Chris

#XO

[Chris @ChrisMUC97]

@elonmusk @ulfposh

[Chris @ChrisMUC97]

@boersenbelfort Geil wie easy ihr euch immer blenden lässt. Da kommen erstens locker 10k pro Jahr an Property Tax dazu plus ist das Ding nach dem ersten Hurrikane Geschichte und man zahlt dafür aber nochmal 5-10k pro Jahr an homeowner insurance 😉

[Praveen Neppalli @praveenTweets]

Agentic AI adoption is on fire at @Uber, and it's changing the way we build, not just in engineering, but across the entire company.

Today, 99% of our engineers use AI tools. More than 70% of pull requests are attributed to local or cloud agents. And our engineers have built 2,500+ agent skills across the software development lifecycle.
Those numbers are exciting, but they led us to a much bigger question:

How do we bring agentic AI beyond engineering?

Finance. Legal. Operations. Marketing. Customer Support. HR. Procurement.

These functions run on complex workflows that are often manual, highly nuanced, and spread across dozens of systems. You can't automate them effectively by looking at process diagrams or documentation. You have to understand how the work actually gets done.

So we created something called Agentic Pods.

The idea is simple.

We handpicked ~30 of our most AI-proficient engineers (people with deep knowledge of Uber's systems) and paired each of them with a domain expert from a business function.

Then we gave every pod just two weeks.
• Days 1 – 2: Shadow the expert. Observe every step. Document workflows. Ask questions. Build intuition.
• Day 3: Prioritize opportunities based on scale, repetition, business impact, and data availability.
• Days 4 – 5: Build a working agent alongside the person doing the job.
• Days 6 – 9: Validate with several others performing the same work. Does it generalize? Does it actually make their job better?
• Day 10: Ship.

In just the past two months, we've run 16 Agentic Pods across 16 different business functions.
• Capital allocation across 150 cities: 15 hours → 30 minutes.
• Financial pacing reports: 2 days → 10 minutes.
• Marketing web quality assurance: 2 weeks → 50 minutes.
• Support workflow creation: 9,000 manual workflows → self-service automation.

The productivity gains are impressive, but what surprised us most wasn't the speed.
• It was how quickly engineers embedded in unfamiliar domains uncovered opportunities that had been hiding in plain sight.
• The biggest wins rarely come from automating one task. They come from rethinking an entire workflow. Once you redesign the workflow around AI, you often eliminate handoffs, remove unnecessary approvals, replace legacy tooling, reduce vendor spend, and dramatically accelerate decision-making.
• The workflow becomes the unit of automation - not the individual task.
• The most impactful agent skills cut across teams, orgs, functions, tools, and systems.

The biggest lesson? The best AI opportunities are rarely visible from the outside.

You discover them by sitting next to the people doing the work, understanding every friction point, and building with them, not for them.

We're now forming a dedicated team to scale this further and go deeper. They'll deeply understand the work, redesign it from the ground up, and use AI to fundamentally change how the business operates.

It's exciting times!

[Chris @ChrisMUC97]

@julius95903 @sparbuchfeinde Noch nie so einen Blödsinn gelesen. Weil du natürlich jede Krise timen kannst du Held

[Chris @ChrisMUC97]

@friedberg @ulfposh @thinkBTO habt ihr das in der Welt oder in Mega schon mal gecovered? Unfassbar was da gerade in CA abgeht und leider auch mögliche Blaupause für DE

[Chris @ChrisMUC97]

@WhaleEverything @grok @NoLimitGains LFG

[Chris @ChrisMUC97]

@WhaleEverything @NoLimitGains @grok GOLD

[Chris @ChrisMUC97]

@WhaleEverything @NoLimitGains @grok Done

[Chris @ChrisMUC97]

@Jaxweah @NoLimitGains @grok Done

[Chris @ChrisMUC97]

@WhaleEverything @NoLimitGains @grok Done

[Chris @ChrisMUC97]

@WhaleEverything @NoLimitGains @grok Done

[Chris @ChrisMUC97]

@Mrcryptoxwhale @NoLimitGains @grok DONE

[Chris @ChrisMUC97]

@E_Boeminghaus Sie haben wohl noch nie was von Shared Services oder Global Business Services gehört. So ziemlich jeder DAX Konzern hat interne Services verlagert. Der Post ist einfach nur unnötige Panikmache. Munich Re nutzt einfach nur das aktuelle Momentum in Deutschland.

