jdklein33 on LinkedIn

The short story + lessons from how I 'blew up' buying an SMB at age 43 1. 17 yrs of W2 Corp tech sales 2. Married, 3 kids 10-14 y.o. 3. Owned house, vaca home & rental 4. Living in Redmond Life is good, yes? Yes, life is good, I'm on TV! Soooo...why do this entrepreneur thing?

Polymarket isn't a betting site. Its a paid media influence site for propaganda and manipulation. Kalshi probably same

The golden age of corruption. nymag.com/intelligencer/…

Software horror: litellm PyPI supply chain attack. Simple `pip install litellm` was enough to exfiltrate SSH keys, AWS/GCP/Azure creds, Kubernetes configs, git credentials, env vars (all your API keys), shell history, crypto wallets, SSL private keys, CI/CD secrets, database passwords. LiteLLM itself has 97 million downloads per month which is already terrible, but much worse, the contagion spreads to any project that depends on litellm. For example, if you did `pip install dspy` (which depended on litellm>=1.64.0), you'd also be pwnd. Same for any other large project that depended on litellm. Afaict the poisoned version was up for only less than ~1 hour. The attack had a bug which led to its discovery - Callum McMahon was using an MCP plugin inside Cursor that pulled in litellm as a transitive dependency. When litellm 1.82.8 installed, their machine ran out of RAM and crashed. So if the attacker didn't vibe code this attack it could have been undetected for many days or weeks. Supply chain attacks like this are basically the scariest thing imaginable in modern software. Every time you install any depedency you could be pulling in a poisoned package anywhere deep inside its entire depedency tree. This is especially risky with large projects that might have lots and lots of dependencies. The credentials that do get stolen in each attack can then be used to take over more accounts and compromise more packages. Classical software engineering would have you believe that dependencies are good (we're building pyramids from bricks), but imo this has to be re-evaluated, and it's why I've been so growingly averse to them, preferring to use LLMs to "yoink" functionality when it's simple enough and possible.

LiteLLM HAS BEEN COMPROMISED, DO NOT UPDATE. We just discovered that LiteLLM pypi release 1.82.8. It has been compromised, it contains litellm_init.pth with base64 encoded instructions to send all the credentials it can find to remote server + self-replicate. link below

@shawngorham I thought Jake retired

HELP! (for a friend) I am a LP in a deal and the GP has gone SILENT. No return calls, no return emails. Reached out the CPA who did the last K1 and they cant reach them either. What's the play?

Donald Trump called mail-in voting “mail-in cheating” on Monday. That same day, news broke that he just voted by mail in a Florida special election. His polling place is a 15-minute drive from Mar-a-Lago. He spent the last two weekends there. He mailed it anyway. He is now holding the entire country hostage to pass a bill making it harder for you to vote the way he just voted. Shameless hypocrisy. nytimes.com/2026/03/24/us/…

Dad, what were you like in the '90s? #BringBackOurSonics

@KyleAsay_ You sure you weren't using a white font?

Whenever I see someone using feedback from Claude or ChatGPT to validate product/market fit I think about the time I uploaded a blank PDF and asked ChatGPT to score how valuable the content was from 1-10 My blank PDF got a 9.5/10 and ChatGPT wrote 5 paragraphs about how brilliant I am

Keep hiring at the entry level -> paradoxically, AI means you need more talent to take advantage of the dramatically wider opportunity set.

@RegZeller Assuming you've ran this through AI tools of choice?

For my machine shop friends, how do you go about training new people to quote CNC machining? Especially those that haven’t had much (if any) experience actually machining? Is it possible? Are there programs to purchase that are better than the ones I looked at 5-7 years ago? I was taught how to quote, but I’m arguably novice at best and it’s been a hot minute since doing it day to day.

If you've ever rolled your eyes when hearing "Let's circle back and pressure-test to ensure alignment," congrats, you might be immune to corporate BS. While corporate buzzwords might sound smart, they could actually be a red flag for bad decision-making. New research from Cornell finds employees who are most impressed by "corporate bullshit" (aka jargon that's "semantically empty and often confusing") are actually worse at their jobs. They scored lower in analytical thinking, reflection, and problem-solving in the study. As researcher Shane Littrell put it, "It's the people that can't tell the difference that seem to have the most problems." And those most susceptible consistently chose the worst solutions for work-related problems. The twist is that those same employees are also more likely to see leaders as "visionary" and feel inspired by company missions. So BS might boost morale, even if it ultimately tank outcomes.

@GayBearRes Lost the plot

What if your mom and dad never met?

@drgurner @shanaka86 Are we tired of winning at 8D chess yet?

@shanaka86 "Every tanker that pays in yuan instead of dollars establishes a precedent. Every precedent weakens the petrodollar architecture that has governed energy trade since 1974." Massive if this is how it is proceeding.

