Dave Zohrob 📈

My journey to @ycombinator started 18 years ago on a trip back from Antarctica. It was Christmas 2006. I’d quit my job and was backpacking through South America, trying to figure out what to do next. Then a friend sent me a link that changed everything…

I'm lucky enough to have a great doctor and access to excellent Bay Area medical care. I've taken lots of standard screening tests over the years and have tried lots of "health tech" devices and tools. With all this said, by far the most useful preventative medical advice that I've ever received has come from unleashing coding agents on my genome, having them investigate my specific mutations, and having them recommend specific follow-on tests and treatments. Population averages are population averages, but we ourselves are not averages. For example, it turns out that I probably have a 30x(!) higher-than-average predisposition to melanoma. Fortunately, there are both specific supplements that help counteract the particular mutations I have, and of course I can significantly dial up my screening frequency. So, this is very useful to know. I don't know exactly how much the analysis cost, but probably less than $100. Sequencing my genome cost a few hundred dollars. (One often sees papers and articles claiming that models aren't very good at medical reasoning. These analyses are usually based on employing several-year-old models, which is a kind of ludicrous malpractice. It is true that you still have to carefully monitor the agents' reasoning, and they do on occasion jump to conclusions or skip steps, requiring some nudging and re-steering. But, overall, they are almost literally infinitely better for this kind of work than what one can otherwise obtain today.) There are still lots of questions about how this will diffuse and get adopted, but it seems very clear that medical practice is about to improve enormously. Exciting times!

@conductor_build +1 to using 4.6 with 1M context window, i'm running out of context multiple times in the middle of tasks that would've been fine before.

New in latest release: - Opus 4.7

Keynes acquired Newton's private papers and was shocked at what he found. @michael_nielsen reads the key passage in the essay Keynes published afterwards: "Newton was not the first of the age of reason. He was the last of the magicians, the last great mind which looked out on the visible and intellectual world with the same eyes as those who began to build our intellectual inheritance rather less than 10,000 years ago." And as Michael jokes, what are these great scientists actually doing? Writing down squiggles on a page based on observations and these mysterious cosmic connections, then using it to accomplish miracles. Launching rockets, creating atomic bombs. "That's exactly what magicians do." Keynes was shocked to find that Newton's alchemy and theology used the same methods as his physics: "There was extreme method in his madness. All his unpublished works on esoteric and theological matters are marked by careful learning, accurate method and extreme sobriety of statement. They are just as sane as the Principia, if their whole matter and purpose were not magical. They were nearly all composed during the same twenty-five years of his mathematical studies."

excited to try this!!

Introducing Fort, a wearable that automatically tracks strength training. Strength training is one of the best things you can do for your health and longevity. It deserves better tools.

@terronk interesting. i've had much better luck w/ claude coding Expo/RN than doing native swift...

Wild. It’s actually dramatically easier to maintain two native mobile codebases now than to use React Native. RN’s dev environment still a nightmare, even LLM can’t figure it out sometimes. Sucks at fast iteration due to architecture. And cost of framework translation is zero.

Then came year 53.

@IlyaAbyzov @TorchHealth congratulations!

OpenAI has acquired 🔥@TorchHealth The Torch team and I are joining OAI to help build ChatGPT Health into the best AI tool in the world for health and wellness.

I'm jumping the "New Year Stats Posts" a lil' early but I just wanted to share that we've doubled active paid subscribers every single quarter this year 🥹 back to building, 2026 gonna crush

I hid a camera on the roof of an apartment building and aimed it at a bench 300ft away in Dolores park. Then I decorated the bench and turned it into a magic photo bench.

@Google @gmail followed, thank you!

@dzohrob @gmail @dzohrob Hi Dave. We'd like to move this conversation to DM. Please follow us and let us know when you have so we can share next steps.

@Google need urgent help asap - i got locked out of my personal account (dzohrob) that i've had for 20+ years. i have no idea why. recovery does not work with my real phone number (or any phone number, e.g. my wife's). google authenticator also removed all my 2fa codes from my phone, which means i'm going to lose access to tons of 3rd-party services... please help!

It’s been a big year for consumer AI! For the rest of December, @venturetwins + I are going to share a product every day we’ve been loving Day 1️⃣ - Nori Health (@NoriDotAI) Nori ingests tests, wearables, fitness/nutrition trackers and gives a daily readout based on goals 👇

F25 Demo Day in the books

@rrhoover @nurlannurmanov @smock not too far off lol

@nurlannurmanov lol cc @dzohrob @smock

Me, if I applied to YC W26

We're looking for someone who can 'do it all' as a podcast/video producer – planning episodes, booking guests, editing, judging what's good to include and not in the main recording and for short clips, etc. If that sounds like you, get in touch.

@brookeleblanc @tamarawinter @stripepress i’m reading this as we speak (well, as soon as i put my phone down). beautifully done, amazing content, such a high quality product

Everything @tamarawinter (and team @stripepress) touches turns to gold.

@l2k i think the latter

Why is my X feed suddenly full of investors griping about annoying things founder do like trying to optimize their startup's valuation? Some algo change or YC demo day approaching?

@jeff_weinstein so, so many- from so many cities i visited 3 years ago

happy thanksgiving email from restaurants i went to that one time: automatic unsubscribe.

@thogge ty!

@dzohrob x.com/nateliason/sta…

The implications of these few paragraphs feel very under discussed.