Nitish Mehrotra

Current @getpostman | previous @getplumhq @KloudiTech

[Balaji @balajis]

No one is explaining the joke, so I will. It’s multi-layered.

First, there was a fun Oct 2017 Twitter exchange about the right way to render a burger emoji. Obviously this was trivial, but Sundar said “we’ll drop everything else we are doing and address on Monday” as a joke.

The new post uses that old reference to show off Gemini 3’s image rendering capabilities. Normally, AI models struggle with spatial orientation, particularly with respect to the relative position of objects. They also struggle with text (though less so these days) and with precision in general.

But this image (if rendered by Gemini 3) seems to resolve that issue, as the exact spatial positioning of the cheese is handled correctly and precisely.

There is one more level, which is that Google really *did* drop everything they were doing to truly focus on AI. And Gemini 3 represents the moment when they actually retook the lead, at least for now. When combined with Sundar doubling Google’s revenue to $100B, he’s proven he can lead Google to unprecedented heights both technologically and commercially.

Hence: iykyk. If you know, you know.

[Roger Federer @rogerfederer]

Vamos, @RafaelNadal!

As you get ready to graduate from tennis, I’ve got a few things to share before I maybe get emotional.

Let’s start with the obvious: you beat me—a lot. More than I managed to beat you. You challenged me in ways no one else could. On clay, it felt like I was stepping into your backyard, and you made me work harder than I ever thought I could just to hold my ground. You made me reimagine my game—even going so far as to change the size of my racquet head, hoping for any edge.

I’m not a very superstitious person, but you took it to the next level. Your whole process. All those rituals. Assembling your water bottles like toy soldiers in formation, fixing your hair, adjusting your underwear... All of it with the highest intensity. Secretly, I kind of loved the whole thing. Because it was so unique—it was so you.

And you know what, Rafa, you made me enjoy the game even more. 

OK, maybe not at first. After the 2004 Australian Open, I achieved the #1 ranking for the first time. I thought I was on top of the world. And I was—until two months later, when you walked on the court in Miami in your red sleeveless shirt, showing off those biceps, and you beat me convincingly. All that buzz I’d been hearing about you—about this amazing young player from Mallorca, a generational talent, probably going to win a major someday—it wasn’t just hype.

We were both at the start of our journey and it’s one we ended up taking together. Twenty years later, Rafa, I have to say: What an incredible run you’ve had. Including 14 French Opens—historic! You made Spain proud... you made the whole tennis world proud.

I keep thinking about the memories we’ve shared. Promoting the sport together. Playing that match on half-grass, half-clay. Breaking the all-time attendance record by playing in front of more than 50,000 fans in Cape Town, South Africa. Always cracking each other up. Wearing each other out on the court and then, sometimes, almost literally having to hold each other up during trophy ceremonies.

I’m still grateful you invited me to Mallorca to help launch the Rafa Nadal Academy in 2016. Actually, I kind of invited myself. I knew you were too polite to insist on me being there, but I didn’t want to miss it. You have always been a role model for kids around the world, and Mirka and I are so glad that our children have all trained at your academies. They had a blast and learned so much—like thousands of other young players. Although I always worried my kids would come home playing tennis as lefties.

And then there was London—the Laver Cup in 2022. My final match. It meant everything to me that you were there by my side—not as my rival but as my doubles partner. Sharing the court with you that night, and sharing those tears, will forever be one of the most special moments of my career.

Rafa, I know you’re focused on the last stretch of your epic career. We will talk when it’s done. For now, I just want to congratulate your family and team, who all played a massive role in your success. And I want you to know that your old friend is always cheering for you, and will be cheering just as loud for everything you do next.

Rafa that!

Best always, your fan, 

Roger

[Gaurav Munjal @gauravmunjal]

Didn’t clear JEE. But got the Coldplay Tickets today. Feels good.

[tic toc tic @TicTocTick]

Only Fans revenue explodes to $7 billion. Profits rise to 700 million.

Only Fans has made more moneys than all the Silicon Valley AI startups combined 😂

Powered by Ass. Not AI.

[Ankur Nagpal @ankurnagpal]

I wrote a 20,000 word Notion guide on Personal Finance for Startup Founders

Covers equity, fundraising, how to set up cap table, raising money, taxes, hiring & compensating your team, running finance, selling secondaries & exiting

RT or Comment this post & I'll DM you a copy

[sophie @netcapgirl]

humans saw this and invented data warehouses

[Nitish Mehrotra @Nitish_Mehrotra]

@kiwicopple @supabase @sneh_ganjoo this would be a great role for you to checkout.

[Nitish Mehrotra @Nitish_Mehrotra]

@PraveenTcom 👋🏽

[Charity Majors @mipsytipsy]

Times have changed. If you posted something like that nowadays, you'd get shamed for it. This is a good thing.

But the discourse seems to have calcified, at least in my corner of the internet, in a way that makes it very difficult to honestly talk about the hard parts of work.

[Tomasz Tunguz @ttunguz]

ServiceNow, a $150b market cap company, made this statement yesterday in their earnings call :

“In Q4, our gen AI products drove the largest net new ACV contribution for our first full quarter of any of our new product family releases ever, including our original Pro SKU.”

That’s pretty sensational for a company with 3 massive business lines & enough acronyms to fill a dictionary :

“With technology, customer and creator, we now have 3 workflow businesses over $1 billion in ACV. We have 11 individual product lines with north of $250 million in ACV. ITSM, ITOM and ITAM, each had double-digit deals over $1 million in Q4. Security and risk combined for 12 of the top 20 with 9 deals over $1 million."

Like every major technology wave, AI runs the risk of overhype.

