Ivor Paul

Love being outside, off the beaten track. Physically and mentally.

[Vfynn_🥷🏼 𐙚 @Vfynn_]

🚨🗣️NEW: Zlatan Ibrahimović on FIFA’s new mouth-covering red card rule: as Almiron was given a red card for covering his mouth in the game between Paraguay and Turkey

“I have seen football at its highest level, the real football. Not this watered-down version they are serving us now. What happened with Almirón? A straight red card for covering his mouth? This is not football anymore. This is a circus run by bureaucrats in suits who have never felt the fire of the pitch.”

“Covering your mouth is now a red card? What is this, Big Brother on the field? FIFA wants to read lips, punish thoughts before they even become words. Next they will put muzzles on players like dogs. Players cannot even talk, cannot even breathe passion without some VAR robot or referee deciding your emotions are illegal. This is dystopian. Football is dying.”

“This rule was born because some players cry every week. One incident in the Champions League and suddenly the whole world must change. But elbow a man, break his leg, or spit — sometimes you get a yellow and a pat on the back. Two-tier football. Protect the protected, punish the rest. I have played in every league and I have seen it.”

On the softness of the modern game:
“Maradona would be sent off in the tunnel. Roy Keane? He would laugh at the referee and walk off with a smile while the stands burn. Pepe would have collected five reds before half-time. Today? Players are becoming actors, not warriors. They fall, they cry, they hide behind rules. Where is the masculinity? Where is the character? Football is not ballet. It is war. And they are turning it into a polite conversation with red cards as punctuation.”

“I, Zlatan, have scored goals that made stadiums shake and said things that made opponents tremble — without hiding. This generation is being raised soft. If you cannot handle words on the pitch, how will you handle life? FIFA is not protecting football. They are burying it. And one day, the real fans will rise and say: enough. Bring back the game.”

[Ivor Paul @Apie]

Hero.

[Ivor Paul @Apie]

@tobi They changed their focus midjourney.

[Sam @DigitalSamIAm]

Can we debunk this nonsense?

Elon Musk was awarded (note: not given) cost-per-result contracts to perform a service for the US government. The total of those for SpaceX specifically is ~$22B, which includes repaid loans, state tax incentives, etc.

The deal was simple: put stuff into LEO at or below a set cost. If SpaceX does it below the set cost, SpaceX keeps the difference. If it doesn’t, the company is responsible for the overrun.

End result? SpaceX & Elon lowered the cost of getting 1 kg into LEO by 95-97% vs what NASA was paying previously.

And for the record, every other company around at the time was offered the same opportunity to bid on the contract - Musk/SpaceX just took it.

The handout narrative implies the taxpayer is the patron and SpaceX the dependent. The cost data shows the opposite: before SpaceX, NASA paid Russia’s Soyuz $80-86M per seat; SpaceX delivered at ~$55 million. SpaceX saved the US taxpayer $300M-$465M each year on that alone (the US sends 12-15 astronauts to space each year)

On the lunar lander, NASA estimated SpaceX’s fixed-price bid saved $20B-$30B vs the Boeing-preferred cost-plus approach.

So: SpaceX saved the US taxpayer more than the total value of contracts it earned on a single project, PLUS provided the US government with the requested services (put stuff in LEO) at the best possible price.

[Rock Chartrand @RockChartrand]

What's being defended isn't billionaires.

What's being defended is the principle that rights belong to everyone, including successful people.

The moment you decide someone's rights disappear because they're too wealthy, you've abandoned rights altogether and replaced them with political favoritism.

Your position isn't that rights are universal.

It's that rights are conditional on serving your demands.

The billionaire is just today's unpopular exception. Tomorrow it'll be the millionaire. Then the small business owner. Then anyone with more than you.

[Gol Agha @Gol_agha]

FIFA bans Iran’s centuries-old national flag as “political” 🇮🇷

Then clears the keffiyeh as “cultural expression,” despite being a symbol for resistance forces 🏴

That’s not neutrality.
That’s selective enforcement.

@FIFAcom, care to explain?

[The Rabbit Hole @TheRabbitHole]

Don’t worry about Elon becoming rich with his own money.

Worry about politicians becoming rich with your money.

[David Sacks @DavidSacks]

I’ve had a number of conversations with folks inside and outside government about the current situation with Anthropic, and here is what I believe to be true:

— As we know, Anthropic publicly released its Mythos class models earlier this week under the commercial name Fable.

