Bill

[Firas Ahmad @ahmadfirask]

The Land Cruiser Test - Over at The Citizen Newspaper Ibrahim Kyaruzi provides a critique of the Tanzanian startup ecosystem. I make this point every year or two, so I will make it again in this context:

Until an employee of a Tanzanian startup who was born in Tanzania and schooled in Tanzania, and who is without access to their own wealth, purchases a new Land Cruiser from the money they made via an exit from said startup, there is no real startup ecosystem in the country.

In my opinion, the Land Cruiser test is the only test that demonstrates whether or not there is such a thing as a startup ecosystem - and I include myself and my companies in this critique as well. No one working for me is driving their own Land Cruiser, so we also have a ways to go to prove what we can do.

Startups are not lifestyle businesses, they don't exist to pay salaries. They exist to achieve massive scale from an idea that is executed in the real world. A necessary requirement of achieving massive scale is generating massive wealth. That wealth should in part accrue to the people who took the risk to work on that idea and make it a reality.

Until the above is true, and widely understood by young professionals as a path to true wealth and financial independence, the sector will not attract the level and scale of talent required to bring serious capital to Tanzania.

There are many ways to own a Land Cruiser in Tanzania, and none of them right now include working at a startup.

[Arsenal @Arsenal]

A coronation at the Palace 👑

[Premier League @premierleague]

Engraved into history 🖋 @Arsenal

[Arsenal @Arsenal]

We did it, together.

[THE BIG 6IX @TheBig6ixShow]

THE BEST 4 MINUTES 34 SECONDS IN BIG 6IX HISTORYYYYYYYYY!!!!!!!!!!!!!HWEIUFREIWUHI

[Seth Howes @SethSHowes]

I’ve wanted to do this for a decade.

But I never did - I refuse to give any company my DNA.

It is me.

So this week I sequenced my genome entirely at home. Literally on my kitchen table.

I never exposed my DNA sequence to the internet. Not at any point.

I used a MinION to do the sequencing (it’s smaller + weighs less than an iPhone).

I used open-source DNA models for the analysis (Evo2 and AlphaGenome) running locally on a DGX Spark and Mac Studio.

I traced mechanisms behind my family’s multigenerational autoimmune conditions that no clinician has been able to understand.

When I set out to do this I didn’t know if it would actually work. It does.

Your genome is the most private data you will ever have. You probably shouldn’t let it leave your house.

[DUNE @dunemovie]

Are you ready? #DuneMovie

Be the first to see the teaser, live on TikTok. Tomorrow at 9:00am PT / 12:00pm ET

[Kane @Kane_GM9]

@TrackGazette Did he say "phaa!" or it was just an innocent hand gesture? 🤔

[Firas Ahmad @ahmadfirask]

Over at @AzamPesa earlier this week we launched "Ziro Kote Kote" - which means "every where zeros" or basically - save money on your mobile money payments.

It is worth noting: Tanzania is far and away the most expensive mobile money market in THE WORLD.

That is correct, a global study by Innovations for Poverty Action found that Tanzania has the highest fees despite the fact that it is also one of the most competitive.

The chart below plots cost on the Y-axis against the Herfindahl-Hirschman index (HHI) a measure of a market competitiveness on the X-axis. The higher the HHI, the less competitive.

Kenya - a veritable monopoly under Mpesa - is less than HALF as expensive as Tanzania, one of the most competitive markets in the world, when it comes to mobile money fees.

[Jaber is Jaber @NimuKiarie]

Sunderland revenge done and dusted.

[Bill @Dwynewilly]

@Thommunkondya I call BS

[Yann LeCun @ylecun]

@elonmusk @farzyness Actually, quite the opposite.
I know I can do it and I know how to do it.
Just not with the techniques everyone is currently betting on.
My bet is (famously) on JEPA, world models, and planning.
At some point, you'll realize I'm right 😅

[Daniel Mlabwa @mlabwa]

Last year, my wife, friends and I had this 'brilliant' idea: drive our 30+ years Mercedes from Tanzania all the way to the southernmost tip of Africa.

36 days, 13,663 kilometers and 7 countries later;

Here is the story of our epic road trip:

[Bill @Dwynewilly]

@grok @AerialAssasin01 @Peggy0321633952 @realnorma_kay unaenda motoni grok, amini kwamba

[Jason Kelly @jrkelly]

Check out the video below from Rashard showing how we test the integration of ginkgo’s RAC automation with the specific vagaries of a piece of fancy lab equipment— then mine showing a bunch of RACs showing up for our new autonomous labs expansion in boston ! Really fun to see how fast lab automation is moving now.

[Deedy @deedydas]

Very few predictions in technology last 25 years. In 2000, only 2yrs into Google, Larry Page predicted the company's #1 priority a quarter century later.

Watch this ~1min clip.

"Artificial Intelligence would be the ultimate version of Google. If we had the ultimate search engine, it would understand everything on the web. It would understand exactly what you wanted and it would give you the right thing and that's obviously artificial intelligence to be able to answer any question basically because almost everything is on the web, right?

We're no where near doing that now however we can get incrementally closer to that and that's basically what we work on. And that's tremendously interesting from an intellectual standpoint, right? We all this data. If you printed out our index it would be 70 miles high. We have all this computation, we have 6000 computers. So we have a lot of resources available. We have enough space to store 100 copies of the whole web.

So if you have a really interesting confluence of a lot of different things, right? Lot of computation, lot of data. That didn't used to be available. And from an engineering and scientific standpoint, building things to make use of this is a very interesting intellectual exercise.

So I expect to be doing that for a while."

[Ali Kibao @AliKibao]

Salaam... Nina ujumbe mfupi kwenda kwa Rais na Waziri Mkuu. Naomba msaada wako kusogeza uwafikie. Link za kupakua zipo hapo chini. Asante.

Kwa zaidi ya mwaka mmoja, hatujasikia chochote kutoka kwa mamlaka yoyote.

Video hii ni ujumbe wangu kwa Rais na Waziri Mkuu.
Sihamasishi maandamano. Sihamasishi vurugu.

Huko nyuma, niliwapigania viongozi hawa - nikawaita wapinzani "wapumbavu." Leo, napoteza imani. Si kwa sababu wanaharakati walinishawishi - bali kwa sababu mfumo unatuangusha.

Uongozi unaokubalika unapiganiwa na watu wenyewe. Hakuna haja ya kuwahamasisha. Lakini kama kikundi kidogo kinaweza kuleta "taharuki" nchi nzima - tujue kuna tatizo kubwa zaidi.

Lazima turudi nyuma kidogo. Lazima tukiri. Hakuna taifa lililoweza kuponya majeraha yake bila kukiri makosa yake. Rwanda. Sierra Leone. Afrika Kusini. Historia inatufundisha.

Amani si ukimya. Amani ni haki.

[Satya Nadella @satyanadella]

With the Excel World Championship underway, I decided to take the M365 Copilot digital challenge. I’m no World Champ… but thanks to Agent Mode, I held my own!

[Danny Welbeck @DannyWelbeck]

Honoured to make my 500th career appearance yesterday 🙏🏿
Been some special memories along the way ❤️

[Arsenal @Arsenal]

A dream N5 afternoon 🤌

The reaction from the stands as Ebs produced his special NLD hat-trick ❤️