Joshua Kibbey

Our observations often say more about us than that which we observe.

Absolutely beautiful rant about AI in Linux Kernel from Linus yesterday: I realize that some people really dislike AI, but this is an area where I'm willing to absolutely put my foot down as the top-level maintainer. Linux is not one of those anti-AI projects, and if somebody has issues with that, they can do the open-source thing and fork it. Or just walk away. AI is a tool, just like other tools we use. And it's clearly a useful one. It may not have been that "clearly" even just a year ago, but it's no longer in question today. There are other questions around AI (like what the economy of it will actually look like in the end), but "is it useful" is no longer one of those questions. Anybody who doubts that clearly hasn't actually used it. Yes, it can also be a somewhat painful tool, both for maintainer workloads and just from a "it keeps finding embarrassing bugs" standpoint. But the solution is not to put your head in the sand and sing "La La La, I can't hear you" at the top of your voice like some people seem to do. The solution is to make sure those LLM tools _help_ maintainers instead of just causing them pain. There's no question on that side. We're not forcing anybody to use it, but I will very loudly ignore people who try to argue against other people from using it. And no, AI isn't perfect. But Christ, anybody who points to the problems at AI had better be looking in the mirror and pointing at themselves at the same time. Because it's not like natural intelligence is always all that great either. The kernel project has been and will continue to be about the technology. Sure, the social angle of working on open source is important and often a very motivating part of the project, but in the end that's a side benefit, not the _point_ of the project. This is *NOT* some kind of "social warrior" project, never has been, and never will be. In the kernel community we do open source because it results in better technology, not because of religious reasons. And so we make decisions primarily based on technical merit. Not fear of new tools. Linus

BREAKING: Argentina will face Spain in the World Cup final.

@Jonathan_Blow @chamath Because each rule is tied to a spot on the code. You look at the code and verify it was interpreted correctly

@chamath How do you know that this output is accurate?

Here is the first case study of what 8090 can do. Working with CMS, our Enterprise team decoded a 50yr, 18M repo of COBOL and Assembly that governs billions in healthcare payments. We documented 100,000+ business rules in plain English using Software Factory, each traced to its exact source line. The people who own Medicare policy can now read how their systems behave and change as they see fit. Full story in the thread below. We can do this for any large enterprise who have big, legacy codebases.

Drone operator sends 2,500 drones into the air for a drone show celebrating America's 250th birthday in North Richland Hills, Texas. "...For America 250, we celebrate in style!" said Sky Elements Drones. Remarkable.

@NPGrothe @SawyerMerritt Live in the Austin suburbs and see cyber cab apparently mapping routes with some frequency. Seems like they may try to hit the burbs soon.

@SawyerMerritt The question here is can $TSLA launch more robotaxi's than Waymo in general? I think to do this, we will need to see launch outside of city limits OR get into cities Waymo is not in. Otherwise investors can expect Tesla to absorb ~2/3rd of Waymos revenue... not a lot.

Tesla's Robotaxi/ride-hailing service is now available in 5 areas: • Miami: Unsupervised Model Y rides only • Dallas: Unsupervised Model Y rides only • Houston: Unsupervised Model Y rides only • Austin: Mix of Unsupervised & safety monitor Model Y rides • Bay Area: Safety monitor Model Y rides only

1/ Today, we announced Visa is joining Open Standard alongside Stripe, Coinbase, Mastercard, American Express, Blackrock, US Bank, BBVA, Standard Chartered and 100+ initial partners with the mission of issuing Open USD, a shared stablecoin designed for the global financial system.

When you hit a wall in math, coding, or any hard skill, do not immediately conclude that you lack talent. Most walls are just prerequisite debt finally coming due. Go back, fill the gaps, make the basics automatic, and the wall often turns into a staircase.

