ali

A software engineer aspiring to become less wrong everyday. Opinions are my own.

[ali @alimagdich]

omg when did so many rich nepo babies move to Munich ? #rhetorical

[ali @alimagdich]

Should I dox myself ?

[ali @alimagdich]

I made my side of the deal and now it’s your turn to deliver

[Palantir @PalantirTech]

Because we get asked a lot.

The Technological Republic, in brief.

1. Silicon Valley owes a moral debt to the country that made its rise possible. The engineering elite of Silicon Valley has an affirmative obligation to participate in the defense of the nation.

2. We must rebel against the tyranny of the apps. Is the iPhone our greatest creative if not crowning achievement as a civilization? The object has changed our lives, but it may also now be limiting and constraining our sense of the possible.

3. Free email is not enough. The decadence of a culture or civilization, and indeed its ruling class, will be forgiven only if that culture is capable of delivering economic growth and security for the public.

4. The limits of soft power, of soaring rhetoric alone, have been exposed. The ability of free and democratic societies to prevail requires something more than moral appeal. It requires hard power, and hard power in this century will be built on software.

5. The question is not whether A.I. weapons will be built; it is who will build them and for what purpose. Our adversaries will not pause to indulge in theatrical debates about the merits of developing technologies with critical military and national security applications. They will proceed.

6. National service should be a universal duty. We should, as a society, seriously consider moving away from an all-volunteer force and only fight the next war if everyone shares in the risk and the cost.

7. If a U.S. Marine asks for a better rifle, we should build it; and the same goes for software. We should as a country be capable of continuing a debate about the appropriateness of military action abroad while remaining unflinching in our commitment to those we have asked to step into harm’s way.

8. Public servants need not be our priests. Any business that compensated its employees in the way that the federal government compensates public servants would struggle to survive.

9. We should show far more grace towards those who have subjected themselves to public life. The eradication of any space for forgiveness—a jettisoning of any tolerance for the complexities and contradictions of the human psyche—may leave us with a cast of characters at the helm we will grow to regret.

10. The psychologization of modern politics is leading us astray. Those who look to the political arena to nourish their soul and sense of self, who rely too heavily on their internal life finding expression in people they may never meet, will be left disappointed.

11. Our society has grown too eager to hasten, and is often gleeful at, the demise of its enemies. The vanquishing of an opponent is a moment to pause, not rejoice.

12. The atomic age is ending. One age of deterrence, the atomic age, is ending, and a new era of deterrence built on A.I. is set to begin.

13. No other country in the history of the world has advanced progressive values more than this one. The United States is far from perfect. But it is easy to forget how much more opportunity exists in this country for those who are not hereditary elites than in any other nation on the planet.

14. American power has made possible an extraordinarily long peace. Too many have forgotten or perhaps take for granted that nearly a century of some version of peace has prevailed in the world without a great power military conflict. At least three generations — billions of people and their children and now grandchildren — have never known a world war.

15. The postwar neutering of Germany and Japan must be undone. The defanging of Germany was an overcorrection for which Europe is now paying a heavy price. A similar and highly theatrical commitment to Japanese pacifism will, if maintained, also threaten to shift the balance of power in Asia.

16. We should applaud those who attempt to build where the market has failed to act. The culture almost snickers at Musk’s interest in grand narrative, as if billionaires ought to simply stay in their lane of enriching themselves . . . . Any curiosity or genuine interest in the value of what he has created is essentially dismissed, or perhaps lurks from beneath a thinly veiled scorn.

17. Silicon Valley must play a role in addressing violent crime. Many politicians across the United States have essentially shrugged when it comes to violent crime, abandoning any serious efforts to address the problem or take on any risk with their constituencies or donors in coming up with solutions and experiments in what should be a desperate bid to save lives.

18. The ruthless exposure of the private lives of public figures drives far too much talent away from government service. The public arena—and the shallow and petty assaults against those who dare to do something other than enrich themselves—has become so unforgiving that the republic is left with a significant roster of ineffectual, empty vessels whose ambition one would forgive if there were any genuine belief structure lurking within.

19. The caution in public life that we unwittingly encourage is corrosive. Those who say nothing wrong often say nothing much at all.

20. The pervasive intolerance of religious belief in certain circles must be resisted. The elite’s intolerance of religious belief is perhaps one of the most telling signs that its political project constitutes a less open intellectual movement than many within it would claim.

21. Some cultures have produced vital advances; others remain dysfunctional and regressive. All cultures are now equal. Criticism and value judgments are forbidden. Yet this new dogma glosses over the fact that certain cultures and indeed subcultures . . . have produced wonders. Others have proven middling, and worse, regressive and harmful.

22. We must resist the shallow temptation of a vacant and hollow pluralism. We, in America and more broadly the West, have for the past half century resisted defining national cultures in the name of inclusivity. But inclusion into what?

Excerpts from the #1 New York Times Bestseller The Technological Republic: Hard Power, Soft Belief, and the Future of the West, by Alexander C. Karp & Nicholas W. Zamiska

https://t.co/8igjazz1On

[ali @alimagdich]

I was working from a cafe today and a group of ladies sat down next to me and started discussing how they are using agentic AI to create presents to their grandchildren. Is this the future we talked about 10-15 years ago ?

[ali @alimagdich]

Copenhagen March 2026

[le.hl @0xleegenz]

Walking alone through a foreign city at night and realizing how far you’ve come has to be a top 3 peak moment of all time

[BuBBliK @k1rallik]

> been paying $200/month for cloud AI APIs
> laptop: M2 MacBook, 16GB RAM
> tried running models locally, garbage quality after 4K tokens
> read this TurboQuant breakdown on Tuesday
> applied 3-bit KV cache compression
> same MacBook now runs 100K token conversations
> quality: identical to cloud
> cancelled all API subscriptions Wednesday
> it's been 3 days
> saved $200/month forever
> with a free algorithm from a free paper
> my MacBook didn't change. the math did

[Matt @matt503ea5sf9z5]

They're doing drone strikes with a KANBAN board and story points

[Andrew Gazdecki @agazdecki]

How founders feel when vibe coding their 15th SaaS with zero users:

[ali @alimagdich]

Thank me later
https://t.co/HytextddBf

[ali @alimagdich]

It'll be like driving a car. Not everyone knows how to fix the engine if it breaks down. But those who do, are looked upon as experts of matter and definitely indispensable

[ali @alimagdich]

This is crazy, using AI will be cli-based. If you are using skills the anthropic way, you basically won't have to write a single line of code again. You have the advantage if you understand how it works and how to debug it yourself but it won't be necessary for the daily user.

[ali @alimagdich]

Europe is amazing.

I was having coffee in Malmö, Sweden and after I was done I wanted to piss but I thought I’d just hold it until I am back in my hotel in Copenhagen, Denmark.

I am tweeting this with one hand.

[ali @alimagdich]

Me and her somewhere in Italy dancing our asses off (I am single and have a standup meeting in 2 mins)

[ℏεsam @Hesamation]

> you finally said “fuck it”
> left tech for good
> no worries about AI
> don’t care about rate limits anymore
> started a plumbing business

[ali @alimagdich]

20 yrs from now (if humans still exist), people will wonder why the hell does everyone mean by “tweeting”. Isn’t it called X ?

[ali @alimagdich]

#lit

[ali @alimagdich]

When you’re favoured by God, you’re also favoured by the devil