[Andrej Karpathy @karpathy]

I wrote a quick new post on "Digital Hygiene".

Basically there are some no-brainer decisions you can make in your life to dramatically improve the privacy and security of your computing and this post goes over some of them. Blog post link in the reply, but copy pasting below too.

Every now and then I get reminded about the vast fraud apparatus of the internet, re-invigorating my pursuit of basic digital hygiene around privacy/security of day to day computing. The sketchiness starts with major tech companies who are incentivized to build comprehensive profiles of you, to monetize it directly for advertising, or sell it off to professional data broker companies who further enrich, de-anonymize, cross-reference and resell it further. Inevitable and regular data breaches eventually runoff and collect your information into dark web archives, feeding into a whole underground spammer / scammer industry of hacks, phishing, ransomware, credit card fraud, identity theft, etc. This guide is a collection of the most basic digital hygiene tips, starting with the most basic to a bit more niche.

Password manager. Your passwords are your "first factor", i.e. "something you know". Do not be a noob and mint new, unique, hard passwords for every website or service that you sign up with. Combine this with a browser extension to create and Autofill them super fast. For example, I use and like 1Password. This prevents your passwords from 1) being easy to guess or crack, and 2) leaking one single time, and opening doors to many other services. In return, we now have a central location for all your 1st factors (passwords), so we must make sure to secure it thoroughly, which brings us to...

Hardware security key. The most critical services in your life (e.g. Google, or 1Password) must be additionally secured with a "2nd factor", i.e. "something you have". An attacker would have to be in possession of both factors to gain access to these services. The most common 2nd factor implemented by many services is a phone number, the idea being that you get a text message with a pin code to enter in addition to your password. Clearly, this is much better than having no 2nd factor at all, but the use of a phone number is known to be extremely insecure due to the SIM swap attack. Basically, it turns out to be surprisingly easy for an attacker to call your phone company, pretend they are you, and get them to switch your phone number over to a new phone that they control. I know this sounds totally crazy but it is true, and I have many friends who are victims of this attack. Therefore, purchase and set up hardware security keys - the industrial strength protection standard. In particular, I like and use YubiKey. These devices generate and store a private key on the device secure element itself, so the private key is never materialized on a suspiciously general purpose computing device like your laptop. Once you set these up, an attacker will not only need to know your password, but have physical possession of your security key to log in to a service. Your risk of getting pwned has just decreased by about 1000X. Purchase and set up 2-3 keys and store them in different physical locations to prevent lockout should you physically lose one of the keys. The security keys support a few authentication methods. Look for "U2F" in the 2nd factor settings of your service as the strongest protection. E.g. Google and 1Password support it. Fallback on "TOTP" if you have to, and note that your YubiKeys can store TOTP private keys, so you can use the YubiKey Authenticator app to access them easily through NFC by touching your key to the phone to get your pin when logging in. This is significantly better than storing TOTP private keys on other (software) authenticator apps, because again you should not trust general purpose computing devices. It is beyond the scope of this post to go into full detail, but basically I strongly recommend the use of 2-3 YubiKeys to dramatically strengthen your digital security.

Biometrics. Biometrics are the third common authentication factor ("something you are"). E.g. if you're on iOS I recommend setting up FaceID basically everywhere, e.g. to access the 1Password app and such.

Security questions. Dinosaur businesses are obsessed with the idea of security questions like "what is your mother's maidan name?", and force you to set them up from time to time. Clearly, these are in the category of "something you know" so they are basically passwords, but conveniently for scammers, they are easy to research out on the open internet and you should refuse any prompts to participate in this ridiculous "security" exercise. Instead, treat security questions like passwords, generate random answers to random questions, and store them in your 1Password along with your passwords.

