Usman Yaseen 🇦🇺

Per aspera ad astra

#Markets #Stocks #Macro #Geopolitics #Theology #Quran

[Usman Yaseen 🇦🇺 @usmanyaseen]

Daily Bayan ul Quran by Dr. Israr Ahmed: 20-40 Minutes for Mental Clarit... https://t.co/qDlIWRI3bh via @YouTube

[Usman Yaseen 🇦🇺 @usmanyaseen]

“If you’re in this business for money, go do something else boy”

[Kevin Carpenter @kejca]

Warren Buffett: "I watch everything — [like rail car-loadings] — but I don't do it to make specific investment decisions. I enjoy it. I want to know what's going on."

"But I don't think I can make money by predicting what's gonna go on next week or next month. I do think I can make money by predicting what's gonna happen in ten years."

(CNBC || 2020)

[Usman Yaseen 🇦🇺 @usmanyaseen]

Every once in a while he drops a banger.

[Cassandra Unchained @michaeljburry]

#kalshi as with all #PredictionMarkets is In a regulatory loophole within an extremely heavily taxed and excessively regulated industry that is gambling no matter what anyone calls it. It is as old as humanity and has driven people to enslave their families and descendents in long ago times. Worse, there is nothing preventing cheating in prediction markets. Cheating, the only activity as old as gambling, with the same power to drive humans to extremes. So Kalshi presents the ability to gamble and cheat, and the loophole allows all of it in every state. So of course it is number 1 by a mile and will keep growing as long as society steps aside and lets these horrific base human weaknesses run roughshod over all and any logical, moral and decent challenge.

[Usman Yaseen 🇦🇺 @usmanyaseen]

@IanCarrollShow They bring their own demise themselves, sort of like a vicious curse

[vitalik.eth @VitalikButerin]

One thing I find striking in the discourse between AI 2040 and its detractors is that the two seem to be locked in to totally incompatible worldviews of how fast and how much of a big deal AI progress is:

* In AI 2040, every scenario sees superintelligence of some kind emerging by 2040, unless a herculean effort is made to completely stop it
* Detractors say things like "AI 2040 is naive about human coordination ability and a threat to freedom", but don't seem to see any naivety in assuming that the ASI transition will just go well by default, don't seem to see ASI itself as a massive power concentrator risk, and don't seem to feel fear of humanity's "hard power" dropping to zero if ASIs can do literally every task better than we can. This stance makes total sense in a "AI is normal technology" world, zero sense in a world where superintelligence is possible by 2030 and almost guaranteed by 2040

I think my beliefs are:

- If I was confident that (present-day-style) AI is normal technology, I would be in the detractor camp
- If I was confident that superintelligence is coming in 2030 by default, I would be closer to the AI 2040 camp - it's naive, but every other option is naive squared?

But my problem is that I feel great uncertainty and have no idea which of the two worlds (or some other third thing) we're living in?

Hence why I continue to be open-minded about slowdowns/pauses, but also I feel very uncomfortable with the "open source bad, the good outcome is the one where our guys have controlling global dominance" push coming from some major AI companies and intellectuals - in a "normal" world that's the sort of thing that triggers every political alarm bell at the same time.

A big reason why I have been advocating and trying my best to support the d/acc platform (rapid up-skilling in formal verification, cryptography, secure and open hardware, pandemic resistance and other defensive biotech, food and basic resource security, public epistemics, non-power-concentrating versions of physical security) is that these things are clearly worth doing in both worlds.

The 2040 plan is already much more open source friendly (even mandating it! yay). It also includes "mutually assured compute destruction" ideas which (if they work) effectively give one of 2-5 actors the ability to trigger a global compute winter - as opposed to giving 1-5 actors the ability to selectively disenfranchise people they consider baddies while exempting themselves. This is also a big improvement. So I can see the earnest attempts to improve along the dimensions detractors criticize on ("does this concentrate power in big AI labs and superpower governments?"), and I appreciate this. I think many people don't appreciate enough the differences between different "kinds" of pause buttons, and how some concentrate power far more than others. Probably we can think harder and improve even more here.

But on the "slowdown/pause or not" topic, there isn't a magic "escape the tradeoff" button.

