Kevin Chen

Gemini release is cool but personally I’m holding out for the Gemini Pro Max

@aakashgupta @pangramlabs is this ai?

Anthropic would have built this in a day and a dev would have tweeted the news. At OpenAI, an exec is telling you about a plan. That gap tells you everything. In the last 7 days, Anthropic shipped Dispatch, channels, voice mode, /loop, 1M context GA, MCP elicitation, persistent Cowork on mobile, Excel and PowerPoint cross-app context, inline charts, and 64k default output tokens. Felix Rieseberg tweeted "we're shipping Dispatch" and you could control your desktop Claude from your phone that afternoon. Every launch came from an engineering account or a GitHub release. In the same 7 days, OpenAI shipped GPT-5.4 mini and nano. Redesigned the model picker. Sunset the "Nerdy" personality preset. Announced three acquisitions. To find a comparable volume of shipped product from OpenAI, you have to rewind to December. This is the most underrated difference in AI right now. Anthropic PMs don't write PRDs. Boris Cherny, head of Claude Code, ships 10 to 30 PRs a day and hasn't written code by hand since November. 60 to 100 internal releases daily. Cowork was built with Claude Code in 10 days. The tools build the next version of the tools. Every cycle compresses the last one. Engineers are empowered to ship and announce. The entire org runs like a product team, not a corporation. OpenAI has the opposite problem. Fidji Simo is CEO of Applications, a title that exists because engineers aren't empowered to ship without executive approval chains. She joined from Instacart. Before that, a decade at Meta running the Facebook app. Since she arrived, OpenAI has acquired 12 companies for $11 billion in 10 months and announced a "superapp" consolidation through the Wall Street Journal. The exec responsible for shipping it is tweeting about "phases of exploration and refocus" on the product she hasn't shipped yet. That's what happens when you layer a Meta-style product org on top of an AI lab. Decisions go up. Shipping slows down. Announcements replace releases. Anthropic's product announcements come from the people who wrote the code. OpenAI's come from the C-suite and the press. One of those loops compounds. The other one meetings.

@xio4444 @pangramlabs ai?

Okay, here’s some random advice I’m pretty sure you’ve never heard before. I’m also willing to bet your dad, brother, or most of the men in your life never taught you this. Let’s talk about fuel efficiency. While most gasoline in the U.S. (about 95%) comes from the same pipelines, the additives brands mix into their fuel vary significantly. Some brands like Mobil, Shell, and Chevron add extra detergents to help keep your engine cleaner longer. Their fuel helps keep fuel injectors clean, prevents carbon buildup, and maintains better combustion, which helps your car maintain optimal fuel efficiency. These brands are part of the Top Tier Detergent Gasoline Program, meaning they contain higher levels of detergent additives than the minimum required by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. So when people say gas from these brands “lasts longer,” it’s not that the gas itself lasts longer, it’s that your engine stays cleaner, which improves mileage and efficiency. Here’s another fun fact: Costco gas, while cheap, is actually very good quality. Costco stations sell huge volumes of gasoline every day, so their fuel is almost always fresh because of the high turnover. They also maintain strict monitoring systems for their underground tanks to keep them clean, which matters more than most people realize. So, if you want to keep your car running efficiently: Use brands like the ones mentioned above, or any brand that’s part of the Top Tier Detergent Gasoline Program. Fill up early in the morning if possible. Gasoline expands when it gets warm, making it slightly less dense. Cooler temperatures mean slightly more fuel per gallon. Don’t pump at full speed. Most pumps have three trigger speeds. Using the slower setting can reduce vapor loss while filling. Avoid filling up when the tanker truck is refilling the station. When underground tanks are filled, sediment at the bottom can get stirred up. Stop overfilling your tank. Once the pump clicks, stop. Overfilling can damage the charcoal canister in your car’s emissions system and can even trigger a check-engine light. Use the correct octane for your vehicle. If your car requires 87 or 93, stick with that. Octane measures how resistant gasoline is to premature combustion in the engine. Higher octane doesn’t mean better fuel, it just means the fuel can handle more compression before igniting. Keep your tires properly inflated. Even slightly underinflated tires can reduce fuel economy by 3–5%. Tire pressure is actually one of the biggest factors affecting how long your gas lasts. So there you go, some random car advice I’m willing to bet most people never heard before. Hopefully it’s useful to you or anyone else who reads this.

I’m 25. Give me oddly specific life tips. No general ”surround yourself with positive people” tips. I want the most random, specific advice possible.

@aakashgupta @pangramlabs ai?

Costco didn’t decide to become a housing developer. California’s regulatory structure forced the trade. The math: This $425M project bypasses CEQA entirely through AB 2011, a state law that exempts mixed-use projects with affordable housing from environmental review. Traditional Costco stores in Los Angeles face years of discretionary approvals, community meetings, and potential lawsuits. This project broke ground in months. The real constraint isn’t land. Costco can find five-acre commercial sites in LA. The constraint is permission. A standard big-box store triggers environmental impact reports, traffic studies, design review, and community opposition that can add $10M+ in legal and consulting fees before a single permit is issued. By making two-thirds of the project residential with 23% affordable units, Thrive Living converted the entire development to ministerial approval. No hearings. No CEQA. No lawsuits from neighbors who don’t want a warehouse next door. Costco’s CEO confirmed they’re watching to see if this “creative way” of reaching members can be replicated elsewhere. Translation: if the only path to opening stores in high-value markets is building housing on top, Costco will build housing on top. The 400 jobs and 800 apartments are real benefits. But the reason this project exists is that California made the regulatory cost of opening a normal Costco higher than the construction cost of adding 800 apartments. That tells you everything about California’s housing crisis. The state created such a hostile approval environment that companies are voluntarily building affordable housing to escape it.

