Vladimir Andral

Interested in product mgmt, real estate, blockchain, payments, and macro econ | Product @ Google Cloud | Former Product @ Fundrise/Visa/Amazon/BofA

[Not Jerome Powell @alifarhat79]

Lmaoooooo I’m crying

[Ray Dalio @RayDalio]

Now that the budget bill has passed Congress, we can see what the projections look like for deficits, government debt, and debt service expenses. In brief, the bill is expected to lead to spending of about $7 trillion a year with inflows of about $5 trillion a year, so the debt, which is now about 6x of the money taken in, 100 percent of GDP, and about $230,000 per American family, will rise over ten years to about 7.5x the money taken in, 130 percent of GDP, and $425,000 per family. That will increase interest and principal payments on the debt from about $10 trillion ($1 trillion in interest, $9 trillion in principal) to about $18 trillion (of which $2 trillion is interest payments), which will lead to either a big squeezing out (and cutting off) of spending and/or unimaginable tax increases, or a lot of printing and devaluing of money and pushing interest rates to unattractively low levels. This printing and devaluing is not good for those holding bonds as a storehold of wealth, and what’s bad for bonds and US credit markets is bad for everyone because the US Treasury market is the backbone of all capital markets, which are the backbones of our economic and social conditions. Unless this path is soon rectified to bring the budget deficit from roughly 7% of GDP to about 3% by making adjustments to spending, taxes, and interest rates, big, painful disruptions will likely occur.

[Vladimir Andral @VladAndral]

@amasad Replit is great, but please fix/add:
1) Recursive loops when agent tries to fix bugs
2) Doing things on its own without approval even after you've told it not to do so
3) Login/authentication issues
4) implement real testing of changes like a user would

[Simply Bitcoin @SimplyBitcoin]

BULLISH: Charles Schwab sees #Bitcoin hitting $500K–$1M with government adoption and says, "If you don’t have at least 10% of your portfolio in Bitcoin, you risk falling behind." 👀

[Paul Novosad @paulnovosad]

Fascinating paper on where 6000 global elites went to college. Billionaires, CEOs, heads of state, central bankers, etc.

In a word: Harvard.

Fully 10% of global elites went to Harvard. Elite US schools are over-represented (23% IvyPlus), but nobody comes close to Harvard.

🧵

[Brett Adcock @adcock_brett]

OpenAI + Figure

conversations with humans, on end-to-end neural networks:

→ OpenAI is providing visual reasoning & language understanding
→ Figure's neural networks are delivering fast, low level, dexterous robot actions

(thread below)

[Austin Rief ☕️ @austin_rief]

"After first 2-3 millions, a paid off home and a good car, there is no difference in qualify of life between you and Jeff Bezos"

Agree or disagree?

[Yashar Ali 🐘 @yashar]

Hillary Clinton on the Israelis and the Palestinians today on The View.

Covers everything from Hamas to humanitarian pauses to Yasser Arafat to Anwar Sadat.

[QE Infinity @StealthQE4]

Take a listen to this landlords story.

The surge in property taxes has turned his rental from nicely profitable to being in the hole monthly.

And he has a 2.25% mortgage!

The numbers in this are staggering.

[Marques Brownlee @MKBHD]

Having a hard time processing this... generative fill... for videos... built into Premiere

[Shreyas Doshi @shreyas]

“You are great at execution, the team loves you, but you need to be more strategic”

Hearing this feedback from your direct manager or your skip manager can be very confusing.

And for highly capable product people who consistently get things done, this theme of “you need to be more strategic” is extremely common. It is perhaps the most common feedback given to otherwise-competent PMs at some point in their career.

--

It starts showing up after you’ve rapidly ascended your company’s career ladder up to Sr. PM or Group PM. And once it starts showing up, it just will not go away. That is, until you fix it.

--

But here’s the trouble: it is incredibly confusing to know how to act on this feedback. As a further complication, while many managers / skip levels are happy to deliver this feedback, most of them either do not have the expertise or the time to create more clarity on how the employee should act on this feedback.