The Hansonian in me says: the winning deal is a deal which, from the perspective of both sides' present-day beliefs and knowledge, both sides would accept, though for different reasons. If the crux is AI progress speed, then identify a set of pre-agreed triggers for "okay, serious shit is happening" [super-pandemics? >25% unemployment? something involving slaughterbots?], and pre-agree that we become much more open-minded to the slowdown or pause thing if enough triggers come to pass within some timeframe. 2040 detractors (who clearly implicitly think that we'll see amazing speedup of progress from AI but think that what I call the "serious shit" category is overhyped) will accept expecting that the triggers don't come to pass, and AI worriers will accept expecting that they will. Pre-agreeing on the specific triggers means that once the triggers either hit or don't hit, there is stronger legitimacy around the idea that one side's worldview turned out more correct and we should be more inclined toward their program.

If I were @elonmusk (or zuck, or...) I would re-tool twitter much more heavily into being a platform for helping to identify and make these kinds of grand win-win deals, so that we can bypass big-country governments and big-company CEOs and big nonprofit intellectuals and give more people a voice in the discussion. It's possibly one of the best things that social media _could_ do for humanity if it wanted to.

But again, maybe this is also naive. Actually, probably it's naive.

But currently, I see zero plans for how to deal with an ASI transition that are not naive. Perhaps humanity is stuck with a choice between naive and naive squared (or maybe even naive squared and naive cubed), so I feel inclined to cut some slack to people who are trying.

[RyanLee @RyanLeeMiniMax]

I’m incredibly excited to share this:

MiniMax has just closed a new $2B funding round. 🚀

At the same time, our CEO, IO, shared three long-term commitments with the team:

• No salary until we achieve AGI.
• Over the next four years, he will dedicate shares equivalent to 4% of the company’s total equity from his personal holdings to reward employees who are building MiniMax for the long term.
• Another 1% will be committed to supporting the open-source community.

The funding is exciting. But what excites me even more is what it represents: a long-term commitment to AGI, to our people, and to the open-source ecosystem.

We’re living through one of the most exciting moments in the history of AI, and we’re just getting started.

If you’re passionate about frontier AI, open source, and building the future, we’d love to build with you.

Intelligence with Everyone. 🚀

[Mao Ning 毛宁 @SpoxCHN_MaoNing]

A historic day in China’s space program!

China’s Long March-10B has successfully completed its maiden flight—and recovered its first stage via a sea-based net. This marks the country’s first-ever controlled rocket recovery. A major leap toward reusable launch capabilities. 🚀🌊🇨🇳

[Usman Yaseen 🇦🇺 @usmanyaseen]

This stuff is really cool, China is sum positive for the World. I’m saying this as a westerner.

Cooperation brings more fruits and confrontations only brings misery.

[Zhao DaShuai 东北进修🇨🇳 Commentary @zhao_dashuai]

Looks straight out of a Sci-Fi film.

People being rescued by drones during floods in China.

[Usman Yaseen 🇦🇺 @usmanyaseen]

More bad news for silver

[Wall St Engine @wallstengine]

Longi, China’s 🇨🇳 largest solar maker, has begun producing solar cells that replace silver with copper at its Shaanxi facility. Solar accounted for 17% of global silver demand last year.

[Capital Misallocation @BenBrey]

Basically you just discovered the concept of THE BEZZLE? John Kenneth Galbraith coined the term in his book “The Great Crash 1929” and Michael Pettis @michaelxpettis penned an excellent article on this topic in summer of 2021 during the last financial bubble summer.

Guess why Pettis wrote about in the heady days of 2021 or Galbraith discussed it in reference to the Great Crash buddy.

Serious Q - is it really preferable to be lied to and diluted and taken advantage of by high level stock promoters like the guys who runs the parent company of this platform?

Ask the Germans about that in the 1940s after over a decade of fake markets & manipulation the day that they actually let the DAX go back to being a free market it put in one of the greatest Thanksgiving Turkey charts of all time. If you look closely at the chart below I would argue your timing of this idea for the SPX is likely a historical analog that would land somewhere in space time between the Blitzkrieg Euphoria & Barbarossa. I mean that would be the absolute most Boomer shit ever if they keep it afloat until 2031-2032 shedding a bunch more boomers to finally let it dump the year social security is set to be toast absent a monster bond rally.

Hope isn’t a strategy buddy. And the Bezzle isn’t real wealth.

https://t.co/kJNN3E5RFZ

[Usman Yaseen 🇦🇺 @usmanyaseen]

@steve_hanke This is why Peter thiel is there

[Usman Yaseen 🇦🇺 @usmanyaseen]

$ETH

[sudo rm -rf --no-preserve-root / @pcaversaccio]

it's pretty simple: my personal goal is to make Ethereum the leading privacy chain (unconditional native txs & private compute via confidential smart contracts). everything else is of second importance to me. and i don't fucking care if this is unpopular. i don't fucking care if most people disagree. i'm not fucking stopping until we get there.

