it "Sooo incredible… reliving the early Internet all over again. But juiced 10000x." [^16]
- **Jason Lemkin** promoted his own [SaaStr piece](https://www.saastr.com/cloudflare-cut-20-atlassian-cut-10-mostly-engineers-bending-spoons-cuts-up-to-75-all-three-got-better-so-how-lean-can-b2b-teams-really-get/) on the cuts at Cloudflare (20%), Atlassian (10%) and Bending Spoons (75%), so this is self-promotion. His takeaways: "Small teams ship more," and "the cuts worked where AI agents already did the work." [^17]

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### Sources

[^1]: [𝕏 post by @patrickc](https://x.com/patrickc/status/2111476578907820433)
[^2]: [The Zcash Moment - TOKEN2049 Singapore 2026](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lVzT7qKXe2E)
[^3]: [𝕏 post by @DavidSacks](https://x.com/DavidSacks/status/2111490304092078474)
[^4]: [𝕏 post by @DavidSacks](https://x.com/DavidSacks/status/2111514773020172648)
[^5]: [𝕏 post by @KryptonCGO](https://x.com/KryptonCGO/status/2111504267777294572)
[^6]: [𝕏 post by @DavidSacks](https://x.com/DavidSacks/status/2111515308737610031)
[^7]: [𝕏 post by @sagivo](https://x.com/sagivo/status/2111496523154616353)
[^8]: [The Future of Inference Market & Model Routing: Commodity or Increasing in Value? | LangChain CEO](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1jDCPEHwQfI)
[^9]: [𝕏 post by @rauchg](https://x.com/rauchg/status/2111643672274165938)
[^10]: [𝕏 post by @TimSweeneyEpic](https://x.com/TimSweeneyEpic/status/2111633221725122769)
[^11]: [𝕏 post by @elonmusk](https://x.com/elonmusk/status/2111551063870570853)
[^12]: [𝕏 post by @lefineder](https://x.com/lefineder/status/2111217686776815968)
[^13]: [𝕏 post by @paulg](https://x.com/paulg/status/2111423024163586403)
[^14]: [𝕏 post by @pmarca](https://x.com/pmarca/status/2111684043926622639)
[^15]: [𝕏 post by @Ekimko](https://x.com/Ekimko/status/2111347724071088497)
[^16]: [𝕏 post by @martin_casado](https://x.com/martin_casado/status/2111592743617319009)
[^17]: [𝕏 post by @jasonlk](https://x.com/jasonlk/status/2111630331186999665)