BREAKING: The Strait of Hormuz is no longer closed. It is no longer open. It is something the world has never seen before: a permissioned corridor run by the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, priced at $2 million per vessel, payable in yuan. Three ships transited in the last 24 hours. Three. Out of a pre-war average of 60 per day. Total throughput: 310,000 deadweight tonnes. Three percent of normal. Four hundred vessels are waiting outside the strait right now. One hundred and fifty tankers. One hundred and twenty bulk carriers. One hundred and thirty others. Waiting for permission from the IRGC Navy to enter a 5-nautical-mile channel between Larak and Qeshm islands inside Iranian territorial waters. This is how the gate works. A vessel operator contacts approved intermediaries with IRGC connections, submitting full documentation: IMO number, ownership chain, cargo manifest, destination, crew list. The intermediaries forward the package to the IRGC Navy’s Hormozgan Provincial Command for sanctions screening, cargo alignment checks that prioritise oil over all other commodities, and geopolitical vetting. The toll is approximately $2 million per tanker. For a VLCC carrying 2 million barrels, that is $1 per barrel. Preferred currency: yuan. If the vessel passes, the IRGC issues a clearance code and route instructions. Upon approach, VHF radio hail, AIS verification, patrol boat escort. One ship at a time. Through the narrowest channel of the most important waterway on Earth. Iranian crude is still flowing. Approximately 1.1 to 1.5 million barrels per day, mostly to China, at near pre-war levels. Iran’s own oil transits the strait it controls. The blockade applies to everyone else. Iran is simultaneously the gatekeeper and the primary beneficiary. The toll funds the IRGC. The IRGC maintains the gate. The gate generates the toll. The circle is self-sustaining. Now look at what is NOT transiting. Fertiliser. Gulf nations supply 49 percent of the world’s exported urea. Ammonia requires the natural gas that Qatar declared Force Majeure on and that Iranian strikes disrupted at South Pars. Effectively zero fertiliser vessels have received approval through the permissioned corridor. The IRGC is prioritising oil because oil generates revenue. Fertiliser does not. The molecules that feed four billion people are trapped behind a gate that only opens for molecules that fund the gatekeeper. The yuan preference is the structural shift that outlasts the war. Every tanker that pays in yuan instead of dollars establishes a precedent. Every precedent weakens the petrodollar architecture that has governed energy trade since 1974. The IRGC is not just blocking a strait. It is building an alternative payment rail under live fire. The $2 million toll in yuan is not a fee. It is a proof of concept for a post-dollar energy settlement system, stress-tested in the most extreme conditions imaginable: a three-front war with the world’s largest military. The world’s central banks are trapped by the same strait: the Fed cannot cut, the ECB is hiking, the BOJ is tightening. Six countries are rationing fuel. Japan’s 10-year yield hit a 27-year high. Slovenia has QR codes at the pump. South Korea is barring government vehicles one day per week. And behind all of it, 400 ships wait outside a 5-nautical-mile channel for a clearance code from the IRGC Navy, payable in a currency that is not the dollar. Twenty percent of the world’s oil supply. Controlled by a VHF radio call and a yuan transfer. The strait did not close. It changed ownership. open.substack.com/pub/shanakaans…

New season, new wallpaper 📱

Pardon me for being, ahem, pragmatic, but this IS hyperbole. The thing that's weird about articles like this is they assess a "balance sheet" that doesn't include the US government's biggest assets - its natural resources, land and present value of future tax receipts. The land and resources alone are worth $100+ trillion. But the taxing authority is the real whopper. The US government has a present and future claim on the output of the wealthiest country that ever existed. A conservative discount rate of 4.5% over 50 years equates this to a $200T+ asset. They love to talk about "unfunded liabilities", but what about the present value of uncollected tax receipts? It's a crazy huge figure.... So no. The wealthiest country in human history doesn't have a bankrupt govt. It has a very poorly run govt that could benefit from being a lot better run, but it's not bankrupt. Carry on.

I need some new glasses - should I go back to LensCrafters?

Pulitzer-worthy

@jamesonhaslam Start with a giant bag of pennies...ugh, never mind

how do you teach someone the importance of compounding/consistency There is nothing more important No idea how to smash this into my kids brains

He put pressure on China’s oil supplies and showed them he did have a bargaining chip fo their rare earth materials. He kept the Epstein files under wraps and off the news for a month. He distracted everyone from ICE, DOGE and the government shutdown. He created demand for the arms industry. He gave a boost to Saudi Arabia and their associates. And he made a billion or so on the markets. A mystery, isn’t it?

Bigger than any futures move at the time? It was a futures move, and insider one as outlined in my tweet that unusual whales seems to have used. Also it wasn’t a $1.5B trade, that was the notional value. As for “bet” and “bigger than any futures move at the time” I’m assuming you rushed to assume this was prediction market stuff… it’s not. ES and CL *are* CFTC regulated futures and underpin the whole economy. This fraud is fleecing American pension funds, and is something the SEC and CFTC have *clear* jurisdiction over. Meanwhile the SEC wouldn’t let their enforcement division investigate Trump’s family and has had protest resignations. You should be dragging the SEC and CFTC commissioners before Congress to question them on this.