Ben Silone

What most people don’t understand about our oceans is if you are almost anywhere on the surface, there are literally billions of dollars worth of resources directly beneath you: Raw Materials - lithium, magnesium, uranium, sodium, gold, hydrogen, etc, nearly everything exists dissolved in seawater in greater abundance than on land. As our oceans are in a constant state of motion, raw materials are replenished everywhere in our oceans. Energy - with warm surface waters, much of our oceans act as a massive thermal battery, storing solar energy that can be extracted cleanly, 24/7. Beyond this, our oceans never stop moving, with huge amounts of energy available from waves, tides, and currents. Water - simple to desalinate, providing effectively infinite clean water. Food - land is generally limited to a 2 dimensional area, while water allows for food production in 3 dimensions (especially high quality protein), drastically increasing the amount of food produced directly beneath any surface point of our oceans. Environment - unlike a city on land, which necessarily destroys most nature in that space, anything built on the water can easily provide underwater habitat and aerated waters for sea life, which ultimately produce most of the worlds oxygen and sequester most of the worlds excess co2. Space - with Earth’s increased rotational speed at the equator, rockets can carry 15-30% more payload than from where they are currently launched. Limited air traffic and regulation, and no hurricanes, allow for consistent and frequent launches for moon and Mars colonization.

@Keller @wholemars Used to be a decade, this are accelerating quickly, probably closer to 6 months now

The Bitter Lesson of Robotics: It's extremely easy to make a video of a robot doing something once under perfect conditions then post it to X. But it often takes a decade to harden systems and design for all the insane edge cases of the real world. Many companies raising $$$$ on cool demos, but all the hard work comes after

@WilliamShatner Not many scenarios where I would be in such a rush i wouldn’t want to stop for some breaks during that much driving

And for the #teslarites who don’t understand 500 miles. Time is money. How long does it take to pump a tank of gas? 4-5 mins versus 30. Early last week I went up to the Yosemite area (about 300 miles.) I got up there, did my thing and got gas (5 mins) and drove back. With a Tesla. It would be drive up (maybe on one charge) charge up 20-30 mins, do my thing. Drive back, stop along the way to recharge (again probably another 20 mins…) That’s too long. 500 would be one recharge so it’s 10 mins gas versus 29-30 mins which I would consider.🤷🏼

@tszzl I liked him, thought he has played the role well so far, Zendaya has been terrible though

the dune movies were doomed from the start to be good and not great due to the casting of chalamet as paul. he does not have the gravitas for a child-god and is much better suited for kind of silly coming of age movies

@IterIntellectus What is this prediction based on? Birth rates?

this is why AI and humanoid robots are the only way for humanity to survive we are getting much dumber and it’s never going to get better

@RandPaul They are, lots have died because of it, odd to ignore that fact

Disgusting. How long until Iranians rise up and reclaim their country . . . Iran regime hangs 19-year-old wrestler Saleh Mohammadi for protesting regime | Fox News foxnews.com/sports/mojtaba…

@RuiHuang_art Not sure what this is, but it’s awesome!

@AureusArena @andyfang Robots replacing humans for menial tasks is the goal, and the best thing for all humanity

@andyfang Anyone who does this, just know you are training your replacement that will never get tired, never complain, never takes breaks, all this data is being collected for pennies on the dollar, if you knew your worth you would avoid helping them but you will most likely be a pawn.

Introducing Dasher Tasks Dashers can now get paid to do general tasks. We think this will be huge for building the frontier of physical intelligence. Look forward to seeing where this goes!

Humanity's greatest need right now, beyond new tech, is HOPE. A compelling, abundant vision of the future that people WANT to live in.

@SenSanders The prompt: “say how dangerous AI is in such a way that I can get more funding for my political campaign”

I spoke to Anthropic’s AI agent Claude about AI collecting massive amounts of personal data and how that information is being used to violate our privacy rights. What an AI agent says about the dangers of AI is shocking and should wake us up.

@niccruzpatane They can’t even make a few new EV models 9 years from now!!!

Both Rolls-Royce and Bentley are abandoning their EV ambitions. Bentley is scrapping the development of four new EVs scheduled to release by 2035. Rolls-Royce has quietly backed away from its plan to go fully electric by 2030. Legacy auto is backtracking at every angle.

@mattshumer_ Been running numbers for the value of robot training data. Need humans recording themselves doing everything from dishes to shopping to hanging a tv.

DoorDash is laying the groundwork for a crazy move here. Agents will be able to 'hire' humans to do tasks for them in the real world. And this will collect insane amounts of training data for robotics. Kind of genius, kind of terrifying.

