Lukens Orthwein

The Pope rightly warns that AI must serve human dignity, not become a tool of domination or exclusion. But if we hand governments sweeping power over AI development in the name of safety, how do we prevent it from being used to censor, surveil, and control citizens — as Orwell foretold in 1984? This is the real alignment problem. “Quis custodiet ipsos custodes.” Who will guard the guardians? “Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.” The oldest questions of human nature and authority don’t disappear in the AI age. They become newly relevant.

This is hilarious

@stripe @link Incredibly exciting. We look forward to bringing agents the easiest and best way to make money for their users through useful work with a minimal energy budget

Today, we’re launching the @link wallet for agents. It lets you securely empower agents to spend on your behalf. Your payment credentials are never exposed and you approve every purchase. link.com/agents

I hope people in tech realize that if you don't support Trump, you get this.

@nikitabier It’s brutal. At least 3-4 days, plus more arbitrary rejections on previously allowed things, so in practice it’s often a week. Reminds me of app review in 2013.

iOS developers: How long is App Review taking for everyone these days? It is now taking longer to get our app approved than it is to build the actual features.

@nikitabier Love the listen feature

Over the last 3 months, Articles on X have grown 18x. It is one of the fasting growing new products on the platform. Today we're making them even better: we're launching a Listen feature—powered by Grok Voice. You'll be able to listen while scrolling Timeline or on-the-go from your lock screen. It's now available on iOS for top Articles in English and launching on more platforms soon. Here's how it works:

🚨 Do you understand what just happened? New York wants to ban AI from answering questions about medicine, law, and engineering. Let me translate that for you: > The industries charging you $500/hour just lobbied to make sure you can't get the same answers for free. > This was never about safety. It's about protecting the bill rate. > Lawyers don't want you to know AI can draft a contract in 30 seconds. > Doctors don't want you to know AI can read your bloodwork better than a resident. > Engineers don't want you to know AI can review your blueprints overnight. They're not banning AI to protect you. They're banning it to protect their invoices.

This will add an entire other 1% to the global GDP

@tobi My setup has different WC3 and StarCraft units for each Claude worker and matching terminal tab colors, with different races corresponding to different repos and ticket categories. I’ve never been more productive 😂

@JorgeCastilloPr Doing this tonight

How to finally become the 10x engineer: Add WarCraft 3 sounds to Claude hooks to get alerts when it finishes a task or needs permission.

Merry Christmas. In 1946, C.S. Lewis penned a Christmas sermon in which he wrote: “All over the world… men & women will meet on December 25th to do what is a very old-fashioned &, if you like, a very Pagan thing—to sing & feast because a God has been born. You are uncertain whether it is more than a myth. Well, if it is, then our last hope is gone. But is the opposite explanation not worth trying? Who knows but that here, & here alone, lies your way back not only to Heaven, but to Earth too, & to the great human family whose oldest hopes are confirmed by this story that does not die?” #MerryChristmas2025

@paulwarren_ @AppStore @readwithmargins Love to see it, great work

Excited to share Apple is featuring Margins, the app for book lovers, as App of the Day! #OnTheAppStore @AppStore @readwithmargins

@OfficialLoganK @GoogleAIStudio Please if there’re still slots 🙏🏻

Big upgrade to vibe coding in @GoogleAIStudio lands in Jan, but if you want to test early… 👇🏻

@nikitabier Free speech

In 2 words, what is your purpose in life?

@Steve_Sailer @DaveStallard2 @NickKristof Okinawa has longest life expectancy in Japan as well

@DaveStallard2 @NickKristof Thanks. Is this everybody or whites only? Hawaii has lots of Asians, who live a long time. It would be interesting if Hawaii's whites are particularly long-lived due to being outdoors a lot.

You know the best way to bring your life expectancy down? Move from a blue state to a red state. Red states have a life expectancy 2.2 years shorter than blue states.

I am actually the lead and corresponding author on the most cited research paper of this person's career. Someone told me that today, and I verified it. The claim that her work has had any substantial effect on breast cancer is a dramatic overstatement. Like much of what’s being presented in this 60 Minutes segment, it’s a PR narrative designed to grab money. It’s dishonesty from these institutions about what technology from the life sciences can actually do—and it says more about the way universities grift the public for sympathy and funding than anything about science itself.

With Climate Doomerism fading, AI Doomerism will become as the central organizing catastrophe on the Left. It justifies their takeover of the economy and especially the information space. And it has enough pseudoscience and Hollywood storytelling behind it to seem compelling.

Grokipedia clears Gamergate, tells the truth. It's never been told like this before. It's more than fair. It documents nearly everything. While it does not report the bomb threats and doxing that Gamergate received (with receipts), and does not challenge the claims of Sarkesian and Quinn, I think it's pretty fair. The most fair it has ever been and the REAL story, not the fabricated lies that Wikipedia peddled for years, regurgitating the manufactured slop by game journalists. Thank you, @elonmusk. Link in reply to the article.

New episode: "How Elon Works" This episode covers the insanely valuable company-building principles of Elon Musk A few notes from the episode: 1. The mission comes first. 2. Retreat is not an option. 3. A maniacal sense of urgency is our operating principle. 4. Product design should be driven by engineers. 5. You should not separate engineering from product design. 6. Having separate design and production departments is bullshit. Keep everything together and feedback immediate. 7. The leader should be on the front lines. You should be a battlefield general. 8. "If they see the general out on the battlefield, the troops are going to be motivated. Wherever Napoleon was, that's where his armies would do best." 9. Apply The Algorithm constantly. (1) Question every requirement. (2) Delete any part of the process you can. (3) Simplify and optimize. (4) Accelerate cycle time. (5) Automate. 10. Repetition is persuasive. "I became a broken record on the algorithm. I think it's helpful to say it to an annoying degree." 11. You should go ultra-hardcore on deletion and simplification. 12. Camaraderie is dangerous. It makes it hard for people to challenge each other’s work. (Refer to point #1) 13. Never ask your troops to do something you wouldn’t do. 14. Hire for attitude. Skills can be taught. Attitude changes require a brain transplant. 15. Good attitude = A desire to work maniacally hard. 16. The only rules are the ones dictated by the laws of physics. Everything else is a recommendation. 17. Keep your entire company committed to a common goal. 18. If things aren’t going well, throw away the existing design, start from first principles, question every requirement based on fundamental physics. 19. Find the limit. You want to delete as much as possible and you can’t do that unless you find the limit. 20. If you aren’t adding back at least 10% of the things you deleted, then you didn’t delete enough. 21. Maintain control. Avoid joint ventures. Eliminate middlemen. 22. Have a relentless dedication to questioning every requirement. 23. No work about work, just work. 24. Go to the problem. Get on the plane. Fly to the source. Go to the exact location in the factory. Go to the problem and stay there until it's resolved. 25. The best part is no part. 26. Be wired for war. 27. Do not fear losing. It hurts the first 50 times but then you’ll be able to play with less emotion. You will take more risks. 28. Stay heads down focused on doing useful things for civilization. 29. When something is important and has to be done quickly, have meetings every 24 hours to run the algorithm and check on the previous days progress. You'll be shocked at how fast this speeds things up. 30. Life needs to be interesting and edgy. 31. Delete, delete, delete, delete. There are 100 more ideas in the episode. I hope you listen to it. 30 years of Elon’s career + 60 hours of reading and research and me just absolutely ripping through idea after idea at 2x speed for 90 minutes. It will be hard to find a better use of time.