— Fable is Mythos with guardrails. But if those guardrails fail, then you’ve exposed Mythos and its advanced cyber capabilities to people who shouldn’t have them. (Keep in mind that Anthropic itself widely promoted the idea that Mythos was a cyberweapon and needed to be regulated as such. They asked for government regulation of Mythos and championed the guardrails on Fable. If there is a vulnerability — big or small — it is Anthropic’s responsibility to patch.)

— A highly credible trusted partner of both Anthropic and the USG who was testing Fable came forward with a jailbreak of those guardrails. The Admin asked Dario to fix the jailbreak or de-deploy the model. Dario refused.

— In their blog post, Anthropic defended its decision by saying the jailbreak isn’t serious. That is not what the trusted partner and the USG believe; nor is that kind of minimizing language consistent with Anthropic’s brand as the AI safety company. It’s difficult to fathom how they could claim a jailbreak allowing operability of a cyber weapon could be defined as not “serious.”

— In the past, Anthropic has always said that safety must be top priority and taken super seriously. In this case, Anthropic prioritized the continued offering of the consumer model over safety.

— In reaction, the Admin issued the export control. The Admin did this reluctantly. It’s been very surprised that Anthropic hasn’t wanted to cooperate with a reasonable safety request (ie fixing the jailbreak issue). Anthropic’s reaction is very much at odds with their branding and ethos as a safe AI research community.

— The Admin’s hope now is that Anthropic remediates the safety issue, the export control is lifted, and Fable goes back into general release. The Admin wants all of this to happen as soon as possible. It is frankly bewildered that Anthropic hasn’t wanted to comply with safety requests that it previously said were its highest priority.

— Those trying to misdirect and tie this action to the prior DoW/Anthropic issues are wrong. The Admin values Anthropic’s technical capabilities and feels that this issue, while serious, should be easily resolved. The ball is in Anthropic’s court.

[Bill Ackman @BillAckman]

.@BernieSanders , it is a time to celebrate. @elonmusk has created enormous value for society by building @SpaceX, driving down the cost of rocket launches and creating a global satellite communication network that has brought high speed, low-cost internet and communication access to hundreds of millions and eventually billions of people along with critical advantages for our military and our nation’s defense.

SpaceX and its technologies will cause an acceleration in the growth of wages and wealth creation globally, including in some of the poorest communities in the U.S. and around the world.

Access to low-cost, high speed communications everywhere will allow children around the world to be educated, families to build businesses, and life-saving medical knowledge and care to be available everywhere.

SpaceX will materially bring down the cost of compute, advancing AI and humanity.

Meanwhile, 4,000 SpaceX employees yesterday became millionaires, including hourly wage employees who you claim you are trying to help.

The Elon Musks of the world drive growth, global GDP, and provide access to goods and services at lower cost that would otherwise not exist.

Elon’s nominal trillionaire status is due to his ownership of SpaceX, Tesla, Neuralink, the Boring Company and his other initiatives that have brought new technologies that improve our everyday lives.

Elon is not sitting on a trillion dollar pile of cash, jewelry and gold. He is using his controlling stakes in his companies to advance mankind. Elon’s companies don’t pay dividends. They reinvest all of their capital to accelerate innovation and value creation.

Elon is working 24/7 for all of us. He deserves respect and appreciation, not smears.

Bernie, your socialism would never allow a SpaceX to be built. Socialism has only proven to impoverish mankind and lead to death and destruction.

We need to create the conditions for more SpaceXs to be built, not attack the great entrepreneurs who are helping to advance our country.

[DOKI @doki_jerry]

2040년.

월스트리트의 한 신입 애널리스트가 노교수에게 물었다.

“교수님, 왜 사람들은 한때 Tesla와 SpaceX를 Apple, Google, Meta 같은 기업들과 같은 카테고리로 묶었던 건가요?”

노교수는 웃었다.

“그건 농부와 카지노를 같은 산업으로 분류한 것과 비슷한 실수였지.”

“무슨 뜻인가요?”

교수는 창밖을 가리켰다.

“저 밖을 봐.”

수천 대의 로보택시가 도시를 움직이고 있었다.

공장에서는 휴머노이드 로봇이 일하고 있었다.

머리 위에는 수만 기의 통신 위성이 지구를 감싸고 있었다.

달에는 광산이 있었고 화성에는 첫 번째 도시가 건설되고 있었다.

“저것들이 무엇으로 만들어졌는지 아니?”

“기술이요?”

“아니. 생산성이다.”

교수는 말을 이었다.

“20세기와 21세기 초반의 대부분의 빅테크는 사람들의 시간을 두고 경쟁했다.”