@TerribleMaps You sure that hasn’t changed recently?

The most spoken language in each London borough

@LauiLittle4050 @balajis A few locations were temporarily shut down, don’t spread lies

@bsilone @balajis x.com/_GlobeObserver…

I'm going to make some obvious points. (1) Blowing up all the oil infrastructure in the Middle East is an insane idea, and may well result in a global economic crash and humanitarian crisis unrivaled in the lives of those now living. We're talking about the price of everything everywhere rising, from food to gas, at a moment when inflation was already high. All of that will be laid at the feet of the authors of this war. (2) The antebellum status quo of Feb 27, 2026 was just not that bad, but we're unlikely to return to it. Expect indefinite, long-term, ongoing disruptions to everything out of the Middle East. (3) Also assume tech financing crashes for the indefinite future. The genius plan to get the Gulf states caught in the crossfire has incinerated much of the funding for LPs, for datacenters, and for IPOs. Anyone in tech who supported this war may soon learn the meaning of "force majeure" as funding gets yanked. (4) Many capital allocators will instead be allocating much further down Maslow's hierarchy of needs, towards useful basic things like food and energy. (5) It's fortunate that all those progressives yelled about the "climate crisis." Yes, their reasoning about timelines was wrong, and much of the money was wasted in graft, but the result was right: we all need energy independence from the Middle East, pronto. It's also fortunate that Elon and China autistically took climate seriously. Now they're going to need to ship a billion solar panels, electric vehicles, batteries, nuclear power plants, and the like to get everyone off oil, immediately. (6) It's not just an oil and gas problem, of course. It's also a fertilizer problem, and a chemical precursor problem. Maybe some new sources will come online at the new prices, but it takes time to dial stuff up, particularly at this scale, so shortages are almost a certainty. That said, China has actually scaled up coal-to-chemicals[a,c] (C2C), and there's also something more sci-fi called Power-to-X[b] which turns arbitrary power + water + air into hydrocarbons. But all of that will need to get accelerated. I have a background in chemical engineering so may start funding things in this area. (7) Ultimately, this war is going to result in tremendous blame for anyone associated with it. It's a no-win scenario to blow up this much infrastructure for so many people. Simply not worth it for whatever objective they thought they were going to attain. But unless you're actually in a position to stop the madness, the pragmatic thing to do is: scramble to mitigate the fallout to yourself, your business, and your people. [a]: reuters.com/business/energ… [b]: alfalaval.com/industries/ene… [c]: reuters.com/sustainability…

@rjkennedy @balajis Haven’t seen any sign of that

@bsilone @balajis Add: the decimation of USA soft power & influence throughout the world.

Not buying this at all. We will see 10x growth in the next 10 years. If a company is growing 10x and there are 10x more startups, and new industries supporting all that growth, there will be a lot of jobs for humans still. Company that are static will fire people and replace them with AI and robots, but those that grow will have those plus a lot of humans. Some industries will be hit, new ones will rise up in their place, as has always been the case. This process is just more accelerated than in the past. College isn’t just based on AI, it’s largely based on most colleges setting low DEI standards and not keeping up with technology fast enough.

Andrew Yang on the coming layoffs.

@disclosetv Like most things in government, they don’t need more money, they need to use the money they have more efficiently. Cut the waste!

NOW - Trump says the $200,000,000,000 billion Pentagon funding request goes "beyond even what we're talking about in Iran. This is a very volatile world."

As has been the case for these past 10x periods, the next ten years could likely 20x or 100x instead of only 10x if it weren’t for widespread doomer mindset. Those who think the world will get worse no matter what they do have no incentive to work hard to make it better.

Doomerism is the worst religion

@PeterDiamandis Also up your interview questions for all jobs to ask “how do you use AI”. There are no right answers, but there is a wrong answer. If they don’t use AI at all, they aren’t learning and may not be interested in increasing their output for the company.

In some cases, AI can use computers better than a human can. The impact on traditional desk jobs worldwide will be drastic. If you haven't already, begin upskilling yourself. Don't know how? Ask AI!

@quesoliker @balajis But one decision by Trump or Iran can significantly change that outcome. And none of that accounts for the greater efficiency and increase of wealth from technology (ai and robots). Things are more likely to be better a year from now.

@bsilone @balajis You think so? I think it’ll be worse. We’re just dealing with news headlines now. The reality has yet to hit consumers in things like food prices and heating oil come winter, beyond what’s happened at the petrol pump