Razvan Turcu

software, product builder, cs @ucberkeley '24

[Raul Vintila @RaulVintila]

🤦

The first graph is showing better efficiency (CPA went from ~$205 to ~$182 in 26Q1).

The second graph is implying higher click volume, which in this case translates to higher conversion volume.

So we're looking at more conversion volume with better efficiency, yet everyone is saying this is a total collapse in performance.

You can't argue with math.

If we don't understand the most basic and fundamental equation in paid social (cpa=cpc/cvr), what are we even doing?

[Razvan Turcu @RazvanTurcu]

@alexcooldev move somewhere else bro you have the money

[Razvan Turcu @RazvanTurcu]

@donJulianLo What product are you running ads for?

[tim. @ygg0f]

lock in.

[Pope Francis – ARCHIVE @Pontifex266Arch]

Christ is risen! These words capture the entire meaning of our existence, for we were not made for death but for life. #Easter https://t.co/s8D2o4WCfV

[Razvan Turcu @RazvanTurcu]

@ionescumarkus @atletiuniverse clearly touched twice

[Trad West @trad_west_]

Real

[Andrej Karpathy @karpathy]

Agency > Intelligence

I had this intuitively wrong for decades, I think due to a pervasive cultural veneration of intelligence, various entertainment/media, obsession with IQ etc. Agency is significantly more powerful and significantly more scarce. Are you hiring for agency? Are we educating for agency? Are you acting as if you had 10X agency?

Grok explanation is ~close:

“Agency, as a personality trait, refers to an individual's capacity to take initiative, make decisions, and exert control over their actions and environment. It’s about being proactive rather than reactive—someone with high agency doesn’t just let life happen to them; they shape it. Think of it as a blend of self-efficacy, determination, and a sense of ownership over one’s path.

People with strong agency tend to set goals and pursue them with confidence, even in the face of obstacles. They’re the type to say, “I’ll figure it out,” and then actually do it. On the flip side, someone low in agency might feel more like a passenger in their own life, waiting for external forces—like luck, other people, or circumstances—to dictate what happens next.

It’s not quite the same as assertiveness or ambition, though it can overlap. Agency is quieter, more internal—it’s the belief that you *can* act, paired with the will to follow through. Psychologists often tie it to concepts like locus of control: high-agency folks lean toward an internal locus, feeling they steer their fate, while low-agency folks might lean external, seeing life as something that happens *to* them.”

[Andrew @andrewmichaelio]

"The difference between me and the other kids is that they would go to chess practice, they would maybe even do their homework, but they weren't living and breathing the game in the way that I was.

I would think about it all the time—like, I'm thinking about the game while I'm sitting on this chair, I'm still analyzing a game that I played today. It never goes completely out of my mind.

I think a lot of very good chess players do that, but casual chess players? No, of course not.

I think for anybody—if you want to be great at something, you have to be obsessed with it. And yeah, it has to come from within."

Magnus obsessed @zachpogrob🏴

[Razvan Turcu @RazvanTurcu]

@armankhon Super useful. Thank you!

[Mike Lee @BasedMikeLee]

Ban porn on @X

Who’s with me?

[Razvan Turcu @RazvanTurcu]

@catalinmpit What happened? You seem like an experienced engineer that would find a job easily in a normal market.

[Aravind Srinivas @AravSrinivas]

There’s a lot of misconception that China “just cloned” the outputs of openai. This is far from true and reflects incomplete understanding of how these models are trained in the first place. DeepSeek R1 has figured out RL finetuning. They wrote a whole paper on this topic called DeepSeek R1 Zero, where no SFT was used. And then combined it with some SFT to add domain knowledge with good rejection sampling (aka filtering). The main reason it’s so good is it learned reasoning from scratch rather than imitating other humans or models.

[ₕₐₘₚₜₒₙ @hamptonism]

This is what it takes.

[Legitimate Targets @LegitTargets]

🚨🇷🇴 NEW: THE CǍLIN GEORGESCU INTERVIEW

On today's episode of Legitimate Targets, Jackson Hinkle speaks with COUPED ROMANIAN Presidential Candidate Cǎlin Georgescu (@CG_Romania) about his fight for Romania's sovereignty & why he wants PEACE with RUSSIA.

[Alex Jones @RealAlexJones]

NATO officially cancels results of Romanian election! The Western controlled security services of Romania have officially staged a coup against the people!

[Ian Miles Cheong @ianmiles]

Almost a decade ago, UAE Foreign Minister HH Sheikh Abdullah bin Zayed warned Europe of what would happen if they continued down their path of suicidal altruism by inviting dangerous fanatics into their nations. They should have listened.

Are you listening now?

[Razvan Turcu @RazvanTurcu]

@elonmusk @RnaudBertrand The only chance that we currently have is for Elon Musk to buy Romania🥲