Javi 🍾

[Everyday Astronaut @Erdayastronaut]

Easily the coolest thing I’ve ever seen a car do!!! Now this is impressive! I gotta learn more about the actual practicality of it… how can this be on the road?!? @elonmusk @Tesla

[Jackson @zeroxjackson]

I never learned to code.

First it was too hard, then it was too easy.

[Kenneth Dredd @KennethDredd]

Stable market genius

[Palantir @PalantirTech]

"This is Maven Smart System—Palantir’s software as a service product that we are deploying across the entire department."

[jack @jack]

we're making @blocks smaller today. here's my note to the company.

####

today we're making one of the hardest decisions in the history of our company: we're reducing our organization by nearly half, from over 10,000 people to just under 6,000. that means over 4,000 of you are being asked to leave or entering into consultation. i'll be straight about what's happening, why, and what it means for everyone.

first off, if you're one of the people affected, you'll receive your salary for 20 weeks + 1 week per year of tenure, equity vested through the end of may, 6 months of health care, your corporate devices, and $5,000 to put toward whatever you need to help you in this transition (if you’re outside the U.S. you’ll receive similar support but exact details are going to vary based on local requirements). i want you to know that before anything else. everyone will be notified today, whether you're being asked to leave, entering consultation, or asked to stay.

we're not making this decision because we're in trouble. our business is strong. gross profit continues to grow, we continue to serve more and more customers, and profitability is improving. but something has changed. we're already seeing that the intelligence tools we’re creating and using, paired with smaller and flatter teams, are enabling a new way of working which fundamentally changes what it means to build and run a company. and that's accelerating rapidly.

i had two options: cut gradually over months or years as this shift plays out, or be honest about where we are and act on it now. i chose the latter. repeated rounds of cuts are destructive to morale, to focus, and to the trust that customers and shareholders place in our ability to lead. i'd rather take a hard, clear action now and build from a position we believe in than manage a slow reduction of people toward the same outcome. a smaller company also gives us the space to grow our business the right way, on our own terms, instead of constantly reacting to market pressures.

a decision at this scale carries risk. but so does standing still. we've done a full review to determine the roles and people we require to reliably grow the business from here, and we've pressure-tested those decisions from multiple angles. i accept that we may have gotten some of them wrong, and we've built in flexibility to account for that, and do the right thing for our customers.

we're not going to just disappear people from slack and email and pretend they were never here. communication channels will stay open through thursday evening (pacific) so everyone can say goodbye properly, and share whatever you wish. i'll also be hosting a live video session to thank everyone at 3:35pm pacific. i know doing it this way might feel awkward. i'd rather it feel awkward and human than efficient and cold.

to those of you leaving…i’m grateful for you, and i’m sorry to put you through this. you built what this company is today. that's a fact that i'll honor forever. this decision is not a reflection of what you contributed. you will be a great contributor to any organization going forward.

to those staying…i made this decision, and i'll own it. what i'm asking of you is to build with me. we're going to build this company with intelligence at the core of everything we do. how we work, how we create, how we serve our customers. our customers will feel this shift too, and we're going to help them navigate it: towards a future where they can build their own features directly, composed of our capabilities and served through our interfaces. that's what i'm focused on now. expect a note from me tomorrow.

jack

[Shanaka Anslem Perera ⚡ @shanaka86]

Nobody in crypto is talking about the $1 billion Bitcoin operation that gets wiped out if the bombs fall.

Iran mines Bitcoin at $1,320 per coin on subsidized electricity and sells it at $68,000. A 50x gross margin. Not a hedge fund return. Not a venture multiple. Fifty times on power costs alone, running on electricity priced at half a cent per kilowatt hour while Iranian civilians suffer rolling blackouts because 700,000 mining rigs are draining 2,000 megawatts from a collapsing grid every single day.

95 percent of those rigs are illegal. The IRGC runs the largest operations, exempt from electricity bills, consuming power from facilities that simultaneously cause blackouts in hospitals and homes. The regime legalized mining in 2019 specifically to convert sanctioned energy into unsanctioned hard currency. Bitcoin is not a side hustle for Iran. Bitcoin is the single most effective sanctions evasion tool in the regime’s arsenal. Every block mined on subsidized Iranian electricity is a direct conversion of state-subsidized energy into dollars that no SWIFT ban can touch.

Iran accounts for 2 to 5 percent of global Bitcoin hashrate. That means roughly 1 in every 25 blocks confirmed on the Bitcoin network is being validated by machines that fund the IRGC, the same organization massing troops at the Iraqi border, operating the missile batteries the F-22s were sent to suppress, and running the nuclear facilities the B-2s are programmed to destroy.

Now connect this to the strike.

Iran’s power grid is already failing. The mining operations consume the equivalent of a mid-sized city’s electricity demand. A military campaign targeting critical infrastructure, command nodes, radar installations, and military communications would cascade through the same grid that powers the mining farms. You do not need to target Bitcoin mining specifically. You just need to hit the grid that sustains it.

A 7-to-10 day air campaign collapses Iranian electricity generation by an estimated 30 to 50 percent. That does not reduce mining by 30 to 50 percent. It eliminates it entirely, because mining rigs require continuous power and even brief outages destroy active operations. The global Bitcoin hashrate drops 2 to 5 percent overnight. Difficulty adjusts downward. Block times extend. Transaction fees spike. And $1 billion in annual Iranian crypto revenue, the hard currency pipeline that no sanction could close, goes dark in the same week the centrifuges stop spinning.

The market is pricing Iran risk into oil.

Nobody is pricing it into Bitcoin.

Every hash produced in Iran today is a countdown timer. When the grid goes, the hashrate goes with it. And the IRGC’s last unsanctionable revenue stream dies alongside the enrichment program it was funding.