--

So let’s solve that.

First, if you receive the “you need to be more strategic” feedback, it doesn’t automatically mean that you should be looking to take a product strategy course or read a product strategy book.

Product strategy and being strategic are not always the same thing.

In practice, not all “you need to be more strategic” feedback is the same.

--

There are 3 distinct categories of this feedback:

1) More Product Thinking: You need to do more Product Thinking and less Project Thinking (see the image below if you’re curious about the differences between Product Thinking and Project Thinking)

2) New Opportunity Creation: You need to spend more time on creating new opportunities and the next big new business for your org & company (instead of being mainly focused on executing on and optimizing the current cash cow)

3) Actual Product Strategy: You need to clarify the vision and product strategy for your product (and make sure that the right people at the right levels in the right functions understand this vision & strategy, and are aligned to execute on it across the company)

--

#1 is usually the case for Sr. PMs / GPMs when they want to get to Director level.

#2 is usually the case for Director level folks who need to demonstrate impact above and beyond what would organically happen anyway.

#3 is usually the case for GPM / Director / VP level folks who are very good Operators, but haven’t yet found the time or built the skills to clarify a real product vision and strategy and get the broader org aligned towards it.

--

So if in the next perf review season you get the “you need to be more strategic” feedback, I suggest you use this framework to get more clarity from your manager on what you actually need to do to respond to their feedback.

[Mike Beckham @mikebeckhamsm]

We began manufacturing in America in 2022. We will make over a million bottles domestically in our first year.

I’ve learned first hand why it is so hard to build things in America.

For us, the biggest barrier hasn’t been wages or regulation.

[James Lavish @jameslavish]

We keep hearing how long bond yields are spiking higher.

Sounds ominous, but why? And more specifically, what does it mean for investors?

Time for a debt 🧵👇

[Borriss @_Borriss_]

Less than 31 hours since OpenAI started dropping the ChatGPT vision feature on pro users...

People are scratching their heads in disbelief.

10 wild examples:

[Lex Fridman @lexfridman]

Here's my conversation with Mark Zuckerberg, his 3rd time on the podcast, but this time we talked in the Metaverse as photorealistic avatars. This was one of the most incredible experiences of my life. It really felt like we were talking in-person, but we were miles apart 🤯 It's hard to put into words how awesome this was for someone like me who values the intimacy of in-person conversation. It gave me a glimpse of an exciting future with many new possibilities and fascinating questions about the nature of reality and human connection ❤

Timestamps:
0:00 - Introduction
0:52 - Metaverse
15:27 - Quest 3
30:16 - Nature of reality
34:54 - AI in the Metaverse
51:51 - Large language models
57:49 - Future of humanity

[Sam Altman @sama]

voice mode and vision for chatgpt! really worth a try. https://t.co/g8uA4QxXMb

[The All-In Podcast @theallinpod]

2,851 Miles by @bgurley from the @allinsummit

now available in full on @x

(0:00) 2,851 Miles
(24:44) In conversation with @bgurley

[Vladimir Andral @VladAndral]

Amazing AI live translator that syncs the speakers lips as well.

[gaut @0xgaut]

ok this is absolutely *wild*

using AI to live translate and sync your lips

[gaut @0xgaut]

ok this is absolutely *wild*

using AI to live translate and sync your lips

[Rowan Cheung @rowancheung]

AI continues to make unbelievable advances in healthcare.

Researchers have just created a brain implant that decodes thoughts into synthesized speech allowing paralyzed patients to communicate through a digital avatar.

This is incredible:

-The implant converts brain signals into text at nearly 80 words per minute, focusing on phonemes vs. whole words to enhance speed.

-The AI generates realistic vocals (mirroring a patient’s pre-injury voice) and facial animations that aim to enable more natural communication.

-The breakthrough brings the tech closer to real-world use, with the next step being a wireless model that doesn’t require a physical connection to the interface.

Restoring communication for those with paralysis is an innovation that would change countless lives.

While it sounds crazy, mind-reading implants seem to be inching closer to reality.