cold open: google campus. a conference room named “moonshot serenity 4b.” twelve people are in a meeting titled: pre-sync for sync alignment on ai velocity.
sundar sits calmly at the head of the table.
a pm clicks to slide 1 of 187.
“the agenda today is simple,” she says. “how do we move faster while preserving our culture of not doing that?”
everyone nods.
then the door opens.
noam shazeer walks in.
the room goes silent.
noam: “i’m leaving.”
a vp of gemini reliability, brand, trust, latency, policy, and vibe raises a hand.
“leaving… this meeting?”
noam: “google.”
someone gasps. someone else opens a doc titled retention narrative draft final final noam v7.
sundar blinks once.
“noam, we brought you back.”
“for two point seven billion dollars.”
“technically you licensed some technology and reacquired talent.”
“that sentence is why we need legal in the room.”
legal is already there.
cut to: openai.
sam altman stands beside a whiteboard that just says ship.
an engineer walks by carrying a server rack and what appears to be the future.
sam: “we can offer speed, compute, and one meeting.”
noam: “one meeting per week?”
sam: “no. one meeting. total.”
back at google, the emergency retention committee forms instantly. it has 31 members.
a director says, “what if we give him a new title?”
“he already co-leads gemini.”
“distinguished super co-lead?”
“google fellow?”
“he already left google, founded a company, got brought back for billions, then left again. he’s folklore.”
meanwhile, a gemini launch review begins.
pm: “we’re ready to announce the model.”
policy: “can it answer questions?”
eng: “yes.”
policy: “too risky.”
marketing: “can we call it experimental?”
research: “the model is better than the last one.”
brand: “better is aggressive.”
trust & safety: “what about ‘more contextually adjacent to usefulness’?”
a staff engineer whispers, “openai just shipped a model while we were discussing the adjective.”
cut to noam’s exit interview.
hr: “what could google have done better?”
flashback montage:
a chatbot blocked because it might be too good.
a launch delayed because a button was the wrong shade of responsible blue.
a spreadsheet comparing twelve ai product names.
a meeting where someone says “we need a single coherent ai strategy” and three new strategies are created before lunch.
noam: “nothing comes to mind.”
hr: “great. we’ll mark that as positive attrition.”
later, sundar calls him privately.
“google is still google. best researchers. best infrastructure. billions of users.”
“yes.”
“so why leave?”
noam looks out the window.
“because you have everything except permission.”
silence.
sundar, softly: “we can create a permission working group.”
cut to all-hands.
sundar addresses the company.
“noam is leaving. this is not a loss. it is an opportunity to reflect on our operating model.”
chat explodes:
“is this recorded?”
“which gemini?”
“can we ask gemini why people keep leaving?”
“it said ‘insufficient context.’”
a vp steps up.
“to honor noam’s legacy, we’re launching project attention.”
applause.
“it will study whether attention is, in fact, all we need.”
a researcher raises a hand. “didn’t we answer that in 2017?”
“yes. but now we need enterprise readiness.”
final scene: noam arrives at openai. badge works instantly.
receptionist: “yeah, we just made one.”
no pre-read. no doc. just a whiteboard, five people, and a model running somewhere hot enough to toast bread.
sam: “ready?”
noam smiles.
cut back to google. a calendar invite appears:
meeting: reduce meetings task force kickoff
duration: 90 minutes
required attendees: 214
sundar sighs, opens gemini, and types:
“how do we move faster?”
gemini responds:
“have you considered leaving google?”
smash cut to credits.
Thinking through how absolutely scammy modern B2B pricing is getting. You've basically got the model providers charging you for input/output tokens (so they're not incentivized to be efficient), the application layer charging for "outcomes", and then the model providers on the other end saying they also deserve a cut of the profit you make if you make major discoveries / advances?
$META is reportedly testing paid subscription tiers across its apps:
• Instagram Plus: $3.99/month
• Facebook Plus: $3.99/month
• WhatsApp Plus: $2.99/month
Meta is turning extra app features into another recurring revenue layer across its massive user base.
