Peter

Time is a drug. Too much of it kills you.

[Peter @peteror_]

@Zai_org - not sure if that Claude thing is a bug or a feature ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

[signüll @signulll]

cold open: google campus. a conference room named “moonshot serenity 4b.” twelve people are in a meeting titled: pre-sync for sync alignment on ai velocity.

sundar sits calmly at the head of the table.

a pm clicks to slide 1 of 187.

“the agenda today is simple,” she says. “how do we move faster while preserving our culture of not doing that?”

everyone nods.

then the door opens.

noam shazeer walks in.

the room goes silent.

noam: “i’m leaving.”

a vp of gemini reliability, brand, trust, latency, policy, and vibe raises a hand.

“leaving… this meeting?”

noam: “google.”

someone gasps. someone else opens a doc titled retention narrative draft final final noam v7.

sundar blinks once.

“noam, we brought you back.”

“for two point seven billion dollars.”

“technically you licensed some technology and reacquired talent.”

“that sentence is why we need legal in the room.”

legal is already there.

cut to: openai.

sam altman stands beside a whiteboard that just says ship.

an engineer walks by carrying a server rack and what appears to be the future.

sam: “we can offer speed, compute, and one meeting.”

noam: “one meeting per week?”

sam: “no. one meeting. total.”

back at google, the emergency retention committee forms instantly. it has 31 members.

a director says, “what if we give him a new title?”

“he already co-leads gemini.”

“distinguished super co-lead?”

“google fellow?”

“he already left google, founded a company, got brought back for billions, then left again. he’s folklore.”

meanwhile, a gemini launch review begins.

pm: “we’re ready to announce the model.”

policy: “can it answer questions?”

eng: “yes.”

policy: “too risky.”

marketing: “can we call it experimental?”

research: “the model is better than the last one.”

brand: “better is aggressive.”

trust & safety: “what about ‘more contextually adjacent to usefulness’?”

a staff engineer whispers, “openai just shipped a model while we were discussing the adjective.”

cut to noam’s exit interview.

hr: “what could google have done better?”

flashback montage:

a chatbot blocked because it might be too good.
a launch delayed because a button was the wrong shade of responsible blue.
a spreadsheet comparing twelve ai product names.
a meeting where someone says “we need a single coherent ai strategy” and three new strategies are created before lunch.

noam: “nothing comes to mind.”

hr: “great. we’ll mark that as positive attrition.”

later, sundar calls him privately.

“google is still google. best researchers. best infrastructure. billions of users.”

“yes.”

“so why leave?”

noam looks out the window.

“because you have everything except permission.”

silence.

sundar, softly: “we can create a permission working group.”

cut to all-hands.

sundar addresses the company.

“noam is leaving. this is not a loss. it is an opportunity to reflect on our operating model.”

chat explodes:

“is this recorded?”
“which gemini?”
“can we ask gemini why people keep leaving?”
“it said ‘insufficient context.’”

a vp steps up.

“to honor noam’s legacy, we’re launching project attention.”

applause.

“it will study whether attention is, in fact, all we need.”

a researcher raises a hand. “didn’t we answer that in 2017?”

“yes. but now we need enterprise readiness.”

final scene: noam arrives at openai. badge works instantly.

receptionist: “yeah, we just made one.”

no pre-read. no doc. just a whiteboard, five people, and a model running somewhere hot enough to toast bread.

sam: “ready?”

noam smiles.

cut back to google. a calendar invite appears:

meeting: reduce meetings task force kickoff
duration: 90 minutes
required attendees: 214

sundar sighs, opens gemini, and types:

“how do we move faster?”

gemini responds:

“have you considered leaving google?”

smash cut to credits.

[Peter @peteror_]

Brain cells while using AI for something I don't know much about
- oh, this is so good
- or maybe we just don't know enough to tell if it's crap
- but it's logical! Well said. Except the "this-not-that" I TOLD THIS THING NO TO DO!
- or maybe we don't know what we don't know
- how would we know that?
- heard about this learning thing?
- ok, let's wait until the new model, that will tell us.

[Peter @peteror_]

@NickADobos @clairevo @cursor_ai JFC...

[Samo Burja @SamoBurja]

The government institutions of the United Kingdom enabled and actively covered up the organized abuse of over 250,000 underaged victims over decades.

This is a terrible crime and is the worst human rights abuse of its citizens by any developed government in the 21st century.

[Peter @peteror_]

@maybe_cmeister @aporia9n London has about 5x the GDP and 3-4x the population compared to Dubai.

[Peter @peteror_]

@giyu_codes First rule, make the requirements less dumb.

[Nate Berkopec @nateberkopec]

Pair programming was a ZIRP phenomenon

[tyler hogge @thogge]

here is a link to the final SpaceX roadshow deck.

what a fun read.

https://t.co/0kSQDsAfpA

[Dirty Texas Hedge @HedgeDirty]

Over 4000 workers just became millionaires by owning the means of production and the socialists are pissed

[Angus Bylsma @AngusBylsma]

The British frozen-food supermarket chain Iceland has, on their website, a cartoon parable warning the unsuspecting customer of the perils of management consultancy.

[Peter @peteror_]

@t_blom I don’t know what’s in the water at YC, but you did sound much more human while building Monzo.

I guess being somewhat delusional is part of the job, but this is way past that. I would rather not like things “extracted” from my head thank you so much.

[Armin Ronacher ⇌ @mitsuhiko]

This is such a good post. https://t.co/IdmAnh18Nt

[Peter @peteror_]

The Gen Z version of "KITT, get out of the car" must be "Claude, get out of my computer"

[tobi lutke @tobi]

https://t.co/5MJ7u1VHwf

[Peter @peteror_]

Soldiers, who like sunny weather better: we never march in april, but we may in june

[Kristian Niemietz @K_Niemietz]

Data is counterculture.

[Peter @peteror_]

@arram You mean like this? https://t.co/igMq8mDnHO

[Nate Berkopec @nateberkopec]

IMO it's very disrespectful to post direct output from an AI into an email, Github comment, or other document intended for human consumption without any annotation saying that it's agent output.

[Peter @peteror_]

You either make it or break it.
Or, in case of an omelette, both.