Disk encryption. Always ensure that your computers use disk encryption. For example, on Macs this total no-brainer feature is called "File Vault". This feature ensures that if your computer gets stolen, an attacker won't be able to get the hard disk and go to town on all your data.

Internet of Things. More like @internetofshit. Whenever possible, avoid "smart" devices, which are essentially incredibly insecure, internet-connected computers that gather tons of data, get hacked all the time, and that people willingly place into their homes. These things have microphones, and they routinely send data back to the mothership for analytics and to "improve customer experience" lol ok. As an example, in my younger and naive years I once purchased a CO2 monitor from China that demanded to know everything about me and my precise physical location before it would tell me the amount of CO2 in my room. These devices are a huge and very common attack surface on your privacy and security and should be avoided.

Messaging. I recommend Signal instead of text messages because it end-to-end encrypts all your communications. In addition, it does not store metadata like many other apps do (e.g. iMessage, WhatsApp). Turn on disappearing messages (e.g. 90 days default is good). In my experience they are an information vulnerability with no significant upside.

Browser. I recommend Brave browser, which is a privacy-first browser based on Chromium. That means that basically all Chrome extensions work out of the box and the browser feels like Chrome, but without Google having front row seats to your entire digital life.

Search engine. I recommend Brave search, which you can set up as your default in the browser settings. Brave Search is a privacy-first search engine with its own index, unlike e.g. Duck Duck Go which basically a nice skin for Bing, and is forced into weird partnerships with Microsoft that compromise user privacy. As with all services on this list, I pay $3/mo for Brave Premium because I prefer to be the customer, not the product in my digital life. I find that empirically, about 95% of my search engine queries are super simple website lookups, with the search engine basically acting as a tiny DNS. And if you're not finding what you're looking for, fallback to Google by just prepending "!g" to your search query, which will redirect it to Google.

Credit cards. Mint new, unique credit cards per merchant. There is no need to use one credit card on many services. This allows them to "link up" your purchasing across different services, and additionally it opens you up to credit card fraud because the services might leak your credit card number. I like and use privacy dot com to mint new credit cards for every single transaction or merchant. You get a nice interface for all your spending and notifications for each swipe. You can also set limits on each credit card (e.g. $50/month etc.), which dramatically decreases the risk of being charged more than you expect. Additionally, with a privacy dot com card you get to enter totally random information for your name and address when filling out billing information. This is huge, because there is simply no need and totally crazy that random internet merchants should be given your physical address. Which brings me to...

Address. There is no need to give out your physical address to the majority of random services and merchants on the internet. Use a virtual mail service. I currently use Earth Class Mail but tbh I'm a bit embarrassed by that and I'm looking to switch to Virtual Post Mail due to its much strong commitments to privacy, security, and its ownership structure and reputation. In any case, you get an address you can give out, they receive your mail, they scan it and digitize it, they have an app for you to quickly see it, and you can decide what to do with it (e.g. shred, forward, etc.). Not only do you gain security and privacy but also quite a bit of convenience.

Email. I still use gmail just due to sheer convenience, but I've started to partially use Proton Mail as well. And while we're on email, a few more thoughts. Never click on any link inside any email you receive. Email addresses are extremely easy to spoof and you can never be guaranteed that the email you got is a phishing email from a scammer. Instead, I manually navigate to any service of interest and log in from there. In addition, disable image loading by default in your email's settings. If you get an email that requires you to see images, you can click on "show images" to see them and it's not a big deal at all. This is important because many services use embedded images to track you - they hide information inside the image URL you get, so when your email client loads the image, they can see that you opened the email. There's just no need for that. Additionally, confusing images are one way scammers hide information to avoid being filtered by email servers as scam / spam.

VPN. If you wish to hide your IP/location to services, you can do so via VPN indirection. I recommend Mullvad VPN. I keep VPN off by default, but enable it selectively when I'm dealing with services I trust less and want more protection from.

DNS-based blocker. You can block ads by blocking entire domains at the DNS level. I like and use NextDNS, which blocks all kinds of ads and trackers. For more advanced users who like to tinker, pi-hole is the physical alternative.