@Austen Sad and true

At some point in the near future (if not the recent past) many of the best engineers you’ve ever met will write their last line of code

Tonight at 4pm PT, Valar Atomics will initiate a SCRAM and subsequently a Loss of Forced Cooling event on the Ward 250 plant. This will be our most important safety demonstration to date, showcasing how far advanced nuclear has come in fundamental safety. Loss of cooling has always been the central challenge behind some of the most serious historical reactor incidents; it’s what caused the meltdowns in both Fukushima and Three Mile Island. After a reactor shuts down, the recently split atoms continue to give off heat as they work down their decay chains, causing temperatures to rise in the core. In traditional reactors, this means that it is necessary to continue running the cooling pumps for several days after a shutdown. In the case of both TMI and Fukushima, forced cooling of the core failed, causing meltdown. So why are we going to initiate a Loss of Forced Cooling event tonight? Because the Ward series of reactors are fundamentally different from the reactors of prior generations. We designed this reactor to be inherently and intrinsically safe, also called “walk-away” safe. Tonight, we’re going to demonstrate that. After commanding a SCRAM of the reactor, our Senior Reactor Operator (SRO) will command the reactor operator to shut down the main circulator, turning off forced cooling. But the SRO will not stop there—we are going to simulate total electrical failure of the plant. In addition to shutdown of the coolant loop, we will shut down the chiller, the RCCS pump, and both building and nuclear HVAC systems. This will leave the reactor without any active cooling of any kind, giving us a complete demonstration of the passive safety of this architecture. Over the next 24 hours, we will see the decay heat in the core safety distribute through the system and leave through the RCCS via passive circulation. We are not going in to this blind. We did this test in Hawthorne late last year at much higher temperatures and with a simulated decay heat input more than 100x higher than we’ll be demonstrating today. But tonight, we’ll be doing it with real nuclear decay heat. Join us live at 4pm PT / 7pm ET on the Valar Atomics X account!

This is a bad plan for little tech and competition. Anthropic will just sort by its highest paying U.S. companies which will leave startups further behind.

@KobeissiLetter This is the worst possible outcome. This means that a handful of the most connected companies are going to get an absurd massive advantage over everyone else. This is the sort of thing I would consider boycotting Anthropic over.

At a very hi level, free cashflow = operating cash flow - capex. The hyperscalers are deep into an investment cycle so they are consuming their operating cash flow. It is incorrect to look at this and assume their FCF has collapsed because operating cash flow has collapsed. It hasn't. Capex has exploded. This cycle should be eerily reminiscent of Amazon's approach over the past 20 years when they did the same thing related to e-commerce and AWS buildout. The question should be what moat did Amazon create at the end of that cycle and what kind of moat could the hyperscalers build now related to AI after this cycle?

A Columbia ER doc wrote in @nytimes that she typed her own lab results into ChatGPT and got better care than her own doctor gave her — availability, patience, and truly customized diet and exercise steps (not just a generic handout). Her doctor's response to the labs was "book another appointment to discuss." I have to say I've asked patients many times to do just that. But ChatGPT was available immediately, not in two weeks or a month. It asked about her day, analyzed the ingredients in her vitamin gummies, and came up with a customized plan right away. For free. When I talk about tech making healthcare better and smaller, this isn't the better part. It's the smaller part — while patients (even patients that are doctors) getting better care than healthcare can provide. buff.ly/8fWpMrL #DigitalHealth #AIinHealthcare #FutureOfMedicine #healthcareAI

Today @Meta is proud to launch America’s Workforce Academy with our partners. This program will provide paid training, certification and a job for Americans of all backgrounds to be part of building American leadership in the world. Because we believe the Future is for Everyone. wsj.com/opinion/high-t…

This is disaster from Meta AI. Imagine being able to hack high profile accounts like White House, the U.S. Space Force, and Sephora simply by chatting with a support bot. why would an AI chatbot be allowed to perform critical actions like changing the email address of an account in the first place? Password resets, email changes, and account recovery are some of the most sensitive security operations. Handing that authority to a chatbot without robust verification seems like a disaster waiting to happen. This is exactly why AI agents should have guardrails before they get access to real systems. Source : 404

What a time to be alive

@patrickc @pmarca Variables seem to be how independently the agents within the system can act, how big the incentives are, number of independent actors. When there are huge numbers of nodes in a graph with strong incentives and complete autonomy it’s almost unsettling how quickly everyone adapts.

@tszzl Use Claude and an mcp now Way better than using straight slack

is there a better slack for agent age

All personnel are accounted for and safe. It’s too early to know the root cause but we’re already working to find it. Very rough day, but we’ll rebuild whatever needs rebuilding and get back to flying. It’s worth it.