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Patrick Collison: Matt Faherty's report on the NSF
Collison called Matt Faherty's report on the National Science Foundation "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."
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." 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."
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 He argued that line is outdated, since the frontier "actually is today" at 10²⁷.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). He then pointed readers to two replies:
- @KryptonCGO 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.
- @sagivo 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."
Harrison Chase: Factory's blog posts on model routing
On 20VC, 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.
Guillermo Rauch: Tim Sweeney on AI-assisted development
Rauch quoted Sweeney's post and called it "Well said!" 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."
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.
- Paul Graham linked @lefineder's post 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. Graham's takeaway: before you could get rich by creating wealth, you did it by winning "a military or political dispute."
- 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."
- Martin Casado shared Ekimko's post of clips showing an ASCII MMORPG, a game built entirely from colored text. The clips are credited to TikTok user @Ansenjeo. Casado called it "Sooo incredible… reliving the early Internet all over again. But juiced 10000x."
- Jason Lemkin promoted his own SaaStr piece 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."
Morgan Housel shared a The Psychology of Money Podcast video about Mark Twain on relative wealth, minimalism, worries in your 20s, and the barbell approach to investing (post).
Paul Graham linked @lefineder's X post on the post-1066 land settlement: it says William retained 21% of England’s land, 57 followers controlled half, and English landholders held 8% of landed wealth, including ecclesiastical holdings. Graham’s takeaway was that, before people could get rich by creating wealth, riches came from winning military or political disputes.
David Sacks highlighted two X posts beneath his argument that a proposed 10²⁵-FLOPs frontier threshold is outdated and cumulative accounting could sweep in commonplace enterprise post-training. He pointed readers to @KryptonCGO’s claim that Meta’s Llama 3.1 405B—trained on 3.8×10²⁵ FLOPs and publicly downloadable since July 2024—would count as frontier under that cutoff. He also linked @sagivo’s argument that cumulative counting could cover weekly fine-tuning and reinforcement learning on small models, potentially requiring compliance paperwork for models that are not frontier systems.
Balaji Srinivasan recommended Vernor Vinge’s science-fiction book True Names, which he cited as a cautionary example of how connecting an online alias to a real identity can expose someone to government targeting; he raised it while explaining the protective value of Satoshi’s pseudonymity.
Balaji Srinivasan shared a Polymarket prediction market about Scott Alexander’s Slate Star Codex getting doxxed after finding it interesting; Polymarket’s founder described the post as an early viral breakthrough for the project.
In a 20VC interview, LangChain founder Harrison Chase praised Factory’s technical blog posts on model routing as “very well done” for explaining how Factory handles routing.
Marc Andreessen (@pmarca) praised You Can See Everything, Primetime, and Digger, saying they make 2026 the best year for film since 2015, when he cites Sicario, Ex Machina, and Mad Max: Fury Road; he concluded, “At long last, movies are back.” Post
Guillermo Rauch endorsed @TimSweeneyEpic’s post on AI-assisted development with “Well said!”, agreeing with its takeaway that the end product—whether a game or an engine—is what matters. The post also argues that AI can free developers to focus on higher-value technical and creative work. Read the post.
Jason Lemkin shared a new SaaStr article, “Cloudflare Cut 20%. Atlassian Cut 10%. Bending Spoons Cuts 75%. All Three Are Growing Faster or Earning More. So How Lean Can B2B Teams Really Get?”, highlighting the takeaway that “Small teams ship more” and that the cuts worked where AI agents already did the work.
Patrick Collison recommends Matt Faherty’s report on the NSF, calling it excellent; he says he wishes there were more deep investigations and assessments like it of government agencies in the US, EU, and elsewhere.
Martin Casado praised a video of an ASCII MMORPG, with its world, characters, environment and effects made from colored text; the clip is credited to TikTok account @Ansenjeo and shared in Ekimko’s post. Casado called it “incredible” and said it felt like reliving the early Internet “juiced 10000x.”
Elon Musk recommended reading a book by Gad Saad about “suicidal empathy,” saying he is astonished by how readily people in the West fall prey to it.