Nicholas Kristof:

'He was preparing to go into the operating room one day when a woman called him over and asked him to photograph her young son, Karam, in his bed in the I.C.U. Sam went over and only then realized that the boy was dead.'

This might be the most important graph of 2024

It illustrates that drug targets with genetic support have more relative success (RS) being approved than those without genetic support

This increase in RS is independent of the effect sizes and frequencies of supporting variants

So much for the plan to turn Miami into a startup hub.

Just did an office hour with an impressive Y Combinator founder who is planning on moving himself and his remote company to San Francisco this year. LLM's are having a very direct acceleration on their business in ways he hadn't imagined when he got started four years ago.

This is not far off. Time spent has more effect when it's spent working on your own projects.

Coinbase crushed it in Q1 2024

- Revenue: $1.6B (+72% vs Q4)
- Opex: $0.9B (+5% vs Q4)
- Net Income: $1.2B (+331% vs Q4)
- Adj. EBITDA: $1.0B (+213% vs Q4)
- Cash: $7.1B (+24% vs Q4)
- 2x USDC on platform vs Q4
- 8x Base developers vs Q4

this tweet is 100% spot on.

we've been thinking a lot about the proper approach to eval models, both for the sake of clarity in the industry, but also for the sake of safe deployment into government + major enterprises.

expect a lot more from us on this front!

At a talk in England I joked that applicants to Stanford had to say what startup they eventually planned to start as part of the college application process. It fell flat because the audience thought I was serious.

Polite society.

Armadio, by Richard Maury, 1987. That's him in the foreground. The woman with her back to us is his wife.

Step into your imagination. Introducing Icons

Thanks Garry! It was a lot of fun being interviewed by you. Many of the questions you asked me were ones no one had ever asked before.

Something I explained to 12 yo: how fast time seems to pass depends on how much you've experienced, and this is why parents always seem to be living in the past. 10 years ago, when he was 2, feels like a lifetime ago to him, but it was yesterday to us.

If you've ever wondered how Ingres et al made those photographic-seeming drawings and paintings, this was how.

Brian Armstrong The CEO of Norway's 🇳🇴 $1.6 trillion oil fund said it all lately:

'Europe is less hard-working, less ambitious, more regulated, and more risk-averse than the US' - Nicolai Tangen

He later added a cherry on top:

'In America, you have a lot of AI and no regulation, in Europe you…

I'm always so envious when I meet people who haven't read any Wodehouse novels, because it means they have them all to enjoy for the first time. That seems the ultimate accolade for a writer of fiction: when the people who've read your books envy those who haven't.

Quitting

Ten years ago today, I quit my job at The Washington Post, sold my furniture, packed my bags and left DC so I could go learn more about this nebulous thing called “technology.” Unlike what most of the advice books will tell you— “you must be running toward something…

I met someone helping the British government with AI regulation. When I asked what they were going to regulate, he said he wasn't sure yet, and this seemed the most intelligent thing I've heard anyone say about AI regulation so far.