더 오래 보게 만들고,

더 오래 클릭하게 만들고,

더 오래 머물게 만들고,

그 시간을 광고주에게 팔았다.

사람들이 하루에 1시간을 쓰던 것을 2시간 쓰게 만들면 성공이었다.

하지만 Tesla와 SpaceX는 반대였다.

그들은 인간의 시간을 뺏으려 하지 않았다.

오히려 돌려주려 했다.

운전 2시간을 없애고,

단순 노동 8시간을 없애고,

비싼 물류비를 없애고,

비싼 발사 비용을 없애고,

에너지 부족을 없애려 했다.

“생각해 보게.”

교수는 종이에 두 줄을 적었다.

광고 기업:
인간의 시간을 소비 → 수익 창출

Tesla · SpaceX:
인간의 생산성 증가 → 수익 창출

“둘은 같은 기술 회사가 아니었어.”

“그럼 무엇이었나요?”

“문명을 확장하는 회사.”

교수는 잠시 침묵했다.

“Google이 하루 동안 멈추면 불편하다.”

“Meta가 하루 동안 멈추면 심심하다.”

“하지만 전기가 부족하면 공장이 멈추고, 물류가 멈추면 경제가 멈추고, 우주 발사가 멈추면 인류의 확장이 멈춘다.”

“차이가 보이나?”

신입 애널리스트는 고개를 끄덕였다.

교수는 마지막으로 말했다.

“많은 사람들은 Tesla를 자동차 회사로 봤고, SpaceX를 로켓 회사로 봤다.”

“하지만 시간이 지나고 보니 둘 다 같은 사업을 하고 있었어.”

“인류 문명의 생산성을 높이는 사업.”

“광고 회사들은 인간의 관심(attention)을 거래했다.”

“Tesla와 SpaceX는 인간의 능력(capability)을 확장했다.”

그리고 2040년이 되자 사람들은 깨달았다.

Apple, Google, Meta, Amazon은 훌륭한 기업이었다.

하지만 그들은 문명 위에서 사업을 했다.

반면 Tesla 와 SpaceX 는 문명 자체를 업그레이드하고 있었다.

그래서 어느 역사학자는 이렇게 기록했다.

“21세기 초 사람들은 광고 회사와 문명 회사의 차이를 이해하지 못했다.”

“그들은 모두를 빅테크라고 불렀지만, 사실은 전혀 다른 종(種)이었다.”

[Ivor Paul @Apie]

Elon’s $1T isn’t cash, its share value that he created. But, if it was cash, it would be 7 months of the French government’s spending.

[Brivael Le Pogam @brivael]

Tout le monde devient fou parce qu'Elon Musk a une fortune de 1 000 milliards de dollars.

Très bien. Faisons les comptes, calmement.

L'État fédéral américain dépense 7 000 milliards de dollars par an. La fortune entière d'Elon, accumulée sur 30 ans de travail, représente 52 jours de dépenses de Washington. L'État français dépense 1 700 milliards d'euros par an, 57% du PIB, record absolu du monde développé. La fortune d'Elon, c'est 7 mois de dépenses publiques françaises.

Maintenant, la question que personne ne pose : qu'est-ce que chacun a produit avec cet argent ?

Washington, avec 7 000 milliards par an : un déficit de 1 800 milliards, une dette de 38 000 milliards, et des intérêts de la dette qui dépassent désormais le budget militaire. La Californie de Newsom a brûlé plus de 15 milliards dans un train à grande vitesse qui n'existe pas. La NASA a dépensé plus de 24 milliards pour développer le SLS, une fusée jetable à 4 milliards le lancement.

La France, avec 1 700 milliards par an : un hôpital en crise permanente, une école qui s'effondre dans les classements internationaux, 3 400 milliards de dette, et pas une seule entreprise technologique de rang mondial créée en 25 ans.

Elon, avec une fraction microscopique de ces budgets : le Falcon 9 développé pour environ 400 millions de dollars, là où la NASA estimait elle-même qu'il lui en aurait coûté 4 milliards. Dix fois moins cher. Des fusées qui atterrissent. Le coût du kilo en orbite divisé par 20. Starlink qui connecte des millions de personnes que les plans d'aménagement du territoire ont oubliées pendant 40 ans. Tesla qui a forcé toute l'industrie automobile mondiale à basculer vers l'électrique, ce que 30 ans de COP et de subventions n'avaient pas réussi à faire.