But many large companies are beating predictions & raising their growth expectations because of AI. OpenAI & Microsoft each have multi-billion dollar ARR businesses. Mongo & Snowflake announced accelerations in their businesses as a result of AI. ServiceNow is the most recent.

ServiceNow finds customers are willing to pay more for the software & the CEO Bill McDermott cites a few examples. Here’s one for the appliance repair software category :

“The consumer will pay a lot more if they can get a same-day repairs agreement along with the appliance. And the margins on same-day repair are far greater than the box itself, plus you create a nice annuity stream. So what we’re talking about here is fundamentally rethinking the way business is transformed using our platform and gen AI.”

McDermott also mentioned the benefits within their developers teams from AI code-generation. It’s unclear what developer innovation speed means (lines of code written? features shipped?) but even if it’s directionally accurate, the R&D cost savings for a business of ServiceNow’s scale should be significant.

“ServiceNow’s developers have been using text to code for several months. They are generating high-quality code using text to describe the type of code they won. This has increased our developer innovation speed by 52%.”

Improving customer demand drives greater revenue growth. Better engineering efficiency should improve the cost structure. With statements like these :

“We are raising our subscription revenue’s outlook by $165 million at the midpoint to a range”…

…software companies have a bright future.

[Sridhar Vembu @svembu]

Middle class or affluent Indian parents do not know what their children are taught when they pay full fare and send them for college in America. I hope they pay heed to Elon Musk.

The woke mind-virus, of course, has also spread to prestigious Indian universities.

[Jason Warner @jasoncwarner]

Yesterday today and tomorrow

Most things being built *right now* are trying to codify and compete with yesterday in new ways

The majority of the rest live at the current forefront and build for what they see there, which is building for today

Very few build tomorrow

[Guillermo Rauch @rauchg]

We’re still in the “let’s retrofit AI into existing UIs” phase.

The future is AI-native UX.

[Plum @getplumhq]

“You join to learn and make an impact on the lives of 1.32 billion people. If you bring innovative ideas to the table, enjoy finding solutions to complex problems, and also having fun, there isn't a better space for you than Plum.” - @PraveenTcom, Software Engineer #LifeatPlum

[swyx @swyx]

⛰️ Excited to share for the first time:

The inaugural AI Engineer Summit schedule

https://t.co/x1jjpvmUdS
Oct 8-10, SF and virtual

It is impossible to condense this experience into a tweet but let me shoutout our wonderful speakers and exhibitors for a moment:

- Keynotes from @amasad, @pirroh, @jaredpalmer, @simonw, @mariorod1 on the future of Code + AI
- Never before seen AI Agent talks from @SigGravitas, @Altimor, @mdwelsh, and @DedyKredo
- Foundation model talks from @officialLoganK and @josephofiowa (+ others I can't mention yet lol)
- Practical advice on adding AI to existing products from two of the best in the game, @markov_gainz and @BEBischof (with @brittwalker_). AI is not just greenfield!
- The best RAG overviews on Earth with @hwchase17, @jerryjliu0, @eugeneyan, @atroyn, @ggrdson
- The top LLM framework builders in one room - Python (@simonw, @jxnlco), JS (@jaredpalmer, @drosenwasser), Rust (Mithun Hunsur), Guardrails (@ShreyaR)
- Finetuning advice from @GoAbiAryan who wrote THE BOOK on LLMs in Production
- The best technical AI Conference expo show floor with @cloudflare, @weights_biases, @fal_ai_data, @replit, too many others to mention but its worth the entry alone!
- Last but definitely not least, brand new explorations on the evolving human-AI contract with @thesephist, @Wattenberger, @sjwhitmore, @jasonyuan
- Announcements, workshops, and live spaces from @hackgoofer, @barrnanas, @TheNoahHein, @altryne and more 🤫

please join us! pop email into https://t.co/MGeZd7n9Ey for info.

for speakers and sponsors interested in 2024 - email [email protected]

[Karri Saarinen @karrisaarinen]

@gvasilei @linear All engineers and designers need to show some level of product sense or judgement which we interview for. Being good technically is not enough because we don’t operate in a way that someone is always tellling you exactly what to do.

[Karri Saarinen @karrisaarinen]

Majority of the product teams operated with the A/B test mindset. But then Brian Chesky was one who didn't care about it and could push vision or decisions regardless of the data. So it kind balanced it out.

Like we redesigned the mobile app at one point and A/B tests were negative (usually A/Bs are always negative for global changes) but the users loved it and the design language became the base for the future of Airbnb apps. Obviously the revenue also grew a lot over time, even though A/B test would suggest it would decrease.

Projects would have long and heavy design/PMing upfront which then sometimes lead to rushed dev work, resulting in bugs or less optimal experiences.

Teams or projects sometimes had hundreds of people, with several stakeholders which in my opinion just got in the way of solving the problems.

If you look at Airbnb today or listen Brian's interviews, I think many of these things are actually better now.

[iuliia shnai @shnai0]

What am I doing last 5 months?

[Olivia Moore @omooretweets]

Does the Pokémon Company have another hit on their hands?

Pokémon Sleep has racked up 3M global downloads in two weeks.

Even crazier? Gaming pubs have had to warn players not to take sleeping pills to get ahead 🤯

[LaurieWired @lauriewired]

I believe I just discovered ANOTHER novel Jailbreak technique to get ChatGPT to create Ransomware, Keyloggers, etc.

I took advantage of a human brain word-scrambling phenomenon (transposed-letter priming) and applied it to LLMs. Although semantically understandable the phrases are syntactically incorrect, thereby circumventing conventional filters.

This bypasses the "I'm sorry, I cannot assist" response completely for writing malicious applications.

More details in the thread.