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Yishan
@yishan
I run Terraformation, and I was once the CEO of Reddit. Both are very interesting challenges. AMA in a subscriber-only newsletter! AskYishan.com
Made on Earth by Humans
Joined April 2008
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    Do you miss the old Quora answers of yore? I'm trying out a subscriber-only newsletter where I answer questions: askyishan.com Secrets to tech, AI, climate, social platforms, and more!
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    My son just explained to my wife that lobsters are effectively immortal and that the only reason they die "of old age" is because they have to continually molt, and each time they molt as they get bigger, it takes more energy and so eventually they just don't do it. And so he
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    Conspiracy theorists who keep saying thereโ€™s โ€œno wayโ€ the hurricane could have intensified so much without some human cause are so close to getting it.
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    I've now been asked multiple times for my take on Elon's offer for Twitter. So fine, this is what I think about that. I will assume the takeover succeeds, and he takes Twitter private. (I have little knowledge/insight into how actual takeover battles work or play out) (long ๐Ÿงต)
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    The emperor has no clothes
    ๐ŸšจiPhone Air is the thinnest iPhone Apple has ever made at just 5.6mm, and it breaks the record of the iPhone 6 at 6.9mm.
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    Let me get this straight: it's not two arms coming together to catch it by squeezing (like chopsticks). It's two arms coming together at just the right width at just the right moment so that two little hooks sticking out of the rocket catch the edge of the arms. The hooks are
    Replying to @yishan
    The booster is caught on these
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    Replying to @yishan
    Or more specifically, a tendency to [ab]use first principles thinking to go "in theory, if the following things are true, it should mean that we can achieve certain unprecedentedly absurd results."
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    My AI investment thesis is that every AI application startup is likely to be crushed by rapid expansion of the foundational model providers. App functionality will be added to the foundational models' offerings, because the big players aren't slow incumbents (it is wrong to
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    Replying to @yishan
    The internet is not a "frontier" where people can go "to be free," it's where the entire world is now, and every culture war is being fought on it. It's the MAIN battlefield for our culture wars.
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    The original architects of American global power did something very clever that no other empire had ever done before: they deliberately hid the instruments of their power. Specifically, they institutionalized the hard power of the post-WW2 American military into a "rules-based
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    R1 isnโ€™t the true big disruption. Itโ€™s just a herald. Hereโ€™s what I predict will happen: Within 3-6 months, an American company will duplicate the same cost-savings in a similar model. DS literally told everyone how to do it. After that, Deepseek will come out with something so
    Deepseek R1 is one of the most amazing and impressive breakthroughs Iโ€™ve ever seen โ€” and as open source, a profound gift to the world. ๐Ÿค–๐Ÿซก
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    Iโ€™m about to do the Lumina treatment, a cure for dental cavities developed by Lantern Bioworks. I figured Iโ€™d do an unboxing and let you come with me on this journey. Hereโ€™s the box:
    Readers added context they thought people might want to knowReaders added context
    Yishan is an investor in the company that produces this product: x.com/yishan/status/โ€ฆ It has not yet been tested in human trials. An FAQ with the company founder is here: astralcodexten.com/p/defying-caviโ€ฆ It is unclear how this probiotic may effect the gut. Mouth bacteria are known to colonize the gut: frontiersin.org/articles/10.33โ€ฆ
    Context is written by people who use X, and appears when rated helpful by others. Find out more.
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    Replying to @yishan
    They would like you (the users) to stop squabbling over stupid shit and causing drama so that they can spend their time writing more features and not have to adjudicate your stupid little fights.
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    My wife always had this clever thing when our kids were young and fights would happen. Sometimes a kid would run crying to us saying "He hit me!" like they'd been attacked for no reason. My wife would always ask, "Ok, but happened right BEFORE that? Did you do something