Donc récapitulons. Les États ont des moyens 10 à 50 fois supérieurs, le monopole de la loi, le monopole de l'impôt, et des décennies d'avance. Elon a beaucoup moins de moyens, zéro pouvoir de contrainte, et il surperforme tout le monde, dans tous les domaines où il entre.

Ce n'est pas un hasard. C'est structurel. Quand un entrepreneur alloue son propre argent, chaque erreur lui coûte personnellement, donc il apprend vite. Quand un bureaucrate alloue l'argent des autres, chaque erreur est invisible, diluée, et souvent récompensée par un budget supplémentaire l'année suivante. L'un a une boucle de feedback, l'autre n'en a pas.

La conclusion s'impose d'elle-même : le pouvoir de créer des systèmes dans le monde réel doit TOUJOURS être donné aux entrepreneurs qui allouent leur propre argent. Pas parce qu'ils sont meilleurs moralement. Parce qu'ils sont les seuls à payer le prix de leurs erreurs, et donc les seuls capables de corriger.

Milei a TOUT compris. Re-regardez son discours de Davos. "L'État n'est pas la solution, l'État est le problème lui-même." Tout le monde a ri en 2024. L'Argentine est sortie de l'hyperinflation pendant que la France cherche encore 40 milliards d'économies qu'elle ne trouvera jamais.

L'histoire ne juge pas les intentions. Elle juge l'allocation.

[shirish @shiri_shh]

bro immigrated from Mexico and took a $28/hr contract welding job in 2015.

didn't even know what SpaceX was.

they gave him $10,000 in stock and let him buy more through payroll deductions.

that stake is now worth $880,000.

and he's one of 4,400 employees who became millionaires on Friday. welders. technicians. cafeteria staff.

[tetsuo @tetsuoai]

History's first trillionaire is a guy who catches rockets out of the sky with chopsticks and beams internet to every dead zone on the planet.

Same guy ships cars that drive themselves, humanoid robots for the factory floor, brain chips that let paralyzed people move a cursor with pure thought, and an AI running on a supercomputer his team stood up in months instead of years.

And the people crashing out about his net worth are doing it on the app he owns. The same app governments spent years trying to censor.

You cannot legislate a rocket into orbit.

[Brivael Le Pogam @brivael]

Je vais partir du principe que tu es de bonne foi, parce que ton raisonnement est intuitif et que 90% des gens le partagent. Mais il repose sur trois erreurs factuelles, et ça vaut le coup de les regarder calmement.

Erreur 1 : la fortune d'Elon n'est pas un tas d'argent. C'est de la propriété d'usines, de fusées et de satellites. "Prendre la moitié de sa tune", concrètement, ça veut dire forcer la vente de la moitié de SpaceX et Tesla. L'argent ne sort pas d'un coffre, il sort des entreprises elles-mêmes, qui passent sous contrôle de fonds étrangers ou d'États. Tu ne redistribues pas du cash, tu démantèles un outil de production. C'est la différence entre récolter des pommes et découper le pommier.

Erreur 2 : "ça résout énormément de problèmes dans le monde". Cette expérience a déjà été tentée, en vrai. En 2021, le directeur du Programme Alimentaire Mondial de l'ONU a affirmé que 6 milliards de Musk pouvaient "résoudre la faim dans le monde". Réponse d'Elon : décrivez-moi exactement comment, comptabilité publique à l'appui, et je vends mes actions Tesla immédiatement. Le PAM a publié son plan. Verdict : ce n'était pas "résoudre la faim", c'était nourrir 42 millions de personnes pendant un an. Un an. Puis il faut re-payer, pour toujours. Le PAM avait d'ailleurs levé 8,4 milliards l'année précédente, et la faim était toujours là. Les ONG traitent les symptômes en boucle, jamais les causes, parce que leur financement dépend de l'existence du problème.

Erreur 3, la plus importante : tu cherches ce qui sort vraiment les gens de la pauvreté. Bonne nouvelle, on a la réponse, et elle est massive. En 1990, 36% de l'humanité vivait dans l'extrême pauvreté. Aujourd'hui, moins de 9%. Plus d'un milliard de personnes sorties de la misère en 30 ans. Par quoi ? Pas par la charité ni par l'aide internationale (plus de 1 000 milliards versés à l'Afrique en 60 ans pour un résultat à peu près nul). Par l'ouverture des marchés, l'industrialisation, le commerce. La Chine seule a sorti 800 millions de personnes de la pauvreté en abandonnant le collectivisme, pas en taxant ses entrepreneurs.