Network monitor. I like and use The Little Snitch, which I have installed and running on my MacBook. This lets you see which apps are communicating, how much data and when, so you can keep track of what apps on your computer "call home" and how often. Any app that communicates too much is sus, and should potentially be uninstalled if you don't expect the traffic.

I just want to live a secure digital life and establish harmonious relationships with products and services that leak only the necessary information. And I wish to pay for the software I use so that incentives are aligned and so that I am the customer. This is not trivial, but it is possible to approach with some determination and discipline.

Finally, what's not on the list. I mostly still use Gmail + Gsuite because it's just too convenient and pervasive. I also use 𝕏 instead of something exotic (e.g. Mastodon), trading off sovereignty for convenience. I don't use a VoIP burner phone service (e.g. MySudo) but I am interested in it. I don't really mint new/unique email addresses but I want to. The journey continues. Let me know if there are other digital hygiene tips and tricks that should be on this list.

Link to blog post version in the reply, on my brand new Bear ʕ•ᴥ•ʔ blog cute 👇

[Mark Nelson @energybants]

I just can't quit on Germany. Now @jposhaughnessy is backing me with $100k to work with Germans to try to restart their nuclear program.

Here's the situation:

Weak German leaders decided to depend on Russian gas instead of German nuclear, and failed to reverse the mistake when Russian gas stopped being an option.

Despite a majority of Germans wanting to keep using nuclear, German reactors are being torn apart right now.

Germany is still planning to build a bunch of natural gas plants to replace coal and nuclear, but is now buying most of its natural gas from America. My family produces natural gas. It would be easy to give up, sit back, and make money off of Germany as their industries fail.

But I won't. A strong, energy-independent Germany is good for Europe and good for the world. And while Germany remains anti-nuclear, Berlin spends German taxpayer money trying to hurt other countries' nuclear energy ambitions around the EU and the world.

So I'm going to put together a conference about nuclear power plant restarts in Berlin in the first half of this year.

We'll explain how America is restarting nuclear plants, how Germany's neighbors are turning back towards nuclear, and what it would take to turn on the German plants again.

One German nuclear plant could return to service by the end of next year, and two more by 2028.

German nuclear power, even after spending millions to low billions to restart plants, would remain the cheapest reliable electricity option for German industry and homes.

Restarted German nuclear plants could operate for another 40 years or more.

I couldn't do any of this work without incredible help from Germans who can't stand to see their country crippled and dependent. If you're German and reading this, please get in touch so we can bring you onboard.

And thanks to Jim and his team for the fellowship and believing in a better future for Germany and for Europe.

[Chris @ChrisMUC97]

@lange_tobias_hh @krusehamburg Sagt die Person, die „noElon“ in der Bio stehen hat 🤣🤣

[Chris @ChrisMUC97]

@stats_feed Biggest BS statistic ever lol
NY and SF before Zurich , wtf?
And Frankfurt which is one of the most dangerous German cities before Munich etc.

[Chris @ChrisMUC97]

@MichaelAArouet Dude your entire freakin account consist of bashing Germany. I’m also so damn tired of Germany‘s elite class but I’m even more tired of your tweets
Get a job douche

[Chris @ChrisMUC97]

@OliLondonTV This is „bonfire of vanities“ in real life 40 years later

[Sophia Proneikos @Pergament_F]

Umberto Eco, who owned 50,000 books, had this to say about home libraries:

"It is foolish to think that you have to read all the books you buy, as it is foolish to criticize those who buy more books than they will ever be able to read. It would be like saying that you should use all the cutlery or glasses or screwdrivers or drill bits you bought before buying new ones.

"There are things in life that we need to always have plenty of supplies, even if we will only use a small portion.

"If, for example, we consider books as medicine, we understand that it is good to have many at home rather than a few: when you want to feel better, then you go to the 'medicine closet' and choose a book. Not a random one, but the right book for that moment. That's why you should always have a nutrition choice!

"Those who buy only one book, read only that one and then get rid of it. They simply apply the consumer mentality to books, that is, they consider them a consumer product, a good. Those who love books know that a book is anything but a commodity."