klyn

stoic bridging the voids

[John Arnold @johnarnold]

hahahahhaha

[Mindset Machine  @mindsetmachine]

I keep coming back to this video once in a while...

[Joanne Chen @joannezchen]

https://t.co/Mky3MW8sXj

[Aakash Gupta @aakashgupta]

We’re spending $200B+ a year on data centers to power AI. One company raised $11M, grew human brain cells on a chip, and the cells taught themselves to play a 3D shooter in a week.

Cortical Labs grew 200,000 human neurons on a silicon chip and taught them to play Doom. The cells navigate, target enemies, and fire weapons in real time. Their previous game, Pong, took 18 months on older hardware. Doom took a week. An independent developer with zero biotech experience built the integration using a Python API. The neurons did the rest.

That compression from 18 months to one week tells you everything about where this is going.

Here’s what the “can it run Doom” crowd is missing: each CL1 unit costs $35,000. A full 30-unit server rack draws 850 to 1,000 watts total. Your brain runs on 20 watts. A single GPU cluster training an LLM can draw megawatts. The energy economics of biological compute are orders of magnitude better than silicon, and that gap scales.

The investor list tells you who’s paying attention. Horizons Ventures, Blackbird, and In-Q-Tel, the CIA’s venture arm. In-Q-Tel doesn’t fund science projects. They fund intelligence infrastructure. 115 units started shipping in 2025.

Cortical Labs is now selling “Wetware-as-a-Service” through the Cortical Cloud. Developers can deploy code to living neurons remotely without touching a lab. They’re pricing access at the level of a software subscription while the hardware runs on real human brain cells derived from adult skin and blood samples.

The Doom demo is marketing. The platform play is a bet that biological neurons will eventually outperform silicon at exactly the tasks AI struggles with most: real-time adaptation under uncertainty, learning from minimal data, and processing ambiguity without brute-force compute.

The question was never “can it run Doom.” The question is what happens when it can run everything else.

[Ivan Zhao @ivanhzhao]

https://t.co/fxHYR6S29D

[Greg Brockman @gdb]

AI product adoption is fast.

[Elon Musk @elonmusk]

Kardashev 1 or you’re not even trying

[Emil Kirkegaard @KirkegaardEmil]

We just published a study showing that national stereotypes of intelligence are also accurate. It looks like this.

[∩ @zachpogrob]

'4000 weeks' is by far the most insane framing for how short life is.

[robert franco @responsiblerob]

GOD MODE

[James Clear @JamesClear]

People can sometimes be held hostage by their expectations. They have a dream of something they would like to achieve or a path they intend to follow, but their mindset falls apart when things don't work out how they had hoped.

The key is to reach for an extremely high bar, but to be adaptable enough to reframe the failures, disappointments, and defeats into fuel for the next thing. Give your best effort, but no matter how it works out, trust that life will be good for you. Focus on how the world is working with you, not against you.

Everything you are given is material for the next move. Everything.

[Thomas Sowell Quotes @ThomasSowell]

Phenomenal explanation of inflation.

Printing money may seem refreshing in the short term but it's poison when used as a crutch.

[Nivi @nivi]

This is the first correct definition of AGI I have heard from anybody who works in AI. His timeline is unknowable but the rest is correct.

[Aaron Levie @levie]

As AI makes it far easier to generate code, we won’t just build the same amount of software, but faster and cheaper. Instead, we’ll build vastly more software to go after more things.

[Pixxel @PixxelSpace]

We have liftoff!! Our Fireflies are officially up in space 🚀

[Reid Hoffman @reidhoffman]

I came across this video of Justin Bieber using a full orchestra to turn the rhythms in his mind into music. Soon, anyone will be able to hum a tune, describe the vibe you’re aiming for, and have an AI-powered producer turn your ideas into reality.

[David Juurlink @DavidJuurlink]

For those contemplating a detox or cleanse in the new year, here’s a toxicologist’s explanation of how they work:

They don’t

[Nivi @nivi]

It is said that you can’t understand something until you can program it.

This imagines that understanding is a terminal state that can be achieved. It is not—understanding is the process of addressing criticisms and there are endless criticisms.

It also imagines that we’re not gaining understanding in the steps prior to writing the program. But, how would we program it if we didn’t increase our understanding along the way?

Computers have a special place in physics because they can simulate anything, in principle. But understanding is more than just simulation.

[JJ @JosephJacks_]

What comes next after open source software?

Open source hardware.
Open source pharmaceuticals.
Open source biology / genetics.
Open source government.