[Usman Yaseen 🇦🇺 @usmanyaseen]

Even City of London is no match for polit-beuro of China let alone Trump.

[Brian Tycangco 鄭彥渊 @BrianTycangco]

Trump taking Venezuela’s Maduro and attacking Iran to gain leverage over China by taking away two of its largest oil import sources but China anticipating the move years ahead by building up 1.3 billion barrels in strategic reserves when oil was low and then ceasing most of its oil imports during the Iran war that ruined Trump’s plan and forced him to deplete US strategic reserves in order to drive oil back down to stop high gasoline from ruining chances in the midterms and China now happily buying back oil below 70/bbl is a wild theory that never made it to anyone’s 2026 bingo card.😅

[Usman Yaseen 🇦🇺 @usmanyaseen]

This is incredible

[Zhao DaShuai 东北进修🇨🇳 Commentary @zhao_dashuai]

People are being rescued by drones in floods in Southeastern China.

[Usman Yaseen 🇦🇺 @usmanyaseen]

Oil above $100?

[The Kobeissi Letter @KobeissiLetter]

BREAKING: President Trump says the ceasefire with Iran is "over."

"I don't want to deal with them anymore, they are scum," Trump says.

[Usman Yaseen 🇦🇺 @usmanyaseen]

Maybe just maybe its not a bubble?

[Hedgie @HedgieMarkets]

🦔Amazon is raising at least $25 billion through a bond sale to fund AI infrastructure, three months after borrowing $37 billion. Alphabet raised $85 billion in equity last month and Meta sold $55 billion in bonds over the past year. Big Tech is expected to spend over $700 billion on AI this year. Amazon's bonds have maturities up to 40 years.

My Take
Amazon has $143 billion in cash and chose to borrow instead of spending it. The financial reason is straightforward: debt at 6% costs less than equity that appreciates at 15% a year. But the scale has moved past financial optimization. These companies are collectively borrowing hundreds of billions against a bet that AI revenue will justify the infrastructure.

Forty years. Amazon just told bondholders it will take up to four decades to pay them back for AI data centers. The Treasury Department's own analysts compared this boom to the dotcom crash this week. The BIS compared it to three separate financial crashes. Oracle warned in its SEC filing that its AI customers might not pay. And the response from the industry is to borrow more. If the revenue shows up, the debt pays for itself. If it doesn't, bondholders and pension funds that bought this paper absorb the loss. Amazon has the cash to survive either outcome. The bondholders are the ones who need the bet to work.

Hedgie🤗

[Michael Pettis @michaelxpettis]

Very interesting piece by Tsinghua University's Feng Kaidong in which he argues that the state's role in fostering technology is to use large projects and industrial policy to connect firms, universities, suppliers, and research institutes, creating the networks through which innovation occurs. Once these networks are established, government intervention should gradually recede and allow market competition to take over.
https://t.co/DpeZ6Uz2cd

[Usman Yaseen 🇦🇺 @usmanyaseen]

“We’re way past making friends”

[New York Post @nypost]

Meta says it's facing $1.4T in penalties in teen mental health case - a sum equal to tech giant's valuation https://t.co/QMH8wACQop

[Usman Yaseen 🇦🇺 @usmanyaseen]

@NoLimitGains Dr*

[Сarm1ne @carm1nee]

Carl Icahn told Larry Fink to his face that BlackRock is "an extremely dangerous company" - then told Wall Street "the mafia has a better code of ethics than you guys"

this is him explaining why BlackRock is pushing the economy off a cliff, why Wall Street keeps selling junk to the middle class, and what 50 years on Wall Street taught him about what's coming next

"BlackRock is an extremely dangerous company. people are buying these bonds not understanding what they're buying"

"the mafia has a better code of ethics than you guys. you're selling this crap and you keep selling it and you're shorting some of it"

"they're all on this party, having a drink, having fun, pushing this thing toward a cliff. you know what's going to destroy it? they're going to hit a Black Rock"

"I've been around a long time. I saw it in '69, '74, '79, '87, 2000. I think a time is coming that might make some of those times look pretty good"

bookmark & watch the full conversation ↓

[Usman Yaseen 🇦🇺 @usmanyaseen]

@edzitron Sayta just is not match for sam thats all