Arun Rao (@sudoraohacker) / X

Arun Rao

16.7K posts

Arun Rao

@sudoraohacker

Builder of large-scale ML systems; adjunct prof @ucla; ex quant derivatives trader & startup founder. Tweets on AI, tech, science, & econ.

Berkeley, CA

Joined June 2012

Pinned
Arun Rao
@sudoraohacker
Dec 22, 2025
My favorite books and reading trace for 2025: I had a five-way tie for the best books this year: 1) Mokyr’s A Culture of Growth on how societies build or block the conditions for sustained progress; 2) John Williams’ masterpiece Augustus, and the runner-up, Stoner, as
6.7K
Arun Rao
@sudoraohacker
Sep 18, 2025
Replying to @NoContextBrits
For the Louvre or National Portrait Gallery
173K
Arun Rao
@sudoraohacker
May 5, 2022
Replying to @neerajarora
This is an unserious post. WA sold to FB with no real business model and was subsidized for years. The team cashed out, but never created an actual business for the app inside FB. And now they have sour grapes and want a contrafactual where they stayed private.
Arun Rao
@sudoraohacker
Aug 2, 2025
Replying to @drgurner
The intuition that comes from dreams may be more important than we realize, but few can harness them meaningfully. Some examples: Kekulé – Dreamed of a snake biting its own tail, revealing the ring structure of benzene. 2.Howe – Dreamed of warriors with spears piercing fabric,
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Arun Rao
@sudoraohacker
Oct 7, 2023
Replying to @ilyasut
Intelligence is dangerous without love, good judgment, character, ethics, and introspection.
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Arun Rao
@sudoraohacker
Jul 28, 2025
Replying to @Afinetheorem
We’ve been having these crop up slowly since 2010 - first trade is down, now tariffs and e-visas. I think it’s a coin flip we’ll eventually get more capital barriers or even full capital controls as this nationalism progresses, and some countries will get extreme with migration
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Arun Rao
@sudoraohacker
Jul 23, 2024
Replying to @levie
Unfortunately long gone. The current Dem party is mostly anti-business and anti-tech. They claim to care but their actions the last 4 years have been clearer (I haven’t seen a US party more hostile to business than the Dems of the last 4 years). It will take some losses for
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Arun Rao
@sudoraohacker
Apr 29, 2024
Replying to @shaunmmaguire
Very disturbing to see - goes beyond peaceful protest to stopping the basic functioning of a university- @UCLA needs to stop these campus checkpoints soon before this becomes a national story and its federal funds come at risk.
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Arun Rao
@sudoraohacker
Aug 2, 2025
Replying to @drgurner
You’d have to read a lot of biographies of scientists and mathematicians to see this pattern. I’m not making some woo woo claim, just that there’s some interesting processing in dreams that some people have used to be productive. The discovery of Benzene is the prototypical
9.3K
Arun Rao
@sudoraohacker
Jan 18, 2024
Replying to @yishan
Teller once said: “von Neumann would carry on a conversation with my 3-year-old son, and the two of them would talk as equals, and I sometimes wondered if he used the same principle when he talked to the rest of us.”
9.6K
Arun Rao
@sudoraohacker
May 22, 2024
Having carefully read the draft of SB 1047, I expect this bill will end the open source AI/LLM development in California and possibly the US (given how many AI startups exist in CA). It’s profoundly misguided and has onerous, ambiguous, and basically impossible to comply with
Senator Scott Wiener
@Scott_Wiener
May 22, 2024
The Senate passed our AI safety & innovation bill, SB 1047. SB 1047 promotes innovation & ensures developers of the largest, most powerful AI models keep safety in mind. I look forward to continuing to work with all stakeholders to make sure this bill is as good as it can be.
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Arun Rao
@sudoraohacker
Oct 26, 2025
One of my spiciest takes: the AI space is moving so fast I see a geographic gap growing between SF and every other place. The Peninsula is 2-3 months behind SF, while NYC and LA are 4-7 months behind, London is 12+, and other places are even worse. It’s highly uneven (eg parts
roon
@tszzl
Oct 26, 2025
am really glad technology is now synonymous with the city of San Francisco. it used to be that you had to live in the soul crushing suburbs of the south bay fka silicon valley . I spent one summer down there as an intern and considered finding a new career path
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Arun Rao
@sudoraohacker
Jan 9, 2024
Replying to @ianbremmer
Lol, a misleading post. The Communist parties in India are irrelevant outside 1 or 2 states, w/ no national presence. The only parties that matter in India are the BJP and the alliance of opposition parties called INDIA.
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Arun Rao
@sudoraohacker
Aug 1, 2025
Replying to @ali_debow
Recast for accuracy: la: envy (Hollywood and car culture) nyc: greed (everything is unaffordable due to bad govt, only the rich can live a normal life) sf: pride (making gods) miami: lust (Latin Caribbean beach party) las vegas: gluttony (casino culture) houston: wrath (oilmen)
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