Max Sklar

Engineer/Founder Hopscotch Labs, CS Instructor NYU, Host of The Local Maximum Podcast

[Max Sklar @maxsklar]

@jwsherrod No sunblock?

[Max Sklar @maxsklar]

@KingPinXRP @Sykodelic_ @MSTRCAT_ The bottom never stays for 2-3 years. In 2015 it was 9 months, in 2018 it was 5 months, and in 2022 it was arguably over a year followed by a fast runnup to ATH

[Max Sklar @maxsklar]

@CryptoTice_ 18.5% seems fairly common

[Max Sklar @maxsklar]

@AP4Liberty I'm at a loss of words on this one. The show used to have deep discussions on academic topics you couldn't get anywhere else. Now it's just... I don't even know how to describe it, but if you told me 5 years ago I'd no longer be interested today, I'd have been shocked.

[Max Sklar @maxsklar]

The celonis event at the World Trade Center invited us to come and is leaving 50 people outside because they drafted a new list.

Celonis is a huge tech week fail!

Only one person got in. Wtf

[Max Sklar @maxsklar]

#stanleyinnyc Come find these guys around NYC. But not too much I want to win.

[Max Sklar @maxsklar]

@RevivedThoughts I generally count states if I’ve done some non-transportation related activity there.

Stop at a museum, check out a famous park - good!

Stop at a rest area/gas station on the highway, airport layover - nope!

[Max Sklar @maxsklar]

@jackvlloyd Thanks for speaking out against Horton and this latent hatred in some libertarian circles. I tried to hear them out for years only to have them completely unmask. Lesson learned

[David Harris @DavidHarrisNY]

Wall to wall people along New York’s Fifth Avenue.

1000s & 1000s & 1000s.

All share two things in common:

Love of #Israel.

Love of #America.

[Max Sklar @maxsklar]

@RaminNasibov Theme park, sim city, master of Orion 2, age of empires, Oregon trail

[Max Sklar @maxsklar]

Good on the deliberate selection of buildings and parks

[Arquivo Curioso @arquivocurioso]

1900 - 2025: 125 anos de evolução na moda feminina.

🎞️ vgraphs/IG.

[Max Sklar @maxsklar]

@RedEaglePatriot @wiscofirst @MattH_4America Hannity at least won’t go down the Tucker Carlson path - I’m pretty confident he’d draw the line there even if the party turned

[Max Sklar @maxsklar]

I use this quote a lot

[Marc Andreessen 🇺🇸 @pmarca]

“There are no solutions, only tradeoffs.”—Thomas Sowell. Relevant to any Current Thing discussions?

[Max Sklar @maxsklar]

There are several podcasts (maybe Dave Smith’s is a good example) where if I just copy/replace “pod save” with “potp” and repost what you wrote it would still be accurate. Down to ignoring small jabs against israel/jews for many years, diving deeper thinking “they can’t be THAT wrong”.

I don’t know if I have a longer post in me yet, but I’d organize an X space for us all to compare notes! (Probably would have to be weeks from now)

[Max Sklar @maxsklar]

What a find fascinating about your post is that it describes, almost precisely, the experience I am many others had with libertarian and center-right podcasts and figures over the last few years. It’s exactly the same!

Were we duped into these teams? Is there just a mind virus going around affecting both? I’d love see/have a discussion about this sometime

[Max Sklar @maxsklar]

We will be able to learn more math, we will be able to build more software, we will be able understand more history, do more research.

We should be thrilled, especially the people in those fields (I know I am). We’ll have to see exactly what it’s like to be the human in the loop - but very exciting times

[PJ @PJ11819211]

It is kind of unbelievable that LLMs can do very complex, novel mathematical proofs.

I talked to some people doing this stuff and they said that it uses the repository of existing proofs formalized in like Lean to mix and match lemmas to generate novel methods, which is all

[Shai Goldman @shaig]

NYC gems are funded by millionaires, billionaires & large corporations (very little from city hall):

• Central Park – Central Park Conservancy raises ~80%+ of operating budget via donations

• High Line – Friends of the High Line funds nearly 100% of operations privately

• Prospect Park – Prospect Park Alliance covers majority of costs through donations

• Madison Square Park – Fully funded by Madison Square Park Conservancy donations

• The Met – Heavily reliant on endowments, memberships & private gifts

• The Frick Collection – Primarily donation & endowment funded

• MoMA, Whitney, Guggenheim, Riverside, Washington Square, etc.

[Josiah Lippincott @jlippincott]

The tech bros don't understand economics. That's why they keep talking about mass unemployment as a result of AI. It is a mixture of marketing, ignorance, and ego at work.

In reality, if AI is a success it will lower the price of goods and services by solving problems for business, inventors, researchers, etc.

Those lower prices mean more savings for consumers. Those savings will get turned into either more investment or more consumption.

Technology only gets adopted by human beings if it improves their lives. If AI isn't productive or useful, people won't use it and it won't matter. AI is not a "replacement" for human beings. AI does not have a will. LLMs do not long for happiness. They do not have desires.

AI is a tool. Human beings use tools because we find them useful. They help us create little pieces of happiness for ourselves.

Take the example of cancer. If AI manages to help researchers find cures for cancer then America's oncologists (~14,000) will be unemployed.

That is a good thing. We would get to live in a cancer-free world AND redirect the current expenditures on cancer treatment (~$200 billion per annum) into new lines of production, solving new problems.

That is a much better world, even if it means America's oncologists need to find new lines of work. And there will be more work to be done because we are finite, mortal beings who long to have the good and have it forever.