Just released frfr—lightweight runtime type validation for Python.
One function. Zero dependencies. 57KB installed. Validates your dataclasses, TypedDicts, and NamedTuples directly.
That's the whole API. Here's why this exists:
When I was younger I assumed everyone wanted everything to be more efficient. That iteration and improvement was something all people could get behind. As I’ve gotten older I’ve realized this is not the case and my mistake was a core error in my mental model of the world and its institutions. Improvement has to be fought for. Status quo is by far the most popular position.
Micro-optimizations in social media are so wrong.
It’s taking the emphasis off of storytelling and more on attention hacking. I love YouTube because it’s harder to apply that kind of trickery into long-form content. A good story is captivating, most people on social media are using the little tricks because they’re pumping out content so fast and creating something captivating takes a lot of time and effort.
There are definitely a lot of other factors at play there (e.g. YouTube viewers are coming purely to watch long form content / are already committed. Tiktok viewers don’t have the same mentality so you have to hyper-optimize for the first 1 second to grab attention and hang on to it).
honestly it feels like meta has been the only one willing to gamble and ship something not completely perfect but they're willing to bet on. i'll take this over apple releasing the same iphone for the last 4 years
Does anyone have prioritization methods that actually work?
I feel like all I see are bloated frameworks that require a lot of estimation that don’t scale super well if you’re considering more than 3 projects at a time
@MKBHD I found my soundcloud covers from when i was 15 years old and have never cringed so hard. No desire to make music, definitely have not gotten better😂
This but for your beliefs and opinions. So many people just living with the same opinions with no defense other than “that’s just what i’ve always thought”.
Ok great but why do you think that😂
Underrated life advice: You can reinvent yourself as many times as you need. New habits. New standards. New people. New career. You’re never stuck. You’re allowed to change. Today, tomorrow, and as many times as it takes to create the life you want.
First 10% of building something is hard bc we’re often lazy and putting stuff off, last 20% is hard because you actually need to ship and sell.
The reality of the world is most projects will not get traction via word of mouth, you need to go get some eyeballs on the thing any way you can
Not sure about everything else in this post but i’m a huge proponent of “completely silent” working. I really think any music at all is too distracting for you to be 100% focused. Brown noise or meditation sounds are also ok but best case is just earplugs
Your highest genius state for deep focus & intellectual flow will be achieved in this way:
- No Coffee. At all.
- No Food. At all. (Minimum 3 days)
- No Music. At all (Not even classical)
- No Opinions from irredeemables and those with low quality thoughts. Their thoughts profane the purity of your intellect.
- No audiobooks, no noise. Wear earplugs.
- No gym; just kettlebells.
- No Alarm clock; sleep and wake up naturally.
- No Sex. Ejaculation diminishes astral flame.
- No Phone; no social media.
- No Movies/TV
- No Conversations, no news, no gossip.
Green tea throughout the day for consistent energy release without crash. You do not need extra supplements or drugs. I have tried them all - this is better. Absolute confidence in your God-given body.
- Study lamp and timer for 99 minute intervals.
- Whiteboard for cognitive maps and thought streams.
- Plain white paper, smooth writing pen (ballpoint German Hauser, black ink)
Few people will ever discipline themselves to do this, and petty excuses will always be made.
Ignore them, it is always cope. The language is mediocrity and gibberish. They will live their entire lives without experiencing genius state.
You can do 12-15+ hour focused days with this within 1 week.
You have no idea what your mind is capable of.
@Codie_Sanchez Planning addiction is real. Same reason people read endless self-help / productivity hacking books. It deceives you into thinking you’re making progress but you’re not
@yasser_elsaid_ The low barrier to entry rn is also whats pushing the bubble of “agentic software” that doesn’t actually add any value. Recent gartner report was interesting, legit useful AI software was rare
@signulll I think the first 10% and last 20% are the hardest. First 10 you’re overcoming laziness / social fears to just start the thing and last 20 you have to actually close it out. Last part is also hard bc a lot of people lack experience defining / knowing what “done” really looks like