Adam Waters

Co-founder @Cloudscaling. AI Infrastructure Builder. Mentor Stanford Hacking for Defense. Rugged Individualist. 🇺🇸

[Adam Waters @adamwaters]

It's just infinite bangers from @justinskycak. If I owned a billboard I'd link it to his Twitter stream.

[Justin Skycak @justinskycak]

Much conventional advice about "finding yourself" is backward because identity is often discovered through action rather than introspection.

[Adam Waters @adamwaters]

In other words kids - show me what you built, not your diploma.

[Justin Skycak @justinskycak]

Grades, diplomas, credentials in general, are becoming increasingly disconnected from demonstrated mastery.

[Adam Waters @adamwaters]

True. Open source AI is the way.

[Brian Roemmele @BrianRoemmele]

Just like with AI today the arrogance of Anthropic (IBM) and OpenAI (DEC) mirrors the arrogance of the computer giants.

They would not even call what we soldered toys, that would come with the Apple Ii.

Today the Dario’s and Sam’s of the world laugh at us with our open source models and mods they never thought of.

It is not a guess where AI will go after they are done with fear games and government manipulation.

We have the fire.

When they are gone we will keep the place warm for you…

[Cristian @cristiannmillo]

Esto es espectacular como se movió Marruecos defensivamente. Esto se entrena. No es aleatorio. Tremendo bloque corto defensivo. Imposible de entrar sin alguna magia o pase filtrado con extrema exactitud. Por eso Brasil se la pasó lateralizando.

[Adam Waters @adamwaters]

@minilek The Academic Senate voted 51-0 to keep the SAT. The Regents? 23-0 to banish it. Seriously now, what is the median SAT of a UC Regent.... inquiring minds and all that.

[Adam Waters @adamwaters]

@Dale_Chu @imkahloon @TheAtlantic It also means some kid who studied hard was robbed of their rightful spot.

[Adam Waters @adamwaters]

@BSaarX RICO.

[Adam Waters @adamwaters]

@beffjezos @elonmusk This is shockingly true having seen the X team in action.

[Adam Waters @adamwaters]

@vc Houses, mate. Plural. He owns three.

[Adam Waters @adamwaters]

@sfmcguire79 The UC Academic Senate voted 51-0 to keep the SAT. The Regents voted 23-0 to get rid of it. Then blithely settled the lawsuit that prompted this madness.

https://t.co/MgbkuBxhbJ

[Adam Waters @adamwaters]

Totally.

[Elad Gil @eladgil]

The events of the last 6 months in technology are arguable amongst the most important in human history

The tools now increasingly exist for recursive self improvement of models & agents

We are likely in very early lift off & exponential

Largely unnoticed outside of tech

[Neetu Arnold @neetu_arnold]

Update: the open letter to restore standardized tests in STEM admissions at UC crossed 850 signatures

Still 7/9 UC Math chairs

37 STEM chairs

We even have an engineering dean

[Adam Waters @adamwaters]

If only. It's actually worse - they actively prevent kids from learning math at their skill level because "it's racist".

[Noah Smith 🐇🇺🇸🇺🇦🇹🇼 @Noahpinion]

The progressive idea of "Let's make everyone equal at math by just not making anyone learn math" is going just about as well as you'd expect

[Adam Waters @adamwaters]

@dim0kq The Stanford Hacking for Defense partnership with Ukraine is awesome.

[Adam Waters @adamwaters]

A totally sane Democrat. Guys like Mahan really need to take their party back over.

[Mayor Matt Mahan @MattMahanSJ]

UC STEM faculty are absolutely right, and this change is long overdue.

We’re doing our kids a disservice and putting at risk the reputation of the world’s best public university system. As Governor, I’ll bring back SAT/ACT scores as part of the admissions criteria for STEM degree applicants.

[Adam Waters @adamwaters]

@pitdesi UC admissions is rotten, no doubt. But the far bigger crime is California public K-12 schools robbing their 5.7m students of a decent education. No wonder enrollment is plummeting.

[Jack @tracewoodgrains]

There was never a point at which the public supported the elimination of academically advanced classes. Residents of blue states overwhelmingly oppose it. Despite this, Experts spent generations building the dogma that it was not only pedagogically sound but a moral necessity.

[Adam Waters @adamwaters]

@pmarca Introduced by Mia Bonta, wife of Rob Bonta, our CA Attorney General. Oh, and here they are in the back of a limo partying with a gangster facing federal prison for bribing the mayor of Oakland.

[Adam Waters @adamwaters]

It's a revolt. https://t.co/xB4y4ZoKba

[Neetu Arnold @neetu_arnold]

University of California STEM professors want standardized tests back due to severe math deficiencies among students:

“We now observe preparation gaps so severe that instructors must reteach middle school mathematics”

“The current admissions metric, based primarily on GPA & essays, can no longer reliably distinguish readiness for university-level STEM majors in an era of severe grade inflation & AI assisted application essays”

[Adam Waters @adamwaters]

RETVRN

[Aakash Gupta @aakashgupta]

That water clarity is an engineering decision, and the math behind it is wilder than the video.

Roman aqueducts ran on gravity alone. No pumps, no pressure systems. Engineers carved channels with a gradient so shallow it borders on absurd. The Pont du Gard in southern France drops 2.5 centimeters over 275 meters. That's roughly the thickness of a coin over the length of three football fields. They surveyed that accuracy with plumb lines and wooden leveling instruments.

The clarity you're seeing is a direct product of flow velocity. Too steep and the water erodes the channel walls, picks up sediment, turns brown. Too flat and it stagnates. Roman engineers targeted a slope of about 20 centimeters per kilometer, which kept the water moving fast enough to stay fresh but slow enough to stay clear. Before the water reached the city, it passed through multi-chamber settling tanks where velocity dropped near zero. Suspended particles sank. Clean water flowed out the top into the next chamber. Repeat three or four times.

Pliny specified the minimum slope in writing. Vitruvius published the exact mortar ratio for hydraulic cement: one part lime to two parts volcanic ash for underwater work. The pozzolana from Pozzuoli reacted with water to form a calcium-aluminum-silicate compound that actually gets stronger the longer it sits submerged. Modern concrete degrades in water. Roman concrete bonds with it.

Scale the whole system and it gets harder to process. Eleven aqueducts fed Rome at its peak. Combined output: roughly 1 million cubic meters of water per day. That works out to about 250 gallons per person for a city of one million. Modern New York delivers about 125 gallons per person per day. Ancient Rome had access to double the per capita water supply of the largest city in the United States, running entirely on slope and stone.

The Trevi Fountain in Rome is still fed by one of them. Two thousand years, same source, same gravity, same water.