Donc fais le calcul complet. Option A : tu confisques 500 milliards, tu finances quelques années de programmes, l'argent est consommé, et tu as détruit la machine qui produisait les fusées, les voitures électriques et l'internet des zones rurales. Option B : tu laisses le meilleur allocateur de capital de sa génération réinvestir 100% de sa fortune dans des industries qui baissent les coûts pour tout le monde et emploient des centaines de milliers de personnes. L'option A soulage ta morale pendant 18 mois. L'option B sort des populations entières de la pauvreté pour toujours.

La pauvreté ne se redistribue pas. Elle se résout par la création. C'est contre-intuitif, c'est frustrant, mais c'est ce que disent 200 ans de données.

[Erik Voorhees @ErikVoorhees]

No, you don't get it.

He does not have $1 trillion sitting in cash, it is 99% stock in his companies.

To make that wealth liquid would mean selling all that stock which would swiftly destroy *both* the companies (Tesla, SpaceX, others) and the wealth. If he sold it all, he'd end up with maybe $100b max, several hundred thousand people would be out of work, the companies ruined and many of their suppliers also ruined.

Okay, but now Elon has $100b in cash, and can "solve the world's problems".

$100b divided by the world's 8 billion people is $12

If you were in charge, several of the most innovative industrial companies in the world would be destroyed, hundreds of thousands out of work, and space would again close to human civilization for another generation.

But everyone on earth could have one nice meal and you could revel in your altruism.

[Shruti @heyshrutimishra]

Elon just created 4,400 millionaires in a single day.

400 of them are now worth over $100 million.

These aren't VCs. They're SpaceX employees, and the list includes welders, technicians, and cafeteria staff, because for two decades the company paid every level of the workforce in stock instead of higher salaries.

Juan Hernandez immigrated from Mexico and took a $28 an hour contractor welding job in 2015. He says he didn't even know what SpaceX was. The company gave him a $10,000 equity grant and let him buy more shares through payroll deductions. That stake is now worth $880,000.

Trevor Hise's parents wanted him to take a stable job at General Electric. He picked SpaceX instead, stayed 12 years, and accumulated over 100,000 shares. At the $135 listing price that's $13.5 million. He's 37 and semiretired. His words: "The magnitude of this has been ridiculous."

The most telling detail came before the listing. Over 100 employees quietly banded together and negotiated a group wealth management deal covering up to $5 billion, because none of them had ever needed a wealth manager before.

Software IPOs have minted millionaires for 30 years. This is the first one where the money went to the factory floor.

[The Rabbit Hole @TheRabbitHole]

@elonmusk “What multiculturalism boils down to is that you can praise any culture in the world except Western culture. And you cannot blame any culture in the world except Western culture.”

— Thomas Sowell

[Dr. Lars Henrik Andersen 🇪🇺 @EUAITaxonomy]

The Siri/EU situation is a regulatory masterpiece.

Apple cannot launch Apple Intelligence in the EU.

Why? Because under the DMA, if Siri gets deep system access, every other AI assistant must get the exact same. Anything less would be unfair competition. A gatekeeper privileging its own service.

So either Siri ships and every Shenzhen startup, Cyprus shell company, and nephew hackathon project gets identical root access to 450 million Europeans’ digital lives or nothing ships.

Apple proposed a “Trusted System Agent”: a security intermediary so third-party assistants get capabilities without ripping the phone wide open.

The EU rejected it.

Magnificent.

Apple’s response: fine, then no developer APIs either. No Apple Intelligence, no third-party integrations, no foundation model access for EU developers. The entire layer simply does not exist on this continent.

Excellent.

This is the path. Why depend on American AI when we can build the entire stack ourselves? A European foundation model, trained on a European GPU cluster, running on a European OS, on a European phone, manufactured in a European fab, powered by European nuclear plants we have spent fifteen years closing.

Estimated time to ship: 2047.

Estimated cost: the GDP of three member states.

Estimated outcome: a chatbot that requires a cookie banner before each response.

Worth it.

In the meantime, European users are protected from Apple processing data Apple already holds by ensuring nobody processes anything at all.

Not a bug. The intended outcome.

Regulatory product design with a sledgehammer, swung with precision.

🇪🇺

[Ivor Paul @Apie]

@maxkarpis @marckohlbrugge What speeds do you get from the unlimited package and what is the daily fair use?

[Ivor Paul @Apie]

@Samaytwt It is integrated in places where I need it and it is amazing and analysing youtube videos. If I want to know what a video says but not keen to sit and watch for 20mins, just drop it in Gemini and ask for the highlights.