@petite_michelle @pangramlabs

As someone who experienced the “warmth of collectivism” firsthand as a child, because Russian colonisers brought communism and collectivism to my very individualistic country, let’s dig into what that “warmth” actually looked like. 1. A flat or house to live in. You literally couldn’t buy one. That simply wasn’t an option. You waited for years to get housing assigned by the state. And you can already imagine the quality: quickly built blocks, or the confiscated apartments of “enemies of the people” who were shot or sent to the Gulag. The party elite got the good places. Ordinary people got a cheap Khrushchyovka with a tiny kitchen and no lift after 5–10 years of waiting. No other option. 2. Your job “for life” (whether you wanted it or not). Officially, everyone had work. In practice, you didn’t choose a career so much as you were placed into one. Want to switch? Good luck. Want to start a business? Cute. Private enterprise was either illegal, punished, or pushed into shady “don’t ask, don’t tell” territory. 3. Travel? Not for you. You couldn’t just decide to go somewhere, even within the “friendly” socialist world, without permissions. The border wasn’t a line on a map, it was a wall in your head. Want to see the West? That wasn’t a holiday plan, that was a crime plot. 4. Information was “collective” too. One TV truth, one newspaper truth, one approved version of reality. If your eyes disagreed, your eyes were “wrong.” And if you repeated what you saw out loud, you could become a “problem.” 5. The “warmth” came with a price: fear. You learned early what not to say, to whom, and where. You learned that walls had ears, and sometimes so did classmates. Collectivism works best when everyone self-censors. 6. Queues: the national sport. Food, shoes, furniture, books, washing machines, a decent winter coat. You stood in line because “they might bring something.” Planning your life around rumours about deliveries isn’t community. It’s scarcity management. 7. Quality didn’t matter, because choice didn’t exist. When there’s only one type of sausage, it doesn’t have to be good. When there’s only one brand of anything, the producer doesn’t compete for you. You compete for the product. 8. Equality was a slogan, not a reality. Officially, everyone was equal. Unofficially, some were “more equal,” and their equality came with better housing, better shops, better doctors, and better futures. 9. Collective responsibility meant individual guilt. One person messes up, everyone gets punished. One person speaks out, everyone gets threatened. It trains people to police each other, not support each other. And the punchline: they still called it “care.” Not because it was caring, but because calling it care made it harder to argue with. Tallinn occupied buy Societs.

@daylenyang next gen waymo vehicle leaked

asked sora for a video of waymo driving in new york

@binarybits Taking the other side, I guess the fear is cars will be so popular that congestion pricing, carbon tax, etc. will be politically impossible to implement like what happened in NYC recently

I think it’s dumb when people treat “more cars on the roads” as self-evidently a bad thing. Congestion and carbon pollution are bad but those things have solutions (congestion pricing, EVs) and it’s a good thing if more people can get where they want to go.

@jjricks_ support.google.com/waymo/contact/…

@tilmanbayer @Waymo @kevinchen kevin has good takes

@shannu_kar Unfortunately members of the public are not allowed inside

@kevinchen Great blog @kevinchen are you working on something that explains what happens inside the building at the depot. Seems to be too large just for data retrieval and processing.

I've become a bit obsessed with @Waymo depots in the last few months. The reason? I believe one of the most important open problems in autonomous driving is real estate acquisition. ⬇️

@max_spero_ “Moby-Dick delves into…” say no more

not quite there yet

@reed wow tfti

just playing @waymo

@sallis_joe This could be a nice opportunity. One downside is commercial real estate prices are correlated with the desirability of the area. Maybe the best case is if you have some tanking commercial properties next to a highly desirable residential/mixed neighborhood.

Zoox continues to lead on transparency around remote operations.

@ONeilBox This is very comprehensive. Thank you!

@kevinchen we're talking over 25 years ago, our co. was sold out. but zoning, franchises, and certificates were big hurdles + we had underground tanks (another nightmare). here's a link to more modern challenges. your article caught the gist of most RE problems. onlinepubs.trb.org/onlinepubs/sr/…

@ONeilBox I'd love to learn more about these regulations!

@kevinchen good article. i grew up in a family-owned transit co. my era was tankers, fuel depots, garages, dispatch, car washes, bus-taxi-limo parks et al. real estate is a nightmare with regs out the yin-yang. anyone thinking flipping a switch will create robotaxis has a rude awakening

@kevinchen In Phoenix, Waymo finds industrial warehouses with unused parking lots. Due to city zoning requirements for a parking lot/per sq ft - parking lots at industrial warehouses sits largely empty. Lots of electrical power capacity available too.

@simoarcher In other areas I think they are basically in the same position as everyone else. - subject to the same permitting and utility delays - need to hire cleaning staff and mechanics.

@simoarcher Existing locations probably don’t help that much except for overnight charging. Otherwise superchargers in major cities are already congested. Rather I think Tesla’s advantage would come from their ability to expand. They have the most operational expertise and low cost.

Not enough people are talking about this challenge. If you'd like to learn more, check out my post: kevinchen.co/blog/real-esta…

A human-driven fleet just needs a convenient parking lot to store off-duty cars. AVs also need: ⚡️ DC fast charging: AVs are often also EVs. 🛜 High-speed internet: for uploading driving logs. These make it incredibly hard to find suitable real estate, especially in cities.