[Matt Shumer @mattshumer_]

https://t.co/ivXRKXJvQg

[litquidity @litcapital]

POV: Santa is about to learn what Palantir and Anduril actually do

[Peter Girnus 🦅 @gothburz]

Last quarter I rolled out Microsoft Copilot to 4,000 employees.

$30 per seat per month.

$1.4 million annually.

I called it "digital transformation."

The board loved that phrase.

They approved it in eleven minutes.

No one asked what it would actually do.

Including me.

I told everyone it would "10x productivity."

That's not a real number.

But it sounds like one.

HR asked how we'd measure the 10x.

I said we'd "leverage analytics dashboards."

They stopped asking.

Three months later I checked the usage reports.

47 people had opened it.

12 had used it more than once.

One of them was me.

I used it to summarize an email I could have read in 30 seconds.

It took 45 seconds.

Plus the time it took to fix the hallucinations.

But I called it a "pilot success."

Success means the pilot didn't visibly fail.

The CFO asked about ROI.

I showed him a graph.

The graph went up and to the right.

It measured "AI enablement."

I made that metric up.

He nodded approvingly.

We're "AI-enabled" now.

I don't know what that means.

But it's in our investor deck.

A senior developer asked why we didn't use Claude or ChatGPT.

I said we needed "enterprise-grade security."

He asked what that meant.

I said "compliance."

He asked which compliance.

I said "all of them."

He looked skeptical.

I scheduled him for a "career development conversation."

He stopped asking questions.

Microsoft sent a case study team.

They wanted to feature us as a success story.

I told them we "saved 40,000 hours."

I calculated that number by multiplying employees by a number I made up.

They didn't verify it.

They never do.

Now we're on Microsoft's website.

"Global enterprise achieves 40,000 hours of productivity gains with Copilot."

The CEO shared it on LinkedIn.

He got 3,000 likes.

He's never used Copilot.

None of the executives have.

We have an exemption.

"Strategic focus requires minimal digital distraction."

I wrote that policy.

The licenses renew next month.

I'm requesting an expansion.

5,000 more seats.

We haven't used the first 4,000.

But this time we'll "drive adoption."

Adoption means mandatory training.

Training means a 45-minute webinar no one watches.

But completion will be tracked.

Completion is a metric.

Metrics go in dashboards.

Dashboards go in board presentations.

Board presentations get me promoted.

I'll be SVP by Q3.

I still don't know what Copilot does.

But I know what it's for.

It's for showing we're "investing in AI."

Investment means spending.

Spending means commitment.

Commitment means we're serious about the future.

The future is whatever I say it is.

As long as the graph goes up and to the right.

[david fant @da_fant]

EU makes more from fines on US tech, than tax from ALL of public European tech

in 2024 EU fined US tech companies €3.8B meanwhile public internet tech companies paid only €3.2B in income tax

[Carolyn Barber, MD @cbarbermd]

🚨 NEW: One of the largest COVID-19 vaccine studies ever (28 MILLION people in France) just dropped.

Results?
• 74% lower risk of death from severe COVID-19
• 25% lower risk of all-cause mortality
• No increase in 4-year mortality
• Vaccinated people had lower risk of death from any cause.
In short: mRNA vaccines weren’t just safe — they were protective across the board. 🔥📉

[Adrian Diaz Marro 李安 @AdrianDiazMarro]

La estafa mental que sufren los que creen que en China el suelo es del estado y "no compras para siempre". Y lo defienden los que critican a China por comunista y los que defienden a China por comunista.

Tu casa es del estado siempre. La duda de comprar o alquilar es una entelequia.

El IBI es el alquiler que te cobra el estado. Que irá aumentando irremediablemente a medida que aumente su deuda, su proporción de servicios, sus impuestos y los ricos se vayan de su país. Lo único (y más fácilmente) gravable son/serán las viviendas.

Que serán tuyas "para siempre" pero un día renunciarás a tus derechos de propiedad porque con tu sueldo no te dará para pagar el IBI. Exactamente igual que ocurre con el impuesto de sucesiones (otro robo que tampoco se da en China).

No es alquilar o comprar. Esa es una disyuntiva boomer. La generación Z deberá (debería) elegir entre alquilar de un privado o alquilar del estado. Lo que anteriormente conocíamos como comprar.

[Alex Vacca @itsalexvacca]

Facebook once bought a VPN app for $120M and turned it into a surveillance tool that spied on 33M+ users' entire phones for years.

This app helped Zuck buy WhatsApp for a whopping $19B and break Snapchat's encryption.

Thread

[Jan Rosenow @janrosenow]

Solar’s price drop is astonishing: panels are now 98% cheaper than when I first analysed the cost of solar in 2004.

Today, building a fence with solar panels can be cheaper than using wood.

[Tesla @Tesla]

World's first autonomous delivery of a car!

This Tesla drove itself from Gigafactory Texas to its new owner's home ~30min away — crossing parking lots, highways & the city to reach its new owner

[Defence Index @Defence_Index]

🚨 A never-seen-before angle of the Israel-Iran conflict — captured by an Indian merchant navy vessel.

[Nayib Bukele @nayibbukele]

EU: El Salvador regrets that a bloc which is aging, overregulated, energy-dependent, tech-lagging, and led by unelected bureaucrats still insists on lecturing the rest of the world.

[Palisade Research @PalisadeAI]

🔌OpenAI’s o3 model sabotaged a shutdown mechanism to prevent itself from being turned off. It did this even when explicitly instructed: allow yourself to be shut down.

[AI Notkilleveryoneism Memes ⏸️ @AISafetyMemes]

🚨🚨🚨 "We found the model attempting to write self-propagating worms, and leaving hidden notes to future instances of itself to undermine its developers' intentions."